Canonball and I now turn our attention to the head (but not leader) of the Constructicons: Hook!
The elite perfectionist of the team, Hook carries the lofty title of Surgical Engineer. His disposition tends to reflect that. And then he had the gall to call Soundwave an “uncharismatic bore.” Yeesh. Glass houses n’ stuff. Here’s his bio:
With the precision of a fine jeweler, Hook performs his job with skill unequalled among the Transformers, whether reconnecting a damaged microchip or setting a two ton girder into place. He’s a snobbish, supercilious, unpopular perfectionist who is able to lift 20 tons. As shoulders and head module, combines with fellow Constructicons to form giant robot “Devastator.”
It is worth noting, though, if you ever need to have the Heart of Cybertron installed into your chest, Hook is definitely your guy.
Hook transforms into the appropriate truck crane alt mode, with some added features, like a swiveling cab and a raising crane arm. It is a shame this arm doesn’t extend past it’s collapsed point, though, since that was a fun feature of the original toy.
Size is about where you would expect him to fall in, though maybe a little smaller than I expected him to be, he still makes good scale with a deluxe Autobot car. He’s shrimpy next to the Masterpiece cars, but since the rest of the crew does half-decent in that arena, I’m willing to let that slide.
Robot mode is a lot more fun than the slidey-fiddly mess the G1 toy was, by far. Decent articulation, good joints, and a significant size presence, are in his favor — his arms keep him from the top of the crew, being a little more restricted than the arm-bots, but still better than the leg-bots. For as many jobs as Hook does in the combined mode, literally making head and shoulders of Devastator, he conceals most of those necessary connections pretty well in his alt modes. The vehicle mode was fine, but I think the bot mode really shines here as far has how well all that incorporates and doesn’t take away from the design. The head sculpt, like the rest of his team, is great, and dead-on to his cartoon look.
Hook oddly has not been a regular feature of previous Devastators. When Classics repurposed the Energon Constructicon combiner into the G1 version, they did so with the more standard “four deluxe and one voyager” build that we see among the other Combiner Wars figures as well. So to have Hook here to take on the upper torso job not only makes him much truer to his roots, but as you’ll see later, adds some impressive bulk to the final mode. So for that alone, I’m already a fan, and it’s nice that he’s a pretty solid figure on his own.
Now here’s Canonball with a video breakdown: