Unless you’re a big fan of the Japanese G1 Continuity (and if you’re not, you kinda should be…), you probably won’t be very familiar with Greatshot.
But for all intents and purposes, he’s the OG Drift. Essentially Greatshot is the reformed and now Samurai-esque Sixshot. I was secretly hoping Takara would make him once Sixshot was announced and boy howdy, they did NOT disappoint.
To be fair, like the G1 toys before them, there isn’t a HUGE amount of retooling on the Six-changers. (G1 QuickSwitch being the exception). However, Takara really put some extra ‘umph’ into the areas that they retooled for Greatshot here.
A new chest plate, chest wings, shoulder cannons (that rotate), a horned helmet and a new face sculpt for the Head Master all shine brightly differentiating him from his predecessors.
Impressively enough, the horns on the helmet fold into the top half for transformation and have a tight grip so they’re not all loosey-goosey.
The most important aspect to his retooling is his beast mode. My favorite mode for all of these guys, it was important to change his beast head to the Rhino/griffin/whatever he is from the animation and they did a wonderful job of it.
The rest of the modes are roughly the same, though the shoulder cannons help make jet mode and tank mode look really neat.
The one neat aspect is that Takara implemented a display stand peg hole into the mold so that the “Submarine” mode can be displayed properly as a blaster-mode, which is greatly appreciated.
The Head Master is the same mold as Revolver, Hasbro’s Titan Master who comes with Sixshot, however, the mold was designed specifically to look like Chromdome’s buddy, Jack, who is killed in The Head Masters. In the comic included with Greatshot, he actually IS Jack, brought back to life to be a Head Master for Greatshot.
BOTTOM LINE
Should you buy Greatshot? While this mold is great, and this specific retool is really top notch, Greatshot is a really obscure character from Victory. Then again so is Black Shadow. (For the record, I love Victory and so far we’ve gotten Black Shadow, Greatshot, and Liokaiser in the last few years. Thanks HASBRO & TAKARA TOMY!)
If you don’t mind the import price, he’s worth every penny.
Pax Cybertron 