So, even before Goodsmile announced they were doing Overwatch figures of any kind, a company known for 3rd party Transformers, DX-9 put out a transforming 3rd Party Bastion. Or as it’s officially know, K1 Freeman. So, a little background, “3rd Party” is a term used often in the Transformers community to refer to a slew of toys and companies that produce unofficial, unlicensed Transformers figures. There are, I believe, similar operations in other toylines, but Transformers is definitely the biggest market for these toys. They aren’t straight bootlegs, like you might find at a flee market, where some company produces a replica of of an official toy and sells it for cheap. These are heavily engineered and often expensive figures, released without the official sanction of the company holding the IP. They also often get goofy names like “K1 Freeman”. Bastion, being sort of a Transformer, got the 3rd Party treatment.
I waited on picking this one up for a while, until the official Figma figures were announced. I seriously doubt Figma ever puts out any of the larger characters, though I’d be happy to be wrong. I have even less faith that Figma will ever put out a transforming Bastion. So Freeman is the next best thing. The main thing that feels off about him is the default skin, which I had honestly forgot what it even looked like, because no one uses it in game.
He does the job pretty dang well. There is some limitation on the articulation, especially on the gun arm, but it’s mostly pretty good. Bastion isn’t exactly a ninja or anything, he’s a big heavy military robot that turns into a tank. Being the product of a 3rd Party Transformers company, he also has all three of Bastion’s modes. Granted, none of Bastion’s transformations are particularly complex. For the turret, he pretty much drops to his knees, fold up the arms, and extend the barrel on the back.
The tank involves some parts swapping, though there isn’t really any other way to handle those giant treads. The Gatling turret swaps for a tank barrel and the legs slide off and get replaced by the tank treads. The treads are actually functional, which is cool, but rubber on toys tends to not really last, so I imagine over time, they will likely end up falling apart. The parts forming kind of sucks, but it’s slick and easy so it works.
The best part, Freeman scales very nicely with the official Figma characters. He might be a tad oversized, but it works, and it’s not a lot if he is. He also includes a little version of Ganymede, his little parrot friend. Ganymede has a little peg that lets him peg onto a fee places on the figure.
Overall, Freeman is a pretty nice representation of Bastion. He’s gotten pretty affordable on eBay as well. The whole thing is very solidly built and has some nice heft to it as well, nothing flimsy here. The real X factor is what Hasbro does with it’s recently announced Overwatch line. They are more likely to release Bastion than Figma, but who knows if it will transform at all. I suspect it would at best turn into a turret and not a tank.
