The Saga of Seaspray

I buy just one or two Transformers a year. It isn’t easy. Hasbro’s modern toys are little plastic torpedoes locked on to the nostalgia nodes of every kid who dug Transformers in the 1980s or 1990s. Countless new Autobots and Decepticons are modern takes on older characters, delivering the poseable, cartoon-accurate action figures we always wanted. That’s a tough poison to resist.

I try to abstain, but a few toys make it past my defenses. The most recent one is Seaspray, a Transformers: Titan Returns incarnation of the hovercraft-bot best known for talking like he was permanently underwater. Or drunk. Or both.

The updated Seaspray follows a design similar to his 1985 version, changing from a slightly tubby robot to a compact hovercraft. The current version has much more articulation, of course, and I like how his enormous feet could suit a clown, a water skiier, or a drowned mobster. I could see his many moving parts getting weak after a few dozen transformations, but then I’m no longer a ten-year-old kid who treats every toy like a stage from Wrecking Crew.

Seaspray also looks fine as a hovership, though I note one little shortcoming: his old ‘80s version had wheels on the bottom, and this new one does not. I know that most hovercraft don’t have wheels, but nor do most hovercraft turn into alien robots. All things considered, it’s a good little toy.

Yet there’s another reason I bought it, and it’s the same reason that Seaspray is one of my favorite Transformers.