Dave's Rescue Bots Rant: "Legion" Wave 1 Heatwave (Brontosaur) Blades (Pterodactyl) Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/123/RBLegion1 While the Legion/Commander class seems to have been dumped for the Age of Extinction line, Rescue Bots rolls to the rescue, as one does. The new "Roar and Rescue" line plays along with AoE by giving everyone dinosaur modes, which I suppose could be explained in the show by getting some Predacon CNA analyzed by Doc Green. ;) CAPSULES $5 price point. Heatwave: Nice chunky brontosaur, decent robot for the size, although it feels like they oversimplified a Deluxe-sized design for this. Mildly recommended. Blades: The dino mode looks more like a jet than a pterosaur, and the lack of paints really hurts this one. Mildly recommended, not as good as Heatwave. RANTS Packaging: Tied to open blister backings on cards 6" (15cm) tall and 4.5" (11.5cm) wide. Same basic layout as other carded Rescue Bots toys, with the addition of Try Me callouts. Drawn art of the robot modes in the upper right, names along the bottom. On the back are photos of both modes (showing all the paint apps that are missing from the actual toys, sigh) and cosell pics of the other toy in the small wave. There are short bio blurbs on the back, and tiny instructions. Interestingly, as much as the package photos show paint apps not on the toy, the drawn art shows paint not even on the photos. Looks like I'll be extensively touching my toys up to match. RESCUE BOT: HEATWAVE THE RESCUE DINOBOT Altmode: Brontosaurus Now Heatwave the Fire-Bot can roar to the rescue as a Rescue Dinobot brontosaurus! [uncapitalized in original] Dino Mode: Well, it's basically a robot brontosaur, with various random tech greebles including gears on the hind legs. 3" (7.5cm) tall at the head, completely made of bright red plastic with some silver, AllSpark Blue, and yellow paint. The snout and most of the spines down the back are painted silver. The visor and the top of the gimmick button are painted AllSpark Blue, plus that color is used for the Rescue Bots symbol on the front/chest. There's yellow paint on some vertical bumpers on the front. Pushing the blue-painted button on the rump makes the head dip down a little. This sort of works in robot mode, making it nod and lower the arms a bit. Other than the gimmick and a little wiggle room in the tail, there's no articulation. Transformation: Pull apart the halves of the dino head (which is easier if you notice and remove the rubber band, oops), the rear legs automatically swing down under the forelegs. Manually drop the tail down. Reverse order to return to dino mode. Robot Mode: They do a surprisingly good job of getting decent humanoid proportions from this transformation, although the minimalist arm and fist molding on the insides of the neck halves are practically impressionistic. Of course, the package art implies that the arms should be able to turn over so that the fists are on the inside rather than the outside, maybe that's planned for a larger version? 2.75" (7cm) tall, so definitely in the Legion class range, but bulkier than most of those. The only new paint is on the face, which is entirely silver with blue visor. Other than motion from the gimmick, the arms can flap a little, but to be honest, that's about as much articulation as I expect from any Rescue Bots toy. Missing Paint: Missing silver on the abdomen and dino feet. (There's also some gray plastic pieces in the prototype that are all red here.) Missing yellow on the helmet and dino forehead, plus additional yellow around the dino face to go by the illustration. Missing dark gray on the dino ears and the gears on the hind legs, plus on the non-jaw part of the face in robot mode. Overall: It's a cute little toy, and these days it's about as much as one can expect for five bucks (although Family Dollar tends to be a bit higher priced on major brand products, so if these ever find their way to Walmart or Target they might be four bucks). RESCUE BOT: BLADES THE RESCUE DINOBOT Altmode: Pterodactyl Now Blades the Flight-Bot can roar to the rescue as a Rescue Dinobot pterodactyl! [Yeah, not a lot of variety here.] Dino Mode: This doesn't really look like a pterodactyl. It looks like a robo falcon head with wings stuck to it, about as chibi as a bird design can get. It's as if they took a Deluxe design with an extending neck and simplified it down so much that the head had to stay stuck on the torso. I prefer to swing the arms up so that the figure can rest level in this mode, since it's not like it's going to break any illusions. 2.5" (6cm) long with a wingspan of 4.75" (12cm), it barely fit onto the card. It's mostly white and orange with some bits of AllSpark Blue (well, Energize Blue these days) and yellow, plus green eyes. The wings, robot arms, and gimmick trigger are a slightly burnt orange plastic, the rest is white plastic. There's a cockpit-like detail painted blue, bright orange (brighter than the plastic) on the sides of the head, and small yellow stripes where the head meets the body. Pressing the orange crest button on the back makes the wings flap up. This function does not work at all in robot mode, as the automorph pushes the wings all the way up. No real articulation other than the gimmick, unless you count swinging the robot arms up on their swivel shoulders. Transformation: Swing the legs back and together, which automatically swings the head and wings up. The lower jaw folds down to form the chest. Robot Mode: 2.5" (6.5cm) tall at the head, although the beast head sticks up above the head quite a bit. There's a new fake window on the chest in blue paint, below a blue Rescue Bots symbol. The head is painted orange with a silver face and blue goggles. No paint on the arms or legs. As noted above, the arms are on swivel shoulders and the gimmick is disabled. Missing Paint: NONE of the paint shown on the wings made it to the actual toy (lots of white, some dark gray and yellow). Dark gray on the hands and torso, white on the wrists, lots of orange missing from the utterly unpainted legs and pelvis. Missing silver on the ankles. While orange is a pretty hard color to paint normally, I have a gloss orange that should be a sufficiently close match, and it only has to go over white. Hm, I think the prototype might have been all white plastic with orange paint on the wings and arms. Overall: I hope this design is going to be released at a larger size, it seems to have made too many compromises. And it is more badly hurt by the slashed paint budget than Heatwave was. Dave Van Domelen, off to paint 'em. [Later update: http://www.dvandom.com/kitbash/dinoblades.JPG http://www.dvandom.com/kitbash/dinoheatwave.JPG ]