Dave's Kiddie Transformers Rant: Robot Heroes Wave 11 (Movie Series 2) Jolt/Ravage (92741) Ironhide/Mixmaster (92472) Autobot Ratchet/Barricade (89893) Chromia/Megatron (89919) Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/123/RH11 Update: Series 2 shipped in two wave-lets. The first wave had the first two sets listed above, plus reships of a pair of the sets shipped out in Series 1, but they did have cosells of those reships so it was a planned thing. The second wave had all four of the toys listed above. Ironhide is a redeco of the Wave 4 toy, rather than the more interesting Wave 5 diving figure. http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/123/RH4 Barricade is a redeco of the original RH version, not the creepy second version. http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/123/RH3 The other six are new molds, and Ratchet is not the same as the version used in the "Battle for the AllSpark" $20 set. Megatron is a "guntank" mode that is possible with the Leader class toy. CAPSULES Jolt/Ravage: Jolt is pretty good, Ravage is adorable. Recommended. $6.96 at Walmart. Ironhide/Mixmaster: A not-so-good redeco of a so-so mold, and a mold that looks okay but suffers quite a bit from lack of paints or color contrast in general, you might want to wait to see if all the Constructicons get re-released in a G1 color scheme for some store exclusive and get that instead. Neutral. $6.96 at Walmart Autobot Ratchet/Barricade: Ratchet's an okay mold with mediocre articulation for a Robot Hero, Barricade is an uninspired deco tweak of an older mold. If they'd done Rescue Ratchet/Patrol Barricade or something it might have been worth picking up, but there's already enough of these general deco schemes floating around. Neutral. $6.96 at Walmart. Chromia/Megatron: Chromia's kinda weird (and really Arcee in blue), but interesting. I quite like the guntank Megatron. Recommended. $6.96 at Walmart. RANTS Packaging: Same as RotF Series 1, but with "Movie Series 2" and changed cosells. The first wavelet has cosells for the Skids/Megatron and Mudflap/Rampage sets on the back, but the second wavelet has all four new sets. AUTOBOT: JOLT Jolt is, on reflection, a pretty creepy guy just based on his few seconds in the movie. Here's a guy who's extremely efficient at dismantling a deceased Cybertronian and attaching the remains to a comrade, and apparently he's known to be good at it since Ratchet doesn't even need to give specific orders, Jolt knows what they want of him. It's a speed that suggests he's had experience doing these strip-and-upgrade procedures while under fire on the battlefield, as opposed to opportunistic salvaging after the fight's over. Jolt's signature weapon/tool is a pair of electrified metal whips with harpoon-hooked tips, and he has them extended from the palms of his three- fingered hands. They's molded to interweave somewhat in front of him, although they don't look wrong if not interwoven. Both are pointed to his left, but fortunately his head will turn to look that way. The way his eyes are molded makes him look surprised. Maybe he's surprised by the giant butterfly that landed on his back. Well, that's what his backpack kibble kinda looks like. :) Made of a deep bold blue plastic with a slight purplish hue under sunlight that's NOT gummy. In fact, except in the whips (which are thinner than most of the bits) it's possibly the least flexible plastic used to date in a Robot Heroes toy. The wheels inside his shoulders and on his shins (he has six wheels, oddly) are painted gloss black. Some U-shaped bits on his chest and the taillights on his toes are painted gloss red. The whips are sky blue and his eyes are yellow. Silver is used extensively, on the face, backpack, elbows and abdomen. A silver Autobot symbol is printed on his left shoulder. He's in the usual hunched over crouch, with both arms bent more than 90 degrees at the elbows and spread out a bit to the sides. He just has the usual neck and shoulder swivels. For a character thrown in for licensing purposes, he at least got a decent Robot Heroes toy. It's a bit too blue, but lack of paint applications is pretty common in this line. DECEPTICON: RAVAGE O HAI Ahem. Given the almost Giger-esque look of the RotF Ravage, you'd think they'd have a hard time making this one cute and kid-friendly. But you'd be wrong. Okay, he's still pretty spikey and spiny, but they managed to enhance the "Gypsy from MST3K" look of his head and a friendly smile doesn't look as disturbingly out of place as on some Robot Heroes toys. Oddly, his lower left foreleg is molded significantly differently from his lower right foreleg. Oddly, they didn't make him out of black plastic. Instead, he's the same very dark brown plastic as the Ironhide redeco, making me wonder if they decided to cast both at the same time. Like Jolt, the plastic is quite solid other than the rubbery tail. There's a lot of silver paint here, but some of it is meant to suggest the existence of more. The outside faces of his lower forelegs and middle hindlegs are painted silver, but not the rest of each piece. His back spines, tail tip and cannon barrel are also silver, and a silver Decepticon symbol is printed on the top of his head. A metallic turquoise paint is used on his rear hips, upper front legs and the backs of his lower rear legs. His big single eye is metallic purple, and his tongue is red. The pose he's designed for, with all feet or legs flat on the table, is one in which he's getting ready to pounce. However, all four hips are swivels and the head is on a swivel so it can tilt to the side, so a fair amount of articulation is possible. The cannons on the hips do block range of motion some, so he can only rear back to have his torso about 30 degrees above horizontal. Given Ravage's somewhat limited role in the movie, he certainly got a nice Robot Heroes toy. And now he needs to go maul my Robot Heroes Bumblebee. http://www.dvandom.com/images/deceptislobber.JPG AUTOBOT: IRONHIDE Well, I preferred the other Ironhide mold, with the whole tumbling-and- firing thing. And I'm not sure what they were shooting for with this color scheme, given that it doesn't match any other Ironhide redeco. He's cast out of the same dark brown plastic as Ravage, and does look black under the right lighting conditions. Almost all of the paint masks have been changed, but the bronze is mostly replaced buy olive green, which is on the same part of his right gun as the bronze on the original, but it covers less of the middle of the left gun than the bronze did. His kneecaps are green rather than the thigh armor, more of his chest center is green, and there's no green on his back. The sides of the head are green in the same places the original is bronze, though. There's gloss black in the center of his back, with a silver Autobot symbol printed on it. Silver covers all of each fist, but only the front of the toes. The bumper/grille parts are the same as on the original. His eyes are blue, and the opening of his left cannon is also blue (less coverage than on the orignal). They should have painted his tires black instead of the small of his back, and done something with the windows on his back. Not a great mold to start with, and the deco job on this one is worse than the original. DECEPTICON: MIXMASTER The third Constructicon to get a Robot Heroes toy (Devastator himself will be one of the super-sized sets later on), he doesn't really look right. He's way too light in color, although I guess with the paint budget on these they would have had to cast him out of at least two different colors of plastic to get close to the right balance, and they almost never do that. The pose is kinda weird too, a sort of cartoon vampire "I'm coming to suck your blood" creeping. He WISHES he were as creepy as Jolt. Oddly, his two kneecaps are dramatically different in shape and size. Made of a very light bluish gray plastic which I suppose splits the difference between the two plastics used for his limbs. However, the cement drum pieces (which are molded as halves, despite there being four) need to be a lot darker. Oddly, they used purple paint on the chest and knees where the Voyager has a more reddish color. An inexplicable sky blue paint is used around the collar, on part of his feet (where it's almost invisible) and on part of his backpack. Most of his head is silver, with purple eyes and the mouth left unpainted, and there's silver hands along the middle of the drum pieces. A light violet Decepticon symbol is printed on the right shoulderpad drum piece. There's no paint on any of the molded wheels, a common problem with Robot Heroes. Hunched over with arms bent 90 degrees at the elbow and held against the sides, clawed hands positioned to rake downward. The usual three swivels, but kibble restricts the left arm to about 90 degrees of range and the right to about 120 degrees. The neck joint is pointed pretty far forward, so the head tilts rather than turning. I suppose with some more paint this could be better, but it's just not all that impressive. And it doesn't help that it's packaged with a weak redeco of a weak mold. AUTOBOT: AUTOBOT RATCHET This is a new mold, with his right arm transformed into gun mode. There's another new mold of him available in the Mission City $20 pack, but that has the buzzsaw blade. The molding on his arms is pretty aggressively asymmetric, even leaving aside the cannon, almost as if a different person worked on each arm and made inpendently different design compromises in turning the Bayformer design into something cuddly. Of course, given that this seems to only differ from the box set version by the right arm, it's entirely possible this WAS designed by two different people. He has a peghole on the bottom of his left foot. Made entirely of light chartreuse plastic, a tiny bit lighter than Robot Heroes Springer. Like the rest of the new figures in this wave, it's a fairly strong plastic, not gummy. The main paint color is a dark gunmetal gray, which is found on his face, parts of his upper arms (different on the two arms), the blaster arm, chest, spare tire on the back, toes and some ankle details. There's silver on his chest headlight trio, elbow "rivets" and some pistons on the insides of his thighs. His eyes are light blue, and the tip of his blaster is red. A red Autobot symbol is printed on the armor on the back of his left forearm. The usual three points of articulation, with his right arm having the sort of useless spinning-around-the-long-axis trick seen on most Megatrons. In fact, since his right arm is bent slightly, the joint is even less useful than normal, about all it's good for is having him hold his gun sideways like someone who's watched too many bad action movies. The left arm sticks straight out at the shoulder and then bends 90 degrees, so it can pose either in "cocked back to punch" or "raise the roof!" positions. His left leg is bent more at the knee than the right, with a sort of "leaning back from recoil" crouch. Not very impressive. The base color may match other Ratchet toys, but the movie model is more subdued, and the dark metallic paint just makes the brightness of the plastic more garishly obvious. DECEPTICON: BARRICADE A not-too-different redeco of the first Robot Heroes Barricade. Still made entirely of non-gummy black plastic, but the paints are darker and include some blue. Most of the upper face is silver, unlike the thinner mask effect on the original, but the toes are silver identical to the original. The thighs and hands are the same dark gunmetal as seen on Ratchet, to the point these parts almost blend into the black. There's numerous metallic blue accents on the arms, legs and pelvis, pretty much where the original is dark metallic purple. The arm doors and teeth are white, the headlights on the chest are yellow, the eyes are red. The left arm door is blank, missing the "POLICE" printing, but a gunmetal Decepticon symbol is printed on the right arm door. Not really an improvement on the original, but neither is it significantly worse. But given how many serious redecos the Deluxe mold got, it would have been nice to get one of those versions. I mean, they can make a BROWN Ironhide, why not a blue Barricade (and, while they're at it, a red and white Ratchet)? It's not like Barricade really has a role in RotF, so there wasn't a need to reproduce the movie look. They did not remold this figure to add a peg hole in either foot, but they did change the copyright date on the foot fmor 2007 to 2008. Oddly, all the molds have 2008 rather than 2009. Well, even though a lot of characters didn't get official names until right before the movie came out, the designs were probably done (and hence copyrighted) well in advance. AUTOBOT: CHROMIA This isn't actually the Chromia model, although it's in Chromia's colors. It's pretty close to the Arcee model, although unlike the Deluxe toy, this one has one wheel as a hand (the Deluxe Arcee has both wheels on the feet). Another interesting design point not seen in the Deluxe toy (and not seen in the movie during her eyeblink of an appearance) is that the motorcycle grips appear to be the hilts of swords slung on her back. One oddity of the mold is that one of the struts on her wheelfoot is folded down as if to add support, but since she's molded attached to a dirtpile base she doesn't really need the extra support, and it makes it look like one of her shock absorbers broke off or something. Her left hand is a big claw holding one wheel, her right arm ends in a sort of claw thing that would be an energy sabre if painted differently. Molded of a very slightly metallic medium blue non-gummy plastic, pretty much the color of the Deluxe Chromia toy. Unlike some figures with ground bases, the base is the same color as the rest of the toy (and it has a peg hole near one edge). The base is painted an unpleasant light brown, both tires are painted gloss black, the eyes are light blue. The "thumb" of her claw hand is silver, and a silver Autobot symbol is printed on her left shoulder armor. Both forearms and the claws on her left arm are dark gunmetal, a paint also used on her face, waist, and various struts on her wheel-leg. Both arms are slightly out to the side and bent forward about 90 degrees, making the swivel shoulders reasonably good joints, and she has the usual turning head. Her wheelfoot is tilted to the side, as if she's in the process of taking a corner. I wouldn't be surprised if we see hot pink and red redecos of this mold for the other two Arcee sisters. On the other hand, I wouldn't be surprised either if we never see this mold again, it's not like we ever got an official blue redeco of the red Frumbly Robot Hero. It's an interesting mold, and at least in Robot Heroes a wheelfoot can be made nicely stable. DECEPTICON: MEGATRON This is a "guntank" mode, in which his legs have been transformed into treads but his upper body remains in robot mode. You can even get the Leader class toy to do this, although the Voyager won't. Well, not well enough to bother, anyway. No parts of the RotF Series 1 Megatron are used in this mold. Unlike most cannon-arm Megatrons, his cannon is pointed forward rather than out to the side. He's on a dirtpipe base, kicking up a small roostertail with his treads. The whole thing is made of a swirly metallic gunmetal plastic, so a variant of "Gold Plastic Syndrome" might happen. While mostly a soft plastic (i.e. not brittle), it's rigid enough I can see it snapping along swirl lines after a few years. The base is a separate piece of the same plastic glued onto the bottom, and it has a peg hole under the left front tread. The dirt is painted the same ick brown as on Chromia. Silver paint is found on his face, left elbow, backside thrusters, some cannon details and the mechanical cores of his treads. The treads themselves are gloss black, a black Decepticon symbol is printed on the right shoulder, and his eyes are red. His cannon arm is straight, as one might expect, and his free arm (which is NOT withered, and has a two-fingered fist rather than a claw) is bent tighter than 90 degrees. Both swivel at the shoulders, although the left arm is somewhat blocked by the treads. The head turns a little, and the waist turns all the way around. The waist joint is tilted forward a little, the neck joint tilted forward a lot (about 45 degrees). I'll admit to a soft spot for canonical "intermediate" modes, even if they never appear in the show/movie. So I'm predisposed to like a guntank Megatron or a gerwalk Starscream. But this was a pretty good execution of the idea, and it's got treads only a little smaller than those on the vehicle mode Megatron seen in the Battle of the Fallen set. So between the two series and the BotF set, you get three modes for Megatron, all about the same scale. Very nice. Dave Van Domelen, is glad that the gummy-plas figures of Movie Series 1 seem to have been a blip rather than the new way of things.