Dave's Kiddie Transformers Rant: Robot Heroes Wave 8 Arcee vs. Decepticon Rumble (G1, reshipped) Ironhide vs. Kickback (G1) Autobot Blaster vs. Thrust (G1) Silverbolt vs. Megatron (BW) Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/123/RH8 Another case of carrying over a set from the previous wave. I ordered all three new ones at once on HasbroToyShop.com, but they sent me a Garindan (that breather mask wearing informer guy from Mos Eisley in Star Wars) by mistake instead of the Silverbolt set. Megatron is the Transmetal I version. http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/123/RH7 has Arcee/Rumble. CAPSULES Ironhide vs. Kickback: Ironhide is a bit boring and too shiny/bright, but Kickback makes up for it. Recommended. $5.99 at HTS.com Autobot Blaster vs. Thrust: Blaster is kinda bad-weird in a number of ways, but generally okay. Thrust is a good mold, iffy paint, embarrassing personal problem. Mildly recommended. $5.99 at HTS.com Silverbolt vs. Megatron: Silverbolt is really bad. Megatron (Transmetal) is okay, but not enough to carry the set. Neutral. Delayed by HTS error, got one at Wal-Mart for $6.96 (and if I ever get the HTS one, I'll take it to Wal-Mart for refund). RANT Packaging: Same as Wave 7. Co-sells are the four sets listed up top. The blisters have G1 Autobot/Decepticon symbols on all but the last set, which has Maximal and Predacon symbols molded into the top. AUTOBOT: IRONHIDE Being a purely animation-model toy, he's a lot simpler than most Robot Heroes Transformers, with very few details to suggest a vehicle mode aside from his window chest. He has a somewhat lopsided smirk, and the way his arms are posed makes it look like he can't pick between high-fiving you or punching you in the gut. His helmet crest is a big more strongly pronounced than in most versions, looking a lot more like a Greek helmet's crest (Roman helmet crests are generally side to side). Made of bright red plastic with a really strong UV glow, making his unpainted parts look way too shiny and new. His face and pelvis are painted silver, while gunmetal paint is used on hands, shoulders, upper arms and thighs. The silver and gunmetal are kinda close together, so unless you look carefully it seems like just lighting differences. The chest and eyes are pool blue, and a red Autobot symbol is printed on his chest. He's leaning forward and stepping with his left leg in front. His right arm is almost straight out at the shoulder and then bent 90 degrees forward, as if he's trying to push or lift something with one hand. The right hand is bent back and partly open, reinforcing the lift/push thing. The left arm is held against the body and bent tighter than 90 degrees, hand balled up in a fist...basically cocked back for an uppercut or a punch in the gut. His heads is tilted a little to the right. The only joints are the standard three swivels (neck, shoulders), but he can exhibit a few interesting poses despite the twisting of his arms. His center of mass is only barely over his feet, and he tends to fall over forward easily. Also, between the soft angles and the lighter color, his pelvis looks like he's wearing a metal diaper. DECEPTICON: KICKBACK Nicely detailed with bits of toy detailing to fill in the gaps of the animation model. He's got an impish grin that will let him fit in perfectly on Insecticomics. His default pose seems to be, "Gimmegimmegimme". Made entirely of black plastic. The forehead, face, wings and the stowed insect leg bits on the backs of the boots are painted silver. The forearms, hands and toes are metallic purple/amethyst, with red stripes around the wrists and red tops to the toes. Antennae and kneecaps are yellow, chest is gold with pool blue detail and a purple/white Decepticon symbol. The eyes are unpainted. Both hands are open and grasping, with the right arm pulled back at an acute angle and the left arm bent 90 degrees and lifted to the side some. He's leaning forward and twisted to his right as he steps forward with his right foot. Standard three joints, with the head looking up slightly. The most natural pose for the arms is to have both hands forward. Lowering the arms looks iffy, while raising them makes it look like he's surrendering while in a high wind. You can raise his right arm to cup his antenna as if he's having trouble hearing what you're saying over all the chewing sounds. Shrapnel came out in a previous wave, and in a future wave Bombshell's getting renamed Hardshell for reasons known only to the lawyers. AUTOBOT: AUTOBOT BLASTER Blaster seems to be leaning around a corner and waving to someone down the hall. It's a very weird pose. Also, unlike Ironhide, he's VERY toy-based, with a number of details that the animation model suppressed (some for good reasons). His eyes bug out rather than being recessed, though, which is moderately creepy. Made of the same red plastic as Ironhide, but he's supposed to be bright and shiny. :) Unfortunately, unlike the other toys in this wave, the bottoms of his feet are totally unpainted and the red is inappropriate (the unpainted parts of Kickback's and Ironhide's feet are the right colors). His forehead and most of the legs are painted silver. The toes, shin speakers, fists and elbows are painted black. The tapedeck control buttons, the face and some details on his shins are gunmetal, with the same low contrast as seen on Ironhide. Eyes and tape door are yellow, with a pool blue window and a red printed Autobot symbol on the chest. Red paint details are painted just over the feet on the black parts of the lower shins. His smile is painted white. Standard three joints. Stepping forward with his left foot and hunched over and to the right a bit. Left arm bent acutely and lifted to the side a bit, so he can raise his left fist to his face and ALMOST punch himself. It's like he's peering at something clenched in his fist. Right arm bent about 45 degrees away from straight and lifted out to the side an equal amount, so his forearm is parallel to his torso when the arm is lifted all the way up. Right hand is open in a grasping or maybe waving position. He can do a "gimmie" pose pretty well, or "o hai", but that's about it. Kinda weirdly posed, some odd molding choices. He can sort of grapple with Soundwave, who is a few millimeters taller than he is...oops. DECEPTICON: THRUST You know how the Starscream mold is rising on an exhaust plume coming from one foot, where the Seekers have their thrusters? Well, Thrust is on an exhaust plume too...but it's coming out of his BUTT. Seriously, even Waspinator feels embarrassed for Thrust. Balanced on one foot in his own little cloud, with a separate piece for his wings, he's in a "taking aim" pose. Everything is made of a dark red plastic, even the thrust cloud, which is simply painted light gray in a really thick layer. Oddly, it's blue near his butt, suggesting icy exhaust. He really needs to get that looked at. The main paint is a gloss black, found on forearms, fists, guns, face, back of the head, cone tip, toes, ankle winglets, pelvis, chest, wingtips, fan ducts, jet intakes. However, it's missing from the front side ducts and from the left side of the pelvis. Yellow slitted eyes, gold pecs, light gray cockpit. There's silver on the intake scoops, some abdomen flank details, and a silver Decepticon symbol is printed in the middle of his back. Standard three joints. The left arm is held straight, about 30 degrees away from the body, back of the fist up. He's pointing this arm at some target. The right arm is bent 90 degrees at the elbow and held about 30 degrees away from the body as well, with the gun sticking straight out. Non-shooting arm. The left leg is tucked up as tightly as possible, right leg bent about 45 degrees away from straight at both hip and knee. He's turned to his right about 30 degrees at the waist. He really only has one good pose, "I'm shooting this guy off to my left." He can sort of do a "throw the arms up in triumph" thing. Unlike the Starscream mold, this can't simply be recolored into the other coneheads, although they could sorta fake it by swapping out the wing backpack. So we probably won't see accurate Dirge and Ramjet Robot Heroes, if nothing else the ankle winglets will be wrong. [Later note: those who have the Botcon 2008 version of Thrust say that specific details on this Robot Heroes version match it while not matching G1 Thrust, suggesting that the RH designers were given the Botcon toy for reference.] MAXIMAL: SILVERBOLT Wow. Other Robot Heroes are made of soft plastic. This one is made of suck. Bad color choices, weird proportion mutations, his spoon missiles look even stupider than on the original toy (no mean feat), smacks himself in the head, and wears a vest or something. His missiles now look like he's 1:1 scale and grabbed the tips off some long grass that had gone to seed. His wings and bird tail are part of a single backpack piece. The entire centerline of his torso is weirdly ribbed, and his abdominal gut-gun thing has moved to being a belt buckle, making it look like he's wearing a vest over a lumpy sweater. Light blue gray plastic. Metallic greenish yellow paint is everywhere, including feet, grass stalks, wings and tail. The wings and tail fade to dark blue at their tips. His lumpy sweater, wristbands and loincloth details are copper. Foot-claws, ankle bolts and eyes are silver. Shinguards and head details are dark blue. A violet Maximal symbol is printed on his left shinguard. His donkey-like smile is painted white. The three standard joints, but his head is tilted to one side so that it looks stupid unless the neck is turned to face right all the way. The arm motion is limited by the wings and by the fact that he smacks his face with his grass stalk. The arms are both bent and lifted to the sides some, to give him a florentine-like two weapon fighting stance, and he's sort of hunching forward with left leg leading, but the legs are too short and the torso too long and he looks like he should be asking about jaAm or something. Oh, and on mine the neck is really loose. Ick ick ick. No wonder Blackarachnia doesn't want to put up with him and is hiding behind my TF:A Shockwave. PREDACON: MEGATRON This is Transmetal Megatron, contemporary to Silverbolt. He probably insisted on being packaged with Silverbolt so that no matter how weak his mold, he'd look good by comparison. He's got the Vok Golden Disc in his left hand, which is in "disc scanner" configuration. The front is molded to look like it's spinning, but the back has an off-center detail that belies that, weird. His hover nacelles are a separate inflexible backpack chunk, and his puny T.rex forelegs are extra pieces mounted behind his head and very floppy. Made of black plastic. The T.rex forelegs, left tail/forearm and the Golden Disc are painted pale gold. The shoulderpads, right hand and lower legs (including the soles of the feet) are painted copper. There's silver details on the shoulderpads. The face and the chest "eyebrows" are metallic purple, the robot eyes and chest eyes are red. A purple Predacon symbol is printed on the right kneecap. And the toe-claws...are painted bright blue. Buh-wha? Did he just get a pedicure or something and decide he needed to feel pretty? Hunched over like most of this line of Robot Heroes, his right leg is slightly ahead of the left, but he's clearly just standing there and leaning forward. The left arm is holding the Golden Disc up for inspection, the right is just sort of hanging to the side, bent at the elbow with an open hand, palm down. Standard three joints, but the backpack keeps the arms from moving much unless you scrap the shoulders past. He has two good poses: inspecting the disc, and holding it out of someone else's reach while moving to take something from them (like, say, the Earth disc). A decent figure, but it really needed to be paired with at least an okay Autobot mold, it can't carry the set on its own. Dave Van Domelen, has wave 9 ordered, scheduled to ship in late December. The price went up two bucks a set, though.