Dave's Alternators Rant

     24. Decepticon Rumble

     Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Alt/Rumble

     Thanks to Hachiman for picking this up for me.  Rumble and Ravage, the
last two new molds to come out of Alternators (at least for the foreseeable
future) were released as Wal-Mart exclusives.  And, as far as I can tell,
none of the Wal-Marts in Northeastern Kansas ever got any.  As reviewed
earlier, I got a Canadian Ravage rather than the U.S. release.
     [Later note: Well, they made it to Wal-Mart in Lawrence KS, at least.
Not that this helped me, since at 90 minutes away, Lawrence isn't even in my
monthly toyhunt radius....]


CAPSULE

     Decepticon Rumble: Okay car mode, if a bit boring-looking.  Simple
transformation for an Alternator, although with the usual panel hassles.
Well-homaged robot mode, but sacrifices poseability for gimmick.  Mildly
recommended.  $20 price point, mostly an eBay exclusive it seems.


RANT

     Packaging: Standard late-fishbowl, with no signs on the actual package
of being a Wal-Mart exclusive.  Lots of "Honda Official Licensed Product"
logos on the package.  And yes, it's not just Rumble, it's Decepticon Rumble,
as this is easier to defend as a trademark.  The number 24 is found on the
package, which is odd given that Nemesis Prime (black convention-exclusive
recolor of Optimus Prime) was also 24.  Doesn't have the usual plastic band
around the car, oddly.
     The call-outs on the bottom are, "Working pile drivers!"  "Opening
hatchback!" and the obligatory "Detailed interior!"

     Motto: "Chaos is the seed of victory."

     The model is listed as Honda Civic Si.  The Civic is kinda the ur-ricer
vehicle, making it perhaps a little ironic how sedately decked out this one
is.  Still, for a turbo-revvin' punk, a Civic is certainly appropriate.

VEHICLE MODE

     7.25" (18.5cm) long, 4.25" (11cm) wheelbase, 2.75" (7cm) wide at the
wheels.  This is, at least externally, a dead-stock 2006 Honda Civic Si.
http://www.edmunds.com/insideline/do/Drives/FirstDrives/articleId=107050 has
a bunch of info about the car.
     Most of the body shell is dark red (990000) with a moderate orangey glow
under UV.  The roof and windshield piece is clear colorless plastic with not
very good paint match with the red on the roof.  The side and rear windows
are all separate pieces of clear plastic bolted into place.  The wheels are
silvery gray plastic, the tires and gearshift are rubbery black plastic, and
most of the interior is black plastic.  There's some metallic gunmetal gray
on the underside, but most of that plastic is visible in robot mode.  The
engine and the thingy in the trunk are silver-chromed plastic, as is the
exhaust pipe.  There's also chrome on the side mirrors and the headlight/
taillight backing.  The headlights and taillights seem to all be clear
colorless plastic, with translucent paint where needed.
     [Later note: I am told that the thingy in the trunk is a subwoofer.]
     The front grille and foglamps are painted matte black, while the trim
around the windows is gloss black.  A black and silver Honda symbol is
printed on the nose, but not molded.  There's clear orange paint on the turn
signals and clear red on the taillights.  As mentioned earlier, the roof is
painted dark red, but it's a slightly lighter shade than the plastic.
Noticeably lighter, unfortunately, under any reasonable lighting conditions.
There's a molded and painted Honda symbol above the license plate, and the
plate itself is "RUMBLE as a Hawaii vanity plate.  There's some silver paint
at the base of the gearshift and on the GPS screen.  Molded on the underside
just forward of the exhaust pipe is "'06 Honda Civic Si".  
     Comparing this to the actual car, it feels like they kinda cheaped out
on the paint job, leaving out details (like paint on the "Si" badge on the
grille, or the i-VTEC along the side molding) that would have been painted or
printed on earlier Alternators.
     Opening the hood reveals a more or less realistic engine block, although
it doesn't look quite like the one on the Edmunds webpage.  The chromed
plastic doesn't hold well to the pegs, but the fit is generally tight enough
that the engine doesn't rattle around when the hood is closed.  Stored in the
trunk is an arbitrary chrome chunk kinda like the engine, but not exactly.
Under the rear window you can see the speaker array for the sound system.
While the back seat isn't realistically detailed (in fact, Rumble's head is
there, making him his own back seat driver), the rest of the interior is
pretty good.  I'm tempted to print out a tiny little map and glue it to the
GPS screen.  The seats fold down, the steering wheel adjusts.  The robot feet
form the firewall, and it's a little far back, so fitting a scale figure
inside would require lopping off the shins.
     The hood, trunk and doors open, although it's a bit tricky getting the
doors to open since this has solid windows.  The front wheels are linked by a
pegged shaft and turn together.

     Note: on at least some Rumbles, the seats are on the wrong sides.
There's notches on the back of the seats that let them "sit up" all the way,
but if the seats are on the wrong sides they won't fit right.  There's one
screw under the middle of each seat that needs to be removed to let you swap
'em, it's a simple enough operation.  Thanks to C.V. Reynolds for pointing
that out.

     Cute trick, you can use some of the robot panels to prop Rumble up on
jacks, a la the Mach 5.  Fold the thigh panels as far as they'll go and fold
the chest panel down a little.

TRANSFORMATION

     Fairly simple in general description, although as with most Alternators,
the devil is in the details of panel-fiddling.  The front third becomes the
legs, the rear third becomes the shoulderpads, and the underside becomes the
chest, with a panel folding down to create a faux cassette tape front.  The
chromed engine and trunk-thing become clip-on backpack weapons.  And, since
this is Honda, there's no way to connect them to the arms to actually point
at anything (remember, Honda made Hasbro remove Windcharger's gun barrel).
The pounders pop out when switches on the inside shoulders are pressed.

ROBOT MODE

     6.5" (16.5cm) tall at the head, 7" (18cm) at the tips of the gunbarrels
sticking up on his back.  The roof of the car ends up on his back, with the
windshield as a buttflap.  The front bumper is split in half as the kneecaps,
and the doors hang off the hips.  The license plate does not split down the
middle, instead it all goes onto the left shoulder, which is a little
awkward.  A plate on the chest is shaped like the core of a cassette tape,
evoking the G1 version.
     The only red plastic pieces in robot mode that aren't vehicle kibble are
the fronts of the boots, which are car underside.  The torso core, shoulder
joints, knee joints, ankle joints and upper arm interiors are black plastic,
as are the barrels of the guns clipped to the back.  The feet, upper arm
fronts, chest front, pelvisl thighs and head are a brownish gunmetal
plastic.  The pounders are chromed a gunmetal dark silver, while the pounder
shafts are bright chrome silver.
     The face is painted black, with metallic light blue goggles and gold
helmet crest.  There's also gold on the chest, shoulders and pelvis flaps.
The center of the chest is black, as are details on the upper arms.  There's
light metallic blue pipes on the shins.  A pale gold Decepticon symbol is
printed at the center of the chest.
     The head turns.  The waist has a transformation swivel, but the pelvis
armor pieces lock down around the "codpiece" and keep the waist from
working.  The shoulders are universal joints, although they only wiggle a
little up and down.  There's no elbows or wrists, but the pounders can sorta
wiggle loosely.  Due to the transformation sliders on the shoulders, though,
he can shrug.  Hips are universal joints, there's a swivel above each hinge
knee.  The ankles are ball joints, and could stand some tightening up.  The
balls are actually at the ends of hinged struts, the hinges at least are
fairly stiff.  Despite the door panbels handing off his hips, he can squat
down all the way to where his knees hit his chest, although his pounders
still don't touch the ground even this far (and due to the transformation
strut on the neck, he can even look up while hunched over).  At least all
hunched over his guns can shoot at opponents....
     http://www.dvandom.com/images/rumblesquat.JPG to see Rumble squating. 
     As for armaments, Rumble has his nearly useless back-mounted guns (at
least on the original toy they could be put on his arms too) and the
pounders.  When you push the button, they shoot out on a 1.5" (4cm) chromed
silver shaft, to a total of 1" (2.5cm) past the end of his "cuffs".


OVERALL

     Well, on the plus side it's not yet another tweak on one of the same two
or three transformations.  But the vehicle mode has some wide seams, and the
pounder gimmick pretty much prevents there from being any arm articulation to
speak of.  It's a decent Alternator, but not really worth the serious effort
that seems to be required for most people to get it.


     Dave Van Domelen, kinda sad to see a line go, especially when it goes
out in such a hard-to-find manner.  Yes, there's been some other exclusive
recolors since Rumble, but convention exclusives and Lucky Draws don't really
count.