Dave's Alternators Rant

     12: Shockblast

     Remold of Meister, http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Alt/Meister, see
that review for mode in depth about the joints and other elements.  This
review will focus on the changes made to the mold.

CAPSULE

     Good mold to start with.  Horrible quality control resulted in
transformation being unreasonably frustrating.  A pity, since it looks nice.
Mildly recommended (from what I've heard, I'm not the only one with
problems).  $19.76 at Wal-Mart.


RANT

PACKAGING

     Same "second season" packaging style as Meister.  The co-sell on the
bottom is for Battle Ravage.  The art for the character is closer to purple,
and the pictures also look fairly purple (but as I'll go into momentarily,
the toy does not).
     As with Meister, the muffler gun is bagged with the instructions.  The
tabbing system that holds the bubble to the cardboard tray is a little
different now, somewhat more secure.  Two plastic straps hold the car
together inside the bubble, and unlike with my Meister, they did the job.
     The instructions are simply Meister's in purple, they didn't change any
of the line art.
     Another similarity to Meister is that the name isn't quite what they
wanted.  The license plate says SHKWAV, not SHKBST or something like that.


VEHICLE MODE

     I picked up a paint color guide this afternoon, and near as I can
figure, Shockblast's body is Phthalo Blue.  Under some kinds of fluorescent
lighting, there's a little bit of purplish tinge to it, but under bright
incandescents I see no sign of it.  
     The other two main color differences on the outside are that the hubcaps
are dark bronze, and there's no defroster lines on the rear window.  The
bucket seats are black with silver backs and silver triangle details on the
headrest area.  Finally, the license plate has a Decepticon symbol and the
earlier mentioned SHKWAV.
     Mold-wise, there's several changes here.  The front airdam is more
pronounced, with larger air intake grates.  The trunk is remolded to be a
little flatter, with a spoiler of dull dark blue plastic glued on.  The
hubcaps are a different five-spoke pattern, and the rear view mirrors are a
bit smaller and more angular.  There's no silvering on the mirror side.
     The quality control issues I've heard about rear their ugly head in
vehicle mode.  The hood doesn't open properly (although this may be something
I can fix once I transform it) and the trunk halves don't join together all
the way.

TRANSFORMATION

     The same as Meister, of course, but the way the blaster hand pokes past
the head in vehicle mode requires a little extra care, especially going from
robot to vehicle.
     Okay, the hood connection of my Shockblast is messed up.  It popped out
when I was trying to transform the toy, and it took an unreasonable amount
of effort and time to get it back on.  It looks like the width of the new
head is enough to flex the connections and make the hood pop off when
transforming.  I ended up having to remove the head and then use excessive
force to keep things together anyway, resulting in stress marks on the hood
piece that goes behind the head.  Really horrible quality control, can't even
just blame it on the head size because it still didn't work well with the
head removed.
     In fact, on closer inspection, even THAT didn't do it.  I ended up
having to remove both arms too, in order to reduce the number of
complications below my number of fingers.

ROBOT MODE

     Here's the color swaps for the non-bodyshell parts.  The light gray
parts remain light gray, and black remains black.  White becomes phthalo
blue.  Autobot symbols replaced with Decepticon symbols.  The silver paint on
the legs and pelvis is replaced by metallic lavender.
     The two mold changes specific to the robot mode are the head and the
left hand.  The head is phthalo blue with silver antennae and a pale yellow
lightpipe from a triangle on the top of the head to the mono-optic in the
center of the face.  Not exactly G1 cartoon style, but close enough to hardly
make a difference. 
     The left hand is replaced by a clear purple gun barrel 1" (2.5cm) long.
It's connected by a restricted ball joint, so it can pose a bit at the wrist
rather than being fixed in position (this little bit of play is necessary for
transformation).  
     The gun is floppy as all get-out, but that's fairly easy to fix.

     [Later Note: There's a peg hole on the left elbow.  Fold the stock of
the muffler gun and plug the weapon onto the forearm as a "booster" for his
arm cannon.  This is an intentional design feature that was left out of the
U.S. instructions.]

OVERALL

     It looks good in both modes, but transformation of the front end is a
royal pain.  I hope it isn't a problem for everyone's copy, but even without
the head being a bit big, the way the joints work for the hood really falls
apart in this version.  It just DOESN'T hold together during transformation,
unless you remove many pieces.

     Dave Van Domelen, nearly smashed Shockblast against the table in
frustration two or three times while trying to get it transformed, it was
that bad.