Dave's Transformers Rant: Wave Three Mini-Cons Adventure Team - Ransack, Iceberg, Dune Runner : Geared Gimmicks Space Team - Astroscope, Payload, Sky Blast : Requiem Blaster Street Speed Team - Backtrack, Oval, Spiral : Complex Bits The Adventure Team was delayed until later in the wave, but I ordered it and the Speed Team together online. CAPSULES Adventure Team: They're all big and gimmicked, but have simplistic transformations and low poseability. Mildly recommended. Way too much online. Space Team: Astroscope is too fragile and weirdly proportioned, Payload is kinda boring, but Sky Blast is nifty. Requiem Blaster is okay. Mildly recommended. $6.96 at Wal-Mart. Street Speed Team: Nice transformations, but not very poseable in robot mode and kinda floppy in vehicle mode. Not as fragile as some have reported. Plastic looks cheap, however. Mildly recommended. RANTS The packaging has changed again, with a green energy background instead of a red one (same pattern, just swap red for green). The character art (Payload for the Space Team) has been retained, and the comic cover shown is different. However, the comic inside is still the old jaAm piece. All three of the ones I got had the first comic, anyway, although I'm told some got the new Scavenger comic. MINICONS: Adventure Team RANSACK - Offroad Vehicle ICEBERG - Snowcat DUNE RUNNER - Dunebuggy Quote: "No obstacle is too great!" They are a unique team of MINI-CONS with the ability to combine forces and battle on any terrain. Sand, ice, and mud are no match for this rugged team, and not even the most dangerous weather can hold it back. They are the first line of defense in difficult battle conditions, and the AUTOBOTS will fight to the end to keep them out of the hands of MEGATRON. STR 6 INT 5 SPD 6 END 8 RNK 5 COUR 6 FRB 4 SKL 7 Avg 5.875 It's interesting to note that the instructions are single-sided and do not mention connecting these toys to Cyclonus (or anyone else) for using their gear gimmick. Guess their intended host is coming a ways down the line, and isn't Cyclonus. Okay, just got paged an URL as I write this, recolors of these guys will be packed in with upcoming SuperCons tentatively named Rhinox and Terrorsaur. Ransack: A dark green offroad pickup truck. Mini-Con symbol is on the hood, and the connector is part of the spare tire on back. This is a clever placement, if not terribly good for connecting it to other stuff. Vehicle mode is 2" (5cm) long, dark green plastic with silver windows, yellow headlights and floodlights (on the rollbar at the front of the pickup bed), black wheels and light gray bed liner. A grey hook is at the end of a red winch line. The front wheels are actually on a spring suspension, which would be cooler if this would lift the gimmick wheel completely off the ground. Why is this a problem? Because the line reels in as the car rolls forward, and then acts as a brake. The hook is thin enough to fit into the holes in the fists of Bonecrusher and Astroscope, and also fits nicely over the bar on the front of the vehicle. Transformation is simplistic even by the Micromaster standard. Fold the rear half down as legs. Stand up. That's it. Robot mode is 2.25" (6cm) tall. The legs are light gray, and the spring suspension blocks on the chest are also light gray. The head is just molded into the underside, with a yellow visor. The gear mechanism is exposed on the belly. Poseability is so-so. The arms move at the shoulders, the legs move independently and are hinged at hip and knee. If placed in a kneeling position, Ransack can use its Powerlinx connector to cling to a larger bot. The winch line comes out above the head, allowing for some webslinging action or something. However, the hook does not curve around enough to hang by reliably. Ransack connects to Cyclonus, but the back and forth action of Cyc's gears doesn't work well with this toy. The line reels in a tiny bit and that's it. Overall: It looks nice in vehicle mode, but doesn't do much for me aside from that. Iceberg: An orange snowcat with plow and turbo engines. Powerlinx connector is in the center of the underside (robot butt), Mini-Con symbol on top of the driver's cab. Treads are black and gray, and there's various other gray details. Vehicle mode is 2.25" (6cm) long with a 1.5" (4cm) wide plow blade. Long thin treads run along both sides, although it's really the gimmick wheel and two small orange rollers on the underside that it moves on. The tread pieces are actually a softer plastic...not enough that the pieces are floppy, but enough that they feel rubbery to the touch. There's a small crane arm on the right side that can be posed a little and moves in the gimmick motion. When you roll the vehicle along, the right and left thirds of the plow blade move back and forth a little, and the crane jerks along with the right side. Gives it a beetle-like motif. Transformation is a little more complicated than Ransack's, which isn't saying much. Pull the rear hald back and twist around, then pull the head out of the driver's compartment. This last bit does have a nice effect in vehicle mode of letting the driver's compartment open up. Robot mode stands 2.5" (6.5cm) tall in orange and black. The head is all orange with tiny yellow eyes, and it has a very Spychanger-ish face. The plow blades form a set of shoulderpads. Poseability is pretty low. Hinged at shoulders and hips, and the waist twists. Iceberg connects to Cyclonus, but I couldn't get the gears to line up properly, it just stripped. I presume that if I could get them to line up, the gimmick would work fine, if a bit uselessly. Overall: Another nice vehicle mode but otherwise kinda uninspiring. Dune Runner: A somewhat fanciful dune buggy with machinegun turret in the back, a very light greenish tan and gray. The Mini-Con symbol is on top of the turret, while the Powerlinx connector is at the very rear of the bottom of the vehicle (back of the head in robot mode). Vehicle mode is a chunky 2.25" (6cm) long and can roll on its regular four wheels, with the gimmick wheel acting as a brake. Press down and roll forward, and the turretted gun traverses back and forth. As with Dualor, you can turn the turret and the gimmick still works. The rollcage gets in the way of moving the turret. Speaking of the rollcage, it's only attached at one end. I have to wonder if an early design had to lock down at both ends, since there's small indents at the front end with no corresponding locking tabs. Or maybe that's just the kneecap joints and nothing more. Transformation is pretty simple, although with a twist or two. The rollcage has to be gotten out of the way before folding the front half down as the legs. Rather than having ugly gaps at the front of the vehicle, there's movable kneecap pieces that fold out of the way. And the spare fuel can twists around to become the head (the back half of this piece is the connector). Robot mode is 2.5" (6.5cm) tall. Fromt the front it's almost all light green/gray with darker green feet (driver and passenger seats) and a blue visor for eyes. The face has a + shape with bolts in the top two quadrants. The gears are exposed on the chest as with the others in this set. The hands are molded into fists and exposed, not hidden behind vehicle panels (I should mention that this is the case for the other two as well, but their arms don't look quite as good). Moderate poseability, with hinged shoulders, hips and knees, and a head that can turn. Dune Runner connects well to Cyclonus, and its gun gimmick does what Crumplezone's is supposed to do, very well. With the shape of the vehicle mode, it even blends in pretty well shape-wise (although the color is wrong, of course). Overall: The best of the three, if only because its gimmick works well. Overall Set: Good vehicle modes, interesting gimmicks, but the gimmicks often get in the way. Uninspired transformations and robot modes. More or less worth getting, though. MINICONS: Space Team ASTROSCOPE - Space Station SKY BLAST - Rocket Ship PAYLOAD - Rocket Transport Truck No Techspec as of 12/10/02 Astroscope: Blue and red with some gray and accents of purple, neon green and yellow. Connector on the underside of the space station, Mini-Con symbols in two places near the middle. The non-robot mode is a bit of a controversy. The name suggests someone considered this to be like the Hubble Space Telescope and roughly to scale with the car Mini-Cons. It doesn't look like the HST, though, it looks more like Skylab, a small one-pod space station. Just a little under 4" (10cm) long when the missile is loaded, I'm inclined to call it a space station. This would put it on the scale of the jets (especially Sonar, which could service it) and Sky Blast. The station mode is a little kibbly, with a robot fist sitting at one end and it looks bad from below. The positionable solar panels are a nice touch, although they'd look better with a chromed paint or at least black gloss. The missile can fire in this mode, with a range of about a meter. Transformation is a pain, and I have yet to accomplish it without at least one piece snapping off. Too many shallow peg joints, not enough metal pins, and the elbow joint on the left arm is already showing serious stress marks...trying to horse the shoulder assembly out usually results in the lower arm ripping off. The pins at the shoulders only make it more likely that all the non-pinned joints will pop. I may have to glue the left arm together soon, it's really disappointing, because it's a clever design otherwise. The robot mode looks okay but the big missile arm is effectively immobile (it can raise to the side, but this makes the figure fall over, and the head can't turn to look that way anyway. It stands 2.25" (6cm) tall when it will stand at all, the way that the solar panels fold together to make legs doesn't allow for very big feet. The head is a very nonhumanoid camera array, which does help endear the fragile little bugger to me. Poseability is iffy. The left elbow bends (and like Bonecrusher, there's a hole in the fist to hold twist-ties or whatnot). The arms lift up to the sides. The hips are ball joints, which would be more useful if the center of mass wasn't over the outer edge of the right foot. The Powerlinx connector ends up on the left shoulder, and one of the Mini-Con symbols is on the chest while the other is concealed. For Requiem Blaster component mode, start with the satellite mode, transform the legs and bend the left arm. That's it. So when I inevitably have to glue the arm together, it'll be in bent position. Overall: This was clearly an idea they couldn't make work on a Mini-Con budget. Three major joints that fall apart way too easily during transformation, and a lack of useful joints in robot mode. Payload: This is a carrier truck, and it looks pretty blah on its own. Black, red and blue with accents in gray, orange and yellow. There's a Mini-Con symbol molded into the right side of the cab, and a connector on the underside fo the cab, driver's side. There's also several pegs and holes a the rear for connecting to Sky Blast in different modes. Vehicle Mode is 2.5" (6.5cm) long and at first glance appears to be of the same scale as the Land Military Team and the various cars. However, if you look more carefully, the sixteen tiny wheels along the sides are meant to be man-sized (the toy actually rolls on larger wheels concealed on the bottom), making this one of those HUGE transport vehicles, and to the same scale as the Air Defense Team. Thus, all three vehicles in this set are to about the same scale, assuming Astroscope is a station and not a space telescope. Anyway, vehicle mode is very solid, thanks in part to some pegging on the piece that becomes the handle of Requiem Blaster. Transformation seems simple at first, but there's a bit of a trick with the legs. Be sure to turn the waist by HOLDING the waist...trying to do it by gripping the legs is likely to cause the legs to both pop off their ball joints. Robot mode is 2.25" (6.5cm) tall and mostly black with red legs and blue head. As mentioned, the hips are ball joints. There are knees, Micromaster-style shoulders, a turning waist and a turning head. Nice poseability. Solid, if boring. Payload has no weapon systems, but you can mount Sky Blast on the arms and shoulders...it looks weird, but powerful. Transformation to Requiem Blaster component takes about as many steps regardless of which mode you start from, and is not exactly a halfway point, which is nice. It forms the grip and stock of the blaster. "Transporter mode" has Sky Blast pegged onto the vehicle mode, nice and solidly, so Payload can carry Sky Blast around. This is pretty much why Payload mounts no weapons, he needs the room for Sky Blast. Overall: Solid bit boring. A nice placeholder. Sky Blast: A weird multistage-style rocket, mostly white with some red and blue and a little gray and bronze. Mini-Con symbol above the cockpit, connector in light blue plastic at the very rear of the rocket (although it can be moved out to the side for docking) and a hardpoint of dubious quality on one side (more about that later). Vehicle mode is 3.5" (9cm) long with sci-fi lines marred only by a bunch of thin pegs sticking out the sides for combination with Payload. It's kibbly, but looks decent otherwise. If you unpeg the boosters, you can turn the connector piece around and repeg the boosters, giving a side-mounted connector. Transformation is pretty nice, although I am inclined to say that the instructions and pictures are wrong. I recommend having the legs 180 degrees around from where the instructions say, since this gives you working knees. Robot mode stands 2.25" (6.5cm) tall, with the blue and red parts more visible than in vehicle mode. He's very poseable. Both shoulders are universal joints (hinge and swivel), the waist can turn AND bend (beyond what the hips allow, but if transformed according to the instructions it just lets him lean back at the waist and look up at the big guys). Hips are restricted ball joints, and the knees can bend. The knees bend the wrong way if you transform according to instructions, but the joints aren't needed for transformation or Requiem Blaster mode, so I suspect something got mixed up along the way (since the waist bit clearly looks like it's supposed to be turned around like in the instructions. The head is hinged for transformation, so it doesn't move in any way that you'd really want your head to move. About the only problem I have with this mode is that there's no hands. A connector at the end of the left arm, and a pointy cockpit at the end of the right. Transformation to Requiem Blaster mode starts with vehicle mode and bends the cockpit out. That's it. Overall: The star of the set. Solid in both modes, poseable, connectable. Nice. Requiem Blaster: Once you hook the three pieces together, they stay together pretty well. The pegs holding Sky Blast to Payload are a little loose, although that might be release oil playing a part. Astroscope connects more firmly to Sky Blast than any of its own parts hold together. The gun is 6.25" (16cm) long, and looks okay. The Sky Blast cockpit sticking out the side looks a little off, but Astroscope's legs make nice twin energy clips. Sky Blast's hardpoint is on the top of the gun, and is intended for holding Commetor, the Mini-Con that comes with future release Jetfire. The gun is a little hard to get into stable position in the hands of anyone capable of holding it, due to the long stock and the overall length of the weapon giving it a long lever arm. But I did manage to get Starscream to hold it straight out. The fact that you have to fire the gun by pressing near the end of the barrel is a bit annoying, but it's not like they could rig anything to trigger it from the rear. Especially considering how fragile Astroscope is already. Overall: The Space Team has some nice ideas, but not all of them are executed well. A decent set, but nothing to salivate over. MINICONS: Speed Team BACKTRACK - Green Car OVAL - Orange Car SPIRAL - Blue Car Quote: "Speed over strength." The three vehicles in the STREET SPEED MINI-CON TEAM all have one thing in common: the ability to work with precision at record-breaking speeds. Their turbo-charged escape capabilities make them key elements in AUTOBOT reconnaissance missions, and they gladly race to the front line in battles against the DECEPTICON forces! STR 5 INT 8 SPD 9 END 7 RNK 5 COUR 9 FRB 4 SKL 8 Avg 6.875 The gimmick for this group is that they have transformations as complicated as much larger toys, and they have elbows (sorta). Very ambitious, and sadly not pulled off quite right. Here's a couple of problems they all have in common: 1) Floppy vehicle modes - There's so many joints that a few are bound to be loose. Oval suffers less from this than the others, but they all have problems. They recognize this and have rubber bands around the fronts of all the cars in the package. 2) Cheap-looking plastic - Lack of detail combines with a tendency for there to be visible discolorations at injection points to make these look a little knockoff-y. A thin paint wash would REALLY have helped these guys. Backtrack: A green sportscar with white windows and silver headlights. The Mini-Con symbol is on the trunk lid, and the connector is almost directly under it on the bottom. I am told by a reliable authority that it is a Cadillac XLR. Vehicle mode is 2.25" (6cm) long and nicely freewheeling. Very good small wheels, and the car's floppiness does not affect wheel alignment. However, the robot feet in the front of the hood tend to flip down readily, there's really nothing holding them in place. While there's a lot of seams on the vehicle, there's no major gaps or bits of robot kibble. Transformation is quite cool. The front pulls out and then rotates around to become the legs, with little pegs locking it (weakly) in both positions. Then the feet flip down and fold out. The shoulders pull out and then up, with tracks on the underside of the car visible for moving the bits. If you're gonna pop an arm off, by the way, it'll be here. Then fold down the trunk to become a big chest. Robot mode stands 2" (5cm) tall at the head, add a little for the shoulder spikes. The head is almsot a peg, with yellow goggles (the paint on them blurs over the edges, adding to the cheap look). The hips are ball joints, and the shoulders are very restricted ball joints. The elbows are weak hinges and bend about 30 degrees. Try to force 'em farther and they pop off. Hands are molded inside the doors, a bit of paint on the arms might have been nice. At the top of the shoulders on mine are pretty obvious injection flaws, hurting the appearance. Overall: It could have been very good, but I think it got too ambitious for its budget. Oval: A yellow-orange sportscar with black windows, white headlights and gray vents near the back (and gray radiator grille). My source says it's either a Saleen S7 or a McLaren F1. The Mini-Con symbol is on the rear underside of the car (left kneecap), with the connector a few millimeters farther back of it. Vehicle mode is 2.25" (5.5cm) long, and the most solid of the three. It rolls very nicely. And it rolls under the CoolPad my laptop sits on, being very slim. Excuse me while I pick up the computer and fish Oval out. Anyway, there are injection flaws on the tops of the doors. Transformation is the simplest of the three, reminiscent of an Omnibot with the head folding up out of the hood. However, it depends on some very small pegs to keep the torso together, and they don't do their job well. Robot mode is a skinny 2.25" (5.5cm) tall, mostly yellow-orange with gray lower torso and upper legs. The head is peg-like and has a silver visor. The legs are ball joints, but it's hard to move them without popping the torso apart. The shoulders are rod swivels, and the elbows are easily popped hinges that let the arms bend about 45 degrees. The entire top of the car's windowed part forms a sort of cape on a hinge. The hands are molded into the doors, and a couple of stabilizing pegs at the ends of the arms look like blaster barrels. Overall: I think if they'd gone with one big peg instead of two small ones, this would be a much better toy. But the robot mode has too many places to fall apart. Spiral: A medium-dark blue sportscar with silver windows and radiator grille, and white headlights. My source says it's probably a Mercedes CLK, but the headlights are wrong (possibly a trademark dodge). Mini-Con symbol is on the bottom along the centerline, a little rear of the middle. The connector is at the very rear on the centerline. Vehicle mode is 2.25" (5.5cm) long and floppy at the front. Plus it has a lot more big obvious seams than the other two, in part because the top part splits into the arms rather than just becoming the backpack. Transformation is unlike the other two, with the canopy splitting into the arms, and the doors folding down to become heel spurs. The legs otherwise transform like Backtrack's, including the waist rotation (but not the pegs on it). The rear part of the car, including wheels, forms the big chest. Robot mode is a touch over 2" (5cm) tall at the head, but the shoulders rise a few millimeters above that. The visor is green and the paint applied a little sloppily. There's some vent detailing exposed on the chest, and it's painted yellow. The arms really don't look like arms, and while there's hands molded inside them, you really can't pose them so that they look like anything but canopy halves, since the plastic is too dark for the details to really show up. Again, painted hands would have helped a lot. Poseability is pretty good, though. The shoulders are swivels but also have transformation hinges that increased motion. The elbows bend about 30 degrees. The hips are ball joints, and Spiral actually has knee joints (although they only bend about 45 degrees). And the waist swivels. Overall: Probably the best robot mode by a small margin, but the vehicle mode doesn't look as good. Set Overall: Ambitious, but too many things don't work well at the size and budget they have. A few metal pins in the elbows would have helped a LOT, but probably would have broken the budget. Dave Van Domelen, got Spark Attack Prime and Paradron Medic PVCs today, completing his set of second wave...better get to reviewing 'em soon.