Dave's Ultra Transformers Rant:

     Tidal Wave

     Picked this up at Wal-Mart the day I returned from a conference
(technically, anyway...got home at 2AM that day).  Wal-Mart had Tidal Wave
and Unicron shelved over under the Gundams, since there was no shelf space
left under the other TFs, it was all taken by old Maxcons and PLOPs.


CAPSULE

     Tidal Wave: Suffers a bit in poseability, but loaded with gimmicks and
modes.  A worthy pairing with Megatron/Galvatron, the first Gigacon mold.
Recommended.  $24.96 at Wal-Mart.


RANTS

     Packaging: Standard Gigacon-sized package, and the Dark Fleet is
packaged in vehicle modes.  Yes, plural.  They're all separated, and Ramjet
is twist-tied down on his own.  A total of 13 twist-ties and 4 rubber bands
hold it all together.  There's a little bubble in the lower right that covers
the TF: Universe CDROM...it's really hard to get the CDROM free without
totally disassembling the cardboard tray, and there's even a twist-tie
running through the center hole.  (I'll cover the CDROM separately later, I
can only run it at work, and work is a mite busy right now.)  
     The missiles are in a little baggie of their own, taped to the bag
holding the instructions and comic.  The instructions do not give individual
names to the three members of the Dark Fleet, so I'll do that.
     Flattop - The aircaft carrier, using the name of the Decepticon
Micromaster Transport it vaguely resembles.
     Gunboat - The torso chunk dual-hull battleship thing.
     Seawing - The transport (hover?) bit that forms the legs, named after
the vague resemblance to the Seacon of that name.
     I'll be using these names for the rest of the review, where relevant.


The Dark Fleet

     While there's some uncertainty in the instructions and other references
whether "Dark Fleet" refers to the individual ships as a group or to their
combined form, I'm going to use it here to refer to the trio of separate
ships.  

     Flattop: 6.75" (17cm) long "baby flattop" aircraft carrier escort of
sorts.  Or a chibi-version of a full aircraft carrier, arguments can probably
be made both ways.  It's got the two runways, small control tower and even a
single elevator for Ramjet.  The main colors are light gray and dark gray
(neither of which match the grays on Galvatron), with red runway markers (and
a few other bits) and raised purple Decepticon symbol at the front.  The
below-waterline bit of the prow is seafoam green, as are some bits under the
front of the runway.  There's a little bit of black paint on some tech
detailing near the stern.  Flattop rolls along on four little plastic wheels
that are ridged to make for a slightly rough ride.
     There's three dead hardpoints here.  Two are side-by-side at the rear of
the front runways (i.e. amidships), and are part of the runway pieces.  The
third is a separate piece of red plastic bolted into the control tower, so it
LOOKS like a life hardpoint, but is not.
     Flattop's big gimmick is the elevator.  The top of it is 1.5" (4cm) long
and 1" (2.5cm) wide.  Pushing up on a tab on the side will cause it to rise
up by an inch (nearly the entire height of Flattop), flipping open the roof
to reveal a tiny little place to put Ramjet.  After you fold him up.  It sits
on a cut-down hardpoint with some brackets around it to brace the
undercarriage junk, and really no other Mini-Con will work here.  If you pop
it up too hard, Ramjet may go flying in an unintended way.  When loading
Ramjet, be sure to press up on the underside of the elevator, or it'll just
go down without Ramjet connecting to the hardpoint.
     A final note of absurdity.  The shoulder connectors at the rear of
Flattop (it splits to become arms, you see) look like huge rocket boosters.
We're OOOOOOFFFFF to OUTER SPAAAAAACE!  We're LEEEEEEEAVING Mother EAARRRRTH!
To SAAAAAAVE the human RAAAAAAACE!  OUR...STAR...BLA-ZERS!
     Ahem.  Okay, so the Yamato was a battleship, not a carrier.  I coulda
made a Robotech "Daedalus Maneuver" joke, you know.  And may yet in this
review.  

     Gunboat: 6.75" (17cm) long, this is the "Well, it hadda go SOMEWHERE"
component of Tidal Wave, a mishmash of styles and colors.  The front half is
a twin hull in seafoam green with copper paint sprayed across the prows and
some silver accents across the tops.  The read half is, well, a robot torso
with turrets and a bridge tacked onto the top.  The torso piece is dark gray
and a little light gray with paint in silver, red, purple and black.  A
purple raised Decepticon logo is behind the bridge.  Gunboat rolls on four
tiny rough plastic wheels.
     The turret chunk has four large turrets with raiseable dual cannons on
the corners and four tiny purple missile turrets clustered near the center.
These are connected to the only live hardpoint in the entire toy.  Place a
Mini-Con on the live hardpoint at the stern and push forward, and the turrets
will all turn in unison, not all in the same directions.  The large turrets
can be positioned independently (with ratcheting) without the hardpoint, but
the little turrets cannot (as far as I can tell without risking damage) be
turned without using the Mini-Con gimmick.
     But that's not all!  Gunboat also has simple missile launchers in each
of the two front hulls which fire red missiles a couple of feet.  The
triggers on the sides, sadly, are pressed when you put Gunboat in robot-
component mode.

     Seawing: 6" (15cm) long and with a 7" (18cm) stubby wingspan, this is a
sort of hybrid of hovercraft and...um, something else with stubby wings.  The
front looks like an openable loading ramp (load up the inside, drop the ramp,
load up the top deck) made of purple plastic.  The main body is dark gray,
with red trim on the wingtips and behind the bridge pieces.  The top deck is
painted copper, and there's copper accents near the front and elsewhere.
Light gray plastic forms the rocket thrusters at the back.  The molded detail
on the underside doesn't look very hovercraft-y, despite the shape of the
sides.  Seawing rolls on four smooth plastic wheels, further suggesting it's
supposed to be a hovercraft (the other two pitch up and down a little,
Seawing glides).
     There are two dead hardpoints on the top deck, and two more on the
bridges (well, okay, one of the chunks is a bridge, the other is a generator
nodule or something).  But it's not the quartet of hardpoints that makes
Seawing the transport specialist of the lot, it's....
     Party boat mode!  The deck halves fold to the sides to become walls, and
little benches fold out from inside (two to a side).  People have taking to
filling the party boat mode of their Seawing with MUSCLE Men, Homies, Digimon
minifigs, etc.  If you leave the benches up, the space inside is wide enough
to carry either Flattop or Gunboat (7cm, you might be able to cram a Car
Brother inside too, or some of the Autobot Armada cars).


DECEPTICON: TIDAL WAVE
Japanese Name: Shockwave
Altmode: Dark Fleet, SuperDimensionalFortress
Mini-Con: Ramjet
Motto: "RAAAAR!"

No bio yet.  Assume it'll involve being big, dumb and big.

     Vehicle Mode: The Dark Fleet combines into what can only be called a
SuperDimensionalFortress with Flattop locked between the front hulls of
Gunboat, and Seawing split apart and wrapped around the back of Gunboat.  The
whole thing is 13" (33cm) long with a wingspan of 10" (25cm).  It's pretty
stable, although if you pick it up by the middle, Flattop may droop a little
bit depending on how solid the ratchets are on yours.  It's kinda difficult
to raise the elevator on Flattop in this mode, but not impossible.
     If you want the party boat benches up in this mode, you'll need to do it
before finishing assembly, as bits of Gunboat's turret chunk lock them down.
Gunboat's missiles work fine in this mode, and the overall balance looks much
better.
     In combined form, Tidal Wave has 9 dead hardpoints and 1 live hardpoint,
all of them fairly accessible (although 4 of them might not work for all
Mini-Cons).  The color is mostly gray and dark gray, lighter towards the
front.  The seafoam green hulls don't even look too bad, given their
placement and their roles as missile pods.

     Transformation: Yep, you can transform Tidal Wave directly from vehicle
mode to robot mode without disassembling.  In other words, while it can be
taken apart, it doesn't HAVE TO BE taken apart (like Omega Supreme, for
instance).  Legs flip and fold around, arms separate (splitting Flattop down
the middle), chest panel rotates 180 degrees, head pops up a little.  The
loading ramps on Seawing become the toes and heelspurs.  Oh, and the missiles
launch if you haven't removed them already.  There's no good storage space
for them in robot mode, sadly.

     Robot Mode: This 11.5" (29cm) tall behemoth looks surprisingly good, a
nice balance of grays, purple, red and green (which is on the head, shoulders
and hands).  The head is pretty retro-chunky, and I think a lighter color on
the face would have worked better.
     Poseability is about on a par with Megatron/Galvatron.  Universal
shoulders and elbows (a bit constrained by the need to mesh flat for
Flattop's vehicle mode), universal hips, all of these jointws ratcheting.
The thumbs move and the fingertips (as a group) bend in a bit.  Knees are
sideways, toes move but not in a meaningful way, no neck.  The waist turns
stiffly as part of transformation.  One cool pose has the right arm raised
and pointed forward as a runway, with Ramjet raised and ready to launch.  The
main quibble I have with the posing is that the forearms are so much shorter
than the upper arms, which can look goony.
     Tidal Wave (unlike Shockwave) does NOT have a sound chip.  But if he
did, when activating his spinning turrets, it should say in John Cleese's
voice, "My nipples explode with delight!"  [Note: the rumor I'd heard of
Shockwave having a sound chip was false.]
     Okay, finally found a place to store the missiles.  With the left arm
down, there's a gap in the top of the shoulder where the ends of the missiles
will fit okay.

     Battleshirt Mode: This is pretty clever, if not something I want to
leave together.  Gunboat and Flattop both connect to the hardpoints on
Galvatron's forearms (gotta have the shiv undeployed), and each then has its
own clip that emerges to stabilize things.  Pushing down on Flattop pops down
a clip that snaps around Galvatron's arm.  Gunboat has clip halves that fold
down from its sides and snap together.  Either will let you wear the Fleet
member as a ring and zoom it around the room.  Woosh!  Flattop loses its
bridge component here, though.  Finally, Seawing has a clip that goes around
Galvatron's elongated waist.
     Battleshirt Galvatron is 8.5" (22cm) tall at the head, 11" (28cm) at the
shoulderpad.  Masses 1.1kg fully loaded out and holding the Dark Saber.  Of
course, between the turret in front and all the stuff hanging off everywhere,
Galvatron's kinda lost in his own kibble.

     Ramjet: Teeny tiny purple/red/gray jet.  PowerLinx connector is on the
bottom (in the robot legs), and the Mini-Con symbol is on the left wing.
     Jet mode is 1.75" (4.5cm) long.  It's a delta wing fighter with canards
like a Saab Gripen or Dassault Rafale, but it's not either.  I think maybe
it's supposed to be the Eurofighter.  The main body and wings are the same
purple as Tidal Wave's purple bits.  The connector joints for transformation
are red, the undercarriage junk is light gray.  The cockpit is painted gold
(it looks distinct from the copper paint on Tidal Wave as far as I can
tell).  
     Folding the nose up in the manner of an Aerialbot (like THAT'LL make any
sense to most of you) and folding up the wings prepares it for storage inside
Flattop, and is also most of the way to transforming to robot mode.  All you
need to do after that is fold down the legs and fold up the toes (which have
a little tab that locks onto the underside of the nose to keep the jet mode
stable).  
     Robot mode is 1.75" (4cm) tall at the head, 2.25" (6cm) tall at the
nosecone sticking up the back.  He's very narrow, and the legs are a single
chunk, much like a Micromaster.  The only poseability is bending at the waist
and knees (so he can sit in Seawing's benches) and bending at the elbows.
The forearms are red, and the faceplate is painted red.  In mine, the toes
flex down a little too much, so I have to bend it forward a bit at the
waist. 
     Overall, it's a tiny little Mini-Con, driven largely by the need to make
it stowable on Flattop's elevator.  But it holds together well and does what
a Mini-Con needs to do.

     Overall set: While there's a number of things that could have been done
a little better, and while I do prefer the Shockwave color scheme (a Hasbro
rep said the colors were changed to avoid a preponderance of purple in the
Transformers aisle), it's a good, solid toy with a lot of detail and thought
put into it.  It's both a "partformer" like Omega Supreme and a unified
Transformer.  Worth the money, and the Battleshirt mode is pure gravy.

     Dave Van Domelen, now to get cracking on the World's Smallest
Transformers box that arrived in the mail today....