Dave's Transformers Artifacts Rant:

     2007 Movie Bubble Bath Battling Robots
          Optimus Prime
          Megatron

     Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Artifacts/BubbleBath1

     Just a quickie review here, there's not a whole lot to say about these
novelty bubble bath bottles.

CAPSULE

     Battling Bubble Bath: An amusing novelty, and cheap enough to grab as an
impulse buy.  Prime is better than Megatron on several levels, though.  $2.97
at Wal-Mart.

RANT

     As part of the movie merchandising blitz, Wal-Mart has aisle displays up
near cosmetics where one face of the display is all Transformers Bubble Bath.
There's two varieties, Optimus Prime and Megatron.  I don't use bubble bath
(I generally shower anyway), so I won't be commenting on that side of the
product.  You get 8.5 oz of the stuff, FWIW.
     Topping the bottle is the upper half of a robot, with buttons on the
back you can press to make the arms swing up, more or less punching.  There's
no "rock 'em sock 'em" targets or other action on either, though.

     Both bottles are blue with a plastic wrapped label around them.  The
labels are specific to the toppers, with pictures of the relevant topper and
the correct faction symbols.  The label has them as "TRANSFORMERS BATTLING
ROBOTS" at the top, and "BUBBLE BATH" at the bottom, but no character names
are used.  The toppers are both made of a metal-flake gunmetal gray plastic,
and the total height of the product is 8.5" (22cm) for both.  The toppers are
just waist-up of the robots, and are roughly Voyager proportioned.  The
toppers can be pulled off the bottles, but will stay on the caps firmly
enough you can also leave them on the cap and twist the bottle open via the
toppers.  The bottles are foil sealed, so no worries about getting a goopy
toy.  
     There's two buttons on the back.  Pressing one in makes the arm on that
side lift by about 45 degrees reasonably quickly.
     Megatron has blue-painted eyes, and that's it for his paint.  Prime has
extensive blue and red paint applications.  All paints are slightly
metallic.  
     In addition to the gimmick joints, each has some other articulation.
Megatron has upper arm swivels, hinge elbows and swivel wrists.  However, the
molding of his arms doesn't let any of the joints actually bring his hands
around into a good striking position, and he generally looks like he's just
flailing around randomly.  Prime only has bendable elbows and a little
movement in his neck, although his arms can be moved up to straight out
(Megatron's are blocked at the end of the 45 degree swing).  With one
semi-open fist and one closed fist instead of Megatron's weird spindly hands,
Prime can also throw a much better punch.  The open hand's gap is bigger than
5mm, but I found I can clip a knockoff Prime rifle around the fingers
securely enough.  :)

     All in all, if you see these you might want to snag Prime, but leave
Megatron on the shelf.

     Dave Van Domelen, needs to get back to finishing his Movie Voyager
review.