Dave's Transformers Artifacts Rant: Armada Bubble Twist At last, TF toys with candy/gum are no longer the exclusive province of Kabaya! Found a single display of these at Toys R Us yesterday: six Armada and six GIJoe, I bought up all the Armada ones. CAPSULES Clever little gimmick package, the gum is nice but loses flavor quickly, and the blind-packed "decoys" aren't too bad. Worth picking up a few for novelty, if nothing else. Recommended. $1.99 each. RANTS Display: The Point Of Purchase (POP) display for these contains six each of the GIJoe and Transformers Bubble Twists, in four rows of three across each. At least on the one I saw, GIJoe had the front two ranks. All of the capsules are made of identical red plastic, so you have to pick them up and look at the label to see whether it's TF or Joe. The only differences on the labels are the small logo near the top, and the outline of the toy surprise in two places (Megatron's outline is used for TFs). Capsules: The red capsules are 4.125" tall and 1.625" in diameter. They are slightly rounded on top and have a tab and hole for attachment to a keychain (although I wouldn't recommend carrying an opened one on a keychain, it doesn't hold together THAT strongly). To open, twist either way to break the label and pull apart the halves. The top part is 2.125" tall and unthreaded, it just has bumps around the bottom lip to help it hold onto the bottom part. The bottom part of the outer shell is threaded on the inside all the way down, and screws onto the pink inner core. It is also 2.125" tall (the joint is an eighth of an inch high, if you're wondering why the numbers don't add up). The inner core is two pieces as well, nested cups with soft bubble gum in between and extrusion opening at the top. The toy is inside the bottom cup, and there's threads around the base of the top cup. Turning the bottom part of the outer capsule around the threads forces the inner cup upward and squeezes out the gum in four gooey quarter-circle "snakes". The bottom cup of the inner core is 2.25" deep and has a 1.25" inner diameter. This defines the maximum dimensions of the "decoys". In summary, if you twist the lower capsule up, gum squeezes out. If you twist it down, it can be removed to reveal the toy. With two layers of opaque plastic around the toy, I doubt it'll be feasable to hold these up to the light and try to see what you're about to get. The label shows a boy with green hair and a girl with light blue hair enjoying the product. The boy is licking the gum (ooookay) and the girl is blowing a bubble. The main logo proclaims "BUBBLE TWIST - Bubble GUM with a TOY Inside (TM)." To the right of the main logo are instructions of a sort, showing how you can twist one way to get gum or the other way to get a toy. The remainder of the label has ingredients and legalese, in English, French and Spanish. The front of the label is justin English and French. Hasbro has the main credit, but Cap Candy apparently makes the Bubble Twists line in general, and a Canadian distributor is also listed. The UPC code, for those who are curious (and I do get the occasional request on these artifacts) is 76930 11671. The Gum: You start with 1.25" of strawberry-flavored gum, which works out to 30 grams (1.06 oz). Half of it is colored a sort of dark pink, half is white. It is very soft and very sweet, but loses its flavor after only a couple minutes of chewing. Can't really say how good it is at blowing bubbles, since I'm not very good at that myself. The Figures: They made the decision to make every figure as large as possible while fitting inside the capsule, which has the odd effect of messing up the scales. Hot Shot is the tallest of the toys at the head, and Megatron the smallest, which is kinda odd. But I guess they wanted all the figures to mass about the same and make it hard to figure out which capsule held what by shaking the product. I do not know the full range of figures and colors, I haven't been able to find that information online. It's possible that my sampling got all the molds and all possible colors. I got the following: Purple Supermode Optimus Prime (2) Blue Hot Shot Blue Megatron Red Starscream Black Starscream With four molds and four colors, you'd have 16 collectible units, reasonable for a product that ships in blocks of six. If you find any other colors or molds, let me know. And if you want to trade for my extra Prime, also let me know. }-> [UPDATE: I'm told that there's also gray figures.] All of them have a level of detail comparable to the original Decoys, and are made of a slick flexible plastic similar (or perhaps identical) to that used in the new MUSCLE figures. They are not eraser-y like decoys. There's only a very small amount of mold flash, mostly around fine details like Megatron's horns. Now for a rundown on each mold that I have: Hot Shot: A certain amount of mold-cheating on his upper arms, with a lot of gaps just filled in with smooth plastic. The upper legs are round tubes, but otherwise the mold looks good. The visor even has the targeting patterns molded into it, a very nice touch. They even put the hood molding on the insides of the boots. Because his design has almost nothing "hanging out", he ended up being the biggest and least deformed of the ones I have. Super Mode Prime: The biggest alteration was also inevitable, they filled in the backpack and leveled it off so his torso is solid. The shoulderpads are not as wide, since a proper width could make the figure too wide for the capsule. There is no detail between the legs or on the forward-facing part of the "dress" formed by the back of Prime's trailer, and the smoothness is a bit jarring. Also, the wheels on his arms are just flat discs, no hubs or other details. Prime is almost exactly as tall as Hot Shot, but because Hot Shot has so much bulk over his shoulders, Prime looks significantly shorter. Megatron: The tank turret is disproportionately large in order to have his arms connect up to it. There's no detail on the underside of the turret, but otherwise the level of detail is great. His left hand even has a hole so he can hold a toothpick or something as a Star Saber stand-in. Overall, I'd call this the best-looking of the four. Starscream: This one suffers a lot from the width restrictions, and also has the problem seen in Megatron's original decoy of a sword that is very thick so it can connect up to his arm. The shoulder wings are rather narrow, and the right wing is less than a millimeter longer than the left wing, despite the left wing being removed to form the sword. The rear "runway" is drastically shortened, which is good, but the arms are spindly, which is bad. His null laser blasters are deployed and look okay. Overall, though, despite being an inherently better design than Hot Shot, this one is the least attractive of the four molds I have. I think if they'd given up on the sword, they could have made a better figure within the restrictions of the capsules. I have not yet tried painting any of these, although they clearly won't paint just like decoys. The plastic is less spongy and slicker, I suspect it'll need a basecoat. They're also a bit taller than decoys, at slightly over two inches (5cm) tall. If you're just interested in Armada decoys, you might be better off getting the board game (8 painted figures for $20, versus 4 unpainted figures for $8 or more depending on luck). Dave Van Domelen, apologizes for not reviewing the board game yet, by the way, but hasn't gotten anyone to play it against him yet.