Dave's Transformers Keychain Rant: Movie Keychains Wave 2

     Barricade
     Megatron

     Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Artifacts/Keychain3

     Basic Fun fleshes out the "usual suspects" for licensed stuff, adding
Megatron and Barricade to their keychain sets.  For notes on packaging, see
http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Artifacts/Keychain2 .
     Found these in the "cheapo toys" section at Wal-Mart, next to the 88
cent stuff.

CAPSULES

     Barricade: Suffers from details that don't hold well in soft plastic,
plus a lack of paint apps.  Mild recommendation to avoid.  $3.96 at Wal-Mart.
     Megatron: Decent molding, kinda boring in colors, but serviceable as a
little action figure begging for a paint touchup.  Very mildly recommended.
$3.96 at Wal-Mart.


RANTS

     Packaging: Same as the first pair, but the package backs show Megatron
and Barricade, both with more paint apps than the actual products can lay
claim to.  The head shot on the front of Megatron uses the old face that
never made it into the movie but ended up on most of the merchandising.

     Commonalities: They're both about 3.5" (9cm) tall and made of rubbery
silver plastic.  Imprinted on the bottom of the left foot is the Transformers
logo, on the bottom of the right is the trademark info.
     Each has a turning head, turning waist, swivel shoulders, swivel hips
and hinge knees.  The hips are a "V-joint" sort of thing, so the legs rise up
and out.  Both have eyelets stuck into the middle of their back for attaching
the keychains, which are of the springy sorta-carabiner ring end variety.
When hung from the chain, the figures lean slightly forward.

     Barricade: All black plastic.  The soft plastic interacts poorly with
all the thin fiddly bits on his shoulders, and it's all kinda warped.
There's also a shortage of paint apps...the arm-doors are white with printed
"POLICE", he's got light blue side mirrors on his shoulder kibble, red
flashers on the back of his shoulders, silver wheel hubs and headlights, an a
couple minor silver and red details.  No paint on the head at all, though.
The head is just a blob of black plastic.  Generally not worth the bother.

     Megatron: Silver plastic with a black wash.  That's IT.  No secondary
metallic colors, no eye paint.  At least it seems to be the correct head, not
the one used for the package art.  Looks decent other than that, though, and
it wouldn't be too hard to spruce up.  Worth grabbing for modding purposes, I
suppose. 

     Overall: The main attraction of the first two was that they were some of
the earliest toys out for the movie.  These don't have that advantage, and
they also come after the Legends and Robot Replicas versions.  At $4 they
just aren't quite impulse enough.

     Dave Van Domelen, at least Megatron's arms are skinny enough to bend at
the elbow without joints.