Dave's Transformers Artifact Rant

     Energon Sandals

     The light-up Transformers footwear line by SG Footwear marches on into
Energon with these sandals for summer.  I'm just going to describe them this
time, rather than doing a capsule evaluation.  :)  I've had them sitting
around my apartment for a few weeks, time to get some sort of review out.

     The Energon sandals come in four sizes: S (9-10), M (11-12), L (13-
adult 1), XL (1.5-2 adult, I think, been a few weeks since I looked).
They're mainly a dark english navy blue with red trim and stitching on the
uppers.  
     The soles are made up of three layers: the top layer is navy and
slightly roughened for grip on the feet, the middle layer is clear and
contains LEDs, the bottom layer is more navy foam and has a rough and bumpy
bottom bot not actual tread.  The foam comprising the top and bottom layers
is pretty stiff...these are not squishy-soled sandals.  The LED layer
stiffens the sole overall, and each has 4 red LEDs along the outstep.  A
shock causes the LEDs to light up in a ripple pattern from back to front.
Overall sole thickness is about an inch, thinner near the balls of the feet.
Just ahead of the heels are raised oval shapes on the top side with the
Transformers Energon logo.  Labels on the sides of the soles proclaim this to
be the "Transformers Eva Lighted" style, which immediately makes me think you
should buy them for your Third Child.
     The uppers are made of three layers: a black pseudo-felt furry inside, a
red layer of what seems like a slightly sturdier version of craft foam, and a
surface of leather or maybe fake leather in navy blue.  Standard sewing
machine chain stitching holds the three layers together, with black threads
on the inside and red on the outside.  The outer layer is slightly narrower
than the others, so the red layer sticks out as a trim.
     There's three velcro closures.  The one that goes around the achilles
tendon has the Transformers Energon logo on it.  The one that goes across the
top of the foot has Optimus Prime written on it in red letters.  Finally, the
toe section can be opened up as well, and is wider to make room for the
picture of Optimus Prime.  This is the same picture used on the FlipFlop
kite, Optimus with his arms stretched out, looking to one side as he points.
The right sandal has the regular image, with Prime looking and pointing to
hsi left.  The left sandal has the mirror flip of that image...so the sandals
point at each other, as if to say, "No, HE'S the evil Decepticon clone!"

     One major advantage the sandals have over the shoes is that, being
sandals, Unicron can wear them with his heel spurs sticking out.  This turns
out to be significantly more stable than the solution I found for using the
shoes.  

     Dave Van Domelen, still hasn't found the baby-sized shirts supposedly
out there, although they might be way too big for Unicron anyway.