Dave's Cybertron Deluxe Rant: Wave 7 Cannonball (Red Alert repaint) Skywarp (Thundercracker repaint) Another repaint wave. Shipping patterns are kinda weird, but in no case so far are they shipped alone. Usually older toys pad out the case (Landmine seems to be popular), and wave 6 is often mixed in as well. Updated May 12, 2006 with the rest of Skywarp's stuff, as I broke down and got one. Updated June 9 with Skywarp's Key Code info. Updated June 27 with Cannonball's Key Code info. He's the Dread Pirate Roberts. Here's the original reviews of the molds: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Cybertron/Deluxe2 (Red Alert) http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Cybertron/Deluxe1 (Thundercracker) CAPSULES Cannonball: Based on a strongly recommended mold. The concept is good, but the actual color scheme doesn't really work for me. Has a small but significant mold fix over both mold variants of Red Alert. Recommended. $9.99 at Target. (recommendation changed April 30, 2006) Skywarp: Based on a mildly recommended mold, doesn't really improve on the original in any way, but certainly does worse in a few ways. Neutral if you don't have this mold yet, avoid if you do. $9.87 at Wal-Mart. RANTS Packaging: Standard Deluxe blister cards, with Primus Unleashed stickers just below the line logo. No Space Camp sticker on either, nor game piece, and both came with the Jungle map. Cannonball's co-sells are Skywarp, Excellion and Override GTS, the repaint brigade. Skywarp's co-sells are Cannonball, Excellion and Override GTS. It does seem that wave 7 is really all four of these repaints. Cannonball is held in by two twist-ties in vehicle mode, plus an extra shield piece held over his roof by one of the ties, to protect his flashers from shipping damage. He still rattles a little in package, because of his stored weapons. Two twist-ties hold Skywarp's jet mode in place, while his missile and Planet Key are just held in by the blister. The left arm was bent incorrectly in package, so it jutted out the bottom more than it needs to. DECEPTICON: CANNONBALL Planet: Earth Altmode: Rescue-modified Dodge Magnum Prior Name Use: None Prior Mold Use: Cybertron Red Alert Key Gimmick: Rotary Cannons Key Code: d2rz A reckless pirate concerned only with where is next bit of stolen treasure is coming from, CANNONBALL and his crew of oil-thirsty pirates have terrorized merchant starships for centuries, returning to CYBERTRON only rarely to refuel and spend their ill-gotten loot on black-market Energon stars and hot, airbrushed graphics for their vehicle modes. He claims loyalty to the DECEPTICON cause only because MEGATRON allows him to operate freely as long as he continues to attack only AUTOBOT ships. STR 8 INT 6 SPD 7 END 9 RNK 9 COUR 9 FRB 4 SKL 5 Avg 7.125 Key Code Info: Cannonball is not the first space-faring Cybertronian pirate to carry that name. For hundreds of years, various disenfranchised Autobots and Decepticons have looked to the stars, and the various interstellar shipping lanes as an escape from the great wars. Inevitably, they come face to grisly face with Cannonball, the worst pirate in the cosmos. To keep his legend alive, Cannonball would recruit new mates to his ship - the SEA SLAG - and train them to be his replacement! The most recent Cannonball is the tenth pirate to use the dreaded Pirate's name! (Also shows Cannonball's color guide. Yes, Cannonball is the Dread Pirate Roberts from The Princess Bride.) Planet Key: Standard Earth Planet. Color Swaps: White has become a very dark gray (darker than 333333), and they did a good job of paint-matching over the parts that need it (which is to say, most of it...there's very little actual white in Red Alert, it's mostly painted stuff). Clear red has become clear purple, black has become the same very dark gray mentioned earlier. The dark blue plastic on Red Alert becomes a sort of gold plastic...well, TWO sorts. They look about the same under normal light, but some gold parts glow REALLY brightly under UV, and others don't. Speaking of UV, the purple glows pretty strongly too. Paint Apps: The weird gumdrop clear bits on the roof were painted over in dark gray, but the flashers on either side of the head are left unpainted. The roof has a darkish neon green electric skull painted on it (the paint reacts medium-strongly to UV, but is not glow in the dark). Each door has the upper half of a skeleton in the same paint. Silver is the most common other color on the vehicle mode, with strips along the running boards and fenders, plus on the front and rear bumpers and a stripe down the center of the hood. The hubcaps are silver. There's a silver airbrushed effect at the top of the windshield. There's more silver on the shoulders, chest and abdomen of the robot mode, and on the mouth area. The headlights are yellow, and the headlight-like pattern on the robot chest is also yellow. A Decepticon symbol is printed on the center of the chest. The left side of the face is painted dark gray, an effect shown on the package picture, but not on the art (or it's very downplayed). I suppose it's meant to be a half mask of some sort, evoking an eyepatch. Other Notes: No mold changes that I noticed. It'd have been cool if they changed his claw add-on weapon into a hook, though. Update April 30: Turns out there IS a remold. A running change in Red Alert added a little "wall" under the hood on each leg, to keep the toes from going in so far that you need tools to get it out. But this made the lower legs fit together poorly, something I didn't really notice at the time on Red Alert. But the wall has been remolded to only cover part of the space, so it keeps the toe from going too far without getting in the way of locking the legs together. Overall: While I like the idea of a pirate variant, this color scheme doesn't really say pirate to me. In fact, charcoal, purple, gold and green don't really say much of *anything* to me. Maybe if the charcoal was replaced by more of a wood effect, make it a "Woody" wagon. Update April 30: The mold change on the legs is actually significant improvement, resulting in my changed recommendation above. DECEPTICON: SKYWARP Planet: Earth Altmode: Sukhoi-37 Flanker jet Prior U.S. Name Use: G1 Prior Mold Use: C.Thundercracker Key Gimmick: Heat-Seeking missile launcher Key Code: d02r The sneakiest of all DECEPTICONS, SKYWARP delights in using his teleportation ability to appear in the middle of a group of AUTOBOTS, hose them with laser fire, and disappear again. He is the dark heart of the DECEPTICON Air Corps, taking joy in playing cruel tricks on friend and enemy alike and using his aerial abilities to avoid a fair fight whenever possible. None too bright, he requires constant supervision by his commander STARSCREAM. STR 8 INT 4 SPD 9 END 6 RNK 4 COUR 5 FRB 8 SKL 8 Avg 6.5 (Sounds more like an update of Hooligan.) Key Code Info: As Starscream looked across Earth for the Cyber Planet Key and the Monster Decepticons of the past, he needed to give Skywarp a job to keep him from bungling up his mission. The job he gave him? Create crop circles, steal cows and make it look like old-fashioned flying saucer UFO's were invading Earth. Skywarp LOVED this assignment and took to it immediately. He spent the next month loafing around Roswell, New Mexico, and using his teleportation powers, he tricked close to ten thousand people into believing Martians were invading! (Also shows color guide.) Planet Key: Standard Earth Key. Color Swaps: The medium gray plastic on most of the upper plane parts (except the tail) has been replaced by purple (roughly 3300CC, a bright "Decepticon Purple" that's so hard to find in paints), bright blue by light gray (barely darker than white), the rest of the darker gray (vertical parts of the tail, undercarriage and robot kibble) has stayed about the same (666666). The soft pieces (vertical tail pieces, canards, nose and missiles) are also 666666 medium gray. The clear orange plastic has been changed to clear dark orange (a little darker than FF6600). Paint Apps: The head seems to be painted entirely medium gray (helmet) and light gray (face and accents) despite likely being made of light gray. Light gray is also on the leading edges of the wings and tail, and some bits flanking the cockpit (roughly where TC is silver, but not the same mask). The missile tips and shoulders have red paint, and there's a weird dazzle camo sort of pattern on the wings in red. The Decepticon symbol is printed near the front of the launcher, instead of at the middle like on TC. Other Comments: Vehicle mode looks nice, but the robot mode color balance doesn't work so well for me. It's clearly not meant to mimic the G1 color scheme, but I don't see anyone wanting to imitate this one. It reminds me of the "Purple Lady" background Decepticon who's been called a female version of the Seeker bodyplan by some. If anything, the shoulder problems Thundercracker has are WORSE in this recolor. The entire wing assembly on mine swings out when you let go of it, since the hinges holding it onto the collar pieces are much floppier. This could just be a bad copy and an example of iffy quality control, but it bodes ill even in that case. Overall: Worse than the original in almost every way. And the original wasn't that great. Dave Van Domelen, prefers the Skywarp he made with Rit dye over this turkey. (http://www.dvandom.com/kitbash/cybwarp4.JPG among other pics)