Dave's TF: Cybertron Rant - Voyager Wave 4 Dark Crumplezone Cybertron Defense Scattorshot You'll note in the Capsules that K-Mart charges 10% more for Voyagers than other stores. I'm treating it as an Impatience Tax. :) And it's still cheaper than ordering online. Dark Crumplezone is notable as being a US-exclusive toy, while still being in Galaxy Force as Armbullet. They made the character in the cartoon, but Takara opted not to sell a toy of the character upgrade. There are apparently a few other late-season characters who only get toys in the U.S. Review of Crumplezone's original molding can be found at: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Cybertron/Mega1 Updated February 15, 2006 with Key Code Info. CAPSULES Dark Crumplezone: An improvement over the original in pretty much every way. Recommended, even if you have the original. $21.99 at K-Mart. Cybertron Defense Scattorshot: Solid vehicle mode, good gimmicks, okay transformation, good robot mode. Perhaps not a Must Get, but a good toy with no significant flaws. Recommended. $21.99 at K-Mart. (Comparison note: if you can only afford one, get Scattorshot.) RANTS Packaging: standard Voyager boxes, but with the addition of the Space Camp context promotion stickers (located on the clear plastic part of the front, above the Cyber Planet Key). Both of mine came with the Earth Map, and Key To Cybertron gamepieces. Neither was a winning gamepiece, I got Optimus Prime and Hot Shot stickers (now have three Hot Shot stickers). The instructions are single-sided, and they redrew Crumplezone's to depict Dark Crumplezone. Dark Crumplezone still has the original Speed Planet writeup on the left side, and CDS has the old Cybertron Planet writeup. CDS's cosells (on the bottom panel) are Dark Crumplezone, CD Hot Shot, Galvatron and CD Red Alert. Dark Crumplezone's cosells are CDS, Galvatron, Evac and CD Hot Shot. DECEPTICON: DARK CRUMPLEZONE Planet: Speed Altmode: Uparmored Trike Dragster Planet Key Code: v2r2 Previous name use: None (Crumplezone alone has been an Armada Mini-Con and the original version of this character). Previous mold use: C-Crumplezone (sort of). With dark power coursing through his circuitry, his might in battle is nearly unmatched, but DARK CRUMPLEZONE is just as dumb as ever. Being dead gave him a mean streak a mile wide, and getting put back together by the otherworldly power of GALVATRON gave him the weaponry he needed. What he can't smash through, he knocks down, and what he can't knock down he pulverizes with his forward plasma ejector cannons. He's too dumb to be a real threat to the AUTOBOTS, but GALVATRON is content to just set him loose on the battlefield and see what he can blast before the AUTOBOTS shut him down. STR 9 INT 3.5 SPD 9 END 8 RNK 5 COUR 9 FRB 9 SKL 7.5 Avg 7.5 Not a lot of upgrade, really. And his END went down. Key Code Info: After being eaten alive by Scrapmetal, almost having your Spark extinguished and then being brought back online by the ghost of Megatron - that might do something to a bots internal processors! Crumplezone was reborn bigger and badder than ever - and nothing was going to stand in his way. Little does anyone know, but when Crumplezone was reborn so was his intellect! Yes! Instead of having the IQ of a 7 year old boy, he now has the IQ of a 15 year old boy!!! With all of this new brain power, Crumplezone has been able to concoct all sorts of new and devious ways of blowing up the Autobots. Learning is the best, kids! (Also has the color guide for the toy, both mold plastic and paint apps, in Pantone numbers.) Packaging Notes: One big twist-tie holds down a bubble that is also tabbed and taped. Two more ties hold Crumplezone down inside the bubble. His missiles are held to the tray with another two twist-ties, and a little baggie is taped to the bottom inside of the tray with a couple of winglets they decided shouldn't be left on the toy in packaging lest they break. Planet Key: Standard Speed Planet Key. Mold Changes: Geez, it's easier to say what ISN'T remolded. The torso core, upper arms/shoulders, pelvis and upper legs. The rear fins, main guns, and wheels. Oh, and part of the lower arms, but not all. Most of the new parts are angular, inspired by an F-117 (especially the cockpit). I'm also told that there was a badguy car in Knight Rider 2010 that Dark Crumplezone strongly resembles (http://www.fortunecity.com/tatooine/phlebas/339/id65.htm has one small pic). There's canards on front of the vehicle mode, extra snap-on winglets ahead of the flip out wings, and a pair of blasters flanking the cockpit (the blasters' tips are designed to breakaway along a somewhat floppy joint for safety reasons, but do not easily come apart). They added a dead Mini-Con hardpoint atop the central line of the vehicle. The top half of the head is remolded, but the bottom half is about the same. The jaw is still articulable. The sound chip is different as well, with different activation sounds. Also, when I put Crumplezone's chip in Dark Crumplezone, it doesn't stay in all the way, and becomes a trigger for rapidfire (this may be an intended feature, but due to quality variations the Key that came with DC was too tight). Because of the serious changes on the front end of the vehicle, the feet actually transform differently than on the original, using a slider hinge (slide forward, bend) rather than a simple hinge. The significantly larger feet also make it much more stable. It's worth noting that very few TFs have been remolded as extensively as this without simply abandoning the original mold and starting from scratch. K-9, the BWII Mutant Beasts, and some of the Mini-Con remolds are in this group. While some money was certainly saved on the engineering side (the transformation is fundamentally the same), this is not a cheap recolor or moderate tweak like the Armada remolds. Colors: Due to the massive remolding, I doubt everthing's even still on the same mold trays, but here's some of the basics. Most of the light green plastic and light gray plastic is now maroon (660000 is the closest web-safe color...okay, so I bought a web color wheel). The dark green parts are mostly a very dark blue (darker than any websafe, probably around 000020). The clear blue is replaced by a clear orange-red (FF6600). The new cockpit guns and the main flip-out wings are also now clear orange-red. The bottoms of the feet (front canards) are clear orange-red plastic, likely a case of making the new molds as compact as possible, rather than design-driven. For some odd reason, there's a few bits of very light blue plastic, on the hip and shoulder ratchets, the plasma ejector triggers, and I think some on the interior of the sound generator. New review feature: UV fluorescence report. Got myself a UV flashlight too. :) The maroon and dark blue plastic glow only a tiny bit, but the clear orange red lights up like it's made of Energon. The light blue is hard to tell, but not strong. The cockpit itself, however, is opaque dark blue with silver windows and gold lightning patterning (well, lightning meets tribal tattoos). There's no paint on the wheels, silver and orange detailing on the plasma ejectors. The jaw is painted silver, the face chartreuse, and the eyes lightpiped orange-red (the head itself is dark blue plastic). There's a Decepticon symbol tampo'ed on the middle of the chest (top of the cockpit). Overall: They took a decent toy and made it better. While they didn't fix the floppy forearm wings issue, everything else is as good or better. Even if you have the original, you may want to pick this one up too. AUTOBOT: CYBERTRON DEFENSE SCATTORSHOT Planet: Cybertron Autobot Altmode: Missile "Tank" [Later note to satisfy purists: Rocket, not missile.] Previous Mold Use: None. Previous Name Use: None, more or less. Key Code: v4kt SCATTORSHOT has proven himself a hero during the campaign on Earth, and his newfound confidence manifests itself in his redesigned robot and vehicle modes. He is perfectly adapted to the harsh conditions he will find on CYBERTRON. Its surface is cracked and tossed into jagged rubble by the horrible gravity of the black hole, and it is infested with dangerous TERRORCONS, mutant robots programmed only for destruction. SCATTORSHOT still worries about bad luck, but he now believes that enough firepower can overcome even all the bad luck in the Universe. STR 9 INT 7 SPD 6 END 6 RNK 7 COUR 9 FRB 9.5 SKL 8 Avg 7.69 ("Mutant Robot Programmed Only for Destruction" = MODOK's kid brother, MR. POD! And yes, they capitalized Universe. Upgrades to almost all stats, but despite his armor, his END is no higher.) Key Code Info: Scattorshot used to be, well, a wimp. He whined and complained and was scared of almost everything. He was a naysayer and liked to foretell his own doom. Not anymore!!! With his amazing upgrade, Scattorshot has an entirely new outlook on life! When the Cybertron Defense team was mowing down the Scrapmetal hordes on Cybertron, Red Alert was ambushed as he scanned the cities for other life forms. Thinking nothing about himself, Scattorshot leapt into the middle of the botpile, smashed every single Scrapmetal with his bare hands and pulled the shaking Red Alert from certain doom. (Also shows the toy color guide as with DCZ.) Packaging Notes: Three twist-ties hold the vehicle mode in place with the missile pod raised. A fourth tie holds the brushcutter together. Two thin ties hold the rifle to the card, and the two missiles are held on with looped rubber bands. Several small bits of the vehicle poke through holes in the backing card, which helps stabilize it. The rifle is not shown on the package, and the instructions don't show how to stow it in vehicle mode (you plug the rear bit onto the left side hardpoint), which makes me wonder if it was a last minute addition. Planet Key: Standard Autobot Cybertron Key. Vehicle Mode: A blue (close to 0066FF) tank-style tread base with a missile pod turret of light blue-gray (kinda like 99CCFF). The treads and brushcutter are a very dark indigo (darker than 000033). The base of the turret is mostly a sort of pale gold (CCCC66 more or less) with some bronze metalflake plastic (CC9933 is the closest) connective parts. Paint accents are mostly silver and gold, with a fair amount of dark indigo paint (this is matte, though, and doesn't match well with the dark indigo plastic). Some clear yellow parts made visible when the Key gimmick is used are slightly orangeish (FFCC00). This is not a web-safe color scheme. :) It's also not a very UV-reactive scheme, almost no parts visible in vehicle mode fluoresce. I'll go into a bit more detail on this in robot mode. The base part is 7" (18cm) long, 3" (8cm) wide, while the missile box is 4.25" (11cm) long and 3" (8cm) wide including the pseudo-handles for robot mode. Total length when the box is pointed forward is 7.5" (19cm). The turret turns all the way around in 24 ratchet clicks (15 degrees per click). It has three clicks of elevation, about 22.5 degrees per click. Unless it's pointed close to forward, it can only elevate two clicks. When you raise the turret, a big gap showing robot bits is revealed. There are 11 gold painted missile tips molded onto each half of the pod (a 4-across, 3-high grid missing the outer top missile in each group). A Cybertron Vanguard symbol (the Autobot symbol with a V-shape behind it) is printed on the upper left side of the pod. The toy rolls nicely on four little wheels built into the treads. Said wheels have the typical roughness to them that makes it feel more like rumbling along on treads instead of rolling smoothly. The brushcutters on the front can be raised to form more of a ram or perhaps a tool for helping mount over hills. There are two dead Mini-Con hardpoints on the sides way near the back. As mentioned earlier, it's an undocumented feature that the rifle can peg onto these. There are two Key slots on the back of the missile box, so close together that even if CDS came with two keys, they couldn't both be inserted at once. On mine, at least, it is possible to insert the key part-way so it will stay in place without activating the gimmick. In each case, most of the outer armor of the pod flips open on a spring, with a two piece bronze hinge that's there purely for looks, helping make the whole thing look beefier and actually feasible. The right pod has a clear yellow sight window that flips up automatically. It contains a dual missile launcher with two bronze missiles, and the launcher must be manually slid forward to expose the triggers (also bronze). When fully deployed, the flip-out part of the weapon is 5.25" (13.5cm) long loaded. The springs are fairly weak, and the launcher doesn't lock into position, so you have to hold it in place to load. The left pod has a cannon (non-firing) that flips forward automatically. The total length is about 6" (15cm). The main barrel is the same light blue as the pod, but the tip is pale gold. There's also a slider inside that is only relevant in robot mode, letting the entire pod slide forward several centimeters (the other pod lacks this slider, so when they're united as a turret it won't work). With both sides of the pod open, the width of the turret becomes 4.25" (11cm), and the flip-down parts cover the robot arm bits. With the Key removed, it's fairly easy to get the panels to close back up in vehicle mode. However, at least with mine (yay, quality control issues), they don't go back so easily in robot mode. I need to push down hard on the indigo- painted panels to get things to snap shut (I think it's partly a matter of leverage and positioning, it's hard to do it wrong in vehicle mode, but easier to do it wrong in robot mode). However, either way, once properly closed they do not spring open on their own. Transformation: The rear side panels of the treads unsnap, and thanks to a hinge/ball joint combo fold down and flip around to peg onto the outer shins. This way, the lower legs have treads on front and back. The brushcutter folds open into Optimal-Optimus-reminiscent feet. Next, the turret has to be pointed vehicle-forward, or you can't go any further...a big bronze cylinder is the core of the rear torso, with arms and head attached so they fold out along gaps in the front torso when aligned correctly. Then it's flip out the fists, and you're done with the minimal transformation. You can also mess about with the pods (half of the turret is now attached to each forearm), of course. Robot Mode: At 7" (18cm) tall, the standard Voyager size, it definitely looks like a grown-up Scattorshot without just being a scaled-up version. The head is reminiscent without being a copy, and has clear yellow visor and "goggles" rather than having those painted yellow. The head, shoulders and forearms are pale gold plastic. The upper arms, fists, upper legs and feet are indigo. The torso and boots are blue (but see below). Bronze plastic appears in most of the larger joints. The visor is painted indigo and the face is silver. The chest is largely silver-painted with some indigo and gold bits. There are gold accents on the shoulders, and silver on the kneecaps. UV testing is rather interesting, at least on my copy. The torso and the right half of the pelvis glow as brightly as the blue plastic on Scout class Scattorshot. The boots (most of the outer tank shell), rifle, and the left side of the pelvis do not light up. Why does half of the pelvis glow and the other half not, like some sort of weird Cybertronian STD? Theory 1: for structural reasons, the torso had to be made out of a different kind of plastic, and the right side of the pelvis was slipped in as part of the "make the molds as compact as possible" process. Theory 2: It was unintentional. Parts were made from both kinds of blue plastic, and mine just happened to be assembled with bits from two different batches. If anyone else out there has a blacklight and a CDS, I'd welcome further evidence. :) [Later note: one other person reports identical behavior, so theory 1 is looking more likely.] The head can turn about 45 degrees either way, and the waist can turn all the way around with 16 clicks of weak ratcheting (the joint is right above the hip connections, so not actually the waist per se). The shoulders are universal ratcheting joints (16 clicks around, the same three clicks out to the side as the turret elevation...because this IS the turret elevation joint). Smooth upper arm swivel, and four clicks to ratchet the elbow through a range of 90 degrees. The fists swing inward on a transformation joint. The right arm pod (cannon) can slide forward about 4cm. The hips are ratcheting universal joints with 22.5 degrees per click forward and back (range of 90 degrees forward of back) and 18 degrees per click outward (0 to 90 degree range). There is a seam below the hip joint that looks like it should be a swivel, but it is NOT A JOINT. Do not try to force it. The knees ratchet 18 degrees at a time, from 90 degrees the normal direction to 36 degrees the wrong way. There's a smooth swivel just below each knee. The toes can swing smoothly to curl around (maximum bend forward is flat-foot position), and the heel spurs lock in place but can be posed smoothly within a fair range prior to lock. This is good for stabilizing a foot-forward walking pose. When the Key gimmicks are deployed, a sort of false handle rests just above each fist hole, giving the illusion of the figure gripping the weapon. The sight window on the misile launcher does not really work in this mode, being nowhere near the robot's line of sight. The left arm must be straight when its pod is deployed, but the fact that the right pod slides forward lets its arm be bent. The separate rifle cannot be held in a hand when that hand's pod is deployed (well, it can peg loosely onto the underside of the right fist, on mine it won't stay on the underside of the left fist), but can peg onto the underside of either pod. Armament count: 22 non-launching missiles, 2 launching missiles, 2 blasters. (By contrast, CDRA has one launching missile, two kneecap blasters, and one multi-tool weapon...and CD Hot Shot reportedly has scores of non-launching missiles.) On final side note. You can kind of store the Key in the robot's back, but it doesn't really fit that snugly (insert the Key with its prong pointed backwards and up 45 degrees from horizontal, using the head storage slot). Overall: A good toy, definitely worth twenty bucks. And they spent it all on the actual mechanisms, rather than trying to fit a noisemaker chip into it. Dave Van Domelen, did see a Scattorshot for $20 at Wal-Mart the day after he got it for $22 at K-Mart, but no Dark Crumplezone.