Dave's Transformers Cyberverse Rant: Elite Wave 2 Grimlock and Trash Crash (T.rex and garbage truck) Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Cyberverse/Elite2 Maybe wave 3? Cheetor was sort of a running change to wave 1, coming out so hot on the heels of wave 1 that a lot of places barely had time to notice wave 1 without Cheetor before Cheetor got added. I think the lag was one week locally. Anyway, this is the last Elite mold of the year, I don't know if the 2020 line will continue Elites. CAPSULE $25 price point. Grimlock and Trash Crash: Interesting transformation, but a lot of corners cut in both modes on Grimlock. Trash Crash looks decent in both modes but doesn't really do anything useful. Mildly recommended. RANT Packaging: Same as wave 1. Trash Crash is a lot more compact than the other Elite armors, so there's no awkwardness getting everything into the box. Well, there wouldn't be, but they decided Grimlock was too thick. AUTOBOT: GRIMLOCK Assortment: E4330 Altmode: T.rex Spark Armor: Trash Crash (Garbage Truck) Transformation Difficulty: 13 steps Previous Name Use: Yes Previous Mold Use: None Function: Legendary DINOBOT King Packaging: Grimlock is weirdly mistransformed with the backs of his boots folded down like stilts because his "don't fall over backwards" supports can't be folded out of the way otherwise, unlike other Elites. Not an auspicious start. Five ties on Grimlock, two on Trash Crash. Hoo boy, I can tell just from getting this out of the packaging that this is going to be a bad toy. Arms popping off, hollow all over, flimsy- feeling in general. Robot Mode: It's kind of a flattened version of Grimlock, as if his chest got into an argument with a Titan and lost. As with other Grimlock toys so far, he has the battlemask up rather than showing his face. There's a general lack of color compared to other Grimlock toys as well. The design is all about heel spurs, with long spurs off the back of the boots (as mentioned above), and big dino heel spurs hanging off the wrists. 5" (12.5cm) tall, in silvery gray, black, and yellow, with a little silver and red. The head, most of the torso, the thighs, and the fists are black plastic. The arms, boots, and chestplate are silvery gray plastic. The heel spurs and some struts visible from behind are also black plastic. Yellow paint is used on the wrist claws, the shins, and most of the chestplate (the vents are left unpainted gray). The faceplate is painted silver, the eyes are blue, and a red Autobot symbol is printed on the sternum. No paint on the abdomen or pelvis, none on the shoulders. Kinda bland without the extra red and yellow. The head turns, the waist does not. The shoulders are really easily popped ball joints, clearly a case of skimping on the budget, since the hips are pinned universal joints. Like, it's hard to move the arms at the shoulders without tearing the arm off entirely. Big minus in the design. Nice solid hinge elbows and knees. The knees tend to have a stopping point at about 45 degree bend, but can be pushed past that. The wrists have no intentional articulation, but tend to fold down on transformation joints even when you don't want them to. The fists can hold 5mm pegs. Transformation: Okay, this part is clever. The top of the dino neck and the top of the dino skull are part of the boots, while the robot back flips around on a horizontal axis to bring out the forelimbs and lower jaw. I mean, the result ain't that great, but after all the Grimlock toys in recent years, it's at least refreshing to see a different take on the transformation. The robot arms become the hind legs as usual, but there's not much you can do to avoid that bit. Beast Mode: Weirdly proportioned, even ignoring the whole "toes sticking up on the back" thing. On the plus side, they did put movable forelimbs on (although they pop off almost as easily as the robot arms). If the shins and toes were stripped off, it might almost work as a very skinny T-rex, but the boots on the back really throw it off. 6.75" (17cm) from snout to tail tip, about 3" or so (7-8cm) tall in a horizontal spine pose. Most of the belly side is black plastic, while the top and the hind legs are gray. The only new plastic parts visible in this mode are the lower jaw (gray), tail tip (gray), chest and forelimbs (black). The eyes are painted blue, no other new paint. The forelimbs are on restricted ball joints, the hind limbs have all the robot arm articulation, the lower jaw is hinged. Spark Armor Partner: As an orange garbage truck with a green sorta- Dumpster held on top, it's probably meant to be a callback to TFA Wreck-Gar. While there's full armature molded for putting down the dumpster, only one hinge is real and only useful in armor mode. Ladders are molded all over the place, including up the front of the cab. 4.25" (11cm) long and mostly orange and green with some black. The six wheels (all real) are black plastic, the armor mode claws on top are silvery gray plastic, everything else is a very saturated orange plastic. The dumpster is painted kelly green, and the upper part of the armature is painted dark gunmetal...the lower part is unpainted, though. The windows on the cab are painted black, while the grille and some brushcutters are painted silver. Molded hazard stripes above the rear opening are painted green. Reasonably stable given its need to split in half, and it rolls pretty well. The rear door is hinged and opens up, so you can put small amounts of garbage inside if you want, I guess. There's 5mm sockets on the sides near the rear. Armored Mode: Not as bad as others had led me to believe, but that's not saying a whole lot. It almost has to be done following the instructions, my attempts at attaching the armor in other ways came out very disappointing. Attach the untransformed garbage truck to the robot's back, then grab the piece with the rear door and pull up and forwards, while holding the other piece onto the back (or it'll pop off). Lift it up and forwards enough, and the whole thing locks in place reasonably well, although the chest does not peg onto the robot chest, unlike other armors. Pushing in on the chest does make the whole thing snap into place internally, at least. The claws (dumpster halves) need to be folded down as a separate step. Unlike some other Elite armors, the arms don't move at all. Just the wrists swing up and down, with claws automatically popping out due to a counterweight inside the housing. The outer helmet does turn, at least. There's no action gimmick other than transformation, for good or ill. Any attempt to move the arms tends to start the reverse transformation. 6.5" (16.5cm) tall with the armor, and the silvery gray plastics match even if the orange plastic deliberately does not. The front of the cab is split to reveal a black chest cannon or something, and the helmet is black with blue visor and forehead tablet. It's definitely a Grimlock head, at least. The 5mm sockets from the rear fenders of the garbage truck end up on the outerward faces of the shoulders. To remove on purpose, fold the claw bits back up on top of the forearms, and then just pull back on the transformation lever until once again there's a garbage truck stuck to Grimlock's back. (Note, if you put the truck on his back upside down, it becomes a really big backpack for him to haul his, well, garbage around.) Overall: More clever than good, sadly. I mean, clever is a virtue in a transforming toy, so I'm not panning this entirely, but the fiddlyness of the armor and the Arm-Fall-Off Boy powerset argue strongly against this toy. Dave Van Domelen, finishing off Power of the Spark just before the next story arc starts.