Dave's Transformers Energon Rant: Demolishor Looks like they're doing a Wave 2.5 with just Demolishor shipping in a box with Prowl, Rodimus and Snowcat (one per case). Presumably it'll also be in a proper Wave 3 with some other new figures. Once that happens, I'll amend this review to include the rest of Wave 3. CAPSULES Demolishor: Fairly sturdy and decent looking vehicle mode, surprisingly complex transformation, pretty good robot mode and Hyper Power mode. A few issues with peg and hole sizes, though. Recommended. $9.87 at Wal-Mart. RANTS DECEPTICON: DEMOLISHOR Function: Heavy Weapons Unit Altmode: Dumptruck Quote: "Your cries of pain are music to my ears." DEMOLISHOR is a nasty DECEPTICON with an equally nasty weapons arsenal. To challenge him would be futile. He loves the thrill of the fight but he especially enjoys inflicting pain on his enemies. In vehicle mode, he is a burly dump truck that is stacked with powerful energon launchers capable of taking down any AUTOBOT that stands in his way. Though a bit uncontrollable at times, MEGATRON prides DEMOLISHOR as one of the DECEPTICONS greatest warriors. STR 9 INT 7 SPD 5 END 5 RNK 5 COUR 5 FRB 9 SKL 7 Avg 6.5 Yep, he has a variant on the later Soundwave mottos. Typos in the bio note are in the original. Specs seem a bit off...too smart, not enough Endurance or Courage. And you'd think Megatron's right hand Con would have a higher Rank, even if the title is more sham than real. Packaging: Standard Energon Deluxe bubble card. Mine came with the old comic/catalog, but I've heard of some that were packaged with the second comic (mine did come with the Xevoz sticker). The trading card is the non-Fleer variety. The co-sells on the back are Rodimus, Scorponok and Insecticon. There's large pictures of the regular robot and vehicle modes, and small pictures of the Hyper Power robot and vehicle modes with missile launcher deployed. Two twist-ties hold the vehicle into the packaging, and another two hold the four missiles (two at a time). Vehicle Mode: Ever see those "Monster Machines" shows on History Channel, with the dump trucks bigger than houses? That's what Demolishor is. A rough scale estimate puts it at about 14m (45-50 feet) tall and 24m (80 feet) long, based on the size of the driver's compartment. Of course, in the show it'll probably end up only as big as Ironhide. Anyway, it's about 3" (7cm) tall and 5" (12cm) long, with 3cm diameter free-rolling wheels. The main color is a kelly green, with dark gray bits aroun the front and on the wheels, silver grille and hupcaps, and some reddish brown parts that are mainly robot kibble. And there's a huge (over 2"/5cm tall) Decepticon symbol painted in the dump box (that's the part that holds stuff and can tip). Demolishor is the biggest Decepticon fan ever! ("And I'm proud to be a Decepticon, cuz at least I know I'm free! From stupid Autobot rules and regs, that stifle you and me.") The driver's compartment is made of clear green plastic, but it's not really obvious in this mode. The bumper is gray and silver in a worn pattern, with the spark crystal in the center of it. A small raised purple Decepticon symbol is just below the front of the driver's compartment. The vehicle mode looks pretty good from the front and top, so-so from the side (a bit gappy), and like a robot from the underside. It's pretty stable, and rolls well once everything's pegged together. The dump box locks down on a peg, and can be tipped up by 30 degrees, more than enough to dump out any contents (like energon stars, spare Easter candy, dice, etc). The dump box is a bit shallow inside because of the missile launcher built into it (more on that in a bit). The front lip of the dump box has two dead hardpoints on it. These are slightly small, and can't really hold 5mm pegholes securely, relying on the center peg of a Powerlinx connector. Hyper Power Vehicle: Flip back the lip of the dump box, tip the dump box back and reveal the missile launchers. The Patriot-like launcher box can rotate 360 degrees, but has gentle ratchets that prefer positions on the four cardinal points. The flipped back lip has two more hardpoints on it, plus two 5mm peg holes. The peg holes are too close together to connect two different Energon weapons, though (center-to-center distance of 12mm/half an inch). (Okay, there's exceptions, like the pieces of Ravage's gun.) The launcher face has eight clear green missile heads in two rows of four. The top row is fake, just the heads with no missiles, since the open part of the dump box is behind them. Despite being made of the same plastic, the real missiles look a lot darker because of the fact they go back into the darkened launcher. The launch buttons are at the point where the dump box interior bends, and they take a fair amount of force to trigger. On the plus side, this means no accidentl launches when you fill the dump box with candy. On the minus side, rapid-firing is harder. The main drawback of Hyper Power mode is that the robot kibble is much more clearly visible. But it's still stable, unlike Snow Cat. Transformation to Robot Mode: The forward direction is almost trivial, folding stuff out as legs and arms and rotating the center block of the torso with the head out. But pay good attention to where things are before first transforming it! There's a bunch of folding panels and sliding torso bits that need to be in the right positions for everything to hook together. It straddles the line between interesting puzzle and frustrating thing. One warning about transforming to robot mode: if you didn't put the head in straight when going to vehicle mode, it can be really hard to fish out. Robot Mode: 5" (13cm) tall, with a big backpack in the form of the dump box. (Dump box dump box dump box wheeee!) A bit more of a mix of colors, with more reddish brown, the clear green plastic of the shoulders and arms being more obvious, and some purple and metallic light blue parts. The chest is detailed to look like it opens up in a manner similar to E-Jetfire's, but it doesn't open. The head doesn't really look like A-Demolishor's, it looks more like a squashed version of Transmetal Terrorsaur crossed with B'Boom's third mode head. He has a squat, Rhinox-y overall feel with very broad shoulders. Poseability is very good. The head is actually on a multiply-jointed arm to let it go into Hyper Power position, effectively giving it complete freedom of movement. The shoulders are non-ratcheting swivel/hinge combos for full range of motion. There's upper arm swivels, although these can only be used when the arms are straight down or straight out to the sides, the shoulder pieces block movement otherwise. The elbows are simple hinges. The hands have 5mm peg holes, but they're too tight to hold any of the Energon weapons I tried. They do hold his missiles nicely, though, as seen in the picture below. The waist ratchets (and this is not needed for transformation, purely added for robot mode flexibility), the hips are ratcheting universal joints, there's swivels just above the very stiff hinge knees. The toes can point as part of transformation jointing, and the heel spurs are long enough to coutneract the backpack's weight. While the arms are kinda short and the figure is blocky, some good poses are possible, such as: http://www.protoformproject.com/dvd/images/enerdem.JPG (he can't actually load the missiles). Hyper Power Robot: To rotate the missile launcher up into firing position, the entire central half of the torso rotates forward, putting the head in the center of his chest in a hunchback sort of style. The block actually lifts up a little, then rotates, then snaps back down into place. This looks a little better than Snow Cat's Hyper Power robot mode launcher configuration. In fact, it kinda resembles a Construction Mech Mk II MOD from Battletech. Anyway, in this mode, the missiles actually fire slightly downward (a depression of 15-20 degrees from horizontal) when locked into place, although they can always be unpegged and raised to about 70 degrees up (the robot feet block this sort of elevation in dump truck mode). This looks a bit weird, though, as it's supported by a thin shaft sticking back from the shoulders. Chuu-chuu-chuu-chuu! Sorry, in one of those weird moods. His weapon platform appearance can be enhanced by putting Energon weapons on the lip of his dump box. He could be even more horribly beweaponed if he could hold weapons in his hands. Overall: A few engineering problems, but otherwise a good toy. Worth picking up if you can find it. Dave Van Domelen, amazed he finished this in one night, what with his horrible typo rate tonight....