Dave's Transformers Generations Rant: Deluxe Wave 2 War for Cybertron Megatron (Cybertronian tank) Darkmount (Halftrack artillery) Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Gen/Deluxe2 [Note: Several things have been brought to my attention, corrections and expansions added in brackets.] This isn't so much a well-defined wave, as far as I can tell, as the two new figures that will end up mixed in with other figures in a variety of ways. The initial debut was a running change to wave 1 in which one Megatron and one Darkmount were subbed in so that there were six different figures in a case, doubles of two old ones and singles of the rest. They might linger into the "wave three" revision that brings in Soundwave, etc. And now I'm getting reports of Dirges mixed in with wave 1 stuff, so Generations toys may be shipping in more of a "whatever we have ready goes in a box" fashion with lots of "wave 2.1a" sort of internal company labeling that's not too meaningful on the shelf. In short, don't bother pointing out that my "wave" labeling for Generations reviews doesn't match whatever "real" labeling you might have gotten off a box or from some online retailer. I know it's messed up, but I'm not playing their game. :) CAPSULES War for Cybertron Megatron: Despite being rather arbitrary, the vehicle mode looks pretty good, and has passable stability. Transformation requires a bit of excessive force but the required joints lead to a very well- articulated robot (that also happens to look pretty good). Recommended. $12.99 at HasbroToyShop.com. Darkmount: AKA Straxus from the Marvel comics. Very good in both modes, with an interesting transformation. The robot is a bit backpacky, though, and there's a sliding piece on the cannon barrel that is going away as soon as I get around to taking this to my craft area. Strongly recommended. $12.99 at HasbroToyShop.com. RANTS Packaging: Same as wave 1. They do have a catalog. And a reminder to those late to the game, Function and Motto are my own creation (or taken from other sources), as they're not present on the actual packages. The Altmode I list in the opening bit is whatever's printed on the package. DECEPTICON: CYBERTRONIAN MEGATRON Altmode: Cybertronian tank Transformation Difficulty: Intermediate (3) Previous Name Use: None (TFA's Cybertronian-mode Megatron was not trademarked as "Cybertronian Megatron") Previous Mold Use: None Gimmicks: Launching missile, tank treads convert to hover engines Function: Decepticon Commander Motto: "To live is to change. To stagnate is to die." MEGATRON rebuilds himself continuously. When the war first began on CYBERTRON, he constantly applied new modifications to catch the AUTOBOTS unaware and under prepared. His spies are always on the lookout for new tech that will optimize his body into the perfect war machine. He is the bleeding edge of technology on CYBERTRON, and his enemies will pay the price for not keeping up. STR 10 INT 10 SPD 10 END 10 RNK 10 COUR 9 FRB 10 SKL 9 Avg 9.75 And there we have it, a perfect rationale for how this might not be exactly the same as the version in the game, or in the comics, etc. He changes body elements more often than Janet Van Dyne changes costumes. Packaging: Six rattan strings bind the robot mode into the package, and his missile is held in by just the blister. They're continuing the trend of having War for Cybertron toys packaged in robot mode, while neo-G1 toys are in vehicle mode. The cannon will probably not be attached to the arm on yours, it's easily rattled off, which is why it gets a separate string to hold it in place. The backpack piece is folded down as a buttcape in package, to keep the torso from being too deep for the blister dimensions. Robot Mode: Even before you attach the cannon (which can go on either arm, but should be on the right arm, due to similarity of patterns described below) there's a slight asymmetry to the design, with the left shoulder having a large pad on the top and the right having a small blaster barrel pointing up. The right shoulder also has a lot of red on it along with a vent pattern similar to the one found on the cannon, while the left has a black vertical stripe but no red. The overall look feels kinda Super- Megatron-y without actually having any of the specific design elements of the Battle Stars character. Probably the closest antecedent would be the Cybertronian Megatron from Transformers Animated, in terms of having legs that taper up to the hips and a color scheme that's light and dark gray with a significant amount of faintly metallic ruby red. Interestingly, his hands are molded in a sort of beckoning pose, for oration rather than fighting. In the fiction, after all, his voice is a more powerful strategic weapon than his cannon. The Decepticon neon color in the game is purple, of course. But unlike on the Autobot toys, it's rather subdued here. In fact, Megatron's red highlights are more noticeable than his purple ones, an effect exacerbated by the fact that much of his purple is clear plastic that looks dark unless you shine a light directly at or through it. 5.5" (14cm) tall at the head, 6.5" (17cm) at the top of the left shoulderpad, with an arm cannon 5.25" (13cm) long. A very light gray dominates the core, with dark charcoal gray on the forearms and shins plus some on the waist for balance. Red is the accent color, mainly seen on the chest, forearms and cannon. Light ghost gray plastic is used on the head, chest, pelvis front, upper arms, panels on the outer sides of the forearms, the thighs and feet. The eye lightpiping, missile and plates on the chest and kneecaps are made of light purple clear plastic. Like Sidearm Sideswipe, though, they painted over the eyes, oops. Pretty much everything else is one or another type of charcoal gray plastic. [Later note: I failed to notice in my initial inspection, but it was pointed out to me that there's also clear purple in a cylinder inside the cannon barrel, visible through some slots around the circumference of the barrel. When you push the missile in, light violet painted ovals slide into view, with the intent of making the cannon look like it's charging up to fire. And with a more vibrant purple, it might even have been noticeable.] The most obvious paint is a dark lightly sparkly ruby red, used on much of the upper chest, the upper right arm, eyes, parts of the cannon and the forearm outer panels. There's some pretty good light gray paint match on the upper chest, knee spikes and MAYBE the pelvis front (I don't feel like taking it apart to see if it's really light gray plastic or painted-over charcoal). The tops of the knee spikes are unpainted, probably because it'd require a separate application for just a square millimeter, but it ends up looking like wear damage. There's gloss black paint on the center of the torso front, on the left shoulder stripe and spikes, on the right shoulder blaster and on the vent details of the right shoulder and the main cannon. There's a little V shaped detail on the forehead that is probably black, but it could be gunmetal...it's hard to tell for sure. Light violet paint is used on some pelvis stripes, power status bars on the main cannon's trigger, and it's used for the Decepticon symbol in the middle of the black section of the chest. There's a gunmetal-painted raised circle on the main trigger, and medium gray paint on the face. The helmet line dips down to cover the entire forehead, so there's no place to put G1 Megatron's iconic downward-pointing arrow brow detail. The neck is a swivel atop a folding strut, so he can turn his head or look down a bit. No waist articulation. The shoulders are universal joints. The elbows are complicated...there's a hinge for normal elbow range of motion, but if you bend the arm by at least 90 degrees you get an extra hinge that partially makes up for the lack of an upper arm swivel. There's a swivel below this arrangement, and on mine the joints were so loose that it impeded the figure's ability to hold up the cannon. A little superglue worked into the joints solved that, though. There's no wrist articulation... in fact, the hands are made up of two halves that come out of the two sides of the forearm, so articulation would be rather difficult to engineer. Universal joint hips, thigh swivels and hinge knees in the legs, and the ankles have hinges in both direction (although the side to side hinges are pretty restricted). Due to how the toy transforms, arms and legs can both be bent double, although you lose the thigh swivel once the knee is bent more than about 90 degrees (an interesting contrast to the arms, which only gain a swivel at more than 90 degrees of elbow bend). All in all, despite the lack of a waist joint, you can get some really good dynamic poses out of this figure. The main gun can clip onto either forearm, and if you fold down the backpack into buttcape position you can store the gun on its vehicle mode mounting pegs. Unfortunately, there's no separate place to store the missile, and the trigger is right over the main arm-peg connecting point so it's hard to get it locked while loaded. I nearly lost the missile twice already. Friction holds it in place reasonably well when not fully loaded, but that's for a pretty loose standard of "reasonably well". For extra weird fun, you can give General Grievous-style arms to this toy, splitting the forearms apart and maybe even wedging a light sabre into the halves that still have thumbs. The missile can be gripped by a half-hand at its thinnest point, but the full hand's lower two fingers prevent this. http://www.dvandom.com/images/megagrievous.JPG (Lightsabers taken from the Grievous Starfighter SWTF...looks like the paint on the handles tends to stick to the insides of the sheaths. And yes, I know the line is from Galvatron, shut up.) Transformation: The chest plate folds down to cover the abdomen and pelvis (mainly to get it out of the way of the upper arms, though, as the front of the robot chest is on the underside of the vehicle and cosmetic changes aren't all that important), the head tucks down, the backpack folds down into buttcape mode. The arms move up and inward, requiring a serious amount of force to get the shoulders to wrap around the indentations in the upper torso that are revealed when you pull down the chest and back plates. The left shoulder top part swivels around to connect the two shoulders together in what is the front of the vehicle mode. The legs just bend 180 degrees at the knees, with the feet flattening out and pegging (mostly) into place as armor on top of the vehicle. It can be a bit tricky getting all the parts past each other, though, and at least on mine I can't get the feet to peg all the way in. The forearms fold open into treads or hoverskirts, with the hand halves not-really-hiding inside them. You have two choices for this mode depending on how you transform the forearms, a treaded tank and a hovertank. The treads don't really lock in place, though, and not only can you see the robot hand pieces inside them pretty clearly, the wheels built into them don't roll very well. It's just too wobbly. Folding the treads to the underside turns them into hoverskirt nacelles. While this doesn't roll at all, it's a lot more stable, and fits the more "generic sci fi" feel of the mode. Vehicle Mode: This is your basic "chunk with a gun and some treads is a tank" design, most closely inspired by the Cybertronian vehicle mode of TF:A Megatron, with several design elements pretty directly lifted from that. There's some "horns" at the front that are clearly meant to evoke Armada Megatron, though. This is NOT a complete vehicle mode without the cannon, there's just too much of a gap down the middle. The cannon is what makes it look like a specific vehicle rather than a random mechanical chunk. And it's a spinal mount cannon rather than a turret, making Megatron more of a mobile artillery piece than any sort of tank (in game, he's classified as a truck, but that's because vehicle class is tied to character class, and all leaders are "trucks"). There's a vague suggestion of a gunnery seat at the back, and it's possible to use the flaps that brace up against the sides of the cannon as stirrups for a Clone Wars Battle Droid (or similarly limber figure): http://www.dvandom.com/images/megadroid.JPG Counting all the horns and spikes and stuff, the chassis is 5.25" (13cm) long and 3.5" (9cm) wide in a roughly hexagonal shape (well, an elongated hexagon). Including the main gun, the total toy length is 6.25" (16cm). Much of the upper armor in the front half is made up of the undersides of the robot feet, but that's as close as this mode comes to revealing new detail. The symmetry is a bit less broken in this mode, as much of the asymmetry is on the underside, but you do get the secondary gun on the right side (the left shoulder's details rotate around to fill in the center of the front armor). There's newly visible ruby red paint swaths along the top armor, combining nicely with the red on the cannon itself. Almost all of the violet is hidden in this mode, though, with just the bit on the cannon trigger, the missile itself and the kneepad bits visible. One place that would have been a nice location for some more violet would be the insides of the knee joints that end up becoming thruster vents in this mode. In treaded mode, the wheels roll poorly and the tread assemblies wobble all over the place. The hoverfans don't roll, but at least they're a tiny bit more stable. The gun is in a fixed spinal mount, there's really no meaningful articulation in this mode. Well, you can fiddle with the hoverfan pieces to prop the vehicle up for higher angle shots. They're most stable if you combine them back into forearms (but leave the hands stowed) and use the robot elbow joints: http://www.dvandom.com/images/megaartillery.JPG Overall: Okay, it has a "doesn't really look like anything" late-G1 sort of altmode mode, but it works pretty well for all that. The transformation scheme leads to good articulation, but has issues in actual execution. All in all, though, it's a good toy. DECEPTICON: DARKMOUNT Altmode: Halftrack Transformation Difficulty: Intermediate (3) Previous Name Use: None Previous Mold Use: None Gimmick: Cannon converts to battle-axe Function: Tyrant Motto: "Mercy is not dispensed here, fools...only death!" Few robots achieve the same legendary status as MEGATRON, but DARKMOUNT is one. He is just as famous on CYBERTRON as the impenetrable fortress that bears his name. From there, he ruled his small corner of the machine world with an iron fist, controlling his subjects with an equal measure of fear and pain. So terrible was his rule that even MEGATRON gave him a wide berth, and treated him with the respect due to an equal. STR 10 INT 6 SPD 10 END 10 RNK 10 COUR 10 FRB 10 SKL 7 Avg 9.125 You can tell he's supposed to be a leader because he has nonsensically high speed just so he can have more 10's. In the comics, Straxus turned into a flying cannon of the same general style as Galvatron. He only appeared for two issues before being shoved off a Space Bridge by Blaster (who couldn't beat him any other way), but in the UK comics his severed head was recovered and did a lot of behind the scenes scheming. You'd think a name like Straxus wouldn't be lost as a trademark, but the scuttlebutt is that someone trademarked "Straxxus" and apparently that was close enough to keep them from wanting to use the name here (and since most of the Google hits for "Straxxus" seem to be people talking about Straxus and misspelling his name, I can see where the trademark lawyers would have a case for brand dilution). But Straxus did rule Darkmount in the comics, so it's an acceptable rename. [Later note: "Straxus" was used as a name in a Doctor Who radio drama, which is apparently the source of Hasbro Legal's skittishness.] Also worth noting is that "_____ is not dispensed here, fools...only _____" was a mini-meme for a while, riffing on Straxus's famous line from the Marvel comics. Packaging: Three rattan strings hold the vehicle mode into the blister. Whoever tied mine needs to learn how to tie knots. The weaponry is modular, with loads of 3mm rods scattered about the surface of the toy, so the way they're set up in-package is merely a suggestion. And not a very good one. :) The mirror-flipped photo shows a much better arrangement, although it also has the gray piece that slides up and down the main gun barrel on backwards when compared to the toy in- package. This is not something you can change without having to re-glue pieces, but looking at the picture I think they got it wrong in the pic and not in the actual product. Well, to the extent that the piece can be right at all. Vehicle Mode: While not exactly a real vehicle mode, it does clearly look like it's supposed to be a Terran one rather than a Cybertronian altmode (which is odd, given that his bio note is purely Cybertronian). At first glance it looks like a simple piece of mobile artillery, but when you look at the driver's compartment it becomes clear that this is more like a mobile Paris Gun. The tires are therefore about as tall as an adult human, the sort of thing I see stacked up at the Goodyear plant in north Topeka. I hear it's based on the G6 Howitzer (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G6_howitzer) but massively upscaled and turned into a halftrack. My rough estimate of the scale puts it at about 15mm (1:133) "tactical wargaming" scale, making the inner diameter of the cannon about 16" (40cm) at scale. This is a battleship gun on a halftrack. The chassis is 4.5" (11cm) long and 2.25" (5.5cm) wide. The turret hangs out over the sides a little (a lot if you mount the clip-on weapons on the sides), and when the cannon is pointed straight forward the total toy length is 5.75" (14.5cm). It's mostly medium blue with bits in medium gray and some accents in red and dark gold. Most of the plastic is medium blue. The clip-on weapons, the tip of the cannon barrel, a chunk around the base of the barrel and some panels on the inside of the chassis top (mostly covered by the turret) are medium gray plastic. There's also some bits on the top front of the turret that are medium gray, but very well painted blue to match the rest. The clips that hold the weapons on are red plastic, as are some joints at the back of the turret. The front wheels and the little wheels inside the treads are black plastic, and the handles folded down at the back of the turret (used for Battle Station mode) are light gray. Oh, and one nice touch is that behind the main layer of drive wheels molded into the tread piece is another layer of drive wheels in blue plastic that ends up attached to the robot forearms. The halftrack treads are painted gunmetal, as is the root of the cannon barrel. A pale gold paint is used on the missile tips of the missile launcher clip-on and on the headlights. The windows of the driver's compartment are silver, the center of the front armor is dark antique gold. It's not immediately obvious under room lighting, but the wheel hubs on the front wheels are painted medium blue, a good match for the plastic. "M17" is printed in white on the front right fender and on the left side front of the turret...the M17 was a WWII anti-aircraft halftrack, but Darkmount is definitely not one of those (for pictures of the WWII vehicle, see http://tinyurl.com/m17halftrack). As was pointed out to me in discussion on the AllSpark, though, this is purely coincidental, as the M17 is meant to be a reference to Marvel Transformers #17, where Straxus first appeared. Rather than a launching missile, the gimmick here is a small arsenal of wepaons with the new-standard 3mm clips. One is a sort of anti-personnel or point defense gun, another is a missile rack with six shots, and the third is modeled after a smoke dispenser but given Darkmount's personality there is no smoke dispensed here, fools...only death. Or maybe napalm. There are six 3mm rod locations on the turret to clip the weapons, plus two more on the sides just ahead of the treads (although those two are more for robot mode). Being clip-on does make them more awkward than simply making them permanently attached, so it's hard to get them to look integral. The configuration I find most aesthetically pleasing puts the AP gun on the small rod at the top right of the turret, the death dispenser on the rearward of the two rods on the left side of the turret, and the rocket pod on the rearward of the right side rods. [Later note: you can use the battle station handles as additional attachment points, but they're a little wider than 3mm and you'll stress the clips.] The turret rotates all the way around, the main gun can elevate to 45 degrees up. If you slide the gray collar piece up a bit, you can depress the gun significantly on the sides and back or slightly to the front. Stability is pretty good (although the front "fenders" don't lock in place, they just hold via joint friction) and it rolls okay on its two real wheels and the two tiny ones hidden under the treads. Battle Station Mode: This is at least a little more convincing than the recent Galvatron tank's officially abandoned third mode. Mostly it involves transforming the chassis into support legs, sort of, but then you flip out handles at the back of the turret so some other robot can operate Darkmount. The mode isn't shown anywhere on the packaging, though, and there's no "Triple Changer!" call-outs, so I guess they didn't think much of it. Nor, really, do I. I mean, the handles are a nice plus, but the way the robot arms just sort of splay out lacks stability or any sense of being a distinct mode. With some fiddling around, I found a configuration that I think is better than the one in the instructions, but it still can't shake the fan-mode look. [Later note: I have been given some guidance based on the Japanese instructions for Straxus (he gets to be called that in Japan, it seems), and the U.S. instructions are unsurprisingly very wrong. The Japanese version is a bit of an improvement, but still looks ad-hoc. To make it, rotate the arms so that the tread blocks are facing each other, and bend the elbows so that the forearms rest flat on the table. The fists rest inside the rear chassis pieces, and the shoulderpad/fender pieces have tabs that fit into slots on the front of the treads. So it's a little more stable, but not as good as I'd like. And, frankly, the ad-hoc artillery platform I made by fiddling with the treads on Megatron looks better. Here's some pics:] http://www.dvandom.com/images/darkmountstation1.JPG http://www.dvandom.com/images/darkmountstation2.JPG Transformation: Wow. The turret becomes the LEGS. I don't think I've ever seen that trick before. Arms, sure. But never legs. The vent/grille on top of the turret folds up to become the codpiece. The arms are inside the treads, and the vehicle front end spreads apart to reveal the robot chest (with the driver's compartment and its complement becoming shoulderpads). The treads and rear armor just become a big backpack, though, and you need to be careful swinging the pieces around or they can pop off. The front wheels hide nicely inside the chest. The axe is literally pulled out of his butt. Going back to vehicle mode requires a bit of care in positioning the hands, and folding the back-of-leg panels back under on the turret must be done at the correct step in the transformation, but it's otherwise not a big deal. The instructions show storing the axe on the back in robot mode by fitting it over a tab in the back. This cannot actually be done, especially not the way the instructions show. There *is* a slot in the axe head piece that can fit onto that tab, but the haft cannot be attached firmly when the head is tabbed in place, and it can only be attached with the barrel pointing up (not down, as in the instructions). The connection is at best tenuous, and certainly nothing like what the instructions indicate. The only solid robot mode storage for the axe is in the robot's hands. [Later note: the sliding chunk can be forced past a clicking point and lock into place at one end or another, giving a little but more open haft/barrel. Slight improvement, anyway.] Robot Mode: Very nicely designed. Other than the ankles having a rather thin spot, the overall look is broad and powerful without being clumsy. Sure, it doesn't look a whole lot like the comic's Straxus except in the head and some of the patterns, but that was his Cybertronian mode anyway. Reformatting altmode usually changes robot mode too. His almost mace-like weapon (which tfwiki.net calls a "metal palm tree") got changed to a more slender-topped pickaxe, in no small part because it's easier to fit inside the turret. :) 5.25" (13.5cm) tall at the head, the backpack raises that to 6" (15cm), and you can get even more height by clipping weapons onto the top of the backpack. More medium gray and a lot more red gets mixed in with the blue. The battle station handles are now atop the kneecaps like riding boot tops and the radiator grille ends up on the crotch. Blue plastic: upper head, shoulderpads, right and left chest sides, spinal core, fingers, most of the backpack, most of the boots, forearm tread wheel details, axe haft, center of the axe head. Medium gray plastic: central torso front (mostly painted), pelvic grille, heels, roots of the shoulderpads, weapon parts as in vehicle mode. Lighter gray plastic: lower face/neck/collar piece, struts behind the head, forearms, palm/thumb pieces, thighs, shoulder roots. Red plastic: shoulder joints, upper arms, ball part of the socket joints holding the backpack, ball part of the hip joints, knee joints, 3mm clips. The pick axe points are rubbery light gray plastic. The centerline of the chest is painted dark gold, as are the eyes. There's distinctive red diamond/triangles molded and painted on the pecs, red triangles on the toes and a red triangle on the forehead. A black Decepticon symbol (G1-style triangle eyes) is printed on the abdomen. Much of the head of the axe is painted gunmetal. The head has a restricted ball joint between the blue top part and the gray jaw area, letting it wobble a bit to open and close the mouth, and since the jaw area is a cylinder you can turn the head without it looking like he's dislocated something. The waist turns smoothly. The shoulders are ball joints on the end of hinged (forward/back) struts. There's a swivel just below each shoulder. The elbows are double hinges...set at right angles to each other. This lets you bend the arm either palm up or thumb up, a rather clever way to avoid having a swivel below the elbow. I'd guess this is for structural stability reasons, since the arms form the core of the treads. The wrists are ball joints, necessary so that you can have the axe haft gripped in both hands. The finger-chunk opens up on a hinge. Ball joint hips, swivel just above the knee, hinge knees. The ankles are restricted ball joints that remind me of Xevoz ankles. The downside of having the turret become legs is that that puts most of the 3mm rods on the legs as well, with just the two from the tread segments that end up at the top of the backpack. So, two of the weapons can mount on the backpack, the third has to go on a leg. There are no arm mounts for the clip-on weapons. The axe snaps into place in either hand, the finger chunk closing over it is mainly for show rather than stability. The collar piece placed on the haft makes it harder to get both hands on the axe at once, though...it serves no useful or aesthetic purpose that I can divine (well, it could be intended to serve an aesthetic purpose, it just looks ugly and therefore fails at such a purpose). Overall: Good in both modes, interesting transformation, only a few stability issues here and there. Axe storage in robot mode needs work, and the sliding piece on the axe haft is just a negative in both modes but it's not easily removed (I'll have to break and re-glue or unless I want to simply cut the sliding piece apart). Pick it up if you can find it. Dave Van Domelen, sees that Terradive and Tomahawk are next in the poll, although the wave 2 PCC Commanders are close behind.