Dave's Combiner Wars Rant - Legends Wave 3 Groove (Motorcycle) Warpath (Legends Megatron retool) Viper (Powerglide retool) Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Gen/LegendC3 A fair amount of weirdness in this wave. Groove got "demoted" from limb to accessory, and Viper ended up as total scalper bait thanks to the GIJoe crossover aspect. http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Gen/Legend2 - Megatron review http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Gen/LegendC1 - Powerglide review CAPSULES $10 price point. Target has bumped these up to $10.49. Groove: Well, it tried. But the robot and vehicle mode both have weird proportions, there's unexplained and possibly useless pegs, and the chestplate mode is really unstable. Very mildly recommended. Warpath: Original mold was strongly recommended, but it did come with a Mini-Con. A good reuse, though. Recommended if you already have Megatron, strongly recommended if you don't. Viper: Original mold was recommended. New head and color scheme are an obvious homage to the Rattler and its pilot Wild Weasel, no other changes. Recommended, but beware of scalping. RANT Packaging: Same as previous two waves. Groove has a sticker on the blister that proclaims him part of the Defensor team, and shows him in very tiny photo as a chestplate. AUTOBOT: PROTECTOBOT GROOVE Assortment: B1797 Component: Chestplate Altmode: Motorcycle Transformation Difficulty: 6 steps Previous Name Use: AoE (just "Groove" in G1, "Autobot Groove" in Uni) Previous Mold Use: None Weapon: None Function: Scout Motto: "War is a problem, never a solution." Freedom fighter would sacrifice his own spark if it would bring peace. Really awkward phrasing, that. A "This" at the start would have helped. Packaging: Five ties hold the robot mode rather awkwardly into the blister. The trading card uses the same art as the cardback. The instructions do show how to make chestplate mode. (There's rumors of an intended gun mode a la Powerglide, suggested by the 5mm peg on one side of the rear fender, but I'm not really seeing it.) Robot Mode: In general outline, it's the "front wheel on back, rear wheel split between legs" design also seen on Prime Arcee and her moldmates (including the previous Protectobot Groove who is a Legion class Arcee redeco). However, the legginess of this mode goes a bit too far. Warpath, for instance, has rather long legs proportionally speaking, but they're just about the right length to give the impression of "giant robot". Groove's legs give the impression of contempt for human proportions. Especially since he turns into a motorcycle and should be around human sized in robot mode (2.7m at my best scale guess, plot devicey mass-shifting aside). Unfortunately, there's no real way to fold the feet out of the way and still stand up with more reasonable proportions. Folding the feet up into vehicle position looks okay, but there's no heels, so the figure would need a stand or other external support. 3.5" (9cm) tall, with the legs being two-thirds of that height. The colors are predominantly black, white, and gunmetal, with some bits of red and gold. White plastic is used on the torso core, shins, feet, forearms, and I'm guessing the head as well. The wheels, shoulder roots (with handlebars) and windshield chest are matte black plastic. The shoulders, lower torso, hips, thighs, and shoulder struts are medium gray plastic. The forearms are dipped in gunmetal paint, while the head and feet (other than an exposed tab on the right foot) are dipped in gloss black. The face is gold with silver visor, and the windshield part of the chest is painted gold. The sides of the boots have red stripes and a red-on-white Autobot symbol in a black star on each side. A small red Autobot symbol is also printed on the right collar area. About the only color I'd have added would have been black on the kneecaps, which turn into the seat of the motorcycle. The head turns a little. The waist doesn't turn, but has a transformation hinge that allows bowing. Ball joint shoulders, elbows, and hips. The shoulder roots don't really lock in place very well, though, and can come undone when posing the arms. Thigh swivels, hinge knees and hinge ankles that are almost digitigrade. The hands can hold 5mm pegs, and the large feet mean that if you give Hot Spot's rifles to Groove he won't necessarily fall over. There's 5mm pegs on ths insides of the wrists for chestplate mode, and tabs on the forearms that are about 5mm by 1mm also used for chestplate mode (and foot rests in cycle mode). The left boot has a 5mm peg and the right boot has a 5mm hole, neither of which has a readily apparant purpose (they're partly blocked by the handlebars in chestplate mode, see later for some ideas). The kickstand on the right thigh is not useful for connecting anything. Transformation: Reasonably new variation on the theme, but it's rather hard to get the rear wheel halves together. Just about any orientation will get most of the way together, but only three specific positions will snap the rest of the way. A certain amount of massaging is needed to get all the parts aligned in the end, and they mostly hold by passive friction rather than pegs or tabs. Vehicle Mode: A sort of stretched police motorcycle with elements of a "crotch rocket" that clash with other elements suggesting a "chopper" style of ride. The footrests on the forearms are not in any position to support feet either way, and the handlebars clearly require a leaning-forward driving position, ignoring the seat entirely and requiring footrests that would be on the lower thighs. It's like Groove was told to assume an Earth vehicle mode but wanted to ensure no humans could possibly figure out how to ride him. Because of the frankestein nature of the vehicle mode, it's really hard to get a read on scale, I can't even assume the wheel sizes since those vary a lot by model, but it seems to be roughly to scale with the current line of tiny Marvel action figures, which are about 1:30 scale (based on assuming my tiny Star Lord is meant to be the same height as Chris Pratt), let's bump it to 1:28 since that's been used by some licensed-altmode Transformers. 3.5" (9cm) long, with the same colors as robot mode, no new applications visible here. It is not possible to take two Grooves and use the pegs and holes on the rear fenders to merge them into a single vehicle. The peg and hole are not at the same level. Since there's no included weapon, neither the peg nor the hole are relevant to this mode. You can put one of Hot Spot's cannons into the left side peg hole, and the kickstand will keep the toy from tipping over, but the only way to mount both would be to pull the hands out from under the seat. It does roll decently without falling over, since both the kickstand and the panniers on the back give it nowhere in particular to go. Combiner Mode: The pegs on the forearms fit into holes on either side of the central chestpiece on Defensor. Getting everything together in the right way is a bit difficult, though, and the parts don't really stay together well. The instructions and the packaging sticker disagree which way should go up, but I find it's slightly more stable with the front wheel up and windshield down. Despite all the pegs and tabs, though, it really doesn't hold its shape well. I was able to sort of fake a "Eagle Hunter" style crossbow pistol mode that uses the right read peg as a grip and has the arms form the limbs of the bow. http://www.dvandom.com/images/GrooveBow.JPG Alternately, incorporating Hot Spot's fireball cannons and scrunching the legs and waist down to bring the seat up under the chest gives a somewhat more stable and convinving weapon. http://www.dvandom.com/images/GrooveGun.JPG Worth noting that while this mold will be part of Victorion, the art so far of Victorion does not include a Groove-style chestplate. (Heh, Groove's sister would make Victorion a Breastforcer.) Overall: Eh, they tried, but every mode has significant problems, either with aesthetics or stability or both. AUTOBOT: WARPATH Assortment: B1798 Component: None Altmode: Tank Transformation Difficulty: 6 steps Previous Name Use: G1, Classic, Gen, Movie1 Previous Mold Use: Gen Weapon: Cannon Function: Tank commander Motto: "A good shot is worth more than a good intention." Tank commander who loves watching his targets to blammo. Describing him as a tank commander implies that he's in charge of other tanks. So I grabbed a trio of old Megatron tanks from Dollar General, dyed them various other colors, and sculpted faceplates for them to make up Warpath's squad. The blue and brown dyes ended up looking almost black, but orange gave me a nice red-brown. [Later note: here's images. The bright lights I used for photography make the colors pop better. http://www.dvandom.com/kitbash/warpathsquad1.JPG http://www.dvandom.com/kitbash/warpathsquad2.JPG http://www.dvandom.com/kitbash/warpathsquad3.JPG ] Packaging: Five ties secure the robot into the blister. As with Groove, the trading card uses the same art as the cardback. Color Swaps: The dark brown parts other than the head become medium silvery gray, all the other parts become dark red. There does seem to be a slight difference between the parts that were originally gray and the parts that were originally light tan, this may be a batch variation being made obvious through the fact they were different sprues. Paint Apps: The chestplate is dipped in dark red paint, a pretty good match for the plastic. That paint is also used on the forearm armor parts. Gunmetal paint is used on the kneecaps, treads, and what little face is visible. The eyes are bright blue, the hazard stripe details on the chest are painted over entirely as black parallelograms (hiding the striped nature), the abdomen is gold. A red-on-silver Autobot symbol is printed on the center of the chest. Mold Changes: The head is new, and molded in dark red. It seems to be on the same sprue as the legs, based on the subtle differences in shade. Other Notes: Just enough time has passed since this mold first came out that I initially thought Warpath was a new mold, something helped by the major color changes. This is also the last of the first four T30 Legends molds to get reused, although Starscream still hasn't gotten a significant retool (if Acid Storm or Thundercracker were retooled, it's very subtle). Overall: Well, it has no Chop Shop, but it's a good mold and an appropriate retool. DECEPTICON: VIPER Assortment: B1799 Component: Weapon Altmodes: Attack Drone, Weapon Transformation Difficulty: 10 steps Previous Name Use: None Previous Mold Use: Gen Weapon: None Function: Attack Drone Motto: (none, this is a drone) Quick-strike attack drone who can take a pounding and keep flying. Between the one-line bio note and the obvious Cobra Rattler appearance (including a Cobra/Decepticon logo), I suspect this is a Cobra-produced drone that is co-opted by Galvatronus. Packaging: 4 ties hold the robot into the blister. The sticker on the upper left of the blister proclaims him to be Galvatronus's weapon. As with the other two, the trading card art is the same as the cardfront art. On the cardback, a ghostly Dead End is shown holding the weapon mode. Color Swaps: Light gray becomes medium gray, red becomes darkish blue. Paint Apps: The faceplate and most of the chest are painted bright red, with gunmetal goggles. The center of the chest has the original Rattler's winged Cobra symbol printed in silver with a small purple Decepticon symbol inside it. Oddly, it's not the more recent Cobra/Decepticon symbol seen in the IDW comics. In vehicle mode, the left wing has the Rattler's winged Cobra logo with a small Decepticon symbol inside it, same design and colors as the chest. The right wing has Z06, also taken from the original Rattler. The cockpit windows are painted gunmetal. The not-intake details on the wing roots are painted silver, as are the jet thruster nozzles. Weapon mode adds bright red to the facing-the-wrong-way targeting screen, and copper to the tips of the missiles. Mold Changes: The head has been retooled into a pretty good likeness of Wild Weasel, the pilot of the Cobra Rattler, although the colors don't match his all-red helmet. The new head omits the rotary cannon, so Viper lacks the A-10's signature weapon. No other mold changes I could find. Other Notes: The legs hold together even more poorly than on my Powerglide, but this seems to be QC roulette. I have no problems with the arms staying attached to the wings in jet and weapon modes either here or on Powerglide, and I know that's a problem people have reported for the mold. Overall: Definitely one of the odder homages, especially since there's no mass-market GIJoe line this year (although that may explain why Viper is so hard to find...Joe fans snapping it up). Definitely worth picking up if you see it at retail, but not worth scalper prices unless you're really a fan of the Rattler and/or Wild Weasel. Dave Van Domelen, should go get started on Devastator now, really.