Dave's Transformers Siege Rant: Voyager Apeface Apeface (Robot/Ape/Starship) Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Gen/VApeface Last of the Voyagers in Siege. CAPSULE $30 price point, I got it from Amazon during a Black Friday sale for $23. Apeface: Ambitious, but I find it involves too much hassle for what you get as a result. Mildly recommended. RANT Packaging: Same as previous Siege Voyagers, with Smashdown as the cosell. Comes with the extra info sheet in many languages, and has the weapon names in Cybertronian script. DECEPTICON: APEFACE Assortment: WFC-S50 Altmodes: Robot Ape, Starfighter Transformation Difficulty: 21 steps to ape, 20 to starship Previous Name Use: G1, Gen:TR Previous Mold Use: None Weapons: SA Sonic Boomer Blaster, EM Electro Shield Function: Saboteur Division: Ground Unit: Espionage Rank: Raider SA Sonic Boomer Blaster: DAM 20, PRE 15, RNG 18 EM Electro Shield: DEF 19 (No attempt at a combined weapon, or even any way for the rifle to really connect to anything else. Not really COMBAT-system. However, they're both pretty close to the G1 versions, although the gun's the wrong color.) Packaging: Annoyingly, either they didn't use a rubber band to hold down the head, or it broke in shipping, because I got the toy with the head rattling around inside. Five ties on the robot, one on the EM shield and none on the gun. The instructions show Smashdown, Caliburst, Singe, and Rung as possible Battle Master partners, plus the final wave Micromasters (Rumble and Ratbat, Direct-Hit and Power Punch). Titan Master: This has no name, but it's meant to refer to Spasma from G1. Something tells me that this is a trademark Hasbro's not too eager to reclaim. In bot mode, it's kinda sorta like the G1 version, although different color runs mean not all the parts are the same colors. The torso front is a milky white plastic. Unfortunately, the white plastic is that not-quite-translucent sort that reminds me of bad skim milk, and it's always looked cheap to me. The arms are black plastic, and have extra vanes or whatever on the front to help cover up gaps in head mode. The rest is Decepticon Purple plastoc. The face is painted red with a silver visor. It transforms normally, but in addition to a face on the backpack, there's a second face on the back of the boots. This second face is the regular robot mode face, with a silver faceplate and red visor...it's not as dynamic as the Titans Return Apeface faceplate, but it does the job. The backpack gives the inner face of the ape mode, with red paint on the visor and black on the forehead. The faceplate is semi-generic venting patterns, because it's covered up by a mask in ape mode. Robot Mode: Note, it's not quite in robot mode out of package, a bunch of tabs and stuff in the back need the wing roots pulled out a bit to let everything connect. Once it's all together, the result is pretty stable, but the hard part is getting it all together. As often happens in Siege, they're mostly going for the animation color scheme rather than the G1 toy, although they tended to make a lot of the starship parts vanish in robot mode, so they have to go with the toy for those bits. 6.25" (16cm) tall at the head, 7.5" (19cm) to the top of the starship nose sticking up in back, in a mix of milky white, black, purple, and deep magenta. The torso, pelvis, forearms, fists, and boot cores are made of milky white plastic, as are a few joint bits (shoulder interior, ape shins over the shoulders, soles of the feet, joint bits on back). Purple plastic is used on the outer shoulders, upper arms, thighs, toes, and the ape hind feet atop the sort of collar section. Black plastic is used for the torso side bits, the rifle, and the rest of the boots' mass. The wings and starship nose on the backpack are dark magenta plastic. The shield is actually transparent blue plastic (also seen more in starship mode), but painted almost entirely in dark magenta. The center of the chest is painted purple (decent match) with a sivler central bit and a purple Decepticon symbol printed on that. Some vents on the torso side bits are painted gunmetal, and some details on the sides of the boots are silver with red and gold accents. There's dark silver splatter paint on the shoulder fronts, shins, and the nose end of the starship sticking up in back. The robot mode faceplate (bootbacks) is forwards in this mode, but you can rotate it to show the partial ape face if you want. The neck has the usual Titan Master articulation, there is no waist joint. Universal joint shoulders, upper arm swivels, hinge elbows, and the wrists bend inwards on transformation hinges. Universal joint hips, upper thigh swivels, hinge knees, and the usual-for-Siege ankle hinges to let the feet stay flat. The toes fold up for transformation. 5mm sockets: outer face of each shoulder, of each elbow (the shield has to go there to reproduce the picture in the instructions or the back of the box), each forearm. Fists, soles of the feet, bottoms of the toes, back of each boot. There's two in the underside of the nose and one on the back of each wing. 3mm studs: front of each shoulder, upper outer corner of each shin, rear side corner of the bottom of each boot, lower left corner of chest plate, tip of rifle. 3mm sockets: top of abdomen, buttplate. 2mm pegs: none accessible in this mode. The rifle has a single 5mm peg at the grip end, mine was closer to 4.9mm and I needed to add some layers of Pledge Future to thicken it so it wouldn't fall out of wherever I put it. The shield has a single long 5mm peg at the front end. Technically the irregular hexagonal gap in the back can snap around a similar shape on the pilot compartment in starship mode, but that's nearly pointless, since closing the pilot compartment puts the main peg into a proper socket. Transformation: Transformation to ape mode is one of those super- annoying ones where it's nice and stable once everything is in place, but until everything is simultaneously in the right place there's a high chance that moving one bit will make two or three others come undone. The starship mode is more of the same, especially trying to get the pegs on the cockpit section into the sockets on either side of the ape head. Both share the robot legs opening up and folding in on themselves to form the front of the ape chest (underside of the starship), with the ape arms unfolding from inside the boots. In starship mode they just sort of sit on the sides, tucked under the wings. Basically, going directly from ape to starship is fairly straightforwards, but the nose piece pets make it hard to do. Officially, not-Spasma needs to be removed from the ape head so that the remainder can fit inside the nose. But if you reposition it upside down (ape face still forwards) it'll just barely fit, although the cockpit doesn't actually let the pilot face show through very well. Might as well just put it in the rear cockpit as per the instructions. Ape Mode: So, it's a mecha-gorilla with starship parts strapped to his back, and robot arms curled up on his hips. I mean, the original wasn't too impressive either, but it feels like they could have done a little more with the kibblem especially given how many panels need to be fiddled with already. Most of the visible part of the face is a mask over the Titan Master, with molded and painted teeth, rather than trying to make the Titan Master carry the full load like G1 Spasma did. In the knuckles-on-ground resting pose, the top of the head is 4.25" (11cm) off the ground, although the starship nose backpack is higher up by a bit. With the shield being placed on the small of the back, all the magenta is now on the back. The head is flanked by the soles of the robot feet, with the robot mode neck socket now being a butthole. The colors are mode dominated by black and milky white, with less purple than robot mode. The upper arms and thighs are black plastic, the forearms and shins are milky white plastic, the hands and feet are purple plastic. The lower half of the head is purple plastic. Those boot-side details from robot mode are on the biceps now, and a Decepticon symbol in purple and silver is printed on the left shoulder front. The ape mouth has triangular white teeth printed over a black mouth. The head is on a restricted ball joint. The shoulders are big ball joints (and pop off easily during transformation), the elbows are hinges, and the wrists are hinges. The hands are sort of hook-like for the whole "walking on knuckles" deal. The hips are very stiff swivels, the knees and ankles are hinges. 5mm sockets: one on either side of the head, one on the outer face of each upper arm, the robot arm ones are accessible on the sides of the thighs, the nose piece's two are still there, and there's two on the chest. None in great positions for anything but storage, and the hands can't hold pegs. 3mm studs: front of each shoulder, plus the ones from the robot shoulders and chest are accessible if a bit weird. There's also a 2mm peg on top of each shoulder (two more on the back, but they're kinda blocked in this mode), and a 3mm socket at the belly button. Starship Mode: As with G1, it's basically a brick with a cockpit on front and stubby wings and tail. If you don't get the ape lower face fully out of the way, it gives the underside of the nose a sort of shark jaw effect like WWII noseart. 7" (18cm) long with a just under 6" (15cm) wingspan, most of the purple is hidden in this mode, making it mostly magenta and icky white. The nose end is magenta plastic with some white paint around the sides and lots of silver battle damage on the front. The cockpit windows are clear medium blue plastic. There's a small purple Decepticon symbol on the nose just ahead of the cockpit. The shin battle damage paint is on the underside now, making it look like he has trouble landing gracefully. The wing top 5mm sockets are accessible, the shoulder and forearm ones are on the rear sides, the sockets on the soles of the feet are on the underside. The ones from the ape arms are on either side just ahead of the wings. There's two 5mm sockets on the underside of the nose, the frontmost of them is meant to hold the rifle in this mode. There's two 2mm *Master pegs on the top near the centerline just ahead of the wings, and the one on top of each ape shoulder is pointed forwards now. The 3mm socket on the robot mode abdomen is now on the underside of the starship for use with flight bases. The wingtips have 3mm studs on the front and back ends, which are sort of accessible in other modes, but not as useful. Technically it can hold not-Spasma and one other *Master, as noted under transformation. A pretty weak mode that's a big hassle to get it into, not really worth it. Overall: I mean, getting a triple changer with articulation is hard in general, especially with one of the modes being a beast and another a vehicle, but neither altmode really feels worth the hassle required to get it made. Maybe Snapdragon would have been a better choice for them to try to do first, since jet to dragon is a shorter trip. A somewhat disappointing final Voyager for the line, at least for me...others like it a lot more than I do. Dave Van Domelen, thinks Titans Return did better at capturing the essence of the character.