Dave's Lego Throwbots Rant: Amazon Jet Electro Granite Okay, I broke down and got all four anyway. None of the new Mystic Knights or Shape Shifters toys came in here this weekend, and I wanted something other than groceries to show for driving in the freezing rain. CAPSULES Amazon: Basically Ski in different colors with Torch-style feet. Weak vehicle-ish mode, but otherwise still good. Recommended. $5.99 at Target Jet: A little awkward looking, but with some nice tricks and a fairly clear difference between land and air "modes." Recommended. $5.99 at Target Electro: Doesn't transform at all, very limited modification potential compared to the others, can't really throw forward. Mildly recommended, but better than Turbo. $5.99 at Target Granite: Doesn't transform, but certain bits can be reconfigured for some play value. Nice weapon gimmick, although it really only attacks its own legs. Also can't throw forward. Recommended. $5.99 at Target RANTS Again, I'll start with some group comments. Amazon is built more or less like Ski, but the other three have a different body plan. The torso blocks of Jet, Electro and Granite do not have worm gears, and the heads are not movable via gears (they're either on ball joints like Jet and Electro or fixed forward like Granite). Instead, there's a chainsaw-like gear piece with a ball on one end that can move back and forth inside the torso block. Geared shafts can be snapped into the sides, so that when you pull the center gear out, something moves. Wings flap for Jet and Electro, axes swing on Granite. While the first group tends to dance on the line between weak vehicle modes and "folding up to fit in the box," this group moves more towards the latter. Electro and Granite can't really be put in anything resembling a second mode, although you can fiddle with Granite's legs to get a more low-slung version. Jet's official transformed mode is just a coffin-like block, but his standing and flying poses are fairly distinct. And Amazon ranks with Torch in terms of "fold it over and use some imagination." I've confirmed that the disc assortment is NOT random. In fact, the picture on the outside of the box showing the contents does show the included discs. They may have initially planned random assortment, but it's not there now. There are no significant leftovers in these sets, just the extra small gear and the extra endcap piece. No extra combiner pieces like with Turbo. Otherwise, assume these toys are like the first batch as reviewed earlier. AMAZON About 4.5" (11cm) tall, this is practically a clone of Ski in teal and green. Here's the differences other than color: 1) Throwing arm is on the right, not the left. 2) Faceplate rather than visor. 3) Torch-style feet rather than pontoon skis. 4) Antenna attached to the right hip. 5) Katana (Ninja sets) instead of skipole. Looks a little puny on a giant robot, though. 6) "Dial" gear on the back is a 2x2 gear rather than a 1x1 gear. As a result, he doesn't have a spare gear, I guess they figure you won't lose a 2x2 piece as easily. 7) Hip joint faces down rather than forward. Basically, if you borrowed some pontoons and 2-long rods from Turbo, you could rebuild Amazon into Ski. Just use the antenna as a skipole. Not that this is a bad thing...Ski's got one of the best designs of the series, and Amazon looks good as a warrior robot. The antenna helps out a little in seeing the "transformed" mode as a vehicle, as it becomes some sort of energy weapon or something. Especially if you swap out this black antenna for a clear yellow one from a space Lego set (it's the thin type with the ball at the tip). JET Judging from the images on the discs, Jet seems to be set up as either the leader of all eight, or the mightiest of them. His personal symbol is a cluster of seven out-pointing arrows, and his "prize" symbol is a planet made up of equal parts the images of the other seven worlds. My guess is that he would have been the golden boy of the line, but the ad guys wisely decided that Ski was more photogenic. }-> It's a little hard to get a measurement of the height of the yellow and black Jet, for two reasons. One, he's really meant to be in a flying pose, his standing pose is kinda secondary. Two, his neck can change length and his head can face straight up. Let's just say he towers over the rest at a height of at least 5.5" (14cm) when standing. His wingspan is up to six inches (15cm), but the wings can be moved back and forth. Jet's head is mounted on the end of his central gear rod, and moving his head up and down causes his wings to fold back or move forward. Depending on how you snap the wings into position, they can range over nearly 180 degrees, but I find it looks better if you make them terminate at being straight across. The wings have propellors on them, like those of a tilt-rotor plane (although they don't tilt forward), and they spin very nicely...blowing on a propellor will get it spinning. Because of the way his hips are installed, he's somewhat awkward when standing up, as his hips actually go sideways. And he doesn't look too great in flight mode with those legs either, so I may want to figure out how to reconstruct his hips. The wings hanging on his back also mean he has to lean forward to stay balanced on his feet. The neck being a ball joint does help a little with the posing, however. In flight mode, his twin throwing arms make for extra wings, and if you fold the legs up under his body he makes for a nifty flying machine. With the wings swept back fully, legs back and arms forward, he's Superman! Well, not really, but you get the idea. The storage mode looks kinda weird, like a hovering thresher machine. ELECTRO Electro, the lightning bug, a purple and black insect-like robot. With throwing arm back as a tail, it measures six inches (15cm) long and a little under 3" (7cm) high, with a maximum wingspan of 5" (12cm). It has a full cockpit cover rather than a visor, but it's made of clear smoke-colored plastic, and has no face imprint. The head is attached to the central gear as with Jet, with the same sort of wing motion. The legs, each a ball-joint "elbow," are attached in an interesting way, but not one lending itself to a lot of useful poses. Perhaps the biggest beef I have with this is how the throwing arm is attached. The shoudler joint is plugged in vertically, so the arm has three positions: forward, backward and straight up. None of these is very good for throwing forward (the up position comes closest). It's as if they gave up on trying to actually use the throwing arm on this toy and just stuck it on there so they could call it a Throwbot. There is no transformation mode, and the fold-up mode is just a chunk of plastic, without even a vague suggestion of being anything else. The limited range of the legs and lack of real limbs other than the legs pretty much sink any other mode ideas. It can be rebuilt into a four-legged critter with the arm mounted sideways, but this doesn't look like much of anything. If you really don't care about looks, you can use one of the 2-long rods left over after re-rigging the legs to attach the throwing arm to one of the wings. This turns the gear gimmick into a longer throwing arm (effectively 6" long, as opposed to the 2" of arm below the spring "elbow"), and the disc can be thrown a tiny bit farther (other factors limit the usefulness of this modification, including the fact that the disc will tend to leave the launcher at a certain speed regardless of how long the arm is. Your homework for next week is to determine that speed, assuming a coefficient of friction of .4 between disc and launcher and the previously given 2" (5cm) lever arm). Well, enough fiddling around trying to redeem Electro. It does illustrate one point about the line in general...these are Legos. While the models suggested on the box can definitely be made with the pieces in the box, you aren't limited to that. GRANITE I was predisposed to dislike this one as the weak cousin of the lot, just like Turbo. However, not only does it have legs instead of wheels (leading to some modification possibilities), it also has a nifty axe- swinging gimmick. Which would be niftier if the axes hit something other than Granite's own legs. The light tan and grey Granite is a little over 4" (11cm) long and of variable height, depending on how the legs are pitched. Longer if you put the throwing arm backwards. You can get a low-slung spidery version by inserting the legs by the other end from how the instructions show. The head is completely fixed in place as a cockpit, but oddly has a visor-style cover, not a cockpit-style one. Since the head is not part of the central gear, the gear is a lot freer to move, making the axe-swinging action a lot faster and easier to use. Unfortunately, the axes are short and only hit the toy's own legs. Borrowing some rods and connectors from other Technic sets would allow the axes to strike out at targets out ahead of the robot, however. Or just replace the axes with guns, which now elevate as anti-aircraft weapons. The throwing arm shares the same problem as Electro's, although it's aesthetically meant to point forward and not backwards. According to the disc images, it projects a forcefield. If you replace one of the axe mounts with the throwing arm, you can use the gear to throw a disc pretty well, but with one major drawback. The mass of the arm causes the shaft assembly to shear off the toy if you pull too hard, resulting in the arm following the disc through the air. Such is the inherent limitation of snap-together gears. The "transformation" just involves folding the legs in so that the toy can fit in the box, but there's enough other things you can do with it to make up for the lack of a second mode. It's nowhere near Turbo's level of lameness. Dave Van Domelen, will build the ThighMaster dragon Super Throwbot later on and review it...legs look to share the humanoid Super Throwbot's problem of having so many joints that overall movement is restricted.