Dave's Marvel Crossovers Rant: Standard Wave 1 Iron Man (Fighter Jet) Hulk (Tank) Venom (Muscle Car) Spider-Man (Motorcycle) Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Marvel/Standard1 We've had ShapeShifters and MegaMorphs, but this is the first time we've had Transformers (TM) of Marvel characters. There's some indications that these are from the same design team that gave us Star Wars Transformers, but without being shackled by the need to be totally source-accurate in vehicle modes. So far, we're only getting the $15 price point, but it's possible we'll see larger toys along the lines of the Millennium Falcon or Death Star. CAPSULES Iron Man: Okay if kinda unstable vehicle mode, nice transformation, decent robot mode. All around "okay" in other words. Recommended. $14.96 at Wal-Mart. Hulk: So-so vehicle mode, a refreshingly different transformation for a tank, nifty steampunky robot mode. Recommended, and better than Iron Man. $14.96 at Wal-Mart. Venom: Sweet vehicle mode, fiddly transformation, "points for trying" on the robot mode. Mildly recommended. $14.96 at Wal-Mart. Spider-Man: Weird and floppy vehicle mode, Arcee-derivative transformation, decent if somewhat kibbly mech mode. Mildly recommended. $14.99 at Target. RANTS Packaging: These are all on large blister cards of irregular but roughly rectangular shape. They have the standard card thickness, rather than the extra-thick cards of the Star Wars toys. The cards are 12" (30cm) tall and 9" (23cm) wide, with blisters 9" (23cm) tall, 7.5" (19cm) wide and 2.75" (7cm) deep. The blisters have the upper left and lower left corners truncated significantly, and the other two corners truncated somewhat less. There's also a triangular dent near the top of the right side, and an "index tab" shaped dent along the bottom. The upper left front is also sloped back, with the character name under this edge. There's some raised bits along the bottom over the logo. Inside the blister, the toy is in vehicle mode, driving/flying towards the upper right. Art of the "hero mode" (upper body mostly) is on the right side above the logo, with "VEHICLE TO HERO" (or "VILLAIN") to its left. The logo is just "TRANSFORMERS CROSSOVERS". Each figure has its own accent color, used for the background of the name, the "TO" in "VEHICLE TO HERO", on the chevrons pointing at the hero mode art, and elsewhere on the package. This will be listed as "accent color" in each toy's review. The bottom left corner of the blister is blank with the accent color, and the bottom of the blister has the various legalese. The blister itself is glued on along most edges, but there's three tabs taped around on the back (left side, left bottom corner, right bottom corner). The bottom edge is taped but not tabbed. The instructions are behind the blank accent color panel. A sticker on the outside of the blister at the left side of the front has the 3+ choking hazard warning. The card front has painted-style normal (i.e. not robotic) art of the character in a triangular section in the upper left, with a background of their accent color if the figure doesn't fill the entire triangle. Most of the card front is a series of comic panels in faded monochrome blue going from lower left to upper right. An arrow callout in the accent color nestles into the triangular dent of the blister, listing the transformation. The Marvel logo is in the upper right. The cardback has a photo of the vehicle mode in the upper right triangle (i.e. right behind the character non-robot art on the front), and a photo of the hero mode dominating the left side. There's a callout pointing to the toy's main attack feature. The bottom has co-sells of the other three toys, shown in both modes with a "COLLECT them all!" admonition. Between the photos and the co-sells is the Data File, which has a short common blurb for the line (well, semi-common...heroes have one blurb, villains have another) and the notes about the individual toy below that. Hero Story: "Basing their designs on alien technology, MR. FANTASTIC and IRON MAN create powerful new battle suits for the heroes of Earth." Villain Story: "Based on prototypes stolen from his nemesis MR. FANTASTIC, DOCTOR DOOM builds a series of mechanized war-suits for the use of the world's worst Super Villains." In other words, this is a followup to the Avengers/Transformers series, more or less, but without specifically referring to Transformers. Probably to keep the rights situation simpler. The toys are held into the blisters just by the plastic, there's no twist-ties. However, there are rubber bands used to keep parts together in some cases. The instructions are line art with black and red ink (and gray and pink tones). They're mostly laid out like standard Transformers instructions, but lack photos of the toy. The instructions call the humanoid mode "Mech Mode". HERO: IRON MAN Altmode: Fighter Jet (F-22, sort of) Accent Color: Golden yellow Call-out: "Double repulsor blast launchers!" Data File: The very first battle suit developed by IRON MAN was his own. It is the only one of the mechs built so far that can fly in both modes. It is also extremely powerful in battle, with a huge array of lasers, missiles and other weapons. IRON MAN also incorporated an override system that lets him take remote control of most of the other battle suits he has built. It's that last line that answers the question, "Why would you put Hulk in a battle suit?" :) Assuming some sort of virtual reality control system (i.e. Hulk can't really be trusted to use levers and control yokes), when the fight is over Iron Man can just switch Hulk's systems over to remote operation and let Hulk fight Zerg rushes or something until he gets bored. Packaging: Two missiles held into the blister under the jet. A rubber band holds the missiles onto the right wing, but not the left wing (which is more completely sandwiched between blister pieces. Vehicle Mode: A somewhat chunky F-22 sort of jet (although the tail section is all wrong for a Raptor). The main colors are a slightly dark red and a sort of taupe (the brownish gray used in a lot of the kiddie-line Go-Bots), with some light gray and yellow bits. The jet is 6.75" (17cm) long, with a wingspan of 7" (18cm). Like I said, kinda chunky...a proper F-22 Raptor with that wingspan would be significantly longer (about 9.5" or 24cm). In addition to the two working missile launchers, two pairs of linked-together sidewinder-ish missiles are pegged under each wing, and a smaller missile is pegged near each wingtip. Overall stability is iffy, with the tail and wing pieces on non-locking hinges that are easy to displace. The missile launchers, tail pieces, wings and the central top fuselage are taupe plastic. The missiles (both firing and non-firing) are light gray plastic. The cockpit is clear ruby red plastic. Everything else is a slightly dark red plastic. There's a fairly good darkish red paint match for the leading edge of the wings (and tail pieces) and the cockpit framework. A good taupe paint match is found on the thruster end to blend in the wing coloration. Darkish gray paint is on the air intakes. There's some yellow paint details on the wings and fuselage. A bit of black paint is behind the cockpit. There's no landing gear, just some molded fake wheels. The cockpit opens up a little, revealing molded seat and controls. However, the cockpit motion is really just there for transformation, and it really only opens up a few millimeters. The two main missiles do launch, but there's no mechanism for popping the secondary missiles out other than pulling them off manually. :) The underside has minimal robot kibble, thanks to various sliding panels, and only the robot arms are really visible. Transformation: The wings fold back into a backpack, then the nosecone splits to reveal a place for the waist to clip together. The majority of the underside folds forward and some panels fold so that the waist can snap together (the nosecone halves become the hip pods). The feet fold down and heels extend in a nifty way, and some sliding panels reveal the thighs and cover the gaps in the shins created by folding down the feet. The shoulders separate and settle down, and the fists flip out from the forearms. Mech Mode: 6.5" (16.5cm) tall and generally with proper human proportions. He's in the usual red and yellow Iron Man color scheme for the most part, although the abdomen is the jet cockpit rather than being yellow. The forearms are hollow, which looks a little bad, and he has a big wing backpack that looks better if you just unfold it partly. Overwhelmingly red plastic in this mode, with the taupe wings folded up on the back and the tail fins folded away. The faceplate is painted yellow, along with the upper arms and most of the thighs. He has a yellow Unibeam of the "Superman pentagon" shape. The eyeslits and mouth slit are painted black. The head turns, but the waist does not. The shoulders are swivels, but there's also several semi-ratcheting transformation hinges that give a lot more range of motion. The upper arm swivels ratchet 45 degrees at a time, quite stiffly, but the elbows are smooth hinges. The wrists turn smoothly, plus have transformation joints for a little extra range. The hands are kinda puny, like a lot of SWTF toys. The hips are ratcheting universal joints, with 30 degrees at a time to the sides and 45 at a time forward and back (the forward/back joints aren't as stiff, though). There's ratcheting (45 at a time) thigh swivels that are pegs, which can pop out if you're not careful. The knees are double hinged but can only bend to 90 degrees. The ankles can move forward and back a little, but not side to side, which interacts badly with the ratcheting side to side hips (you can't stand the figure with feet just a little bit apart, it's a lot or nothing). The missile launchers end up on the undersides of the forearms, making them not quite repulsor blasts. :) The missiles can either be left loaded, or held like batons in the hands. Undocumented feature: The double missiles from the wings can be pegged onto the forearms. However, there's no other place to put the smaller wingtip missiles. Overall: I'm tempted to open the legs up and see if I can un-ratchet the hips, as that's the biggest problem with the articulation. They generally overdid it on the ratchet joints in mech mode, in fact, although the wings could have used stronger ratchets. Looks decent, though, and it beats the pants off the Shape Shifters Iron Man I have. :) [Later note: Open up the thigh by removing the two screws on the back. There's a little red piece about 1cm long slotted in under the ratchet cog. Yank it out and set it aside in case you want to re-install it later. The legs will now separate smoothly, although it may be looser than you like. If you're willing to make permanent changes, you can sand the red piece down just enough to soften the ratcheting, and it won't be loose.] HERO: HULK Altmode: Tank (fantasy) Accent Color: Green Call-out: "Spring-loaded power punch!" Data File: This mech suit was built specifically to match the power and rage of the HULK. Its armor is indestructible, like the shield of CAPTAIN AMERICA. Its hydraulic joint flexors absorb the HULK's energy, so that the battle suit becomes stronger as the HULK gets angrier. In vehicle mode, a powerful sonic cannon knocks other mechs to the ground, and scrambles their audio sensors. Something tells me the tank mode only gets used when Bruce Banner is in control. Or whant Tony uses his override. :) Packaging: Just held in by the blister. His sonic cannon barrel needs to be pulled out to complete his transition to vehicle mode, though. Vehicle Mode: Well, not the first Hulk to become a tank, that's how they did it for MegaMorphs too. Anyway, this is what I consider a "fantasy" tank design, in that it doesn't really look like any actual tank...it just has treads, armor and a big gun. 6" (15cm) long, 4" (10cm) wide overall. The treads are an inch wide (2.5cm) and have the largest drive wheels in front (3cm) tapering down to the smallest (1.5cm) in back. It has a turret molded, but the turret doesn't actually turn. The main gun has an wide hexagonal aperture, 2.3cm wide and 0.5cm tall with a shape kinda like the Superman diamond cut in half and connected to the sides of a wide rectangle. A fairly standard Generic Energy Cannon shape, in other words. The main colors are green (duh), gunmetal and a sort of gold/bronze color. There's one impact damage point on the right front "fender", odd given that the armor is supposed to be invincible. ;) Parts of the treads and the rear of the turret are gunmetal plastic, the rest is green plastic. There's some good gunmetal paint matching on parts of the treads made of green plastic. The sides of the treads (drive wheels) are that gold/bronze paint, for a very steampunk look, given that the drive wheels have a gear pattern molded into them. The gold paint is also on vents on the turret. The fronts of the top vents and the cannon aperture are painted black. Muzzle vents on the barrel are painted silver, and silver is also used on the headlights, some details on the turrent sides, and that impact damage point. The toy rolls on four concealed wheels on the underside, as with most tank TFs. The turret doesn't rotate, but the barrel will elevate using transformation joints. The whole thing is very stable despite the profusion of panels involved. Transformation: The treads become arms, the turret becomes legs...an inversion of one of the usual tank transformation schemes. The main gun splits in half and becomes the heel spurs. There's a LOT of panel folding and pegging to make the treads into credible arms. Plus a number of subtle touches elsewhere. Once you figure out the tranformation once, it's pretty nifty. Unfortunately, not all of the arm panels attach firmly. Note, when going back to tank mode, be sure to get the legs pegged into the right holes on the torso piece. The hexagonal holes are the intentional ones, but the pegs will fit in the nearby screw holes...it just won't work as well for vehicle mode. [Later note: D'oh, I didn't even notice this...but the picture on the cardback is mistransformed. You need to fold the shoulders out on an additional joint to give the arms proper clearance. I figured this out on my own before writing the review, but didn't notice that the package photo was incorrectly transformed.] Mech Mode: 6" (15cm) tall...and just as wide. A definite Frankenstein's Monster vibe to the head, and the gear patterns from the treads on the arms give a strong steampunk feel to this robot mode. It's like a Hearts of Steel Crossover. Of course, he does sort of suffer from a touch of Bulkhead Syndrome...he's so powerfully built that they simply couldn't make him as tall as the other toys without using more plastic than the budget could handle, so he's the shortest of the figures. The color balance is pretty good, with gunmetal "pants", hands and shoulderpads on an otherwise mainly green body. The pelvis, thighs, fingers, thumbs and a few panels on the arms are gunmetal gray plastic, the rest is green. There's a good gunmetal paint match on the shoulderpads, gold/bronze details on the arms, chest and shins. The hair is black, the forehead and teeth are silver, the eyes are white and the cheeks are gray. Rather than a missile weapon, Hulk has a spring-based melee attack gimmick. However, unlike Fast Action Battlers, the waist will spring back from either direction. Also, there's springs in the shoulders, so if you raise the arms to point forward, you can get the arms to flail back and forth on the springs as well. It works "best" if you hold the figure by the legs and shake it around, although you can also just pull one arm all the way back and let go. While spring-based melee gimmicks normally annoy the heck out of me because of how they interfere with posing, it works surprisingly well here. The head turns. The waist turns as part of the gimmick and will NOT ratchet to permanently change position. The shoulders are ratcheting universal joints even without the spring-loaded bit, although extreme poses tend to look a bit bad because of the way the panels end up separating. Ratcheting upper arm swivels, ratcheting elbows, smoothly swiveling wrist. The thumbs hinge inward, and the fingers (all as a chunk) have a hinge at the root and another at the first knuckle. The joints are stiff enough to get a pretty good grip (I had Hulk grab my finger and hang in mid-air for a couple of minutes while I was watching TV). Hips are univeral joints, smooth forward and back but ratcheting to the sides. Ratcheting swivels just above the ratcheting hinge knees. The ankles are smoothly hinged, and if you want to pose it leaning way back the heel spurs can be extended. Overall: While the tank mode is kinda "we'll slap treads on and call it a tank" in nature, it looks decent enough. Combined with a fairly innovative transformation for tanks and a good clockworky mech mode and you have a pretty good toy. VILLAIN: VENOM Altmode: Muscle Car Accent Color: Purple Call-out: "Double missile blast!" Data File: Obsessed with the destruction of SPIDER-MAN, VENOM welcomes any advantage. This powerful war suit allows him to cruise the city streets in secrecy, searching for his quarry. It's got the speed to pursue any target, or outrun any hero that might give chase. When it comes time to fight, his mech mode spews out volleys of powerful missiles capable of blasting other war suits to pieces. Okay, so either these have size-shifting capability, or Venom's gonna get stomped flat by the much bigger Iron Man and Hulk suits. Because a 50 foot long muscle car ain't too stealthy. Mind you, Spider-Man's kinda stuck with a gigantic motorcycle unless the transformation allows for mere contortionism and not limb removal. :) Also worth noting, the heroes have "battle suits" while the villain has a "war suit". Hmmmm. So, they're saying that battle is heroic, but war is villainous? Packaging: Just held in by the blister, no rubber bands. The missiles are stored on the car itself, so no separate packaging for those. Vehicle Mode: Approximately Alternators sized at 7" (18cm) long. We rarely get Transformers cars this size anymore...Deluxes tend to be a little smaller (1:30 scale or thereabouts) and Voyagers use bigger types of vehicles like trucks. Granted, it lacks the rubber tires or interior details of an Alternator, but at $15 you can't have everything. Anyway, this is a black muscle car (looks kinda like a 1969 Camaro, a friend pointed out the vehicle and other than the headlights I definitely agree) with oversized supercharger hood bump and a spoiler. And while it lacks the interior goodies of an Alternator, the underbody is completely enclosed...this makes transformation problematic, but it's a nice feature. All the plastic is black. There's metallic purple flames painted along the sides and on the hood. The windows are metallic pale blue, as is the rear license plate (with molded "VENOM" as a vanity plate...so much for disguise). There's a white Venom symbol on the hood (just in case the license plate didn't give him away), and the headlights are white. The front and rear bumpers are silver with a sort of spikey teeth/claws motif, and teeth are molded over the grill, which is also silver. The hubcaps are silver, and molded in a bladed pattern...oddly the front wheels have the blades spiraling one way, and the rear wheels are the other way. Oh, and the door handles are silver. The tail lights are red and amber. The wheels are free-spinning, and the rear ones are on springs that let them push together for transformation, but the springs don't really do anything useful in this mode. There's no action features in this mode, but the missiles do clip on the underside. The whole thing is very stable, and the fact that it's black makes the panel lines less obvious, so it's a pretty sweet ride. A pity that it costs the toy so much in the transformation department. Transformation: He's like an Alternator in that there's a lot of fiddly panels and confusing parts that look like they should snap together but don't. The basic idea of doors into arms, rear section into legs, hood into chest...that's pretty standard. But the devil is literally in the details. The underbody panel tries to fold up inside the torso, but it gets in the way of what looks like a peg that's suppose to lock the chest down. The instructions don't help, though, and I've tried every combination I can think of, it still won't lock. Also, the boots are HUGE, way too much of the trunk just slapped onto the feet. The doors pop off easily during transformation, and only loosely lock around the forearms in robot mode. In general, he has the worst tendencies of Alternators in terms of having piles of folded auto body panels hanging off everywhere. [Later note: Okay, it turns out there IS a configuration that lets the chest lock down. But one of the relevant joints had to be forced past the "it feels like it's going to break" point to make it work. It's the one I circled in yellow here in this image borrowed from Benjamin Dolle: http://www.dvandom.com/images/venomtorso.JPG ] Mech Mode: 6.75" (17cm) tall and about 6" (15cm) across at the shoulders, but not as bulky overall as Hulk. Just like the car, it's pretty much all black, with metallic purple accents. There's a lot of cables and other techno-organic motifs, as if this were a cross between the Venom symbiote and a Phalanx/Technarch entity. The shoulders are a bit low given the position of the head, and the stability of the torso is rather low, but the main aesthetic flaw is the huge boots, which have a "Let's just dump the rest of the car back end here, since we can't figure out anything else to do with it" feel. The hood Venom symbol becomes a chest symbol, and the headlights become pecs. The cables on his thighs are painted metallic purple, and there's a sort of metallic purple wash on the greebles revealed on the upper shins. The hands are also washed in metallic purple. The head is a sort of robotic interpretation of Venom's own, mostly organic-looking, with a Yaniger-style tongue and neck cables. The eyes are white, the teeth are silver, the tongue is metallic dark red, and there's lots of metallic purple bits on the cables. The feet seem to be metallic purple plastic, the only non-black plastic on the toy, although the hands might be purple with a black wash rather than black painted mostly purple. The head turns, and the waist does, more or less. I suspect it's supposed to lock down the chest to the waist to things don't turn, but since I have yet to find a way to lock the chest down, the waist is still free. The shoulders are universal, with smooth "up to the sides" blocked a bit by a fender flap and soft-ratcheting swivel. There's an upper arm swivel that ratchets, and the elbow is a ratcheting hinge, but the upper arm is so short (about 2cm from shoulder joint to elbow joint) that you can't get much meaningful articulation going on. The wrist swivels, the index fingers are hinged separately from the chunk of the other three fingers. So he can point at someone before saying he'll eat their brains (or processor cores). Hips are ratcheting universal joints that are hard to move without messing up the torso. Hard-ratcheting swivels above each ratcheting knee hinge. There's a couple of transformation hinges on each ankle that give a decent range of motion, although there's no swivel or side to side motion. The missiles, which look like globs of black goo, can either be loaded into the launchers on the top of the forearm or left on storage clips on the underside of the forearms. The trigger has to be pushed downward to launch, which is a little awkward with the door panels in the way. Overall: I like the vehicle mode, but I think they should have sent this one back to the drawing board to fix the way the torso transforms, at the very least. I mean, points for trying something that hasn't been done before, but perhaps there was a REASON it hadn't been done before, eh? [Later note: With the proper torso setup, it's a lot more stable up top, and if you force the shin pieces down a *second* click they lock properly. So the stability issues are taken care of...the butt-ugly issues not so much.] HERO: SPIDER-MAN Altmode: Motorcycle Accent Color: Red Call-out: "Web missile launcher!" Data File: Capable of phenomenal acceleration, and maneuverable enough to weave through traffic as easily as SPIDER-MAN himself dodges bullets, his motorcycle mode is the ultimate extension of his style. In mech mode, it duplicates his powers almost perfectly, with powerful electromagnets that allow wall-crawling, and missile launchers that fire explosive blasts of webbing strong enough to entangle even the most powerful machine opponent. Mind you, unless this is a skintight suit, wall-crawling is as likely as not to bring the wall down on top of him.... Packaging: No twist-ties, no rubber bands. The missiles are attached as exhaust pipes (although they fell out as soon as I opened the blister). Vehicle Mode: Finally, a transforming Spider-Man that doesn't turn into a spider! It's a weird hybrid sort of motorcycle, though. Most of it is your basic "crotch rocket" street bike, but the front wheel and fork are more at home on a roadster, it's nearly a chopper. It's also generally lumpy with obvious humanoid bits here and there. 8" (20cm) long in red and blue. Most of it is red plastic, with black handlebars and wheels, gray tailpipes/missiles and a clear windshield. The front inch or so of the main body is blue plastic. There's a little bit of gray plastic on the underside, two pieces that fold down to act as kickstands of a sort. There's extensive blue paint on the fuel tank and the seat. Red and black paint make the border of the windscreen look like a Spider-Man mask, and the single headlight is painted silver. The wheel hubs are also painted silver. There's some bits of gunmetal gray on the blue plastic bits near the front, and a black spider-symbol on the fuel tank (aka the robot chest). There's bits of black paint on the tailpipe missiles to enhance the webbing appearance. Very floppy front end. Not only is the windscreen just sort of loosely set "wherever", but the front fork doesn't really stay in place either. The missiles don't really stay very well in place as tailpipes either. Going back to the windscreen, it has hinges on it that don't seem to have any real function. I mean, okay, it lets the thing flatten out a bit in mech mode, but it's not like it NEEDS to flatten, or that it looks any better that way. The wheels spin freely, and if you're careful you can let it roll freely along the table, supported by the twin kickstands. Transformation: Rather reminiscent of various Arcee designs. Like the Energon version, the legs have to split apart and go around the entire front end, which folds against the back. The seat splits into the arms, with the head popping up from storage in the main body. Like movie Arcee, the rear wheel splits into two semi-circular chunks that just sort of hang off the arms. Oh, and you have to remove the missiles before transforming, there's a panel that has to fold through where they rest. You can put 'em back in those slots for storage afterward, though. Getting the legs around the front wheel can be tricky to do without popping the legs off, but once you figure it out it's not too hard to do again. The whole front wheel and windscreen section folds up against the back, but doesn't lock down or even really stay in place very well. Mind you, locking it would remove waist articulation, but it's still annoying that it's so loosely held in place. Additionally, the windscreen has a notch that fits around the front fork, but they should have gone that extra little bit and made it a clip, that would have held things together better. Mech Mode: 6.75" (17cm) tall, generally pretty good proportions but with wheel halves hanging off the backs of the shoulders and that front wheel stuck in as a backpack. Pretty close to the usual red and blue color scheme for Spider-Man, with only a few gratutitous silver and gunmetal bits. His hands are molded in "thwip!" poses, but thanks to his wrist articulation he can throw the horns too. So, he's the audience for Soundwave's heavy metal guitar solo. The arms, head, torso and feet are red plastic. The pelvis and legs are blue plastic. The kickstand pieces become shin details, and all the wheel stuff is in back. There's silver paint on the insides of the strut pieces holding the wheels in addition to being on the outsides. There's also silver on a vent on the top of the head and some cables around the insides of the thighs. Gunmetal is used around the eyes and on smoe of the webbing pattern on the cheeks, plus the bits from the vehicle mode that are now on the outsides of the thighs. There's black paint inside the webbing pattern from the face, plus on the chest spider. The eyes themselves are painted white. The head turns and can tilt back. In fact, it's hard to get to to NOT tilt back, it doesn't really lock in place. The waist turns with ratcheting, but the wheel backpack gets in the way...and if you just flip the backpack down it exposes the huge gap in the back. The shoulders are ball joints out on struts that allow shrugging. The elbows are struts that are hinged where they meet the upper arm and swivels where they meet the lower. The wrists are swivels on the ends of transformation hinges. The hips are restricted ball joints, the knees are ratcheting hinges with "floating" kneecaps that can adjust to keep the joint covered. The ankles are hinges with a good range of motion. The forearms contain missile launchers that fire from a "black costume" position over the back of the hand (yes, you can swivel the hands around to "fix" this, but it looks odd). If you leave the missiles attached to the tailpipe roots, it resembles the sort of cape-armor you get in the Gundam Rose or Nu Gundam. Overall: Well, it looks okay in robot mode, albeit with floppy and cheaty backpack kibble. The vehicle mode looks a bit odd and has a loose front end. Fairly derivative transformation, and kinda unstable overall. But at least it's not another spider altmode. Dave Van Domelen, thinks a Carnage remold would work better as a head-swapped Spider-Man than as the recolored Venom we're supposedly getting.