Dave's Marvel Crossovers Rant: Standard Wave 3 Iron Man (Jet) Carnage (Muscle Car) Thor (A-10 Thunderbolt) Captain America (Hummvee) Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Marvel/Standard3 Iron Man is in black and gray, Carnage is a red and black redeco of Venom, wrapping up the recolors of all wave 1 toys. Original reviews are at: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Marvel/Standard1 I did not buy and will not review the recolors, as last time. There's some head-scratching over why the Iron Man redeco didn't get named War Machine, since it's in War Machine colors. The "avoid child-unfriendly names" attitude that gives us "Fireblast" on techspecs might be the reason, but "Carnage" isn't exactly kid-friendly. My guess is that they decided that Iron Man has much better name recognition, and with War Machine currently having its action figure trademark protected by the recent Ultimate War Machine figure (Ares BAF wave), there was no need to use the less familiar name. Meanwhile, Carnage probably doesn't have any worse name recognition than Venom, so they changed the name. CAPSULES Iron Man: Original mold was Recommended, but with the price bump I'm disinclined to get any recolor that doesn't absolutely wow me...and this doesn't. $16.97 at Walmart. Carnage: Mildly recommended original mold, and if Iron Man isn't getting bought, Redneck Venom sure the heck ain't. $16.97 at Walmart. Thor: The vehicle mold is nice, but the colors are quite bad and the almost total lack of paint is a serious problem. Transformation is a mess of loose panels and bad pegging, and while the robot mode has lots of nice molded details it holds together very poorly. Avoid. $16.97 at Walmart. Captain America: Decent if color-mismatched vehicle mode, okay panelmaster transformation, good robot mode. Suffers frmo a lot of little problems and fragility questions, though, so only mildly recommended. $16.97 at Walmart. RANTS Packaging: Same as wave 1. Co-sells are the three other figures in the wave on Thor's, but Cap has Wave 1 Spider-Man instead of Carnage. Iron Man's photo in the co-sells is so heavily photoshopped that it looks gray rather than the black that dominates it. Terminology note: An "N point" ratchet means that if the joint could go all the way around in a circle, it would take N clicks. So an 8 point ratchet goes 45 degrees per click, a 12 point ratchet goes 30 degrees at a time, etc. HERO: THOR Altmode: Assault Jet (A-10 Thunderbolt) Accent Color: Yellow Call-out: "Hammer smash!" Data File: Ultimate power - that's what you get when you combine the strength of a Norse god with state-of-the-art battle suit technology. This mech was built to channel the thunder god's control over lightning, making it many times more powerful than any battle suit ever constructed. In vehicle mode, THOR can rain justice from above, bringing the weather itself down on his enemies! Warning, this will be on the terse side, as I just can't work up the enthusiasm to spent a lot of time on this disappointing toy. Packaging: No twist-ties or rubber bands, just a secondary tray laid over the main blister tray. It's not even taped. The right wing is folded over and hidden under the character art, since the wingspan is otherwise too long for the blister. The hammer is held in very firmly by the blister. Vehicle Mode: Essentially an A-10 Thunderbolt (so the name is apt) with enough changed to avoid licensing issues. The color scheme is controlled by the mech mode, though, leading to something of a mess here. The actual mold is pretty good, at least. 8" (20cm) long, 9" (23cm) wingspan. A dull red plastic is used on the wings and the rear 2/3 of the fuselage. The vertical parts of the tail (and part of the horizontal sections) are black plastic, as are the detachable under-wing missiles and the landing gear. The front third of the fusealge and some of the underside bits are dark blue plastic. The hammer and the rest of the underside are silvery gray plastic. The jet engines are bright yellow. The cockpit and the nose cannon are painted black. That's the only paint intended for this mode. Even a black wash or something on the wings would have helped tie things together a little, but they apparently decided no one would care. It's too back-heavy for the landing gear to work, depending on the hammer storage to even come close to stability. The landing gear doesn't lock into place, but at least the wings are fairly well connected. Unfortunately, the hammer storage leaves it hanging out the back as if it were falling out of his tail section, and it pegs into the robot's butt. All sorts of wrong there. The missiles are removable. Unfortunately, they also tend to fall off when you don't want to remove them, and the hardpoints come with the missile, so they're not really "launchable" in any fashion. Best to just glue them on if yours are loose. If I thought the toy in general was worth the effort, I'd repaint the whole thing dark blue with some red accents to make it a Cobra Rattler. Transformation: The engines become shins, with thighs at the rear underside of the fuselage. The arms are tucked together on the underside of the middle fuselage. The front bit of the fuselage does a certain amount of unfolding to make for a better torso...in theory. Pretty much all of the red plastic pieces try to unfold and refold into a cape, but...eh. There's too many bits that pop apart if handled roughly, and some rough handling is almost necessary to get them transformed. Once you're done, there's still several parts that flop around as if there's supposed to be additional pegs. Mech Mode: 7.5" (19cm) tall, with a generally good color match to the classic Marvel Thor costume. The arms and head are silvery gray plastic, the cape is red, the torso and thighs are dark blue, the boot tops black and the boots yellow. The hammer shaft, belt and hair are painted yellow. The face and some disc details on the torso are silver. He has red and black armbands and white eyes. There's plenty of scrollwork details molded into the inside of the cape, as well as on the arms, thighs and pelvis. Too bad the paint job doesn't bring it out at all. Head and waist swivels, universal shoulders, hinge elbows that don't bend very far, swivel below each elbow, swivel wrists. Universal hips, swivels above hinge knees (and extra hinges for transformation below the knees you have to be careful not to bend), some play in the ankles. The kneepads of the boots are really loose, but most of the leg joints are stiff ratchets, so the boot tops end up flopping around a lot. The hammer fits loosely in either hand. Probably a tolerances issue. The cape limits the shoulder mobility and doesn't really look good in general, with lots of tabs sticking out and not connecting to anything. The hammer also stores between his legs, making him ready for an appearance in Doctor Horrible's Sing-Along Blog. Overall: Bleh. The molding of the vehicle mode is pretty good, but the coloring is a lost cause. And the robot suffers horribly from a high- tolerance design meeting low-tolerance manufacturing. Give this one a pass. HERO: CAPTAIN AMERICA Altmode: Armored 4x4 (Hummvee) Accent Color: Blue Call-out: "Pop-out shield!" Data File: Sometimes world-class threats require world-class power. That's when CAPTAIN AMERICA steps into his specially-built mech suit. Fast, made of the same indestructible Vibranium alloy as his shield, and attuned to his perfect reflexes, only a Super Soldier like CAPTAIN AMERICA could control the awesome power of thi sbattle suit. Plus, the vehicle mode is rugged and stealthy, giving him the drop on evildoers! Whoa, so Tony Stark does the impossible and replicates Cap's shield, and the first thing he makes is a giant robot? I like this version of Tony. On the other hand, I wonder what Tony's smoking that he thought bright red and blue counted as "stealthy". Packaging: The spare tire/shield is held onto the top layer blister rather than attached to the vehicle mode. A pair of blister spacers are taped in place to keep the vehicle from rattling back and forth. Vehicle Mode: Hummvee with the serial numbers filed off. Like Thor, the color scheme is driven by mech mode, so it's a bit weird here. 6.75" (17cm) long, this is an uparmored Hummvee with barred front windows. There's diamond pattern molding on the hood and front of the roof, meant for mech mode to evoke the chainmail shirt Cap wears. The hubs on the tires are molded with stars, and there's another star on the hood. The roof and front end are dark blue plastic, the aggressively off-road tires are light gray plastic, the rest of the vehicle is medium red plastic. The spare tire shield is dark blue plastic in the center and red otherwise in this mode, although there's light gray bits inside. The main paint application is silver, on the hubcaps, stars on the hood and spare tire, headlights and bumper. The front grille is painted red in a good match to the plastic, and the windows are painted black. It's not as bad as Thor, but it still looks pretty badly mech-mode-driven. Transformation: A lot of panels, some of which have long pegs that are hard to undo unless you go in the right order, and most of which are difficult when going back to vehicle mode. The panels do mostly lock down in mech mode, at least. The ones on the forearms don't, though. The basic transformation is a standard car thing, with the rear section unfolding into legs, the arms at the sides, and the head hidden inside the hood. However, there's a couple of twists and folds in the torso that make it a little more interesting. The hood opens up in a weird way to let the head out, you need to lift up the front of the center bit first, then the rear to let the head out. Be careful when going back to vehicle mode. The pegs that hold the waist together can be bent apart badly if you're not careful. In general, getting all the panels together takes some doing, and there's a lot of places where I can see stress marks forming already. Mech Mode: 7" (18cm) tall, with some pretty clever ways of generating Cap's costume details using vehicle bits and standard robot elements. For instance, the silver brushguard and red grille on the front end of the vehicle become the red and white (replace white with silver for pretty much all costume elements) abdomen stripes. And a helmet crest of the Optimus Prime variety takes only a little tweaking to create an A shape on the forehead. Heck, replace the wings with regular antennae, tweak the A and replace the mouth with a faceplate and this is a decent Optimus Prime without changing any colors. And a more faithful Prime would require only a few swaps. Anyway, the forearms, fists and lower legs are red plastic. The light gray wheels end up on shoulders and calves, and I don't know what the helmet wings are made of since they're painted over silver. The shield is as in vehicle mode, and the rest of the toy is blue plastic. Extra silver paint is added on the face, forehead A, helmet wings and the lower sections of the upper arms (as per the white on Cap's costume). The eyes are white, otherwise paint as per vehicle mode. The head turns smoothly. The waist is a 10 point ratchet and the axis is pointed back a bit so he simultaneously turns and leans back a bit, a good shield-hurling piece of articulation. The shoulders lift smoothly to the side and rotate on 10 point ratchets, but the front fenders get in the way a little bit and the joint itself looks fragile. The elbows are smooth hinges just below an 8 point ratchet swivel, while the wrists turn smoothly. The hands are both molded into fists, the shield pegs onto the vehicle's running boards. The hips are universal joints, with 16 point ratcheting to the sides and smooth forward and back. 8 point swivels above the 8 point hinge knees, although there's a smooth transformation hinge below the knee that will move before the knee ratchet goes, unless you're careful. The transformation hinge also lets the knee bend all the way. The toe and heel spur can point on transformation joints, but aren't that stiff. Going back to the shield, it can take a fair amount of force to get it pegged solidly onto either arm, and the two pegs are of different sizes to ensure that the shield is only held in one orientation...why, I don't know, since it's not like there's a lack of rotational symmetry here (and it doesn't matter which way the star points). Overall: I like this more than I want to. I have to remind myself that the transformation is just waiting to cause breakage and that the vehicle mode is in dire need of unified colors (a USAgent redeco would probably work very nicely). Unlike Thor, which is just a write-off, this one comes awfully close to being good. Dave Van Domelen, still has Pegasus/Thor around somewhere (review at http://www.dvandom.com/reviews/AvengersTF), but never bought the Captain America MegaMorphs helicrapter.