Dave's Transformers Crossovers Rant

     Spider-Man/Iron Man Combiner

     Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Marvel/Ultra1

     Just as Star Wars had its first big set as a combiner, so does Marvel.
However, where Han and Chewie had no individual mode, Iron Man becomes a jet
and Spider-Man becomes a helicopter in addition to the combined "Super
Bomber" and "Heavy Assault" modes.


CAPSULES

     Iron Man: Pretty good all around, if not stellar, and only barely makes
concessions to the combiner idea (so it could conceivably be sold
separately).  Some balance and stability issues, but not too bad (especially
compared to the movie Transformers).
     Spider-Man: Would have been better as a SciFi transport of some sort,
ditching the rotors entirely rather than trying to find ways to fold them
away.  Otherwise okay in both modes, but unstable.  
     Set: Eh.  It's a fairly nice idea, and compared to the recent Superion
set it's not a bad deal, but it's still a decent toy packaged with a so-so
toy at a fairly high price point.  Mildly recommended.  $29.99 at Target.


RANT

     Packaging: Self-space dominating window box that seems to invariably get
stuck on the bottom shelf because no one wants it dominating good shelf real
estate.  18" (46cm) wide, 9.75" (25cm) tall and 3" (7.5cm) deep with shallow
truncation on the top right and left edges (cut in 6cm from the right or left
and 3cm from the top).
     The packaging is divided in half, with Spider-Man's colors and images on
the left (as seen from the front) and Iron Man's on the right.  Art of
Spider-Man is in the upper left, and he's pointing at the viewer in a
somewhat accusing manner.  Iron Man is in the upper right, reaching towards
the viewer.  The lower left and right have drawings of the robot modes in
fairly neutral poses.  Art of the giant super bomber mode is in the middle,
cardstock glued onto the window plastic and barely connected to the border.
The Transformers Crossovers logo is along the lower left border, and the
Marvel Universe logo in the lower right.  A sticker proclaiming "6 modes!" is
on the window above the super bomber art.  Each toy is packaged in vehicle
mode, visible through the window plastic.
     The artwork on the front wraps around to the sides, revealing that
Spider-Man is in a web-slinging hand pose, not an accusing point.  Bad design
choice, guys.  It also makes Iron Man's robot art look like he's cowering.
The names of the altmodes are printed along the sides.  The top has a small
window section (4"/10cm wide) with small photos of both modes and "Spider-Man
to Attack Helicopter" and "Iron Man to Fighter Jet" in Impact font (or a
close enough match).  There's some small window cuts in the sides around the
robot art.  The bottom is mostly blank, with UPC and ownership statements.
     On the back, the six modes are enumerated.  1 and 2 are Iron Man's
vehicle and robot modes, 3 and 4 are Spider-Man's vehicle and robot modes.  5
is the Heavy Assault Mode (combined robot) and 6 is the Giant Super Bomber.
There's photos of the individual toys in both modes on either side, the
bomber in the middle and a tiny heavy assault photo below and to the right of
the bomber.  Below and to the left of the bomber is the bio note.  Along the
bottom couple of inches of the box back are cosells of the current wave of
Standards (darker Spider-Man motorcycle recolor, brown and yellow Wolverine
redeco, Carnage redeco of Venom) plus more legalese.
     Cutting two pieces of tape on either side lets you slide the inner tray
out of the box, and the instruction sheet is loose behind the tray.  The
front of the instructions has the individual transformation instructions
(Spider-Man takes up abhout 60% of the sheet), the back has the combination
instructions for modes 5 and 6.  
     Iron Man's missiles are held to the card tray by rubber bands.  Both
vehicles are twist-tied to blister trays that are taped by tabs to the card
tray, and the ties do not go all the way through.  So it's cut the tray
pieces apart, or get out the wirecutters...you need at least patience with
fingernails prying up tape to get these guys loose.


HERO: IRON MAN
Altmode: Fighter Jet (F-302, sort of)
Accent Color: Golden Yellow

     Packaging: Four tabs to untape, two twist-ties using that annoying
double twist trick.  Packaged with the wingtips folded up and the vertical
stabilizers folded down.

     Vehicle Mode: The F-302 is a vehicle from Stargate (SG-1, Atlantis, etc)
that's a fighter craft hybrid of human and alien technology.  If they
released the Iron Man toy in a more "realistic" ghost gray color scheme, it'd
do a decent imitation of the F-302.  For those more into real airplanes, if
you took an old Canberra, lopped the nose tail off (so the cockpit sat behind
the leading edge of the wings) and put a couple of extra and somewhat boxy
thrusters at the rear of the wing you'd be pretty close to the silhouette.
The wings are like slender not-quite-isoceles triangles with the short side
against the fuselage, the leading edge longer than the trailing edge and the
pointy bit rounded off.  Under-wing pods with missile launchers are about
halfway out each wing, and jet engines are where the wings meet the fuselage.
Those boxy thrusters are pretty much the boots tacked onto the jet (with the
kneepads forming a sort of tail fin, although there's fins on the
wing-mounted engines too to do that job), but it's easy to see them as a
space drive system.  There's no landing gear, but it will stay level on a
flat surface due to some of the tiny tabs on the underside.  And it's all in
red and yellow since it needs to turn into Iron Man.  :)
     The wingspan is 11" (28cm), while the length is merely 6" (15cm).
Almost all of the visible parts are matte red plastic with extensive yellow
paint.  The underwing missile launchers fire via buttons that poke out
through holes in the cowling around them, and when loaded the missiles poke
out both ahead of and behind the wings.  Oddly, you can rotate the robot
waist without seriously disturbing the wings, as there's no pegs locking it
in place.  This doesn't really add any play value or improved looks, though,
and it really just means you have to fine-adjust the leg chunk or the vehicle
mode looks damaged.
     If you look at the underside, you can see more of the yellow plastic
from the robot mode, but from the top or side there's only a couple of bits
of yellow plastic visible on the front sides of the engines.  The missiles
are black plastic, and the launchers are silvery gray plastic of which only a
couple pegs are visible in this mode.  Everything else is matte red plastic.
     The cockpit is painted black, the wing engine intakes are painted cool
light gray and the boot engine intakes are painted silver.  Most of the top
of the fuselage (including the non-window parts of the cockpit) is painted
bright yellow, there's yellow stripes on the wings (narrow trapezoids from
the halfway point of the wing back to the flaps), the thruster apertures are
painted yellow, and the kneepad "fins" are yellow on the top but not the
sides.  
     Nifty fanmode trick: separate the nosecone bits as per making the robot
chest (you'll need to swing the jet intakes aside to get them all the way
back) and you have the jet deploying Unibeam Cannon.

     Transformation: Pretty straightforward, but with little details that
make it a little more interesting.  The nose folds down to become the chest,
revealing the head, but as mentioned above the tip splits apart to reveal a
Unibeam.  So he neither copies the Seeker style (the cockpit stays behind his
head anyway) nor has a big pointy chest.  The engines become arms, and the
big chunk in back unfolds into legs.  A couple of panels that help fill in
the sides in vehicle mode fold over the calves to close them up.  The hands
pop out of the rear of the thrusters, the fronts of the thrusters fold aside
to get out of the way of articulation, and the feet unfold into toe and heel
parts.  
     Getting the feet back into vehicle mode can require a bit of force, a
slider joint might have helped in that respect, but probably would have
affected stability in hero mode.
     There's a subtle point that's missing in the instructions.  Once you get
into robot mode, the torso slides forward on the pelvis so that the center of
mass shifts forward, helping with both looks and stability.  Of course, you
need to shift it back for vehicle mode.

     Hero Mode: Well, it's a pretty well-proportioned chunky Iron Man armor
with big wings in the back that you really can't do much with.  Oh, they can
be folded this way and that, but some of the less compact positions require
leaning the toy forward a little to stay standing.  The hands are molded in a
"firing repulsors: position rather than in fists.
     In addition to the repositioned vehicle bits, the pelvis, head and hands
are red plastic.  The upper arms, inner shoulder joints, hips, thighs and
knees are bright yellow plastic.  It's a bit of the shoulders that's visible
in vehicle mode.
     The paint from the rear of the thrusters becomes wrist paint here.  The
face is yellow with black slits for eyes and mouth, plus there's cool light
gray paint on the uni-beam on the chest and on the repulsor apertures on the
palms of the hands.  No other hero-more-specific paints.
     Head and waist both turn smoothly.  The shoulders are universal joints
that are smooth-hinged to the sides and ratchet on their swivel.  No upper
arm swivels.  The hinged elbows look like ratcheting was intended, but later
removed (the inner part of the joint has ratcheting teeth, but it moves
smoothly).  The wrists are smooth swivels.  The hips are universal joints
that swing smoothly forward and back but ratchet outwards, repeating the jet
Iron Man toy's problems with there being no middle ground between At
Attention and Kirby Pose.  There are ratcheting swivels above and below the
knees (the upper ones are really stiff, the lower ones not so bad but blocked
by kneepad kibble), while the knees themselves are ratcheting hinges.  The
upshot is that if you want it to stand up, you're pretty much stuck with legs
straight and locked together...the ankle hinges and relatively small feet
don't have enough range or stability to support much else, especially with
those wings making it top-heavy.  A few dynamic poses are possible, but the
fact that the boots have "spats" that are a millimeter or two in from the
sides of the feet robs the toy of a lot of stability if the feet aren't flat
on the table.
     If you open up the wings (which is done for both of the combined modes),
the launchers are merely pegged in, and can be removed.  But...that's it.
There's nowhere else to place them, other than putting them on the top side
of the wings.  No peg holes on the arms, or shoulders, nuthin'.  Well,
there's peg holes on the shoulders, but those are for locking Spider-Man's
nose section in place in combined mode, they're too small for the launchers'
pegs.

     Overall: If this were sold on its own, you'd hardly notice the lack of
Spider-Man, as the only real concession to combination on this toy are a few
holes on the shoulders and a peg on the abdomen.  Fairly simple, but other
than the excessive ratcheting it's pretty well executed.  


HERO: SPIDER-MAN
Altmode: Attack Helicopter
Accent Color: Red

     Packaging: 4 tabs to untape, three twist-ties, the propellors are
threaded through slits in the plastic blister, and a secondary plastick
blister chunk is wrapped around the rotor shaft.  The rotors have "elbows"
for transformation, and you bend them to slide the rotors out of the slots.

     Vehicle Mode: Well, it's a SF-ish helicopter with big jet engines on
pods where floats would be on a water-landing helicopter (they're too short
for this to be amphibian, though).  The rotors have big ugly joints to let
them fold away, and the place where they join is made to sink into the body
to get out of the way in transformation.  There's web patterning along most
of the fuselage and tail, but not on the cockpit piece.
     To be honest, this toy would work a LOT better if they abandoned
pretense of a real vehicle, dropped the rotors and made it a hover style
vehicle like the landers in Aliens.  Replace the standard tail-with-
stabilizer-rotor bit with a pair of stabilizers that could double as weapons
in hero mode, solve all the "what do you do with the rotors" problems in
every other mode, etc.  I may try a kitbash.
     [Later note: It's not reversible, as the rivet that holds the main rotor
assembly on is REALLY tight, but I'm pleased enough with the results to not
worry about being able to go back to the helicopter.  See the results
yourself here: http://www.dvandom.com/kitbash/tfspidey1.JPG and
http://www.dvandom.com/kitbash/tfspidey2.JPG ]
     Anyway, this red, blue and black helicopter is 8.75" (22cm) long and
4.75" (12cm) wide ignoring the rotors.  The rotor span is 8.5" (21.5cm) and
the rotor circle extends about an inch (2.5cm) past the front of the
cockpit.  Both rotors spin, but the main rotor is rather wobbly because of
all the joints.  The pontoon jet engines are not jointed to rotate to
hover-aid position or much of any position of use, and are solidly pegged in
place.  The rotors fold as close as 90 degrees apart at their root, plus
there's additional joints about an inch (3cm) out from the center that let
the rotors fold for various stowage.  There's little wheels on the underside
of the jet pontoons, and a tail wheel can be folded down.
     The rotors are matte black plastic, the pontoon struts are bright blue
plastic, and there's a few joints in both of these colors that are visible
here and there.  Otherwise, this mode is the same matte red plastic as Iron
Man's jet mode.
     Gloss black paint covers the cockpit, and matte black on the turbine
intakes just behind the cockpit.  The front ends of the pontoon jets are
separate red plastic pieces that are fully painted medium matte blue and
light cool gray (same light gray as on Iron Man), with a silver ring on the
front edge of the part they're attached to.  Matte blue is also used for some
details around the rotor and a spider emblem atop the cockpit (it's shaped
like a Spider-Tracer, stubby legs).  The bump with the rotor on it is also
painted silver.  There's odd projections on the tips of the rotors intended
to let them be cannons in bomber mode, and they have cool gray circles at the
ends.

     Transformation: The pontoon jets become the legs, with the front cover
pieces rotating aside.  If you're not careful, they pop off pretty easily,
though.  The tail section splits into two arms, with the rear half of the
tail just becoming kibble hanging off the arms.  I tried a few ways to fold
it into better configurations, but it's all pretty bad.  The rotors
officially point up over the shoulders rather than down as a cape, and
officially form more of a U shape than a W shape, but the W configuration
lets the cockpit settle more securely against his back.  No matter what you
do, though, the rotors get in the way of the shoulders and tend to pop
apart.  More reasons to just remove the rotors entirely.
     The instructions lack one step that was clearly designed into the toy.
The torso sides pull out at the top to widen the chest.  They don't really
lock into place either way, though, so I expect anyone playing with the toy
would discover the feature on their own.  Note, though, if you spread the
chest apart like this, the shoulders look slumped.  Raising the shoulders up
on transformation joints makes the turbine intake pieces push away from the
torso a little and prevents them from tabbing into place.
     When going back to vehicle mode, you need to rotate the fists 180
degrees or they'll keep the tail from snapping together.

     Hero Mode: I'm not really sure what they were shooting for here.  The
rotors stick up behind the back like samurai armor banners, sorta, but
there's no real samurai motif other than that.  The head is an awkward mix of
Spider-Man's mask and some mecha elements like a trojan vent and a chinstrap,
plus silver-painted corded neck "muscles".  There's plenty of weird design
compromises as well, although few if any of them are a result of the
combination (the recessing rotor hub is about it).
     6.75" (17cm) tall at the head, with the rotors sticking over the head by
an inch or more, depending on how you position them.  The color balance isn't
exactly Spider-Man's (no blue on the torso flanks), but it comes close.
     The head and clenched fists are slightly rubbery red plastic.  The upper
arms, upper legs, knees and some joints are blue plastic, the rotors are
black plastic, everything else is matte red plastic.  There's extensive blue
paint on the insides of the forearms, the shoulder armor (the details there
look odd in vehicle mode and are clearly there for hero mode) and the fists.
The neck and chinstrap are silver.  The eyes are white with black borders,
and a couple of headlight details on the top of the head are also white.  A
black spider symbol (closer to his proper chest symbol) is on the top of the
chest.  
     The head turns, the waist doesn't turn but there's a ratcheting hinge in
the abdomen to let the pelvis swing down for robot mode.  The shoulders are
universal and smooth both ways, but the shoulder armor gets in the way alot.
There's VERY stiffly ratcheting upper arm swivels, soft-ratcheting elbow
hinges, smooth wrist swivels.  The hips are universal joints that are smooth
forward/back and ratchet out to the sides.  Soft-ratcheting mid-thigh
swivels, and ratcheting twin hinge joints for the knees so they can bend
almost double.  The feet are hinged so the toes and heels fold together for
stowing, and there's a little play in the stowing slider joint for some side
to side motion.  The feet can't bend farther than "flat" however, but you can
deploy the Heavy Assault Mode toes from the shins to stabilize kneeling
poses.  
     The abdominal bend joint means that Spider-Man's robot can do the pelvic
thrust, so there's clearly a time warp drive installed. 
     I could call this an undocumented feature, but I suspect it's just a fan
mode.  Rather than just leaving the tail sections folded back as per the
instructions, you can rotate them up to be scimitar blades.  Also, if you
trim away a bit of the underside of the tail pieces, you might be able to get
them to fold flatter against the forearms with the outer side out, rather
than having big hollow things facing out.
     As a note to kitbashers, the tail rotor is held on by a screw rather
than a rivet, so it can be more easily removed if you want to try some less
radical mods to de-helicopter it.  Also, the entire cockpit and rotor chunk
is held on by a "clip around a metal rod" assembly and is fairly easy to pop
off for working on.  If you remove the riveted-on main rotors, the hub piece
pops right out as well, not really being designed to be stable when stowed,
the hero head keeps it from falling inside in vehicle mode.  In fact, you
don't even need to remove the rotors.  Pop off the main blades, then force
the nubs closer than 90 degrees apart, and it slides right through.  The
rivet holding on the nubs doesn't seem amenable to non-destructive removal,
though.

     Overall: Unstable and unconvincing in both modes, and you can't really
blame it on the combiner elements.  Extensive kitbashing could turn it into
something a little better, though.


HERO: COMBINER
Modes: Giant Super Bomber, Heavy Assault (robot)

     Data File: Faced with the war suits of Earth's villains IRON MAN designs
powerful new battle suits for himself and SPIDER-MAN.  The heroes can attack
separately, taking advantage of their unique powers, or combine spider powers
with super tech to create an immensely powerful super jet.  This new armor is
the most powerful technology in the world, combining the might of two of
Earth's greatest heroes.

     Um, faced with all TWO of the war suits, you mean?

     Super Bomber Combination: Well, not much to it.  Start with the two
vehicle modes, swing the helicopter's nose down and rotor blades forward,
then snap the jet onto the back.  The helicopter nose slides over the jet
nose, open up the wing foils to attack position, and rearrange Spider-Man's
legs to be a bit closer to the wings.  There's some small pegs on Spidey's
cockpit that go into holes on the leading edge of Iron Man's wing roots,
which helps stabilize things a little and raises the innuendo levels of this
combination to nigh-toxic levels.

     Super Bomber Mode: Well, moving the robot legs up makes for a better
flight profile, but also makes it so that the toy can't really rest on the
table, as Spider-Man's groin juts out the bottom all alone.  Fortunately,
there's two (admittedly close) points of contact, so folding down the
helicopter tail wheel creates a minimally stable triangle for support.  Since
most of Spider-Man's blue parts are on the underside, the color balance is
pretty much just Iron Man's with a little more black, plus some silver where
the wings are cracked open.  The rotors use their gray dots at the tips to
fake it as quad cannons in addition to the missiles.  Spidey's boots add
another pair of jet engines, for a total of six.  It's not really giant, but
I suppose it counts as super.
     8" (20cm) long with the helicopter cockpit and tail extending the length
in both directions, but the wingspan is the same as Iron Man's alone, 11"
(28cm).  The Heavy Assault robot mode folds the wings up more, which affects
the wingspan, though.  Other than silver paint inside the split-open wings,
there's really no colors visible here that weren't visible in the individual
modes.  Spidey's legs were swapped around so that the blue intakes become
thrusters at the back, though, and the silvery plastic of the launchers is
fully visible rather than just seen as a couple of pegs.
     Once it's propertly together, this is surprisingly stable.  It still has
Iron Man's problem of the wings not staying pegged together at the engine
section, but otherwise I can pick it up by just about any part of the toy and
it won't fall apart.  I can even shake it around a bit before the peg starts
to come out.  Mind you, as stress weakens the main connector, stability will
likely go down.

     Heavy Assault Combination: Iron Man's configuration is almost identical
to the bomber mode, just different folding of the wings.  Spider-Man is the
robot mode with the head stowed, the rotors flipped down, the shins folded
down into longer toes, and then connect Iron Man as per bomber mode.  I
suppose it's theoretically possible to transform between the two combined
modes without separating them, but the clip just isn't that strong, it'll pop
apart while you're transforming the arms.  
     Note, the instructions show the wing sections spread only 30 degrees
apart, but the joints on mine don't allow for each half being 15 degrees
above or 15 degrees below...to have them symmetric, it's necessary to have
each one a full 30 degree click away from horizontal.

     Heavy Assault Mode: It looks vaguely like a gerwalk mode for the super
bomber.  From the side there's a strong Battletech feel to it, along the
lines of the Mad Cat and similar Mechs.  Oh, and while it's certainly
possible to leave the rotors pointed forward as seen in bomber mode, the
instructions say to point them backwards like a cape.  A lot more of
Spider-Man's blue is visible here, since his limbs are the limbs of the Heavy
Assault Mode.  The shin panels that fold down aren't just panels, they have
twin pistons connected to them.  The pistons are also red plastic, and
there's silver inside the panel and on the inner rods of the pistons.
     Actual height depends on how crouchy you make it, and the folded up
wings rise above the cockpit.  But in a reasonably close-to-instructions
pose, it's 6.75" (17cm) tall at the cockpit top, about 7.5" (19cm) tall at
the wings, and 9.75" (25cm) across the wings.  The folded down shins make the
feet plenty long enough to support the toy, although Spider-Man's non-
ratcheting hips can result in some sagging if you try too extreme a pose.
     No, there's no way to mount the launchers anywhere but the wings here
either.  I thought maybe Spider-Man's arms would have appropriate peg holes,
but nope!  The tail connection peg holes on his left arm are a little too far
apart and a little too small.

     Overall: I'm glad they didn't try to get a standard humanoid robot
combination out of these, to be honest.  The number of compromises that would
necessitate would probably have killed the toy in general.  The Gerwalky form
also emphasizes that these are piloted mecha, which I like, and excuses the
smallness of the arms (which is a feature I don't care for, but can live
with).  As for the super bomber mode, eh.  It really doesn't add much, but
neither does it represent an additional cost over the design elements needed
for Heavy Assault.  In fact, I suspect the Heavy Assault mode was designed
first, then someone tinkered with it to see if a combined vehicle was
possible too. 


     Set Overall: Okay, so they combine.  It's almost an afterthought,
though.  Iron Man is pretty good, Spider-Man less so.  It's a nice break from
the foibles of the Revenge of the Fallen toys, at least the flaws are
different.  I kinda hope Iron Man gets released separately in War Machine
colors, but any recolor would likely be a complete set (maybe War Machine and
black suit Spidey).


     Dave Van Domelen, holding off on kitbashing Spidey until he's certain
that some changes can't be made in a reversible fashion (like rotor
removal).