Dave's Movie Deluxe TF Rant - Wave 4 Cliffjumper (not reviewed) Autobot Camshaft Landmine Stockade Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Movie/Deluxe4 An all-Autobot, mostly-recolor wave to kick off the AllSpark Power Deluxes. Cliffjumper is shortpacked, and I'm not going to go to a lot of effort to find one...if I stumble across one I might buy it, otherwise I'll live without it. Cliffjumper is a recolor of the Concept Camaro version of Bumblebee, while Autobot Camshaft is a recolor of Swindle. Landmine is the only new mold in this assortment. http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Movie/Deluxe2 - Concept Camaro BB http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Movie/Deluxe1 - Swindle Update 2/12/08: As a running change, Stockade has been added to this wave, although it doesn't seem that anything was removed (maybe Camshaft was, it seemed ot be pegwarming from the previous case). Also, I finally spotted a Cliffjumper in person, and wasn't impressed enough to buy it. Update 2/14/08: I got a spare Stockade and painted it up like Optimus Primal. :) http://www.dvandom.com/kitbash/stockprimal1.JPG http://www.dvandom.com/kitbash/stockprimal2.JPG http://www.dvandom.com/kitbash/stockprimal3.JPG CAPSULES Cliffjumper: Not reviewed. Original mold is recommended. $10 price point. Autobot Camshaft: Original mold is recommended. This version looks a little better in robot mode and a little worse in vehicle mode, but doesn't fix any of Swindle's engineering problems. Mildly recommended unless you never got Swindle, in which case a low-end "recommended". $9.99 at Hasbrotoyshop.com. Landmine: Solid vehicle mode, good spin on a classic transformation scheme, very nice robot mode, and a gimmick that only helps rather than hindering. Strongly recommended. $9.99 at Hasbrotoyshop.com. Stockade: A really good toy with some significant flaws, some of which are intrinsic, some of which can be user-ameliorated. Transformation is almost Mini-Con-like in simplicity, though, which may turn some off (seriously, I think one of the Street Speed Team has the same transformation). Recommended. $9.96 at Wal-Mart. RANTS Packaging: The AllSpark Power toys have the same rough trade dress as the previous Movie Deluxes, but with bright blue accents. The image behind the figure is of the AllSpark in blue and greenish blue, looking vaguely like a planet. The arc of cardstock that proclaimed Automorph action or other features on the early versions now has "ALLSPARK POWER" on a bright blue and white circuit-and-lightning background. The package back has the usual (touched up) photos of robot and vehicle modes, with a smaller version of the AllSpark cube on the right side about halfway from the top. The co-sells are for only the other two in this wave. (Stockade has Cliffjumper and Camshaft as co-sells, but I know Landmine's in the case with him too.) The catalog included with the instructions is nearly the same as the wave two catalog, but with one panel's worth replaced by a promo for the Transformers Animated show. It's also sometimes folded differently so that instead of Ultimate Bumblebee being the cover, the TF:A ad is the front. As always, the functions and mottos are mine, the actual packaging doesn't include them explicitly. AUTOBOT: AUTOBOT CAMSHAFT Altmode: Sportscar (like a Saturn Ion or a Chevy Cobalt) Licensor: None Previous Name Use: Alternators Previous Mold Use: Movie Swindle Package Callouts: "Extending torso cannon!" Function: Reconnaissance In Force Motto: "I may not always be the first one there, but I'm always the last one standing!" Deployed as part of an in-force recon squad to the hotter spots in the galaxy, AUTOBOT CAMSHAFT is used to trouble. Most of the time, BUMBLEBEE is the first to touch down on an alien world, but when OPTIMUS PRIME needs to know the lay of the land under extremely hostile conditions, he sends in AUTOBOT CAMSHAFT and the crew. His adaptive armor, enhanced by the power of the AllSpark, can harden to resist the most brutal environmental conditions. His weapons systems are designed to disable DECEPTICONS quickly and quietly. AUTOBOT CAMSHAFT is the perfect scout to call on when you need someone to hit the ground firing. STR 8 INT 6 SPD 7 END 9 RNK 4 COUR 7 FRB 6 SKL 6 Avg 6.625 Twist-Ties: Two, plus an Alternators-like plastic strap. Color Swaps: Red becomes a faintly metallic light gray, the clear plastic is more of a light blue now, and black stays black. However, it turns out that the gray plastic on Swindle is at least two different mold pieces. The upper arms, forearms, mono-optic housing and thighs are now a reddish brown plastic. The rest of Swindle's gray parts are a light bluish gray on Camshaft. Paint Apps: The hood and roof are matte black, as are the front end grilles. They sort of try to paintmatch the doors and roof trim to the silvery plastic of the rest of the car (the doors are clear plastic), but it ends up a much more metallic silver and a bad mismatch. Blue tribal-tattoo styled paint details are on the sides, while the taillights are orangish red. The hood logo is printed as an Autobot symbol. There's no paint on the hubcaps or on the stomach cannon. In robot mode, there's an Autobot symbol printed on the sternum. The only other paint unique to this mode is a bright blue "AllSpark Power" paint that's on the chest, the sides of the head, bits on the flanks, forearms and thighs. Other Comments: Sadly, they didn't fix the various engineering problems with this mold. It still has big ugly seams in car mode, and the torso doesn't hold together solidly in robot mode. Overall: Well, it's a decent if flawed mold, and the flaws are still around in this version. The robot mode colors are a bit more dynamic, but the vehicle mode colors mismatch fairly blatantly. All in all, no better or worse than Swindle. AUTOBOT: LANDMINE Altmode: Desert Patrol Vehicle Licensor: None Previous Name Use: G1, Energon, Cybertron Previous Mold Use: None Package Callouts: "Cryo-shock rifle!" "Working shocks!" Function: Espionage Motto: "It's what's UNDER the surface that's the most dangerous." Brought to life by the AllSpark pulsewave released during the final battle against MEGATRON, LANDMINE is still learning what it means to be an AUTOBOT. He is content, however, to continue his work with the humans of Sector 7, even while IRONHIDE trains him in the finer points of robot combat. He enjoys the excitement and intrigue of working as an agent in a super-secret organization. Knowing that what he does not only keeps the humans safe, but also protects his fellow AUTOBOTS brings him great gratification. STR 6 INT 7 SPD 6 END 4 RNK 4 COUR 8 FRB 6 SKL 5 Avg 5.75 Two retcons in his bio note, of two different kinds. That he was born at all is one of the more "benign" variety, where it's revealing something that could have happened in the movie, it just wasn't seen at the time. However, since Sector 7 was explicitly disbanded at the end of the movie, his bio note contradicts that. At best, Sector 7 is being posited to have kept going despite the Presidential order. Of course, given how many Sector 7 toys are out there, I suppose they kinda need to keep the organization going for the toy continuity. :) Twist-Ties: Two on the vehicle, one on the separate gun. A single rubber band holds the rear together. Vehicle Mode: Called a "dune buggy" on the package, it's a DPV, or Desert Patrol Vehicle: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desert_Patrol_Vehicle (it's a bit more beefy than a real DPV, but they have to fit the robot bits somewhere). The real thing is 4.08m long. The toy, on the other hand, is 5.25" (13.5cm) long, making it approximately 1:30 scale. The main body shell color is a sort of matte greenish gray. The front window is clear colorless. The tires, bumpers and "running board" pieces are either black or very dark gray plastic. There's also soft black plastic on the grips, bipod and ammo belt of the roof-mounted grenade launcher. The launcher itself is a medium gray, as are the wheel rims. A light silvery gray plastic is used on the grnade launcher mount, the struts for the wheels, the seats inside, the exhaust pipes at the back, and a pair of propane tanks in the back. The main deco color is black, with stenciled symbols all over the place. The Sector 7 logo is found on the passenger side roof 'eave' plate, both sides of the hood, and behind each door. An Autobot symbol in black is on the front of the hood. The number 52 is stenciled on the driver's side roof eave and on both doors. There's also a unit number on the rear fender area, "UNIT 52G-534" on both sides. Ahead of the unit number on each side is a very muted U.S. flag, more of a black, white and really dark red. There's no paint on the hood-mounted searchlight, but the regular headlights are silver, and the taillights are red (middle two) and yellow (outer two). There's a little bit of AllSpark Power blue on the grating over the engine (in the rear). Each wheel is independently mounted on a spring, the main gimmick for the toy. The grenade launcher is on a swivel mount, plus hinges to let it aim up or down. There's a gap behind the gun position where a figure could crouch if it had good enough led articulation...I don't have one like that, so I cut the shins off a Foot Clan Ninja minifigure from Dollar General and modded it to look like more of a Splinter Cell character: http://www.dvandom.com/images/landminegunner.JPG The bumper pieces, especially the rear ones, pop off way too easily, and could stand to be glued on. Transformation: In rough terms, it's bog-standard G1 Autobot. The arms are folded under the front end, the hood becomes the chest, the rear splits into legs. It's in the little details where the toy shines. The seats become hands, with the seat cushions unfolding into claws. And those propane tanks become toes while the rear wheels fold down to become heels, giving the toy full rollerskate action. Very cool. Also, the grenade launcher can either be removed and held in one of the hands as a pistol, or simply left pegged on and swung up over the shoulder as a G1-style shoulder launcher weapon. Automorph: Well, the front wheels pull together automatically when you pull the arms out from in betwen them. Also, there's a link between the rear bumper halves and some leg panels. Robot Mode: 5.5" (14cm) tall and pretty well proportioned. No launching missile or other action gimmick in this mode, they used up the gimmick budget on the spring shocks in DPV mode. :) The head comes off rather easily, not sure this is something that could be fixed by adding nailpolish or glue layers to the ball joint. Speaking of the head, it's rather interestingly built. There's a "catcher's mask" shape of olive green plastic (darker than the body shell green-gray) over an inner skull that's made of the same color plastic but mostly painted bright AllSpark Power blue with some black spots for accents. These are held together by a screw through a backplate made of medium gray plastic painted pale gold. The rest is a good mix of the various colors of plastic used in the toy. The shoulders and upper arm "skeleton" are silvery gray plastic, with doors acting as upper arm armor plates. The forearms are the darker olive green used on the mask, and the hands are mostly silvery gray but with black claws. The lower torso is the darker olive green, as are the thighs. The hip joints are silvery gray. There's bits of AllSpark Power blue paint on the forearms, collar, pelvis and thighs, plus the paints mentioned on the head. No other robot-only paints. The head is on a ball joint, while the waist swivels. The shoulders are ball joints on the end of hinged struts that let them shrug. The elbows and wrists are also ball joints. Each hand has two hinges on the "fingers" chunk (one at base and one in the middle) and two on the "thumb" chunk (the tip joint of the thumb is shorter than the claws). The hips are ball joints, with a swivel right below each hip. Knees are hinges, and there's a hinge about mid-shin that lets the whole wheeled foot assembly swing forward and back. The left foot has a bit more range of motion because its propane tank is strutted lower, so there's less to get in the way. Overall: A good vehicle mode, interesting twists on a standard transformation scheme, and a very nice-looking and articulated robot. Rather than spend money on a launcher or other obvious gimmick, they used the resources to make the vehicle mode more fully-featured, and stuck with just plain good engineering to carry the robot mode. He even makes the movie aesthetic for robot mode look good. You want this toy. DECEPTICON: STOCKADE Altmode: Sector 7 SUV (Escalade-ish) Licensor: None Previous Name Use: Universe (remold of Tank Drone) Previous Mold Use: None Package Call-Outs: "Lever activates auto-punch attack!" Function: Enforcer Motto: "Tanks BREAK, General...." Drawn to Earth by a Decepticon homing signal after the final battle for the AllSpark, STOCKADE quickly hooked up with STARSCREAM. He's content to follow orders from anyone, so long as those orders involve kicking AUTOBOT tailpipe. Back on CYBERTRON, he used to threaten neutrals into staying neutral, and punished those who seemed to have a problem with their audio receptors. Thre's more than enough AUTOBOTS on Earth to keep him busy. STR 8 INT 4 SPD 4 END 8 RNK 4 COUR 8 FRB 5 SKL 7 Avg 6 And yes, that "Decepticon" in the bio note was not in all caps, oddly. And the phrasing of that sentence suggests slash potential. Otherwise, though, he does sound sort of like a BB/MaxB update...big dumb partner for Starscream to point at his enemies. Twist Ties: Just two, and no rubber bands. Has the same catalog as the rest of the wave, rather than the newer "Animated and Iron Man" catalog that came with Incinerator. Vehicle Mode: This is as close to a Cadillac Escalade as they can get without paying licensing dues, although they didn't try to give it spinnaz. 5.25" (13.5cm) long, making it about 1:38 scale. Note that Sector 7 vans were a GMC brand in the movie, making this a somewht odd choice. Maybe we'll get a recolor done up in some tacky "bling" style, since the Escalade is to tacky SUV what the Honda Civic is to ricers. It even has the low profile (thin sides) tires favored by the tacky types. The side panels and part of the roof are black plastic, as are the tires. Most of the roof and upper sides are made of greenish blue clear plastic, as are the headlights. The front two thirds of the roof rack is light gray plastic, but they don't paint the rear third to match. Unsurprisingly, they get a good paint match with the extensive black that covers the body panels outside the the actual windows (and a moon roof on top is left unpainted). The hubcaps, front grille, tail turn signals and some side grilles just behind the front wheels and all four door handles are painted silver, and silver Sector 7 logos are printed on the front end of each front door (yeah, way to be a secret organization). The taillights are painted red, and a small purple Decepticon symbol is printed at the middle of the grille (yeah, way to be a Decepticon SPY inside an organization that knows what a Decepticon is). The wheels spin freely, and the rear lift-door opens more or less (it's a transformation joint, so the seam isn't quite along the right line). There's some wide seams, especially on the hood, no matter how tightly I squeeze the parts together. No gimmicks are available in this mode. Transformation: Pull down the hood, peel the front doors back to cover the rear wheels, and then just sort of split the roof apart into arms. From there it's really just flipping open panels and flipping out the feet. Automorph: None I can see. Of course, it's pretty simple overall. I suppose you could count the fact that when you pull out the panel covering the head, the head is pulled out behind it, but that's pretty weak sauce. Robot Mode: An odd study in contrasts. This 5" (12.5cm) tall figure has a nice brutish appearance to go along with his bio note, with somewhat gorilla-like arms and a very "non-Bayformer" helmet head. The way the rear bumper becomes the shoulderpads and the exhaust pipes flank the head is very nifty. On the other hand, the shoulders connect at a point too low and too far back (or perhaps you can think of it as the head being too far forward), there's excessive shellformer panels (it's a lot less of a shellformer than it looks at first glance, but that first glance is a killer), and at least on mine the ankles are really weak...a real problem for a top-heavy brute like this. You can kinda compensate for the ankles by folding the vehicle front end kibble down a bit, but it's something that I'm going to have to try to fix on mine. [Update: working a little nail polish clearcoat into the ankle joints fixed the problem nicely.] The color balance is about as good as you could expect for an AllSpark Power toy. The boots, feet and inner parts of the upper arms are a light gray plastic to match the light part of his roof rack. The insides of the forearms, the head, abdomen and thighs are dark gray plastic. The chest, hands, pelvis and shell bits are black plastic. There's lightpiping on the visor slit in the same green-blue color as the windows, but it doesn't really work that well, given the darkness of the plastic and the small size of the aperture on the back of the head. Paint apps, other than the extensive black on the shell pieces, are minimal. The faceplate is silver, and there's a silver Decepticon symbol on the left thigh. The red taillights look good on his shoulder pads. There's AllSpark Blue on the center chest (looking like a blue rubsign), and strips along the forearms and just above the knees. I should note here that it would take VERY little repainting (say, replace all the AllSpark Blue with red, swap faction symbols, paint the helmet dark blue or even just leave it alone but add a silver bit on the crest) to make this a passable Optimus Primal Movie Style toy. The colors are already 95% of the way there already. I'm really tempted to pick up a spare and perform the mod, although I should probably wait until I see a restock of them, so as to not deny the toy to kids who don't have one yet. [Update: store got in another bunch, so I snagged a spare and made the mods, links up top.] Poseability is pretty good, if somewhat kibble-blocked. The head is on a seriously limited ball joint, but the waist turns freely. The shoulders are ball joints out on struts that can move forward and back, but the bulk of the arms restricts motion some. No upper arm swivels, but the elbows are double hinges (again, bulk-limited). The hands open up on hinges at the finger roots, each hand in chunks of two fingers. Ball joint hips, hinge knees, loose hinge ankles. No thigh swivels. The lack of upper arm and thigh swivels is probably the only serious problem with the articulation on this toy, and the shoulder struts can compensate in part for the upper arm ones. There's only one gimmick, but it's a fairly clever one. Pulling back on the light gray roof rack pieces causes the fists to piston out on solid shafts up to 1.5cm. It's not a violent spring-loaded shot, but that also means you can't wear out the spring. :) If you leave the front windshield flaps down over the fists, you can have him punch out his own windows. Sadly, this won't work in vehicle mode...that would have been pretty cool. Overall: While not without some significant flaws, this is an interesting design, with a fair amount of potential...especially if you want to make yourself an Optimus Primal. :) Dave Van Domelen, building up value on his HasbroToyShop "rebate"....