Dave's Transformers Legends Rant: Allspark Power Wave 3 Bumblebee vs. Scorponok Battle Jazz vs. Ice Megatron (not reviewed) Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Movie/Legend6 http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Movie/Legend1 has the Bumblebee and Jazz molds, and http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Movie/Legend2 has the Megatron mold. Battle Jazz is the vs. pack Jazz mold with some black crack deco on his robot mode but (as far as I can tell) a pristine vehicle mode, just as Final Battle Deluxe Jazz. Ice Megatron is mainly a color swap, replacing the black paint with metallic blue, but there's some minor differences in masking. Neither was different enough for me to want to buy a third Jazz or a fourth Megatron (okay, so I got a couple of clearanced Target four-packs, resulting in excess Megatrons, but I like my bronze and blue AllSpark Megatron kitbash better than Ice Megatron anyway). Oddly, I think Scorponok may be the very last totally new mold for the 2007-8 movie line (although I have no idea if he was the last-designed one). Everything else from this point on is a recolor or at best a slight remold (like Battle Mask Bumblebee), at least as far as I can recall. I guess it ties with Cyber Slammer Ironhide, since I saw that today too, but Cyber Slammers are barely worth mentioning. :) CAPSULES Bumblebee vs. Scorponok: Battle damaged Bumblebee paint update is also improved in minor ways, but it's still a so-so mold. Legends Scorponok is love. And hugz. If you could get Scorpy solo it'd be Strongly Recommended, but even with Bumblebee weighing the set down it's still a solid Recommended. $6.88 at Wal-Mart. Battle Jazz vs. Ice Megatron: Yet another Jazz with slight redeco, a decent redeco of what may be the best movie Megatron mold. Mildly recommended if you didn't stock up on the Target four-packs like I did. $6.88 at Wal-Mart. RANTS Packaging: Same as the first wave of AllSpark Battles. Comes with the Nightwatch Prime/Iron Man catalog. AUTOBOT: BUMBLEBEE Altmode: 1974 Camaro Licensor: GM Previous Mold Use: Movie Legends (several times) Previous Name Use: G1, G2, Classic, Movie Techspec: STR6 INT8 SPD6 END5 RNK5 COUR10 FRB3 SKL9 Avg 6.5 DECEPTICON: SCORPONOK Altmode: Robot Scorpion Licensor: None Previous Mold Use: None Previous Name Use: G1, BW, Energon Techspec: STR5 INT2 SPD6 END8 RNK3 COUR6 FRB5 SKL3 Avg 4.75 Left behind by the other DECEPTICONS, SCORPONOK burrows deep into the Middle Eastern desert, hoping to escape notice. Too bad for him, nothing is too small to remain unnoticed by BUMBLEBEE, who hunts the vicious beast-bot across the scorching sands. Though his vehicle mode is poorly suited to the environment, BUMBLEBEE is happy to remain in robot mode in the empty desert, tracking SCORPONOK until the very end. BUMBLEBEE Twist-Ties: 4 Color Swaps: None. Well, the yellow is noticeably more "golden" in contrast to the more canary yellow color of the original, but I'm willing to chalk that up to batch variation. Paint Apps: Reminiscent of the Target "Evolution of a Hero" battle damaged version. The front stripes are a bit chipped, there's scorch marks on the roof and left front fender (including blacking out the left headlight). The rear window is painted metallic blue, however, a definite improvement over the original. In robot mode, the Autobot symbol on the chest is now red, but it's missing the metallic blue kneecap paint apps. Other Notes: None. Overall: Well, the main strike against this is that it's YET ANOTHER COPY OF THE MOLD. Okay, sure, it's only the third use in the U.S., although it's likely to come out at least one more time in Stealth Bumblebee colors. But it would have been nice to have a Concept Camaro version, eh? That aside, this is better than the original, so if you've been passing on the mold until now, don't let the inclusion of this mediocre mold put you off buying the set. SCORPONOK Twist-Ties: 5 Robot Mode: 2.75" (7cm) tall at the head, tack on another centimeter or so for the tail. Slightly hunchbacked due to the beast head becoming the robot head, but the proportions are otherwise FAR superior to the Deluxe version's. The general effect is a more mechanised version of the Beast Wars Scorponok, what with the stinger up over the head, etc. The beast legs stick out of the shins a little awkwardly, though, and if you want him to stand with legs together it makes for a weird cage effect. Made almost entirely of slightly metallic medium-light gray with a bit of inclusion swirl. The stinger is rubbery "dirty gold" plastic. There's gold paint on the face and a band along the middle of the torso turbine (front AND back). The chest and the outsides of the boots are matte black, and the four eyes are red. A silver Decepticon symbol is printed on the right boot. The shoulders, elbows, hips and knees are ball joints. There's two hinges in the tail (plus a hip-level hinge mainly used for transformation but which can help positioning the tail), the head can move up and down, and the (closed) claws spin at the wrist. Okay, there's no geared gimmick or anything, but it's still a very nice feature. The feet are a little small given the topheavy nature of the toy, but it can still stably hold some pretty dynamic poses, superior to most (if not all) other Legends. By the way, if you don't like how the scorpion legs mesh together in front, they're not glued on, you can just pull them out and swap them to point outwards instead of inwards. Transformation: Fairly simple, the legs fold up against the flanks and the head/shoulders chunk swings up. However, the instructions imply you're supposed to make the boots go parallel to the turbine part of the torso, while the way things really fit suggests more of a "rearing up" posture, where the bulk of the torso is up at about a 30 degree angle. This is more stable (although lack of pegs means it's still not all that stable) and much more dynamic. Beast Mode: Almost exactly half the size of the Deluxe version, measuring about 3" (8cm) long in a non-stretched pose. So if the Deluxe version is really 1:16 scale, that makes this 1:32 scale...which puts it in the thick of the range of scales seen in the Autobot cars, albeit at the high end. It also means he's in proper scale with the figures that come with the Screen Battles Scorponok. :) Or if you accept that set as being the proper relationship between Scorponok and the human figures (i.e. closer to my original 1:30 scale estimate), then this toy is more like 1:60 scale...aka 30mm miniatures scale. So he can properly menace your Heroclix or Warhammer figures. Repaint it in G1 colors and it can threaten your Transformers Monopoly pieces. Scale contemplation aside, it looks pretty good. The legs spread a bit too wide apart, and the whole thing could really stand to have some pegs holding it together, but it looks good. The black on the boots ends up on the topside of the torso, but the chest black is on the belly, oddly. The legs have no poseability, and the tail can't do a whole lot with its two working joints (the one at the root is stuck in place by transformation). But the arm and head articulation is still there, and the "rearing up" transformation lets it look appropriately menacing, especially to 30mm miniatures. :) Overall: Okay, this is one worth picking the set up for regardless of what it got paired with. In a little barely-more-than-a-Mini-Con toy, they did a LOT better than the Deluxe Scorponok and making both a good robot scorpion and a good robot mode. Dave Van Domelen, has a rather large number of movie-line Scorponoks at this point (Legends, Deluxe, Blackout-accessory, Robot Heroes, McDonalds) but would buy a Robot Replicas one if they offered it. Not that this seems likely. P.S. Here's some pics: http://www.dvandom.com/images/legscorp1.JPG http://www.dvandom.com/images/legscorp2.JPG