Dave's Transformers Rant: Real Gear Robots Wave 2 Meantime (81418) High Score 100 (82989) Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Movie/RGR2 Based on the co-sells, it looks like these two ship with Booster X10 and Zoom Out 25X. And I'm starting to wonder if the assortment numbers are being picked for whimsical reasons now (palindromic Meantime, "989" part of a game controller's number). And yeah, Target's still cheaper for RGRs than Wal-Mart. CAPSULES Meantime: A little loose in watch mode, and they missed one nifty trick, but otherwise good. Recommended. $7.44 at Wal-Mart. High Score 100: One of the "too small to be REAL gear" altmodes, and somewhat restricted in articulation due to gorilla proportioning, but a good toy anyway. Recommended. $7.44 at Wal-Mart. RANTS Packaging: Same as wave 1 (just change RGR2 to RGR1 in the Permalink if you haven't seen that review yet). Both of these have repeated "Not a working watch/game controller" disclaimers on them...looks like the lawyers are worried these will be too realistic. DECEPTICON: MEANTIME Altmode: Sports Watch G1 Homage: Time Warrior (minor) Motto: Time to Waste MEANTIME is one of the most powerful of the REAL GEAR ROBOTS. It's just too bad he uses his powers for nothing but trouble. He can speed up, stop and even reverse time up to ten minutes. Rather than using his powers to make chores or homework go by faster, though, he likes to hang out at skate parks, where he speeds time up to cause huge wipe outs, then reverse [sic] it so he can watch the accidents again. STR 5 INT 9 SPD 3 END 4 RNK 7 COUR 7 FRB 5 SKL 9 Avg 6 Quick, find all the ways in which this bio note sucks! Talking down to the audience (yeah, any kid would think speeding up chores would be a useful application of the power), logical inconsistency (if time really speeds up, why would it cause an accident?), villains as troublemaking losers, and worst of all, iz not cheezburger time yet. Um. Sorry, injoke attack, LOLGears annat. Packaging Notes: Held into the blister by two clear straps. The watch face is rotated 90 degrees from "wearable" in-package. Watch Mode: Fully opened up, it's 8" (20cm) long, but the strap is symmetric, unlike most real watchbands. The actual case of the watch is 1.5" (4cm) wide, and there's an overall "sports watch" look to things, in terms of chunkiness, design and color. In terms of simple length, it would seem to be long enough to go around an adult wrist, but the thickness of the band means that it falls rather short. However, since the joints are reasonably stiff, it will stay on an adult wrist more or less. Most of the toy is a dark cool gray plastic. Some of the joints (mainly between the band and body, but also some internal bits) are a medium warm gray. The face itself is clear plastic over a sticker, and does a really good job of looking like an Indiglo (TM) watch. A molded Decepticon symbol is above the fake LCD, and painted purple. There's orange (glow under UV) accents on the body and band, and some silver on the borders. Two setting buttons on the side are also painted orange. Despite being a digital watch, there's several mechanical timepiece motifs in the design. The backplate has molded gear patterns to it, and the Automorph gears in between the face and backplate also look timepiece-ish. The band has three hinge joints on each side, and ball and socket plugs to connect together. The time shown on the watch is 5:17:40 AM, the date is Wednesday January 2. That combination of date and day will be true in 2008, or was true in 2002 (and other previous years). My guess would be that the date and time are when someone was born, either the designer or the designer's kid. The face of the watch is actually only a few millimeters thick, with all the gears inside taking up most of the bulk. So while it would be possible to build a working watch in this toy, it's not a simple kitbash to replace the face with a working timepiece. And it'd definitely require more than a few pennies at the manufacturing level to integrate a working LCD into this toy. Transformation: The band splits longways, with most of the top half becoming arms, and the entire bottom half plus part of the top becoming legs. Disconnect them and Automorph, then turn the face 90 degrees to be pointing up again, and twiddle with the fists and feet. Automorph: Pull the hips down and the head and shoulders pop up. Robot Mode: 4.5" (11.5cm) tall. The head, chest, back, arms below shoulders and legs below hips are dark cool (blue-ish) gray. The shoulders, hips, pelvis and space between front and back torso are medium warm gray. The visor is lightpiped orange. The forehead and faceplate are painted dark silver, and the set buttons are now his horns. The only other detail that wasn't obvious in watch mode is that he's wearing a tiny watch on his left wrist. Adorable. I need to paint this to bring out the details. The head is on a ball joint, but mostly just turns. The shoulders are ball joints, plus a transformation hinge that gives extra mobility (but he still can't quite look straight at his own watch). Upper arm swivels, hinge elbows (up to 90 degrees). The wrists have transformation hinges. The peg holes in the fists are 4mm. There's upper thigh swivels, hinge knees (again, 90 degrees) and hinged toe and heelspur joints. The feet, when transformed correctly (the pictures on the package and the photo in the instructions mistransform the feet, but the instructions show correctly), are long enough to support a wide variety of stances stably. He can definitely do the Dreamwave Crouch and not fall over backwards. Overall: Given that making this a working watch probably would have been too expensive, I really only have two complaints. One, the pegging in watch mode could be a bit tighter, since the band tends to separate. Two, would it have killed them to use glow in the dark inks on the watch face sticker to complete the illusion? Otherwise, a good RGR. AUTOBOT: HIGH SCORE 100 Altmode: Game Controller G1 Homage: None Motto: Plug In * Turn On * Power Up HIGH SCORE 100 has been made into a master martial artist by years of watching some of the most dangerous fighters in the known universe try their skill against one another. By careful observation, and copying their moves over and over again, he has reached a level of fighting skill previously unheard of among TRANSFORMERS. If you are patient, and willing to learn, he will teach what he knows, but be warned! The path to ultimate power is fraught with hazards. STR 8 INT 7 SPD 5 END 7 RNK 4 COUR 7 FRB 5 SKL 10 Avg 6.625 Packaging Notes: One strap across the controller. Game Controller Mode: This is one of those cases where the size restraints of the line run up against reality a little hard. While I've heard tell of kiddie-sized controllers this big, it's certainly well below the size of normal game controllers. Anyway, it's only 3.5" (9cm) across and 2.75" (7cm) tall, your standard rounded half-hexagon shape controller. Most of it is a very light gray plastic. The analog sticks (two of 'em), direction pad, four buttons, inner grip pads, slider between d-pad and buttons, and some of the undercarriage junk are a medium gray plastic. The outer grips are painted a slightly darker gray than the inner grip plastic. A dark kelly green is used for the start/reset/etc buttons between the analog sticks, as well as on the shoulder buttons. A black Autobot symbol is printed above the slider. There's no place for a cord to come out, so I guess it's supposed to be a wireless controller. ;) The analog sticks move on ball joint bases, very stiffly. The slider moves, but it's for the Automorph. None of the other buttons actually move. From the underside, it doesn't really look very controller-y, but neither is the robot kibble blatantly obvious (other than the joints). Transformation: Trigger the Automorph, then lift the head the rest of the way up. It can be tricky getting this to work while not having your hand in the way of the shoulder buttons. The grips split into the arms (outer) and legs (inner) pretty intuitively. The pelvis should be unpegged to help with the stance and also free up the waist joint. Automorph: Sliding up the control under the Autobot symbol makes the shoulder button pieces rotate 90 degrees while the head pops up partway and pushes up the panel covering it. When going back to controller mode, the head only sinks down a bit, you need to tilt it the rest of the way and close the panel over it. Robot Mode: Gorilla! Seriously, he has very gorilla-like proportions, with big arms and small legs, and he can even stand in a proper gorilla stance. Fully upright, he's only 3.25" (8cm) tall, but rather wide. The inside of the torso and the inside halves of the upper arms and thighs are made from a more rigid medium gray plastic. The joints and feet are a slightly softer medium gray. The outer parts of upper arms and thighs, the forearms, shins, pelvis, vest and head are very light gray plastic. There's more green paint revealed in this mode, notably on the shoulders and on the vest formed by the folded-together shoulder button pieces. He has a black Autobot symbol printed on his pelvis, and his faceplate is painted medium gray with a slightly magenta red eyeslit. While somewhat hindered by the bulkiness, this figure has a LOT of articulation. Ball joints for neck, waist, shoulders, elbows, hips and ankles. Hinge knees plus a secondary ankle hinge. The legs don't straighten fully due to the curved shape they have to assume in gear mode, but you can get meaningful range of motion out of them. He can definitely look like a boxer, if not a southern style wu shu master. Overall: A really fun little guy, although it would have worked better if they sprang for a Deluxe RGR line and made him a proper size controller. Although, being the right height to punch Meantime (or most Deluxes) right in the reactor linkage has some advantages. Dave Van Domelen, saw Ultimate Bumblebee at two stores today, but wasn't $80 worth of impressed.