Dave's Transformers Rant: Cyber Slammers Wave 2 Decepticon Brawl Autobot Ratchet Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Movie/Slammer2 Frankly, once you have one Cyber Slammer, you've pretty much seen 'em all. And at $7.99 they're a little pricey to collect like Hot Wheels. But I've decided that Brawl needs love and am picking up every version of him (leaving aside recolors, though). Poor guy didn't even get to be under his proper name in the movie.... Update 8/30/07: I did some minor physical modding and a repaint: http://www.dvandom.com/kitbash/csbrawl1.JPG http://www.dvandom.com/kitbash/csbrawl2.JPG Update 10/4/07: Wonkimus Major wanted an Autobot Ratchet, so I'm reviewing the one I got him before sending it off. CAPSULE Decepticon Brawl: Okay chibi tank, standard Cyber Slammer transformation and robot mode. Some of the details are rather cheaply molded. Only get if you are a Brawl fan striving for some level of completeness. $7.99 at Target. Autobot Ratchet: Given the normal shape of the rescue-modded H2, this is barely chibi at all in vehicle mode. Could stand a few more paint apps, but otherwise okay for the line. $7.96 at Wal-Mart. RANTS Packaging: Same packaging as wave 1. No individualized text, just replace the pictures and names as appropriate. Brawl has Prime and Bumblebee as co-sells, Ratchet has Brawl and Barricade. Based on the assortments on the pegs, I'd guess that Brawl, Ratchet and Bumblebee ship together. No catalog with either, and still no twist-ties. Ratchet has the licensor info on his card. DECEPTICON BRAWL "Robot" Mode: 4.5" (11.5cm) long, 4" (10cm) tall at the head, 5" (12cm) tall at the cannon sticking up in back. Made entirely out of olive green plastic except for the black wheels on the bottom. There's fake treads molded on either side of the head and painted black. The minesifter teeth are sort of molded onto the chest and painted black with silver highlights. There's a splotch of dark green (or maybe blue) camo paint on the chest. The drop-down abdomen has black on the belly and gold stripes going up the sides. The shoulders have gold-painted blaster barrels (sort of), the right fist ends with a three-barrelled cannon tip (sort of) and the left fist has short silver-painted claws. By "sort of" I mean that all of these things are molded to be in as few pieces as possible, so instead of discrete cylindrical bits, it's like nested U's that evoke barrels without actually portraying them. The head is well molded, at least, and has silver face, gold forehead and chin, black eyes with red spots in them. Poseability same as with Barricade...almost nil. The head turns all the way around (although there's some blockage that has to be forced past), the permanently bent arms can be raised but flip back down on springs. Transformation: You push the torso down, it snaps into place. Then the wheels spin and the torso pops back up for robot mode. If you want it to stay in vehicle mode, you need to move the switch on the bottom *before* transformation, doing so after transformation won't help. From vehicle mode, flipping the switch back will cause it to enter the "spin wheels and pop open" action. The abdomen folds up into the chest during transformation, and springs back down in robot mode. And yes, I just copied all that text from the Barricade review. Vehicle Mode: A somewhat chibi/chunky version of the semi-real tank that Brawl turns into. The turrets are non-mobile, and most of the barrels have the same sort of cheapo molding tricks as the weapons in robot mode. The minesifters look decent, at least. 5.25" (13.5cm) long, olive green plastic with very dark forest green camo blobs (maybe blue), black painted treads and silver painted mine sifters. A dark (green? black?) Decepticon symbol is printed on the front. Overall: Seriously, you really only need one Cyber Slammer total, if that. I like this one more than the others, but not enough to recommend getting it if you already picked up another one. And the cheap molding on the barrels is rather disappointing, I may need to do some modding. AUTOBOT RATCHET "Robot" Mode: 4.25" (11cm long), 4.25" (11cm) tall, although the last little bit of that is a piece of the hood sticking up over the head. Made mostly of the chartreuse colored plastic that goes with this character, although a little brighter than the Voyager version and not as bright as the Robot Heroes one. The wheels and the brushguard are black plastic. The fake front end on his chest, the roof rack on his back, and parts of the real front end are painted matte black. There's silver on some of the headlights, but not on the chest or roof, plus some silver on the face, abdomen and stubby forearms. The eyes are stickers as far as I can tell, with dark blue irises segmented into eighths around black pupils...only the darkness lets them avoid the Scary Anime Eyes effect Bumblebee has. There's red strips on the top of the head and across the shoulders. He'd be helped a LOT with just the addition of silver paint on the chest headlights. (And no, I do not plan to get one to mod into my fanchar Channel.) He has the standard "arms bent 90 degrees" pose, and is a little hunched over because the roof doesn't let him straighten up all the way. Head turns, arms lift but are on springs so they pop back down, your standard Cyber Slammer articulation. Transformation: Same as Brawl. Vehicle Mode: As mentioned in the capsule, the H2 is already pretty chunky, so this is a somewhat subtler chibification. It's a little wider, proportionally speaking, and the wheels are bigger, but not outside the realm of offroader customization. 5" (13cm) long, 2.75" (7cm) tall and 3" (7.5cm) wide. In addition to the coloration mentioned in robot mode, he has metallic blue windows, the trademark red "bleep" zigzag along each side, and a regular Autobot symbol printed on each door. It's probably the simpified paint scheme that most marks this as a kiddie-down of Ratchet. Again, a little more silver paint would have really helped even within the context of the simplification, picking out the roof lights and the hubcaps of the rolling wheels and rooftop spare tire. And maybe some silver on the "H2" logos molded into the doors. Overall: It's okay. I mean, these are the 2007 version of the Throttlebots or Battle Chargers. Better technology for movement, but same sort of boring "all the same" transformations and articulation, and at $8 they're just too expensive for what amounts to Hot Wheels level collectibility (buy what's essentially the same toy over and over purely for the differing looks). Unless you have a small child who needs durable toys, there's really very little reason to get these unless you just have to buy every version of a character. Dave Van Domelen, does kinda like how his Brawl kitbash turned out.