Dave's Mega Transmetal II Rant: Cybershark II Blackarachnia II (review at end) FINALLY found this guy at the 15th store I checked this weekend...and the first one I checked on Sunday after deciding I'd give the hunt one more try. Very easy to spot in the store, a blue/green/yellow blazon against the sea of darker colors among the Scavengers. CAPSULE Nice-looking but very unstable beast mode. Complex transformation, but parts almost have to snap off to get it transformed. Fairly nice-looking robot mode, but floppy. Overall high annoyance factor drags this down to just "Mildly recommended." RANT MAXIMAL: CYBERSHARK Function: Tracker, Ocean Attack Transformation Difficulty: Advanced (6, mostly from fragility) Motto: "The ocean depths conceal all intentions." Detecting Predacon activity from over 20,000 fathoms below the ocean surface [which puts him nearly into the mantle, since the ocean gets no deeper than 5,000 fathoms in the Marianas Trench], Cybershark hunts his enemies at over 600 knots. From there, little room is left to escape. [His] Armor-piercing, jaw-mounted sonar tracer torpedoes have water-to-air capabilities. [His] Spin-drive tail boosts [his] speed and acts as a quad-bladed razor weapon in attack and robot modes. [He] Also deploys thruster jets for higher speed and limited low-level flight. A fierce warrior, Cybershark honed his skills while bounty hunting a rogue band of Cybertronian space pirates. Fully dedicated to the Maximal cause, he often follows his own methods[,] to the frustration of his commander, Depth Charge. Calculating and fearless, he gives the Predacons a good reason to stay out of the water. STR 7.9 INT 5.3 SPD 6.4 END 5.8 RNK 7 COUR 9.8 FRP 7.1 SKL 6.5 Avg 6.975 Well, the good news is that the mottos (quotes) are back for the first time since before Beast Wars started. I can stop making my own up now. The bad news is, someone really should have shown the techspec to an editor of some sort (not a spellchecker, an editor) before printing it. The cybertronian pirates mentioned may be the BWII Seacons, and I'm sure that's how fanfic writers will see it. Beast Mode: From tail to snout, this shark is about 9" (23cm) long, and a mixture of sea-like colors. Grey body with aquamarine painted along the back and light sea-green along the belly, with red-orange eyes and accents, and turquoise chrome parts. He's fused into a turning attack position, his tail bent to his right and the mouth open wide. Unfortunately, this mode is really unstable, and I'm not quite sure how I even managed to get it to stand up on its front fins right now. The lower jaw (formed from the robot's feet) simply won't stay together, the pegs aren't tight enough. Basically a shark statue in this mode. You can swivel the front fins, but that's about it. The missiles can be stored in the launcher in this mode, but if you try to store them all the way cocked, it messes with the robot leg positioning...leaving them only part-way in works better. Conversion to Attack Mode: Flip out two side panels, open up the mouth more and flip down the extra tines on the tail. Not much to it, nor is there much more you can do with it. This is no Terrorsaur. Oh, and if it's pushed in, push out the button that locks the tail in position. Attack Mode: Molded inside two of the side panels are rocket thrusters, a nice touch, and they can be aimed back or down. Opening the mouth reveals the missile launcher, but also reduces what little stability the toy has. The missiles fire less than a meter. The tail spinning mechanism can be used in this mode, but it would just make Cybershark swim very fast in circles thanks to the permanent bend of his tail. Conversion to Robot Mode: On paper, it looks pretty easy, with the toughest part being the Jetstorm-like assembly of the torso (which can also be a bear to snap apart when transforming back). However, there's four body panels snapped onto parts of the body which are almost impossible to position correctly during transformation without popping them off. Repeatedly. And I can't help but think that the worst offenders would be a lot easier to move if the tail wasn't bent. Finally, removing the missile launcher during transformation requires excessive force. Transformation is GREATLY simplified if you just give up and remove the flank panels (which become shoulderpads) before transforming, and snap them back on at the end. Robot Mode: A little over 7" (18cm) tall at the head-crest, Cybershark looks like he can hold his own with the Ultras. The green comes out more in this mode, and he has a light cyan spark crystal (about the color of the lighter TM Rhinox chrome). One nifty visual effect was obtained by gluing green plastic pieces over grey limb parts and painting dark blue on the grey parts that poke through. It makes it look like he's wearing organic armor of some kind, and enhances the undersea motif. Cybershark's joints are both a good point and a bad point. He has lots of joints, including two per ankle and double knees. But his right elbow is a ball joint. Not as restricted as Cheetor's, but replacing the hinge-plus- swivel mechanism with a single ball joint results, in this case, in Cybershark not being able to hold his gun properly. He holds it sideways. Also, several joints are loose and floppy, a serious problem in this top-heavy toy. I was able to tighten the bejeezus out of his loose left elbow so it just barely holds a pose, and a couple layers of clear coat nail polish on the ball joints of the hips keep him from falling over as much. But the ankle hinges are a bit loose as well, and those are pinned, not screwed or ball-jointed, so there's not much I can do to tighten them. Gimmicks: Cybershark's missile launcher fires two missiles, and in beast mode is mounted on a universal joint. Why, I do no know, because there seems to be only one position it will fit without making hte shark mode fall apart. And in robot mode it would result in shooting out from between Cybershark's legs, an image I doubt the designers intended. His other main gimmick is the spinning blade tail/arm. This is rotated with a gear wheel, and can be fixed in place by pushing a button in once the tail is in the correct shark position. Be careful with this...trying to work the gear while the tail is locked can strip the soft plastic gears and destroy the mechanism. Visually, this is reminiscent of Hellscream's (BWII remold of the original Cybershark) weapon arm, but it's functionally quite different. Finally, his front fins from shark mode can be removed and put in his right hand as a blade weapon, but their permanent curvature tends to make this look like he's using a broken weapon. Overall: I think that if a little more care had been put into the design tolerances of this toy (make sure joints are tight, that parts can move past each other without snapping off, that everything fits snugly in beast mode, etc), it could have been great. As it is, it's merely okay. On the other hand, he makes a better Hellscream than the actual Hellscream toy does, I think. }-> If a bit leggy. Dave Van Domelen, notes that even with his lopsided grin, Cybershark II's face is less scary than Cybershark I's..... Dave's Transmetal II Rant: Blackarachnia II (finally!) Toy karma finally turned in my favor today (spending several minutes explaining K'Nex to a mother and grandmother today probably helped) and I found Blackarachnia II at Target. Only one on the shelf, non-trivial to recognize among the Cybersharks around it, since the box is Maximal pattern. Didn't see it anywhere else today, however. CAPSULE Other than the unwieldy second set of pedipalps, the beast mode is pretty good and can stand on its legs (albeit not very stably). Transformation is challenging but not frustrating. Robot mode is okay, and neither gimmick really works well. Recommended if you can find it. $14.99 at Target. RANT MAXIMAL: Blackarachnia Function: Saboteur Beast Mode: Spider Quote: "I use deception for the purpose of good - I use it a lot." Stealing Megatron's mysterious new technology, Blackarachnia - black rose of the Maximals - succeeded in altering her Maximal protoform into a powerful Transmetal 2 structure. Despite her Predacon pride, she detests Megatron and fights for now with the Maximals. The definitive femme fatale, she despises life's pleasantries. Fires strong venom pincers that operate as paralyzing claw, retrieving enemies from up to 100 meters. Electro disruptor housed in rear segment casts illusions altering her physical placement and appearance for up to 5 minutes. In robot mode, she packs a deadly roundhouse kick. Generally concerned with her own self-preservation, Blackarachnia will at times astound with heroism, but cannot be fully trusted. STR 5.5 INT 9.3 SPD 7.2 END 6.8 RNK 5 COUR 7.6 FRP 6.1 SKL 8.5 Avg 7.0 Treat the entire techspec as if it were peppered with "[sic]" notations, as it reads like it was written in another language first and then translated using a computer program. Whoog. And whoever did write it must be a Ranma 1/2 fan, what with the "black rose" reference (Kodaichi Kuno, the black rose of whatever her high school is). One packaging note, there's actually a photo of the toy in robot mode on the sides of the box, not a repeat of the techspec art. This helps demonstrate what the toy looks like without the "bra." Beast Mode: 9" (23cm) long from spinnerettes to pedipalps, this spider is a mess of colors, mainly chrome silver, chrome red, purplish brown, purple, black and gold. There's touches of a few other colors. }-> Anatomically, it's not a bad spider, with one exception...the main pedipalps. Basically, her robot arms stick out the front even more badly than TM Tarantulas's feet do. They don't bend in any way that would let them work as pedipalps, and there seems to be a second set of pedipalps ("jaw legs" BTW) on the detachable mouthparts piece anyway. Oh, and there's a decent amount of asymmetry, noticeably on the eyes and the abdomen patterns. If you position the legs so that the "shoulder" joints have the open side facing down, you can get the toy to balance precariously on its own legs. I've been told you can bend the robot arms down to add extra support, but I found that they hurt more than helped, shifting the pivot point too far forward and resulting in the spider falling backwards. The spark crystal is visible on the abdomen piece in beast mode, mounted in a chromed wheel-like piece (more like the rim piece of an automobile wheel, actually). You have to pop a panel up in order to rotate the crystal and change her visible allegiance (she has both a blue-green Maximal symbol and purple Predacon symbol). Her mouthparts can be detached only if you pull down the robot arms a bit to let them unpeg. You pull them out on a string, which will retract them when you let go. The mouthparts themselves are hinged and sprung so that they can clamp onto smallish things, like arms or Basic-sized heads. Finally, there's a set of wheels on her abdomen which look like TMII Megadrac's wheel covers and spin (on some, anyway...given that there's some Tigerhawks with non-spinning wing wheels, there may be some BA's with fixed wheels as well). They do not even come close to touching the table in any configuration I could find, so we're probably not talking an abandoned vehicle mode this time. Missilebug Mode: Okay, while fiddling around I did find something resembling a third mode in a highly speculative sense, but it doesn't really use the wheels. To make it, first flip out the bottom of the abdomen, with the two red missiles attached to them. Then pull the spider leg units out so that they're perpendicular to the body. Fold the beast mode in half now, with the head now being on the underside of the folded bit. Now position the six front legs in a kneeling position, with "toes" pointed backwards and "knees" forwards. This gives you a nice stable base. The remaining two spider legs become arms or lasers or whatever. Okay, it's weird and lame, but hey. Transformation: Pretty fast once you've done it once and know where all the foldy bits are supposed to go, but satisfyingly challenging without the instructions the first time. It takes a bit of force to get the head and chest to snap down into place, and you have to remove the grapple line weapon or the back will not snap into place (although you can move it up a peg and leave it on the back). The robot arms tend to pop off a lot, since at least in my version, the elbow joints are a LOT stiffer than the shoulders, and moving the forearms into the right positions pops the shoulder joints. The instructions and some of the pictures indicate the spider legs are all to be left on the sides, but one picture and the fact there's a joint for them to do so suggest that the front six legs rotate up and can stick out over the shoulderpads. Robot Mode: 6" (15cm) tall at the head, 8" (20cm) if you count the missile pack on her back. Shoulderpads are 7" (17cm) wide. Surprisingly, considering how topheavy she is (I refer here to the shoulderpads, not her chest), she stands pretty stably, thanks to stiff leg joints all around and nicely positionable ankle joints. Again, profusely colorful, but it's balanced enough to work reasonably well. She has a red hourglass where her navel would be if she were human. Her head is weirdly asymmetrical and I don't much care for the way her "hair" goes, plus a somewhat shoddy paint job has paint bleeding from her "mask" to her mouth. The spin-kick gimmick is, well, vastly disappointing. To wind it up, you rotate her entire lower body around, ratcheting it. This means that while she does have articulation at the waist, it's one-way. Then, when you push down on the robot head, the legs just spin around together at the waist, the spin resulting in the legs spreading out. However, because of the spark crystal chunk hanging off behind her, her legs can't be raised more than about 30 degrees or they'll hit the chunk and stop. So, a high spin-kick only gets one "whack," not repeating fire. In theory, she can hold her grapple weapon in either hand. In practice, her claw hands are designed to pretty much make sure the weapon won't stay on its peg. She can't hold the weapon pointed forward unless you pull out the string a bit and thread it through the claws, and other claws tend to keep the peg from being fit all the way in. The string extends up to 9" (which isn't even 100 *scale* meters, for what it's worth) and does not retract with enough force to pull the figure up. It will, however, lift a Basic figure quite nicely, provided you can find a good place to attach the claw (Nightglider's best grabbing point is his tail). Okay, you've waited long enough, here it is...the bra. It's a chunk of purple plastic held on by a set of tabs at the top and a pair of glued pegs at the front. Because it was added on over an already in-proportion chest sculpt, it makes BA look a bit too chesty, not to mention losing the race downhill. Mine is glued on quite securely, but M Sipher recommends this trick (which I haven't tried yet). Take apart the chest assembly so you can get at the back of the chest. Then cut away the glue from the back, which will make the bra removable without leaving ugly stumps behind. The instructions mention a "defense mode" in which she drops her shoulderpads around her body as armor. But, as it was with TM Airazor, this pins the arms. Finally, if you want to keep her in robot mode but don't want to have to prop her up against the possibility of minor vibrations, her knees have double joints and her toes point...so she can be set in a good kneeling position. For sniping and such, of course. Overall: If there's one single thing I can point to that's wrong with this toy, it's probably that they tried to do a few too many new things, and most of them didn't quite work. If I were to not limit myself to one thing, I'd also add that the pedipals in beast mode bite and the toy is way too backpacky in robot mode. Dave Van Domelen, maybe gonna try to Dremel those glue bits off instead of disassembling the toy and using a knife....