Dave's RiD Rant: Wal-Mart Landfill

     http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Japan/BuildKing is my review of the
original Build King set.  This new set is a Wal-Mart exclusive whipped up for
Black Friday (day after Thanksgiving) 2003, available for $15 on Friday
morning and reportedly $20 after that, as long as supplies last.  Given the
full endcap of these I saw, supplies should last a while.

CAPSULE

     Landfill Set: Good original molds (gave it a Recommended as Build King)
with new unified color scheme.  Instructions are thorough but hard to follow,
plastic quality is pretty variable from what I've heard, but even at the
post-doorbuster price it's a good deal if you don't have the mold already.
Recommended.  $20 at Wal-Mart

RANT

     As always with recolors, I'm really only going to cover the
differences.  Of course, I never bought the "original" RiD versions, so I'm
comparing to the Build Team from Car Robots...two iterations of the mold
ago.  

     Packaging: These are packaged as a set, all in vehicle modes, in a box
that is 50cm (19.4") long, 13cm (5") tall and 15cm (6") deep.  Yeah, going
metric first this time, since the half meter length was pretty clearly
intended as the prime measurement.  }->  The front and top of the box have
cut-out area with plastic window.  
     On the front, the combined mode art is in the lower right corner, and a
sticker with a picture of Landfill mode is on the window plastic.  While it
is a "Multi-Pack" in English, it's a Quatuor in French and "Cuadruple" in
Spanish.  I like Quatuor as a name for a combiner.  Oh, and yes, this is a
Robots In Disguise toy, although the background colors are first yeart
Armada. 
     The back shows photos of all four toys in robot modes and then the
"Grimlock Mode" Landfill.  The bottom has a little more room, so both robot
and vehicle modes are shown for the individual robots, plus Landfill (still
in Grimlock-as-arms mode).  
     The right side has a different drawing of Landfill, while the left panel
has a "clip and save" ID card in the Armada style.
     All the toys are secured to an Armada-first-year backgrounded card in
vehicle modes, using 2-5 twist-ties each and a bewildering array of rubber
bands (at least 22, and I think I lost a few).

     Instructions: A big fold-out sheet printed on both sides.  One side is
for individual vehicle-to-robot-and-back transformations, the other is for
Landfill component modes.  But, in cramming everything into two (admittely
fairly large) sheets, a lot of clarity is lost.  The most glaring problem
involves transforming Grimlock into arms-mode (which essentially uses the
treads and about 10% of the remaining toy, with the rest of the instructions
being about getting the rest of the toy out of the way).

     Color Scheme: The main color of each toy is yellow, with black as the
main secondary and then light gray as a tertiary color used mostly in joints
and hidden bits.  There's a few bits, mostly on Grimlock (the power shovel),
that were apparently part of a different color's mold and then painted a
yellow that doesn't QUITE match.  There's also black paint in a few places.
Aside from the Autobot symbols in red and white, the only color of paint
other than yellow or black that stands out is silver.  Lots of silver.  I
think it looks like silver camo patterning, but others think it's intended to
look like paint wear showing the metal underneath.  It's not really
convincing as either, really.  Grimlock's tread units also have a dark
purple/brown paint on them that doesn't show up well under incandescent
light.  There's also some of this purple/brown as "mudstreaks" on the backs
of the vehicles, but there's not as much dirt paint as on the first RiD
Landfill toys.  

     Plastic Quality: Okay, as mentioned before, I'm comparing to Build King,
not the original Landfill, so mold degradation may enter into things here.
There's a lot of joints that are stiffer than they need to be, right next to
other joints that pop out really easily, a nasty combo.  The front of Wedge's
chest (that covers Landfill's head) comes out really easily on mine, despite
being slathered with so much black paint you'd think it'd be permanently
paintlocked on.  Hightower's hook is likewise gummed up with black paint.
All in all, things don't hold together very well when compared to Build King,
and the toy has a somewhat cheap feel to it.

     Overall: Well, the previous version was $40 in total, and I think I
dropped $50 on Build King...so if you consider this a really good knockoff at
$20, it's worth it for that.  If I hadn't gotten it for $15, I probably would
have given it a pass.

     Dave Van Domelen, not sure he shoulda even taken it out of the box.