Dave's Transformers Rant: Reveal the Shield Deluxe Wave 1 Turbo Tracks (sportscar) Special Ops Jazz (sportscar) Fallback (Brawn redeco) Mindset (Hailstorm redeco) Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/RotF/DeluxeR1 Reveal the Shield, a new "kinda sorta Movie-based" line, a point I will expound on a little more below. A redeco, a remold and two all-new molds kick off the new theme. http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/RotF/DeluxeN2 - Brawn mold http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/RotF/DeluxeH2 - Hailstorm mold CAPSULES Turbo Tracks: Looks good in both modes, but has stability issues in both modes as well. A good updating of the character, though. Recommended. $9.00 at Target. Special Ops Jazz: Pretty much everything I said about Tracks applies here too, although the details differ. Recommended. $9.00 at Target. Fallback: Original mold was Recommended, and this is just a straight redeco without a head change. So, unless you have a real affection for Outback (who this is meant to be an homage of), only bother with this one if you never managed to find Brawm. $9.00 at Target. Mindset: Original mold was recommended. This head-swap is a bit bland in vehicle mode, but the head's nice. Recommended if you don't have Hailstorm, otherwise get it cheap. $9.00 at Target. RANTS Time for a new sub-line, and the boundary between "movie line" and "Generations" is getting blurred almost beyond recognition by now. Hasbro has even admitted that the choice of which toy goes in what line is somewhat arbitrary at this point. But since the cardbacks still use Revenge of the Fallen styling, and some of the redecos are of movie characters. The gimmick for this round is the return of rubsigns. Those were first used in the mid-80s, with part of the advertising being that they let you know you had a genuine Transformer and not some cruddy knockoff (since the technology for rubsigns apparently was beyond most of the knockoff artists of the day, or something). They returned for a year or so in Beast Wars before they switched to Spark Crystals. And I suppose they'll come back ten years from now if Transformers are still being made. Unlike the G1 and BW rubsigns, which were square and had silver borders, these are cut out to the shape of the Autobot symbol outline, with a 1mm wide black border resulting around the actual symbol once you rub it. No silver parts. The advertising is playing up the angle of not knowing the allegiance of a character until the shield is revealed, but...yeah, I'm sure that red and blue semitractor *might* really be Starscream. Riiiight. Ironically, the first wave of "unknown allegiance" toys is comprised solely of Autobots. Packaging: New! Well, noticeably, if not hugely. The cardbacks are still "gold box" patterning, but the accent color of red (in the cracks of the armor, on the transformation difficulty, etc.) is replaced with blue. The card insert in the blister has a new "Reveal the Shield" logo on the front and left side, which is blue, black and silver with an Autobot symbol starting to be revealed above the words and a Decepticon one below. This blended symbol is also used, sans text, in place of the mechanical eyeball on the card front. The blister itself replaces the molded faction symbols in the upper right with a shield shape with a question mark inside of it. The names are now blue/black letters on a silver background, both on front and back. On the cardback is an inset showing how to use the rubsign, saying "Press to REVEAL AUTOBOT or DECEPTICON allegiance" with the word REVEAL in blue. The rubsign shown has the old-style square silver border rather than the final version of being trimmed to the shield shape. Instructions are just folded up inside, and there's no catalog or other paperwork. AUTOBOT: TURBO TRACKS Altmode: Sports Car Licensor: None Transformation Difficulty: Intermediate (3) Previous Name Use: None ("Tracks" alone has been used several times, as has "Autobot Tracks") Previous Mold Use: None Gimmick: Converting blaster Function: Warrior Motto: "A life-or-death struggle is no excuse for looking shabby." If there's one thing AUTOBOT TRACKS loves, it's himself. In his opinion, nothing is quite so fine as the glint of sunlight off his perfectly polished chrome, or the looks humans give his sweet paint job as he rolls by. He's no coward, but he avoids battle all the same, if only to protect his precious body from getting scuffed or, even worse, dented. STR 6 INT 4 SPD 7 END 5 RNK 3 COUR 6 FRB 6 SKL 3 Avg 5 Packaging: Two rattan strings hold the car in place, the 3mm clip system shoulder rockets are held in by a "lid" blisterlet piece. A double-wrapped rubber band around the middle of the car keeps the doors from flopping open. Not that mine seemed to need any help, being pretty solidly pegged together in the package. Vehicle Mode: There's bits and pieces of several high end sports cars in here, but not enough of any one of them to really call it a single-model homage. And while it's "blue with flames on the hood" in broad strokes, the hood deco is a more modern set of intertwined flames that's almost like a tribal tattoo pattern. The rear end has four odd 5mm peg holes, two on the taillights and two flanking the exhaust pipes. Well, almost 5mm. They're just a bit too narrow to hold any 5mm pegs, and don't seem to be involved in any part of transformation. Perhaps they get used in attaching the rear of the Wheeljack retool I've heard is coming? 5.25" (13cm) long, dominated by medium blue with gold and red flames on the hood. The roof/windshield chunk is made of smoky clear plastic, the wheels are black plastic, and the missiles stuck under the doors are white with light gray roots. Otherwise, the car is all medium blue plastic. The rubsign is on the roof, although on mine it's off-center and askew...you need a really sharp knife and a steady hand to pry it off without damaging the paint underneath it. The roof is painted blue, a bit more matte than the plastic but otherwise a good match. The hood flames are a slightly washed out gold and a faintly metallic red. That red is also used on the taillights. The headlights and hubcaps are silver, the grille is dark gunmetal, and the windows on the rear section are gloss black. By default, the missiles clip underneath the doors. While they have slots in the underside for the fins to fit, it's all loose and it take very little to swing the missiles out to the sides. They cannot be stored on their robot mode clips, that real estate gets way too crowded in vehicle mode. Unfortunately, you can't just leave them off entirely, as there's ugly gaps in the bottoms of the doors when you remove them. Stability is...iffy. I really can't get it back together as well as I'd like, and no matter what I do there's a seam or three gaping wide on the roof or around the doors. The roof canopy is hinged and can fold up, but not without seriously deranging the other panel connections. Flying Car Mode: A bit more involved than the G1 version, in part because you have to mess around with the robot arms and to move to the rear end to unfold everything. Rather than just have wings fold out from the underside, the doors turn into the wings, with wingtips folding out from the ends. A panel just ahead of the rear of the car can flip over to reveal pegs that hold the missiles if you don't want them on the wings (a rather puny callback to the big backpack of G1 Tracks's flying car). The wings can't be made level with the bottom of the car, extending below the wheels by a good half centimeter or so. Since they're behind the center of mass, the car noses forward when you set it down in this mode. The exact wingspan depends on how you position the wings and whether you pull their roots out or leave them in (they slide in for car mode and out for robot mode), but the maximum wingspan possible is 6.25" (16cm). The wing roots and wingtips are white plastic, while the middles of the wings are formed from the blue plastic doors. The leading edges of the wingtips are painted metallic red. Still, while simpler, the G1 version looked a bit better, since it didn't open up the sides of the car. Of course, having it in this mode clears up the seam problem I have in vehicle mode, but it does so by giving up entirely on the doors being part of the body shell. Transformation: Not a good sign when all I do is pop back the rear of the car to let me open the doors, and then I can't get it back into place. The trick is that you have to get the robot arms pegged onto tabs on the inside of the rear shell before trying to fold it down, you can't fold down the arms and then expect the back to snap in place over it. Yes, the instructions show this, but who trusts the official instructions anymore? The torso does an automorph "I love being a turtle" deal when you pull the roof up. The head pops up and the shoulders spread out. The legs feel fragile when transforming, which worries me. Especially when trying to get the car mode back together, since there's a bunch of thin-feeling panels that need to all go in the right places. The main pistol stores inside the rear end, and has to be placed before you get too far in transforming that part back to car mode. You have to almost completely undo the back end to put the gun in or take it out. As a final note, you do almost need the instructions in a few places, or at least careful reference to the package photos, because this mold was designed like the Sunstreaker/Sideswipe one. It can be transformed a couple of different ways, with Tracks picking one set of options and the retool Wheeljack picking another set. You can't exactly use Wheeljack's set here, though, I expect it'll involve some retooling of the knees to let them bend the other way. You can, however, choose to attach Tracks's pistol as Wheeljack's shoulder launcher (as Zobovor suggests, the missiles might act as wrenches or something for Wheeljack, since they can be held in the figure's hands with the 3mm clips on top...or they can go in their vehicle mode clips as shoulder spines). Robot Mode: While some have called him fat, this is definitely a svelter version of the G1 robot mode, while remaining remarkably faithful to the original toy. Really, the biggest departure from the original is that the thighs are gray rather than black. Everything else is a slimming down of original elements, like reducing the backpack or moving the wings from the shoulders to independent joints. Oh, and since the details are all painted rather than done as stickers, they're a bit more restrained. Still, this isn't like the Alternators version, where you look at it and think, "Okay, I can more or less see how this is Tracks beyond just the head." It's pretty clearly the original character in a new tooling. 5" (13cm) tall at the head, 5.5" (14cm) at the tops of the wingtips or the shoulder missiles. It's predominantly medium blue, but with significant amounts of white, gray and black added in, plus red paint accents. Several pieces not in the car shell are blue plastic: the shoulder roots that push outward during the automorph, toes, pelvis front and the outer shell of the torso. The boot fronts are also blue plastic, but dipped in gunmetal paint, I only know the true plastic color because of a painting flaw on mine. A light silvery gray plastic is in the inside of the torso, the shoulder joints, the elbow joints, the knee joints, the ankle joints, the sliders for boot extension and the 3mm clips. A darker shiny gray plastic is on the top of the backpack, the butt, the thighs, the hip joints, and the piece the roof is connected to. White plastic is found on the shoulder missiles, the barrel of the pistol, the wingtips, the upper arms, the head, several struts and joints inside the backpack area, and on a clip-slot in the right boot. The lightpiping is the same color as the car windows, but the eyes are painted over in blue. The forearms and hands are the same black as the wheels. Most of the paint, area-wise, is used to compensate for plastic color issues, like the roof/chest being mostly blue or the shins being gunmetal. The slightly metallic red paint from the hood flames is used on the face, some forearm details and horizontal stripes on the boots. A metallic yellow-green is used on the fronts of the torso side extensions, and also on the nearly-covered pelvis front. The windshield blocks most of the pelvis and is dark enough to make painted details there a bit pointless. The missile-shaped tip of the pistol is painted the same silver as the hubcaps. As mentioned earlier, the eyes are painted blue, and it's not really a translucent blue, so you just get a little glow around the edges. Articulation is very good. The head is on a restricted ball joint that's really just a swivel with a little wiggle room, and the waist is a swivel joint (necessary for transformation, but a little blocked by the chest). The shoulders are ball joints on the end of struts that can be raised on transformation hinges to increase range of motion, there's upper arm and wrist swivels and double-hinge elbows. The hands are posed partly open, but have 5mm peg molding inside them to firmly gip weapons. Ball joint hips, swivels just above the hinge knees. The knees only have about a 45 degree range of motion, though. The ankles are pretty complicated. There's a hinge at the top that's pinned, and if yours is loose like on my copy, the usual tricks don't work very well to tighten it. The heel and toe pieces are each on ball joints (which can be stiffened with glue if need be) and despite a fair amount of restriction still let you pose the feet through a good range. The wings are on hinges that let you tweak them up and down somewhat, although their roots are fixed in place by the backpack. The shoulder missiles have hinges where their clips attach, and the white missile part swivels where it attaches to the gray base. The pistol folds up for storage, plus its 3mm clip is also on a hinge. Customizing Suggestions: Reprolabels has a sticker set out, but frankly I think the modern tattoo flames better suit an update anyway. Tracks would find 80s-style flames to be passe, I expect. :) The tailpipes and rear view mirrors could stand to be chromed, and dyeing the thighs black would make the toy a bit more G1-accurate without requiring a lot of work (assuming you have a dye setup already). The only other change I'd recomment would be to do something about the lightpiping. Either replace the eye paint with something more translucent, or give up on it and paint the back white while giving the eyes a brighter blue paint. Right now they just look black under room lighting. Overall: The torso automorph is a bit loose, as are the ankles, but otherwise it's a good robot mode. The car mode suffers from stability issues, which may be endemic or may just be Quality Control Roulette, but in any case the design clearly failed to compensate for QCR. But it's still a very good updating of a classic character. AUTOBOT: SPECIAL OPS JAZZ Altmode: Street Rally car Licensor: None Transformation Difficulty: Previous Name Use: None ("Jazz" alone or with other epithets has been used plenty of times, of course) Previous Mold Use: None Gimmick: Speakers deploy Function: Xenoanthropologist Motto: "Have some culture shock!" AUTOBOT JAZZ falls in love with every world he visits. The tiniest hint of alien culture is enough to fascinate him for hours. His ability to immerse himself in a new civilization makes him an ideal undercover agent - he blends in with the environment, absorbing every bit of data he can, and looks for the anomaly that tells him DECEPTICONS are present. STR 6 INT 6 SPD 9 END 7 RNK 8 COUR 9 FRB 6 SKL 5 Avg 7 As with many Trademark Two-step names, "Special Ops Jazz" isn't even used in the bio note, he's just the fallback "Autobot Jazz". But not the Autobot Jazz Fallback. Packaging: Two rattan strings hold the car into the blister, while the pistol is held in by just the blister shape. A secondary shell bit between the car and the outer blister protects it. The gun is packaged in deployed mode (it transforms for storage under the front grille). Vehicle Mode: While it's another frankencar, the Porsche influences are a lot more obvious here than any of the influences in Tracks. The spoiler is rather higher up than usual, connected to the top of the (unpainted) rear windows, but otherwise all the classic Jazz elements are there. 5" (13cm) long, white with red and blue stripes and clear blue windows. Most of the car shell is a slightly milky-translucent white plastic. The wheels are black plastic. The roof/windshield piece, the side windows, the headlights and foglamps are clear blue plastic. The rubsign is in the middle of the roof. The roof is painted white, as are the A and B posts around the windows. The side mirrors are painted gloss black, and there's a black strip along the top of the windshield. A darkish blue wide stripe with a bright red thin stripe down the middle runs along the hood and roof, with the red stripe interrupted by a negative-space 4 on the hood. A similar red and blue stripe (but narrower) runs along the bottoms of the doors and up over the rear fenders. The bottom edge of the airdam is bright red. There's black 4's printed on the doors. A LOT of parts that need paint lack it, see the customizing suggestions below. The doors can open up and let you unfold speakers on hinged bits of the windows, for the sound and light show G1 Jazz was known to use. The doors do peg closed, but they're finicky and may not stay closed if you don't have everything lined up just right. The speakers are black plastic on white struts, with silver paint on the woofer and tweeter cones. They're attached to the windows by standard 3mm clips, so they can be removed and given to other toys for parties and other events. While probably not intentional, a slot on the inner side of the speaker settles around the side mirror nicely for stability. It's easier to get the doors to stay closed when the speakers are deployed, since it's a pretty tight fit inside the car for them. Ground clearance is nearly zero, as the robot pelvis juts down below the level of the rest of the underbody kibble. The abdomen is almost as low, though, as are the robot arms, so just filing down the pelvis (ow) won't really improve clearance much. Transformation: At first this seems both fairly simple and a nod to the G1 transformation. Open the doors, pull the rear back to make legs and...oh dear. The boots unfold in a fairly involved way, and you have to do the steps more or less in the right order or things get stuck in weird places. You also have to be a little careful getting the arms clear so the torso can automorph (head is geared to come up as the chest comes down) or parts can pop off. Officially, the windshield/roof piece goes up as high on the back as the hinge will let it go, but this blocks the waist motion a bit. Best to leave it loose somewhere in the middle. Also, the instructions show the speakers hanging out in front of the door-wings, but I think it looks better if you have the windows in "closed" mode with the speakers poking up behind them. Wow, getting it back to car mode is a puzzle. The front end isn't TOO bad, although you have to make sure both shoulders come together at the same time so that the hood is connected properly. But while the legs just sort of pull open for robot mode, getting the feet in the right place for car mode is tricky if you didn't pay really good attention where everything started. Robot Mode: He's scowling, as if angry over being jobbed in the first movie. "If y'gonna keep makin' toys of me, sucka, you could at LEAST bring me back t'life on-screen!" Other than his sour mood, it's definitely G1 Jazz with better engineering. His fold-up gun does look pretty close to the original's as well. The feet are molded to stand flat when spread apart an inch and a half or so. Most of the sticker-details from G1's abdomen and waist are molded into the toy, but not painted. 5.5" (14cm) tall at the head, the speakers can jut up above that if you so desire. While lacking the chrome of G1 Jazz, it captures the black/white/ silver color scheme pretty well. The arms, head, pelvis, hips, upper shins and most of the gun are made of black plastic. The gun's central hinge, the collar area and thighs are white plastic. The feet, lower shin front and abdomen/torso core are silvery light gray plastic. The lightpiping is medium blue. There's not a lot of robot-specific paint. The face is silver, the forearms are dipped in white. That's it, really. The head is on a ball joint with a good range of motion, and the waist turns with the earlier mentioned issue with the roof on the back. The shoulders are ball joints on swiveled wheel chunks that allow a but more lift-to-the-sides range, but be careful lest you pop the arm right off. There's swivels above the elbows and swivel wrists. The elbows are double joints, but the central piece is short enough that the arms can't quite bend completely flat (Tracks, on the other hand, can bend his arms double). Like Tracks, the hands are molded open but with about 3/4 of a peg hole inside the palm. Universal joint hips, thigh swivels, double hinge knees. The big boot backs keep the knees from bending very far, though. Hinge ankles, with the heel spurs independent of the main feet. There's no 3mm rods other than the ones on the windows, and his pistol has no 3mm clip, so he's not a very enthusiastic participant in the 3mm peg program. [Later correction: there's some rods on his gun, so you can clip the speakers to it, or make a bigger gun out of other guns.] Customizing Suggestions: Vehicle mode needs a lot of work. Paint the rear windows blue, paint the taillights bright red, chrome the front grille, tailpipes and side mirrors. Hub chroming might be called for too. And these are just the simple broad stroke changes, ignoring small details that could be added too. If you want to get really fancy, G1 Jazz jas lighter blue pinstripes flanking the red stripe down the middle, for that I'd recommend actually getting model car pinstripe stickers rather than trying to paint 'em. Robot mode could stand to have the molded details on the abdomen and hips painted to match the G1 stickers, although I'd pass on chroming the abdomen and feet. Both because it might be a bit too much chrome, and also because the feet do a lot of scraping around in transformation. Many have complained about loose torsos in robot mode, and I've seen a few tricks for better locking things down, but they all tend to restrict motion in some way. Gumming up some of the automorph joints might be the best bet, because I don't really see a way to add pegs without adversely affecting the vehicle mode's looks. Overall: Vehicle mode holds together a bit better than Tracks's does, but the robot mode does have that nagging chest looseness problem. It also suffers from an apparent paint application cutback, missing things like rear windows or hubcaps due to budget issues. Both of these problems give it a somewhat unfinished feeling, if not as bad as the Republic Attack Cruiser in that regard. On the balance, though, worth getting. AUTOBOT: FALLBACK Altmode: 4x4 Truck Licensor: None Transformation Difficulty: Previous Name Use: No mass market Previous Mold Use: RotF Brawn Gimmick: Rifle mounts on truck or robot Function: Shock Trooper Motto: "It's who I am, not what I do." FALLBACK has never been particularly interested in following the rules. The fastest way between two points, after all, is a straight line. Given a destination, FALLBACK will gladly drive straight to it, smashing through or knocking over anything that gets in his way. STR 6 INT 4 SPD 6 END 7 RNK 4 COUR 9 FRB 6 SKL 3 Avg 5.625 Fallback is what happens when you really want to do an homage to a G1 character but the trademark has since been so thoroughly sewn up by someone else that you can't even get away with putting "AUTOBOT" in front of it. In this case, it's an homage to Outback, but between the Subaru Outback and reports that Outback Steakhouse grabbed a lot of trademark space for merchandising, the name was simply not available. The BotCon 2005 exclusives set the precedent for naming an Outback homage "Fallback" though, and it looks like Hasbro has decided to run with it. Thing is, it's not exactly a sense-making name given the character's bio and techspecs. He doesn't fall back. Ever. Maybe it's meant to be ironic. Packaging: Two rattan strings hold the truck mode into the blister. A rubber band criss-crosses the hood to keep it all together. Color Swaps: The clear plastic is now clear colorless, which stands out a bit more on the pistols than the smoky clear Brawn has. Metallic light gray becomes black, dark brown becomes a sort of cream color. The black of the main cannon, the lower shins and the heels stays black, the rest of the black becomes a dark brown that's a little lighter than Brawn's dark brown. The green of the torso and calves becomes a sort of burnt orange-red. The green of the thighs, knees, toes (I think, they're totally painted over), pistols, roof lights, hands, forearm interior and door struts becomes black. The rest of the green plastic turns cream. Yeah, complex swaps. Paint Apps: The headlights, roof lights and grille are painted silver. The door vents and the snorkle thing on the roof are gunmetal. The rear side window bars are painted black, and the turn signals are painted metallic burnt orange. In robot mode, the toes are entirely painted over in burnt orange-red, a pretty good match to the plastic color. The face and centerline of the chest are painted gunmetal, with orange "windows" in the abdomen. Mold Changes: None that I noticed, no head swap. At least when G1 Brawn got redone as G1 Outback, there were mold changes. Other Notes: You know, folding up the doors in vehicle mode results in wings about as convincing as Turbo Tracks's. The rubsign is on the driver's side of the hood, and ends up on the right kneecap in robot mode. Overall: It's a good mold, but it's just a straight redeco without even a new head. If you could never find Brawn, definitely pick this one up. Otherwise, I suppose it depends on your attachment to Outback as a character, and how cheaply you can find this. AUTOBOT: MINDSET Altmode: Missile Carrier Licensor: None Transformation Difficulty: Intermediate (3) Previous Name Use: None (G2 comics) Previous Mold Use: RotF Hailstorm Gimmick: 8 firing missiles Function: Area Denial Artillery Motto: "I'm agin' it." Change does not sit easily with MINDSET. He likes things the way they are, and it is the weight of tradition that drives his opposition to the DECEPTICONS. They upset the balance of things, an offense for which he can never forgive them. The only alteration with which MINDSET is comfortable at all is that wrought on the landscape by one of his missile barrages. STR 8 INT 6 SPD 3 END 9 RNK 7 COUR 5 FRB 8 SKL 6 Avg 6.5 Mindset is an odd sort of homage. He was a Decepticon in the G2 comics, given just enough characterization that his death was supposed to have an impact. Supposedly a descendant of Onslaught via the budding process, although there's all sorts of continuity holes in that theory. But I suppose that since Hailstorm (who looks more like the comics Mindset anyway) was already a Decepticon, they had to make the redeco an Autobot. http://tfwiki.net/wiki/Mindset has about all there is to know about the original G2 Mindset. Packaging: Two rattan strings hold the vehicle mode into the package, another one secures two missiles. The other six missiles are loaded. Color Swaps: Light gray becomes dark gunmetal, most green becomes a sort of light desaturated Copenhagen Blue, gold becomes black, black stays black, the missiles are very dark gray. The green of the missile box becomes black. Paint Apps: The window borders and the engine chunk in the center front are painted gloss black. The light on top of the cab is painted red. The tread drive wheels are painted silver. And that's it for vehicle mode. The forearms are dipped in gunmetal and have a few of the joint details painted gold. The tops of the feet are painted gloss black. The face is silver with bright blue eyes. The faux grille on the chest is painted gunmetal, and there's gold in the techy fissures of the abdomen and on the mini missile launchers on the shoulders. The bits that are gold on Hailstorm's chest are red here. Mold Changes: He has a new head, which reportedly wasn't meant to be an homage to anything, it's just a design doodle that looked good enough to use somewhere. The didn't do anything about the somewhat loose front end in vehicle mode. Other Notes: The rubsign is on the left top side of the missile box. Overall: It's kinda bland in vehicle mode, although I suppose that fits the character's personality. It's a pretty good mold, but there's not a lot of reason to own both versions of it, unless you find your second one in deep discount. Dave Van Domelen, expects someone has already used "reveal the shield" as some sort of innuendo-laden euphemism in Transformers fanfic.