Dave's Revenge of the Fallen Rant: Legends Wave 4 Autobot Wheelie (RC truck) Soundwave (satellite) Power Armor Optimus Prime (redeco, not reviewed) Bluesteel Sideswipe (redeco) Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/RotF/Legends4 Power Armor Optimus Prime is another redeco that adds black and silver bits to evoke the look of Prime with Jetfire pieces. Bluesteel Sideswipe is slightly bluish silver...I'll wait for a more interesting redeco, thanks. The new molds in this wave seem to be the result of drunken dares. As in, "I bet you can't take that design that barely worked as a Deluxe and make it work as a Legends!" "Yer on, boyo!" [Update May 4, 2010: Due to an accident with a sliding patio door and my Sideswipe, I found myself in need of a new one. I decided that as long as I was rebuying the mold, I might as well grab the redeco and add a quick review.] CAPSULES Autobot Wheelie: This bar bet was won, if barely. Good Micromaster- sized vehicle, interesting transformation and a robot mode that looks like Wheelie without being a total floppy mess. It does sacrifice a lot of articulation to manage that, though, and the vehicle mode shows too much robot junk. Recommended. $4.97 at Walmart. Soundwave: Well, the mold is a good effort, anyway. The satellite mode doesn't really look like Soundwave's official satellite mode, but it's definitely a satellite. The transformation is okay, and the robot mode decent. The paint job is pretty crappy, though...even assuming I got a bad one, there's stuff that should have been painted and (for cost reasons) wasn't. Mildly recommended, and mainly for people who want to try their hand at doing their own painting. $4.97 at Walmart. Bluesteel Sideswipe: Most of my problems with the original had to do with lack of paint in some places, a problem that this version corrects. Recommended. $4.97 at Walmart. RANTS Packaging: Same as previous waves. No NEST markings, although the first sightings of these were well before any NEST stuff hit shelves...stores were just reluctant to stock new Legends over the holidays, apparently. No bio notes, as usual. AUTOBOT: AUTOBOT WHEELIE Altmode: RC Truck Licensor: None Previous Name Use: RotF, Universe2 Previous Mold Use: None STR 2 INT 4 SPD 2 END 9 RNK 1 COUR 1 FRB 2 SKL 5 Avg 3.25 Packaging: 2 twist-ties hold the robot in place. Vehicle Mode: This is pretty close to being in-scale with Deluxe figures, maybe a factor of two off at most. Definitely too big for interacting in-scale with the Human Alliance human figures, though. From the front and sides it's a decent little RC monster truck 1.75" (4.5cm) long and 1.5" (4cm) wide, but from the top or back you can see all sorts of robot parts. The body is medium blue plastic, the wheels and struts underneath are medium gray. Ignoring the paint meant for robot mode, there's ick light brown on the windshields, silver on the brushguard and metallic light blue on the headlights. The front wheels are supposed to spin freely, but the rivet was mis-struck on the right front wheel of mine so it's misaligned and doesn't spin well. These are actually unrelated problems, though, since I was able to cut away a little blob of plastic (the rivets are inserted hot, this one melted a gob out that rubbed against the wheel) and get the wheel spinning freely. The rear wheels actually have a split construction, with the outer sections (not quite half the thickness) being a little larger in radius and spinning there, rather than at the base of the wheel. If it weren't for the bum front wheel on mine, I expect it'd roll decently. As an aside, this is almost the right size to feel at home with the old Micromaster Monster Truck Patrol or Off Road Patrol, I should dig mine out at some point. It's practically an homage to Mudslinger, the blue and orange mold-mate of Greasepit. Hmm, potential kitbash bait? (http://www.tfu.info/1989/Autobot/Mudslinger/mudslinger.htm) [Later note: I just realized, Mudslinger has the same sort of "rear wheels are split, front wheels roll in their entirety" thing as Wheelie.] Transformation: The robot arms are clipped together under the chassis, unpeg them and swing them out and then swing the rear wheels up and back. Then the entire front end unclips from the core chassis and swings down as legs (getting this clipped back in place for vehicle mode can be a little tricky). The cab top swings up to be the head. Going to robot mode is pretty easy, going to vehicle mode might require a peek at the instructions to figure out how to deal with the arms. It's a little tricky for adult- male-sized fingers to get the arms clipped together. Undocumented feature: the truck front end pieces that form the heels seem designed to rotate to give you a more solid contact with the tabletop, but this isn't in the instructions, nor were they rotated in-package. So, while this version can't change his faction symbol, he can still do a heel turn. Robot Mode: 3" (7.5cm) tall, I'd call him roughly to scale with 8" scale figures like the Marvel Famous Covers toys. A little too small for Barbies, too big for 6" action figures (not that many companies even sell that size anymore). Other than his cab core sticking out the back like a handle, he actually does a pretty good job of representing the movie character, especially when viewed from the front. He has wheelfeet made more stable by those turned heels and a couple of little pegs at the front. His head, torso and heels are blue plastic, while everything else (including his neck stalk) is gray. The face is actually a separate piece of plastic that's entirely covered in paint. I unscrewed it and took a knife to a part that's not visible when attached, and confirmed that it's blue plastic (even the threading is silver, so they must've painted it after all shaping was done). His face and the center of his torso are painted silver, with a silver line going down between the "armor skirt" pieces of his pelvis. His eyes are red and a red Autobot symbol is printed in the middle of his chest. There are hinges at the root and top of the neck, so the head can look up and down but it can't turn. No waist joint. The shoulders can bob up and down a little on transformation joints, but the only real articulation the arms have are ball joint elbows. The hips are universal joints and the heels are on swivel joints. Pretty mediocre articulation overall, but given the spindly character design there's not a lot they could have added without making it a floppy mess. Overall: A nice compact vehicle mode, fairly interesting transformation for the size class, and about as good a robot mode as you're going to get at 3" tall for Wheelie's character design, absent doing a miniature Robot Replica. A bit too much robot is visible in truck mode, though, and keep an eye out for manufacturing defects like the one I ran into. DECEPTICON: SOUNDWAVE Altmode: Satellite Licensor: None Previous Name Use: G1, G2, BW, MW, Cybertron, TF:A, RotF Previous Mold Use: None STR 4 INT 9 SPD 8 END 5 RNK 8 COUR 7 FRB 9 SKL 9 Avg 7.375 Packaging: One twist-tie holds the robot in place. Vehicle Mode: This isn't an attempt to reproduce the satellite mode of the Deluxe, it's closer to the usual Terran "barrel with panels" design. It looks more like the satellite that Soundwave takes over, in fact, than it does Soundwave. At the front of the barrel the robot legs and the backpack panel do a decent job of looking unified as...a tight beam antenna? An energy cannon? They don't really say, but the leg-panels can't spread out. The wings and the chest panel form a spread array of solar panels connected just aft of the midpoint of the barrel, although the unfolded chest really doesn't look like anything but an unfolded chest. The secondary head is molded onto the barrel ahead of the spread panel array. The rear of the barrel has an odd set of horns. 3.5" (9cm) long, with the maximum spread of the rear panels being about 4.25" (11cm). The main cylinder and the inner segment of the made-from-chest panel are black plastic, the rest of the toy is light gray plastic. The secondary head is all painted bright turquoise, so it looks less like a head and more like bling being worn by a satellite. There's identical mustard yellow details on the outer surfaces of the fore panels, and dark red hexagons (eyes?) on the wing panels in the back. Two of the three fore panels (the ones that become legs) have dark red paint on triangular bits just behind the yellow parts, but the one that doesn't become a leg lacks that paint (despite having the same molded detail). The other paints are for robot mode, and merely visible here rather than matching the scheme. The front panels can't spread, but they can clamp down as a claw of some sort. Part of his satellite skyjacking role, I suppose. There is not even an attempt to get an official third mode here, fortunately. Not that this stopped me from working out a fanmode, mind you, but it'd have been pretty insulting to pass that off as an official one, IMO. ;) Start in satellite mode, split the rear section apart and swing the halves down to where they should be in robot mode, but don't unfold the arms. Have the horns pointing down as landing gear, and so that the panels attached to the arms can be swept back as wings. Then fold the head-and-chest panel down partway to form the nose end. The result looks very vaugely like a space fighter...but it's not any worse than the Deluxe's official spaceship mode, to be honest. Yes, damning with very faint praise. Transformation: The rear chunk of the barrel splits apart into arms, which unfold and twist around in a fairly clever bit of engineering. The panel that's obviously the robot chest than folds over the space vacated by the arms. Two of the front panels turn into legs simply by folding the toes up, and the third swings up and clips to the back. If you only transform the arms, you get a sort of weird tripod hunchback mode. :) Robot Mode: 3" (7.5cm) tall and in a permanent ready crouch due to the fact he has no knee joints. If you lift up the solar panels (intended to hang along the upper arms like a cloak), the maximum span is 5.5" (13cm). This is one of those designs that really needs more paint to pull off, though, with the all-black arms making him look like a Warhammer mini that was primed black and then only partially painted. The chest could stand a few more colors as well. Heck, about the only parts that have enough paint to work at this scale are the legs and maybe the head. By "at this scale" I mean that I don't expect nearly as much detail in a Legend, but even those lowered expectations aren't met. The arms and torso core are black plastic, the rest is light gray. A medium-dark blue paint is applied to the front of his helmet crest, a band across his chest and the top and front of his thighs. The masking, at least on mine, was a bit sloppy and the paint sort of blurs at the edges. In addition to the mustard yellow on the shins from satellite mode, there's also mustard yellow on the border bits below the blue band on his chest. The masking on this is pretty indifferent too, and both blue and yellow appear to have been applied in too thin a coat. Dark red is found on the tops of his knees, the bottom of his sternum and on his visor slit. A little bit of his bright blue satellite head is visible through a gap in his abdomen armor. His face is silver, and a silver Decepticon symbol is printed on his pelvis. As a minimum touchup, I'd recommend some light gray and medium blue on the arms, and bright blue on the various parts that are clear plastic on the Deluxe. Oh, and paint the back of his helmet crest too. Overall: All things considered, it's a pretty good mold for a character who never really was designed to properly transform (he only had one mode in the movie, and sort of morphed around in variations of it). But it looks like it was painted by a beginner hobbyist. I suppose if you're a hobbyist yourself, you might want to get this purely as a repainting project, but I'm otherwise pretty lukewarm towards it. AUTOBOT: BLUESTEEL SIDESWIPE Altmode: Corvette Stingray Concept Licensor: GM Previous Name Use: None Previous Mold Use: RotF Function: Warrior Motto: "Is blue slimming?" STR 8 INT 7 SPD 8 END 6 RNK 5 COUR 7 FRB 3 SKL 9 Avg 6.625 Packaging: No twist ties, just held into the blister by the blister shape itself. Color Swaps: Gloss black plastic replaced by matte black, light gray replaced by a slightly pearlescent pale blue. Paint Apps: In car mode, the windshield is gunmetal, the taillights are dull red, and there's a silver airbrushing over the front and sides as if he just drove through a mist of silver spraypaint. It blends nicely into the pearly blue plastic, so from the right angle it looks like the whole thing is metalflake light blue and you're simply being hit with glare from one side. In robot mode, the faceplate is medium blue and the eyes are silver. The Autobot symbol has been moved down to the pelvis (so it's not visible in vehicle mode) and is a dark blue-gray. The hexagon shape on the belly is dark red, but the detail below it (which is metallic blue on the original) is blank. Most importantly, though, the molded wheels on the feet are painted matte black, so I won't need to do a touchup job on this one. :) Mold Changes: None that I noticed. Other Notes: While not as movie-accurate, and essentially just a "new suit" redeco, it generally looks better than the original. If you haven't gotten this mold yet, get this version instead of the original. In case anyone's curious, if you break the joints where the side window "wings" connect to the chest, they really can't be glued back together without sacrificing transformability. Overall: Decent mold that has been made significantly more presentable by a better paint job. Dave Van Domelen, did specifically get Stealth Bumblebee (wave 5) for repainting purposes, though.