Dave's Revenge of the Fallen Rant: Scout Wave 1 Rollbar (Delivery Van, 89169) Dead End (Sports Car, 89170) Knock Out (Motorcycle, 89171) Dirt Boss (Forklift, 89172) Depthcharge (Stealth Boat, 89174) Ransack (Biplane, 91396) Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/RotF/Scout1 As the included assortment numbers above indicate, there's some last minute scrambling going on in this wave, but it does seem to have been an intended single wave rather than two waves shipping at the same time. Unlike the first movie, we're getting an actual Scout assortment, rather than Target exclusive redecos and repurposed Real Gears (although I hope we get RGR anyway). These are all non-movie characters, although Knock Out got into the prequel novel, and several of the vehicle modes will no doubt be seen in the movie (i.e. a biplane hanging in the Smithsonian) much like the non-movie Deluxes last time were based on vehicles seen in the first movie. Additionally, Ransack makes a brief appearance in the official novelization, but he's not named, and it may be a scene that was never intended to be in the actual movie. Won't know until the movie actually comes out. I will occasionally refer to a couple of basic modification tricks below. The nailpolish trick uses nailpolish clear topcoat on the balls and/or sockets of ball and socket joints to tighten them up, or inside hinges to fill in gaps and increase friction. The superglue trick puts superglue into a joint, and then you work the joint back and forth until the glue dries. Both tricks seek to tighten loose joints. One final note before I start: it seems like they used a much more brittle plastic in most of these than the designs would have worked best with. This leads to joints being too tight or too loose in several cases, and feeling like they'll break, even if they don't come close to breakage. CAPSULES Rollbar: A bit frumpy in both modes, and apparently planned for slightly different plastic types, but generally good and containing a nice easter egg. Mildly recommended, but keep an eye out for a recolor. $8.44 at Walmart. Dead End: Nice and creepy robot mode, pretty involved transformation for a Scout, okay vehicle mode. Recommended. $8.44 at Walmart. Knock Out: Not a toy I'd give to a kid, it needs a fair amount of work to reach its potential. But if you're willing to do a little basic work with superglue or nail polish topcoat to fix some of the joint looseness, it's a good design. Recommended with that proviso. $8.44 at Walmart. Dirt Boss: Good vehicle mode, decent if somewhat fiddly transformation, okay robot mode. And it's a forklift, which makes me like it more than I would otherwise. Recommended if you're a forklift fan, otherwise mildly recommended. $8.44 at Walmart. Depthcharge: Best of the set. Solid vehicle mode, good transformation, very articulated robot mode, dynamic design. Strongly recommended. $8.44 at Walmart. Ransack: The Kaiser's Nazgul. Probably the coolest design of the lot, but much more vulnerable to the poor quality control that marks pretty much all recent Transformers, which knocks him down to merely recommended unless you're willing to do some work bringing him up to spec in the event you get a bad one (in which case, strongly recommended). $8.44 at Walmart. RANTS Mech Alive: This is the new line-wide gimmick, much like Automorph, but it's not being applied to the Scouts. Packaging: I mentioned this in the Robot Heroes review, but since that's in a different directory with the other kiddie stuff, I'll repeat it here. :) The front of the cardback has a new trade dress. The top 2/5 or so has a general techy pattern merged with the multi-eyed face of The Fallen in shades of red. The corroded-metal Transformers logo with a small "Revenge of the Fallen" subtitle is just above the blister. The upper right has the relevant faction logo in corroded metal, with the corner cut to fit. This makes it easier to pick out factions on the rack, at least. They all have Level 2 Quick Conversion in the upper left. The lower part of the cardfront is made to look like a section of hieroglyphics on a tomb wall with a light shining strongly on the middle. But rather than Egyptian hieroglyphs, there's ancient Cybertronian interspersed with Autobot and Decepticon symbols. The blister itself has triangular cut-outs on the top halves of the sides, and the four corners are truncated. The right side as you look at it has the correct faction logo molded in it. The left side has some Cybertronian glyph molded over the printed version of the glyph on the card insert. At least at my Walmart, the glue holding the blisters on is really weak and there's no tape, about half of them were falling apart on the rack. So expect to have to check for swapping around. The card insert on the blister has a glyph on the left side along with "SCOUT CLASS", and the usual legalese on the bottom. The front has a photo of the vehicle mode, plus name, faction symbol and faction. Oh, and the glyph is the same for all Scouts, but it seems to be size-class-specific, with the Deluxes and Voyagers I bought each having their own glyph. All figures are packaged in robot mode, with folded up instructions sheets under them. The instructions are grayscale with either red or purple highlight colors as appropriate for the faction. Most of the instructions are single-sided, but Depthcharge gets double-sided to make room for his Battle Mode (Ransack is the only other one with a Battle Mode, and while single-sided, his instructions are larger than anyone else's as a result). The cardbacks have no cosells. The faction symbol is in the upper left, matching the cut-out position of the front symbol. The upper right has the Scout class glyph with Transformers.com printed over it, and then the name and faction below that. Below these is the bio note, and then the techspec numbers are on the right middle in simple bars with angled tips and a fade from yellow to red inside, with black numbers at the right edge of the bar. There's no motto or function, so I'll be making them up myself. The right bottom has a photo of the vehicle mode, and the left side a photo of robot mode. More legalese along the bottom, but none of these vehicle modes are licensed, so no licensor info. Note, while they're packaged in robot mode, I'll start off the reviews with vehicle mode as per my usual pattern. AUTOBOT: ROLLBAR Altmode: Delivery Van Licensor: None Previous Name Use: G1, Alternators, Rid, Universe, Armada, Energon Previous Mold Use: None Function: Tactical Support Motto: "You do things by the book because the book records what worked!" ROLLBAR is happiest when he's following orders. He is uncomfortable with improvisation, and terrified of being put into a leadership position. Despite that, he is a highly skilled navigator, and has a keen mind for tactics, making him an invaluable asset to his commanders. He is extremely strong and tough, and though he prefers not to fight, he can be a challenge to DECEPTICONS many times his size. STR 9 INT 7 SPD 5 END 9 RNK 5 COUR 6 FRB 6 SKL 6 Avg 6.625 I smell lawyercon in this naming. The name makes absolutely no sense, but apparently the lawyers wanted to keep the name in circulation. Although "Rollbar" and "Red Bull" do have some similarities in sound. :) Twist-ties: Four. Additionally, the forearms are rubber-banded to the van shell "wings". Vehicle Mode: Your basic ten-wheeler delivery van, although the toy only has six wheels (normally four per axle in back on the real thing). It's rather generic, so I couldn't tell you an actual model, but it's probably about 1:72 scale (aka 25mm scale). 3.75" (9.5cm) long, which would make it around 20 feet (around 7m) long at scale. The width is almost exactly the same as Hot Wheels cars. The color scheme is as close as they could get to Red Bull without being sued. Medium gray and a darkish "Optimus Prime" blue with a red and yellow product logo on each side. The roof, top sides and cab are made of medium slightly metallic gray plastic. The back bottom chunk and the brushguard are dark blue plastic. The wheels are black, and some robot kibble bits and the side bottom panels are "AllSpark Blue" plastic. Dark blue paint with a so-so match to the plastic is used to create a diagonal division between front and back, sloping back and up. This paint and a gunmetal paint are used on the bright blue side panels to conceal them a bit. The headlights and roof lights are canary yellow, the windows of the cab are black. The rear windows are unpainted, and a silver Autobot logo is printed on the hood. Near the top of each side, at the boundary between blue and gray, is a logo that combines a yellow five-pointed star with a red bull's head (the real Red Bull logo is two red bulls charging each other in a yellow border, and the field is blue and silver quartered at an angle rather than just divided in two a bend). When transformed correctly, it's very stable and rolls well on its hard plastic wheels. The metal pins that attach the wheels aren't all driven in correctly, though, and the wheels aren't all along the same track. This increases friction. Transformation: At first glance, this looks like the first wave Beast Wars Basics. Shell chunks attached to shoulders that fold together after you scissor the torso to bring the legs up, etc. And, at its core, that is what you get. But the chest does some complicated rotating and folding and panel flipping along the way, and panels along the bottom sides of the vehicle form fold over the rear wheels to partly cover them in robot mode. It's a bit tricky getting everything in the right order the first few times (I didn't use the instructions, but looking at them now, they don't look too helpful), but other than the forearms popping off occasionally it's pretty elegant. And the forearms seem prone to popping when you look at them funny. This isn't something that the superglue or nailpolish tricks can fix, there's just a lot of places where mechanical advantage will pop the ball out of the socket with even a tiny bit of force applied. Robot Mode: He's a mini-Optimus. Seriously. The head is closely related to the G1 Optimus Prime helmet in shape, with the dark blue color, silver faceplate and yellow forehead accent only strengthening the resemblence. Clever folding panels give him chest windows, and there's circle details on his abs that are clearly based on those found on Movie Optimus Prime. Since the vehicle mode is more or less Hot Wheels scale, he even works as an Optimus Prime for your Spychangers. 4.25" (11cm) tall at the head, a tiny bit higher at the shoulderpads. The roof shell halves of the truck mode form Fortress Maximus-like semi-cape pieces behind the arms. Like vehicle mode, it's mostly gray and dark blue, but more of the AllSpark blue is visible in this mode and less of the yellow. Dark blue on the head, forearms, boots, chest window flaps, and some connectors on the wingpad things. AllSpark blue on the chest (the flaps are connected to it) and flaps on the sides of the boots. Otherwise gray plastic. [Later note: the head is bright blue plastic, dipped in dark blue paint.] Fairly minimal paint applications here, mostly on the head. Yellow crest detail, light blue eyes, silver faceplate, yellow chin. There's also yellow painted behind the shoulders, an odd choice since it's nearly invisible behind the big shoulder chunks. A black Autobot symbol is printed on the left boot's outer flap. The neck is a swivel, but due to the way it transforms there's no waist joint. The shoulders are universal joints (hinge and swivel) with full range of motion. The elbows are ball joints, and because of the tolerances tend to pop apart. I get the feeling that the dark blue plastic was intended to be a slightly softer variety, and it's too rigid to want to stay put. Ball joint hips and knees, but no ankle articulation despite some connections that at first glance look like they should move. The wingpads do get in the way of the legs a bit, and the lack of ankles makes it hard to stand him up in a dynamic pose. [Later note: the shoulders are all riveted together, so no easy removal for dye-job purposes.] The window panels on the chest can fold open on very stiff joints, although there's not a lot of interest. A few bits that could be interpreted as missile tubes but are probably intended as gauges. A few bits of paint (like on the windows themselves) would help, I think. I may touch mine up later on. Overall: Kinda frumpy altmode and a little bricky in robot mode due to the lack of ankles, but the "sort kinda Optimus" angle bumps it up in my eyes. An Optimus Minor recolor might be amusing. Sadly, due to the way licensing works, BotCon can't get their hands on this mold to try their own Optimus Minor or Optimus Junior. DECEPTICON: DEAD END Altmode: Sportscar Licensor: None Previous Name Use: G1, Alternators, Armada, Energon Previous Mold Use: None Function: Psychological Warfare Motto: "All life fuels death, as all of you fuel me." Even other DECEPTICONS think DEAD END is creepy. He's quet most of the time, and when he's not it's usually to either snarl or say something weird. Even in robot mode, he creeps around on all fours. He refuels by siphoning energy from other robots. If he can't find AUTOBOTS to steal from, he quietly attaches his filters to other DECEPTICONS when they're not paying attention, and slowly drains them dry. STR 5 INT 3 SPD 8 END 8 RNK 4 COUR 8 FRB 7 SKL 3 Avg 5.75 I got a real Go-Bot Monster vibe off this guy, but in looking through tfu.info I can't find any that match the head. It's sorta like Manterror meets Ocean Master (Aquaman villain). I am amused by the fact that this will be recolored into Nightbeat. I wonder if they'll give it a new head, or try to play up the "creature of the night" aspect? Twist-ties: Two, plus a rubber band going from one hand through the blister and to the other hand. The top twist-tie is threaded through the chest. Vehicle Mode: Your basic weird concept car sort of thing. My car expert friend thinks it's got some Mitsubishi Eclipse to it, with some Pontiac Banshee and a touch of Corvette in the headlights. But it has a sort of cockpit like bubble compartment for a single driver and no passenger. At 4" (10cm) long, that makes it about 1:46 scale if we assume it's supposed to be as long as the fourth-generation Eclipse. Furthering its concept car look is an exposed engine in back and a pair of airscoops over the rear fenders, evoking a resemblance to the Hot Wheels Power Pipes car (here's a picture of it: http://www.southtexasdiecast.com/hwguide/images/300/349.jpg). [Later note: a reader pointed out similarities to the Peugeot 9009: http://www.carsbase.com/photo/Peugeot_9009_Concept_model_6893.html ] Mainly red and black with dark copper and metallic light blue accents. Aside from the black plastic wheels, all the plastic visible in this mode (without peeking underneath) is a bold red with fairly strong UV glow. The cockpit-like driver's compartment is painted gloss black, and a triangular shape on the rear is also gloss black with a Decepticon symbol printed as part of it. Matte black or very dark gray paint is used on the bottom halves of the sides between the wheels. The headlights and most of the exposed engine are painted metallic light blue, and a sort of dark copper paint is used on the wheel hubs and a few details on the engine. A thin layer of this dark copper paint is used on some flamelike details on the doors, giving an iridescent sheen and almost looking like holographic details. There's no paint on the taillights, license plate or exhaust pipe, although paint on the taillights would be low-visibility anyway against the red plastic. While getting everthing into place is a challenge almost on the Big Convoy level, once the panels are all correct it's a solid vehicle mode that holds together even with rough handling. The clearance is very low, but on a sufficiently flat and smooth surface it rolls well. Transformation: There's the same sort of torso-scissoring as on Rollbar, but otherwise it's a mass of panels that explode outward fairly easily in one direction and stubbornly refuse to oppose entropic philosophy when trying to put the car back together. The limbs are very snugly mooshed together inside the car, no wasted space to speak of. And the stiffness of the joints makes transformation even harder...yeah, this is the one toy in the batch I'd wish for looser joints on. :) Robot Mode: If Scouts had sound chips, this one would have to include a MUAHAHAHA cackle. The clawed hands, the way the joints work together and the fact that the head can be thrown back in laughter just make him a total madboy. He even has stubby hover-wings due to how his rear wheels fold out onto his back. [Later note: If you look at his collar area carefully, you'll see teeth. He has a lower jaw that's fused to his chest. The joint is stiff, but if you use a knife or thin prying tool you can get the jaw to rise up and meet the head. http://www.dvandom.com/images/deadendjaw.JPG] About 3.5" (9cm) tall, the color balance is about the same as the vehicle mode. Mostly red, with a fair amount of black and a little copper and bluish silver. Other than the black wheels, all the car shell bits are red plastic, and this is essentially a shellformer when you come right down to it. You could remove most of the vehicle shell and still have a complete robot. Well, not literally, since some of the vehicle bits act as connectors for the robot bits, so there'd need to be some tweaking, but I think you get what I mean. The upper arms and thighs are red plastic. The forearms, hands, feet and some boot connector struts are black plastic. The head, inner torso, shins and shoulder roots are copper plastic. Again, not a lot of robot-specific paint, although the trunk paint was really more intended for its position as the robot chest. The batlike mask shape on the head is painted black, with bright red eyes. The fronts of the shins are painted black so that the legs better match the arms in color balance. And there's some blue-silver on gear-shapes inside the shoulderpads backing the wheels. The head tilts forward and back, the waist doesn't move. The shoulders are ball joints, but the struts they rest on can swing out to give more range of motion. The elbows and wrists are ball joints, which lets you pick between the default "palm up" position of the hands and a more natural "palm towards center" position. The hands themselves are interesting, being claws emanating from a central ring. The inner diameter of that ring is about 3mm, but there's a bump inside that would keep a peg from going in more than about a millimeter unless you carve it out. Not that he comes with anything to hold. Ball joint hips, very stiff hinge knees, and a sort of double hinge at the ankles. The heels and toes swing separately, so you can splay the foot out a bit if you need to for stability. [Later note: there's also thigh swivels that I missed the first time around, a reader pointed them out to me. They blend in pretty well and are stiff enough to not casually turn.] Overall: It has a nice theme to it, and one of the few I haven't had to do any joint-tightening on. On the other hand, there's a few that are too tight. It's a decent toy, but one where the engineering may not be up to cashing the checks written by the design. AUTOBOT: KNOCK OUT Altmode: Motorcycle Licensor: None Previous Name Use: None (Knockout G1 and Armada, Knock-Out Energon) Previous Mold Use: None Function: Warrior Motto: "I have plans...." Though he is an incredibly flashy and skilled fighter, KNOCK OUT is also desperately insecure. He practices awesome combat maneuvers constantly in private to be sure that the other AUTOBOTS will notice him on the battlefield. His highest ambition is to be the leader of a special combat team, and to get the combination retrofit everyone has been talking about. STR 6 INT 6 SPD 6 END 6 RNK 5 COUR 5 FRB 7 SKL 10 Avg 6.375 That last line in his bio seems to be a reference to the Arcee combiner. In Veiled Threat, he's portrayed as a young Autobot, anxious to prove himself in battle but otherwise having really not experienced it first hand. Twist-ties: Five, no rubber bands. Vehicle Mode: Your basic street rocket sort of motorbike, about the same size (and therefore scale) as Energon Arcee or the Cy-Kons. A little small for a GIJoe figure, but in that ballpark, 1:18 scale more or less. 4" (10cm) long from front to back, wheels 26mm in diameter. There's no kickstand, but the robot kneecaps more or less stabilize it in this mode. A deliberately garish mix of black, white, kelly green and yellow-green, with a few other accent colors. Street racers are not meant to be subtle. The gastank, side cowling and the rear wheel struts are kelly green plastic. The handlebars and some transformation struts are warm gray. Everything else is black plastic. Bright yellow-green paint is used on the wheel hubs and several places on the body. White stripes accompany the yellow-green on the sides and seat. There's some gloss black along the bottom of the side cowlings. The headlights are light blue, the exhaust pipe tip is a sort of greenish light gold, and a black Autobot symbol is printed just behind the black gascap. The front wheel can turn about 30 degrees to the left and 60 degrees to the right, oddly. Both wheels spin, although the rear wheel is a bit frictioned by the fact it's two halves lined up. The handlebars are wobbly and don't lock together. The front wheel can also move forward and back, but this is a transformation joint and not a useful joint for the motorcycle. Aside from the handlebars, it's fairly stable in this mode. Transformation: Vaguely similar to Energon Arcee in the sense that the arms are the seat and the legs tuck together inside the aerodynamic cowling, but generally better at hiding the robot bits at the cost of being a lot more fiddly in assembly. You need to get all the joints bent just the right amount in order to get the cowling to snap in place when going to vehicle mode. The side panels are also only pegged on in the first place, so they're coming off at least a few times during transformation even if you don't plan on it. Easier to just bow to the inevitable and set them aside until you're done. The "nose" section splits apart to become the torso sides rather than just moving as a single chunk, a nice touch. The front wheel doesn't quite turn enough to lie flat against the back. A problem with the robot mode transformation is that it relies on a lot of pegs that have poor tolerances, at least on mine. The waist is supposed to snap together, but instead it just sort of sits there loosely. Due to the way things swing together, this may not be long-term fixable with the usual methods, as things like nail polish topcoat will just scrape off. I've tried the superglue trick on the hinge at the small of the back, which helps a little. A couple layers of nailpolish on the tab and slot also helps in the short term, but it does rub off. Undocumented Feature: There are tabs at the rear of the cowling side pieces that go into slots at the root of the front wheel to give the robot mode wings. This is clearly an intended design element, but it's not shown in the instructions and the toy is packaged with the cowling pieces left on the legs. The pegs can be a little loose, but the nailpolish trick works fine. http://www.allspark.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=59047 shows the cowling in wing mode. Robot Mode: It's amazing what a difference an undocumented feature can make. I really didn't care much for the official robot mode's huge "chaps" formed by the cowling pieces on the legs, and it colored my view of the robot in general. But now that I have the wings on, the colors conspire to make this a sort of Waspinator movie-style. 3.75" (9.5cm) tall at the head, 5" (13cm) at the top of the wings if you have them in place. He has the somewhat standard motoslave-style over the shoulder wheel halves positioned as hoverfans. The head looks kinda like a Wolverine mask, but with exhaust pipes along the sides of the jawline. The right arm ends in a cannon reminscent of Bumblebee's solar blaster, while there's a little hand molded inside the seat half that forms the left forearm. The legs are spindly (especially once you remove the cowling pieces) and slightly digitigrade with an ankle joint a bit of a ways up. The ankles are kinda loose, but the superglue trick worked fine. Black plastic is used on the head, the forearms, the lower legs, the parts of the upper arms that are visible in vehicle mode, and the wheel parts. The wings, hoverstruts and torso core are green plastic. The struts that hold both the shoudlers and the hoverstruts are gray, as are part of the upper arm, the thighs, pelvis and several internal bits. The only new paint is on the head, yellow-green on the scalp and light blue on the eyes. But the vehicle mode paint rearranges nicely onto the robot. The head is on a very restricted ball joint, but the transformation scheme prevents the waist from turning (be patient, SOME of the Scouts have working waists). The hover fan struts are on ball joints for gimballing. Ball joint shoulders, elbows, hips and knees. Hinge ankles, plus extra hinges that let the heels flip out. The heel hinges are too loose to support the figure, so only flat-foot poses will work unless you use the superglue trick on them. The elbows are a bit restricted by the vehicle kibble getting in the way. Overall: Needs a lot of work on the joints and use of the undocumented feature to become a good toy, but at least the potential is there. DECEPTICON: DIRT BOSS Altmode: Forklift Licensor: None Previous Name Use: Armada, Cybertron, Universe (more or less) Previous Mold Use: None Function: Valet Motto: "Behind every great Decepticon is a greater one, waiting." Though he is usually occupied acting as a servant to larger, more powerful DECEPTICONS, DIRT BOSS has big plans. He constantly schemes to acquire more power, laying plans to betray or discredit his competitors and superiors in the hope of taking their positions. In combat, his body is as surprisingly agile as his mind. It's not uncommon to see him leaping through the air towards the enemy, with all his weapons blazing. STR 8 INT 8 SPD 2 END 8 RNK 2 COUR 8 FRB 4 SKL 6 Avg 5.75 Dirt Boss was also used in Transformers: Animated as a forklift, but we're unlikely to ever get that toy. Twist-ties: Three, no rubber bands. Vehicle Mode: They TRIIIIIED to kill him with a FORKLIFT! Ahem. Sorry about that. MST3K is why I have a fascination with forklift toys. I have an unreasonable number of Pixar Cars forklifts (or "Pitties" as they've started to be called), although at least I haven't gotten to the point of buying the $11 three-packs just for the forklifts in them. The first transforming toy I ever repainted was an off-brand Micromaster-style forklift. I even made an Attacktix version of Spoons, the Go-Bot forklift. So you can imagine I was pretty jazzed to find out that Tranformers was finally getting an official, more or less realistic forklift (Liftor doesn't really count as even slightly realistic). 3.5" (9cm) long including the tines, and 2.25" (5.5cm) tall. It's roughly 1:36 scale, where a 2" tall human figure would be about the right size to operate it. This also puts him about to scale with most of the Deluxe cars. The main colors are "tennis ball chartreuse" and taupe (a sort of brownish light gray) with pale gold accents. Taupe plastic is used for the tines, wheels, roof, rear bumper, engine cover, seat, steering wheel and some internal bits. Otherwise it's chartreuse plastic with a moderate UV glow. There's a few bits of chartreuse plastic with strong UV glow visible, but they're mainly robot mode bits. The steering wheel piece has been dipped in chartreuse paint, a so-so match to the plastic, and there's more of that paint on the "interior". There's gold paint on the engine vents, along the sides of the fork supports, and on the diamondplate patterned bits on the side bottom edges. A dark purple Decepticon symbol is somewhat messily printed above the left front wheel. The fork assembly can tilt back about 30 degrees or forward maybe 10 degrees. The tines cannot elevate, although that'd be expecting a bit much of a Scout class toy anyway. The wings can flip down, but that's more for transformation than anything else. Presuming everything's pegged together properly, it rolls well on the four wheels. I'm tempted to bring this to work and use some standard mass sets to see how much it takes to tip the forklift over, but it can handle a Mini-Con or two easily. It can also carry a Cars forklift, which can then carry an N-scale forklift if you have one.... Other than the robot fists being visible in the fork assembly, there's no real robot kibble in this mode. Transformation: Going to robot mode is your basic "pull everything apart and then adjust" deal, with a little slider bit where you pull up the shoulders to make the head pop out of the torso. The legs are on the underside with all four wheels attached to them (hips and ankles), the forks end up on the arms, the roof splits in half into shoulderpads. Getting back into vehicle mode is a bit trickier. The top of the inside (steering wheel, seat) have to fold out over the arms and legs, but there's a Right Point at which to fold the section down. Too soon and it gets in the way, too late and it can't get in. There's also a number of pegs inside that aren't immediately obvious and which the instructions fail to point out, but that are necessary for vehicle stability. Mainly it's the ankles pegging onto the forearms. The steering wheel section doesn't seem to peg anywhere, though. Robot Mode: The face definitely has a sort of pinched "older British manservant" look to it, although Jeeves is not known for carrying big stabby spikes. The chest has a sort of "deflector dish" look to it, maybe that's where his fireblast score comes from. 3.5" (9cm) tall at the head, 4.25" (11cm) to the top of the shoulderpads formed by the roof halves. The colors are pretty much the same as the vehicle mode, but there's two different greenish-yellow plastics, and even under regular room lighting you can tell the difference. The upper arms, thighs and ankle joints are made of a somewhat darker greenish-yellow plastic that has a very strong UV glow. Under stronger light with a decent UV component (like sunlight), the two effects balance out some, making the difference less striking. The torso and the back of the head are taupe plastic, as are the visible vehicle bits of that color. The rest is the less glowy green-yellow plastic seen in the vehicle mode, including the feet and the front of the head. A lot more gold paint in this mode. Much of the chest, the front and outsides of the shins and toes, and the face are painted gold. Bright red paint is used on the eyes, the center of the chest dish and some bits on the calves. Most of the front of the head is painter taupe in a very good match, and I think the earpieces are painted green-yellow over that rather than being left unpainted, but it's hard to tell non-destructively (the UV response of the paint and one of the plastic colors is about the same). There isn't a prominent Decepticon symbol, although the vehicle mode one is still more or less visible in the backpack. The head has no articulation, although it can turtle down into the torso a bit. No waist joint either. Ball joint shoulders, elbows, hips and knees. The wrists are hinged for the fork articulation, which also makes it easier for him to cross his forks in front of his chest Wolverine-style. The ankles are double hinge joints. The feet are tiny, which combines with the backpack to make it tricky to keep him standing. Longer heel spurs would fit under the chassis in vehicle mode, and help significantly in stability. [Later note: there's internal pegs that are supposed to lock into position at the top or bottom to keep the robot mode stable, but the tolerances are at the tenth of a millimeter level, and the quality control on these toys isn't up to it.] Overall: I'm biased towards this for reasons mentionedf above, but it's a decent toy even leaving that aside. The joints could stand to be a little tighter, but it's not so bad that I went for the superglue or nailpolish. And the vehicle mode is very good. AUTOBOT: DEPTHCHARGE Altmode: Stealth Boat Licensor: None Previous Name Use: Universe (Depth Charge was BW) Previous Mold Use: None Function: Naval Command Motto: "Their first mistake was treating the ocean like a more viscous version of the sky." DEPTHCHARGE is a shrewd military strategist. AUTOBOTS and DECEPTICONS alike are accustomed to ground and air-based combat, but ocean tactics are unfamiliar to them. DEPTHCHARGE uses this to his advantage, choosing a stealth boat mode to spy on DECEPTICON forces from the nearest port. Fast and smart, DEPTHCHARGE never shies away from battle - but he prefers to be armed with the element of surprise. STR 6 INT 8 SPD 7 END 7 RNK 8 COUR 10 FRB 7 SKL 8 Avg 7.5 Twist-ties: Six, woo. No rubber bands, but with six ties, he really shouldn't need bands. Vehicle Mode: At first I thought this was a completely fictional boat, but it was pointed out to me that it's very close to the USS Freedom (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Freedom_(LCS-1) ) with the addition of much bigger launchers over the helicopter flight deck. With the real vehicle being 115m long, that puts it almost exactly at 1:1000 scale. Which, by the by, is the general scale of monster figures in the Monsterpocalypse game. LCS stands for Littoral Combat Ship, and that's not a typo for literal. The littoral zone is basically the shallows around a sea coast. An LCS isn't a deep-water ship, it's more meant for supporting shore actions or even working in "brown navy" settings, although it can probably handle deep ocean in a pinch. 4.5" (11.5cm) long, a human would be about 2mm tall on its deck. Unless it's like the Armada Mini-Cons, a miniature version of the vehicle that would fool no one, in which case estimates of scale are meaningless. :) Oh, and unlike some boat toys, they don't put wheels on it to try to make it roll along the table. It's a "waterline model" where it's meant to sit on a table and look like it's floating, so no keel either (like Cybertron Thunderblast has). It's possible that this is meant to be the USS Zumwalt mentioned in the novelization (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Zumwalt_(DDG-1000) ) but it doesn't look anything like the Zumwalt shown on the Wiki page. Then again, since the real Zumwalt doesn't mount the kind of gun mentioned in the novel, the TF-verse's Zumwalt may be totally different in looks in addition to its different weapons loadout. Maybe they just slapped a railgun on an LCS seaframe and christened it as the Zumwalt...the weapon systems are meant to be swappable on the LCS, after all. [Later note: in the movie, they call the railgun ship the USS Kitt, which doesn't exist, but there is a USS Kidd. The Kitt looks kinda like Depthcharge without the boosters on the back, the Kidd does not. The USS Kitty Hawk is sometimes called the Kitt, but it's a carrier.] In case anyone's curious, it's essentially non-buoyant. I tried floating it in a pan of water, and it sunk to where only the top of the radar tower was above water, and I think that was only there because I didn't make the water deep enough. :) Cool gray and ice blue with a little bit of AllSpark blue. All the plastic visible in this mode (unless you look from the back or underside) is a sort of slate gray, and an ice blue "dazzle" camo pattern is painted on most of the parts. The radar tower chunk and the turbines are unpainted, though. The windows on the bridge are painted AllSpark blue. You can pop the turbine things off to provide a flight deck for a very small helicopter. There's even 1:1200 and 1:700 scale helicopters out there for naval modeling enthusiasts (I did some searching a while back for Monsterpocalypse customization purposes). Transformation: The front half splits (and may detach completely, oops) with the hull parts swinging down to become boots. The radar tower sections swing a few degrees and latch again to become the feet. The rear section unfolds into arms in a manner reminiscent of a lot of Autobot cars, with the turbines swinging around to become missile launchers. The thumbs swing up into place and the waist might spin 180 degrees, ta dah. Yes, might. The legs are kinda weird, and the instructions don't seem to agree with how it was packaged. While messing around, I even found a way that doesn't require spinning the waist, although the hollow butt is pretty obviously not meant to stay pointed forward. Going back to boat mode, the arms are really tricky to get positioned just right, but if you keep in mind that the pegs on the shoulders have to go into holes on the palms, that will guide you well enough. Oddly, there's a second set of slots inside the boots that let you snap the feet into position fully stowed. It's like they couldn't quite decide which way the boots should transform, so included both. And then the instructions contradict the photo on the cardback. Battle Mode: An official third mode that uses the boat shell pieces as skis, although according to the instructions the radar tower is up in vehicle position, so this isn't what's meant to use the extra slot. 3.5" (9cm) tall, otherwise see robot mode for other details. I'm not sure this was planned, or just the result of the instructions-writers messing around with the toy, although some of the weird jointing in the legs does seem to be aimed mainly at allowing this mode. Robot Mode: While the details are all different, the general proportions and stance give me a strong "RiD Slapper" vibe. Specifically, the animation model, rather than the toy itself. The big shoulderpads, somewhat hunched over head position (neck near the front of the torso top), the big forearms and hands. Height depends on how you transform the legs. The tallest version, which has proportions more suiting a 100+ meter tall robot, uses the radar tower halves as toes by settling the tabs into the first slots rather than going to the second slots as in the instructions. It's a little harder to get clearance for all his kibble if you do this, but he's 4.75" (12cm) tall at the head this way. If you follow the instructions, it's 3.75" (9.5cm) tall, give or take. The color balance adds a lot of black and a little gold. Most of the limb pieces are black plastic, as is the head, with boat bits forming the shoulderpads, forearms/hands and boots. The torso is also light blue-gray plastic. A gold plastic with strong yellow UV glow is used for the shoulder sockets and part of the knee jointing. The sockets for the missile launchers on the shoulders also use this plastic. The top of the crab-evoking head is painted slate blue and ice blue in a good match of the ship colors, and there's blocks of ice blue camo on the chest as well. A light gold paint is used for accents on the chest and the forearms. Some pistons on the abdominal flanks and the lower face are painted a slightly bluish silver. The eyes are painted AllSpark blue. Matte black paint is used on the missile pod mouths (8 launch tubes per pod) and the abdomen. The head is on a limited ball joint (the socket is inside the head, you might be able to increase the range of motion by shaving a few bits away, but you'd risk the head coming loose), and the waist does turn, woo. The shoulders are pretty complicated: a "shrug" strut joint where they join the back, a gold plastic ball joint, a hinge for the shoulderpads, and a ball joint for the missile pods on the shoulderpads. Then there's a swivel below each shoulder, a double hinged elbow and a hinged thumb. The hand's general position is kinda gorilla-like, the three fingers straight except for the last joint being bent 90 degrees. The thumb is hinged at the palm and swings like a clamp rather than a real thumb. The hips are ball joints, with swivels right below them. And then there's the knees, which make the shoulders look simplistic. A lot of this is for the Battle Mode, but you get some weird S shapes in the thigh, two hinge joints in the normal knee direction, an ankle-like hinge that's almost at knee height if you use the taller transformation, and then a sideways hinge for Battle Mode. And then there's also the positionable toe chunks. The end result of all this articulation is that you can put him in some pretty extreme poses, practically Kirbian, although a lot of poses make his legs look weird. The hips tend to pop off easily, but the black plastic is flexible enough that Depthcharge doesn't suffer the brittle-feeling joints that a lot of his wave-mates have to deal with. And they're stiff enough to allow for lots of extreme poses, they're just in positions that make it easy to accidentally apply too much force. Overall: Thanks to numerous engineering issues, this is a fairly weak assortment compared to what it could have been, so it's kinda faint praise to call Depthcharge the best of the lot. But he has a solid vehicle mode, a good transformation, a sort of bonus half-mode, and loads of articulation. Even without lowering expectations, it's a good toy. DECEPTICON: RANSACK Altmode: Biplane Licensor: None Previous Name Use: G1, G2, Armada, Cybertron Previous Mold Use: None Function: Aerial Combat Motto: "I've shot down more Autobots than you've MET, mister!" Back in the distant past of CYBERTRON, when flight was a new technology, RANSACK was first of the flying aces. He was a ruthless combatant, blasting his opponents out of the sky, and then strafing the helpless troops stuck on the ground without cover. He may be past his prime and equipped with outdated weapons now, but there was a time when RANSACK was the most feared name on CYBERTRON. STR 4 INT 6 SPD 6 END 5 RNK 8 COUR 10 FRB 6 SKL 9 Avg 6.75 Mistransformed in package, his landing gear should be down by his hips, not up under his armpits. It's worth noting that while the name started as an Insecticon, the G2 incarnation was a WWII plane...so it's appropriate to put the name on another museum piece. That Fireblast of 6 is...not borne out in his brief appearance in the novelization. :) Twist-ties: Five (most of which are hard to get undone), plus a rubber band from the head to the middle twist-tie. There's also a difficult to untangle rubber band on each hand, good luck getting this one out of the package without dismembering it. Vehicle Mode: While it certainly has some ahistorical elements (like mounting a gun on the wing, something that'd shred the wing), this seems to be based on the Albatross D.III (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albatros_D.III) and certainly has the right wings, tail and nose, although the alignment of the lower wings is more forward than on the D.III and is more in keeping with the D.I. The real thing is 9m wide and 7.33m long. Ransack is 5" (13cm) wide and 4.25" (10.5cm) long, making the proportions correct as well, and the scale at 1:69. I should note that in the historical Albatrosses, the guns were usually mounted on either side of the engine, synched to fire through the propeller. Ransack instead mounts twin 08/15's on a pod on the underside of the right lower wing, a position that would not only rip the wing off in actual use, but probably send the plane into a spin even if the wing stayed on, thanks to asymmetry. But gotta do something with the arms, I suppose. There's bombs on the other side, which would cause the plane to flip to the right when dropped (real planes generally carried bombs under the fuselage, it was a lot stronger). Yes, I played the Dawn Patrol wargame in the early 80s, why do you ask? Sadly, my copy seems to have vanished at some point. Or maybe it's inside a mis-marked box. Ransack is a mix of dull colors that are appropriate to the sort of thing that might have been kept in service in the Middle East for decades past its glory days. Dark barn red, tan, and a sort of dull chocolate brown. Plus accents in red, black, silver and greenish gold. It matches no nationality, which is likely part of the point. Most of the fuselage is dark barn red plastic, the wings are light tan plastic, and the rest is dull brown (tail, struts, propellor, engine, landing gear, under-wing kibble). Much of the nose and a bit on either side are painted greenish gold. There's also greenish gold paint along the edges of the tail bits. The trailing edges of the tail parts are painted red, and there's a red chevron of sorts on each side behind the gold triangle. The top of the main wing is airbrushed dusty brown, with black wing symbols that merge the German iron cross and the Decepticon symbol. The parts of the tail that are made of red plastic are painted brown with a very good match. The engine is painted silver. The propellor spins, but the landing gear does not roll. If you have everything pegged together correctly (no mean feat) it holds together quite well. There's even a respectable cockpit, although there's no guns mounted on the sides of the engine where they belong. The guns on the wing are the right type, though. Transformation: Quite complex for a Scout, and like most of this wave the transformation to vehicle mode is a lot harder than the transformation to robot mode. Getting the lower wings all pegged together is very hard the first few times, and then merely somewhat hard. The leg section only rotates 90 degrees rather than the usual zero or 180 degrees, which can make transforming the tail a little confusing until you realise you've got the wrong idea about which fin goes where. :) On mine, the shoulder joints are so loose that when you try to unpeg the hands from the wings, the shoulders pop off first. Heck, when you try to peg the hands ONTO the wings the shoulders tend to pop off. And don't let the looseness of the elbow joints fool you into thinking the arms can't bend past a certain point for transformation, just force it. The elbows are like step functions...almost no friction to a certain angle, then a lot of it. Just pushing in the rivet with the tip of a screwdriver fixed it on one of the arms, but not the other, so your mileage will definitely vary. I tried both superglue and nailpolish, but only the superglue had any effect. The brown plastic won't let the nailpolish bond. Battle Mode: Like Depthcharge, he has a sort of transitional mode in the instructions. In his case, it involves flipping the wing cape up in robot mode and positioning it as wings, then flipping up the nose so he can fly along with his propellor driving him. As with Depthcharge, see below for details, as the looks and articulation aren't significantly different. The wingspan is 5.75" (15cm) due to the way the lower wing bits are set out as stabilizers. Robot Mode: Ransack isn't merely old, he's skeletal. Struts on his limbs deliberately evoke human bones in their curved shapes and thinness, and his face has more than a little skull-shape to it. If they were shooting for a "ghost pilot" look, they definitely hit the mark. The legs are a bit short, proportionally speaking, and the hips are very narrow, but remedying either would require details that simply aren't feasible at this scale. 4" (10cm) tall at the head, the lower wing shoulderpads rise a tiny bit above that. The wings form a sort of lich cloak or cape, while the tip of the propellor is at the groin. Things sag with age, you see. He wears his engine as a hat. The color balance puts the barn red near the middle, brown on the extremities and tan as the cloak. Oh, and the pulled-out chunks of fuselage on the hips look a little like jodphurs, those baggy at the thigh pants seen on pulp era heroes and WWI pilots. There's not a lot of pieces that weren't visible in vehicle mode, but here's what they're made of. The head is actually tan plastic, but painted almost 100% (I had to pop it off to be sure. The neck, spine, pelvis and the skeleton of the thighs are dull brown. An inner panel that fills in the chest a bit and looks like a combination of radiator and ribcage is made of dark barn red plastic. The radiator grilles and the head are painted a dark silver, with red eyes on the skull face. Overall: Once I finished fixing all the problems, I liked this more than Depthcharge. But the fact that I had to do so much to bring him up to spec knocks him down more than a little. This is a design that is inherently awesome, but requires equally awesome manufacturing tolerances or it just falls apart...literally. Not everyone I've talked to has had problems with theirs, but it seems to be a case of lucky draws. Dave Van Domelen, now to open the Legends. And thanks to K-Mart, have two waves of Deluxes awaiting opening.