Dave's RotF Rant: Voyagers Group 1 Optimus Prime (redeco, not reviewed) Starscream (F-22, new mold) Demolishor (Power shovel) Ironhide (retool) The Fallen (Cybertronian Destroyer) Desert Tracker Ratchet (redeco, not reviewed) Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/RotF/Voyager1 With the way Voyagers have been showing up, the official wave assortments are...less than useful. So I'm making my own Groups. Group 1 is anything that I found on the Street Date, Group 2 are those that started to hit stores about the time of Street Date but I didn't find until later. So there. The Fallen and Ratchet were definitely part of a distinct set, though, since the packaging is slightly different. http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Movie/Voyager1 - Ratchet and Ironhide original releases. http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Movie/VoyagerT1 - Optimus Prime original release. http://www.allspark.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=59047 is the AllSpark board's thread on RotF fixes, and includes a simple way to make Demolishor's wheels roll. CAPSULES Optimus Prime: Original mold was recommended, but already had three deco versions (or more, I lost count) before this. $21.96 at Walmart. Starscream: Much sleeker vehicle mode with only a little kibble, really good transformation, and a robot mode hampered a little by a removed feature and a lot by having to be "Starscream of the tiny feet". I can't quite go "strongly recommended" on this one, but definitely Recommended. $21.96 at Walmart. Demolishor: Decent vehicle mode, okay transformation, movie-accurate robot mode. I like it, but largely for personal reasons and can only mildly recommend it to others. $21.96 at Walmart. Ironhide: Original mold was mildly recommended, this is a significant retool that improves the weaponry but not the stability of the robot mode. Still mildly recommended if you don't have this mold yet, neutral if you have a version. $21.96 at Walmart. The Fallen: Eh. Okay, good job of capturing the movie's character, but it has a bad foot gimmick and shows signs that not everyone at Hasbro was on the same page when putting it together. Very mildly recommended. $21.99 at Target. Desert Tracker Ratchet: Original mold was recommended. A more subdued color scheme and some nice dirt/dust deco keep this as a definite recommended if you don't have one of the three or four previous deco jobs of this mold. I own two versions already (original and G1-style), so I've given it a pass. $21.99 at Target. RANTS Packaging: The usual size of Voyager box, they seem to be avoiding any really weird shapes that lead to damage in shipping or difficulty in picking up this time around. The zigzag border motif remains, but other than the top corners being truncated it's all done with clear plastic so that the actual sides are essentially flat. The internal bits between the windows are strong enough that there's no real danger of smashing the boxes under reasonable handling. I mean, I could destroy one by sitting on it, but that's not an engineering defect. The front is mostly window, showing the toy in robot mode in most cases. A head shot of the character is in the lower right above their name and faction logo, while the overall logo is in the lower left. The left side has two rectangular windows, with the character name above them, "Voyager Class" between the windows, and a corroded metal faction symbol below. The left side is the same, but replace the faction symbol with the Voyager class "ancient Cybertronian" glyph. The top just has a thin window and the overall logo. On the bottom is a bit of legalese and the cosells. On the "true wave 1" stuff there's just one figure as a co-sell, while all later ones have two toys as co-sells. None of them try to show the entire wave, which makes it more difficult to tell what was intended to ship together. The back has the usual photos of both modes, bio note, tech specs and callouts for the Mech Alive gimmicks. Instructions are loose under the tray, no catalog. As usual, I will supply my own mottos and functions where necessary. Several of the characters get official functions in the catalog that came with later toys. DECEPTICON: STARSCREAM Altmode: F-22 Raptor Licensor: Lockheed Martin Previous Name Use: G1, G2, MW, Universe, Armada, Energon, Cybertron, Classic, Movie1, TF:A Previous Mold Use: None Mech Alive: Spinning Gears (in chest) Function: Air Commander Motto: "Cowards sometimes live." The moment his sensor net registered MEGATRON going offline, STARSCREAM knew the battle was over, and the AllSpark lost. He converted to vehicle mode and boosted for outer space, hoping to buy enough time to rally the DECEPTICON survivors. Returning from CYBERTRON bearing the marks won during his reign over the DECEPTICON army, he is focused on conquest. With a new army behind him, he has the strength to pursue his own goals, and perhaps, when the time is right, bring MEGATRON back. STR 8 INT 4 SPD 10 END 7 RNK 9 COUR 5 FRB 8 SKL 8 Avg 7.375 He continues to have inexplicably low intelligence, an inheritance from G1 when his and Skywarp's stats were accidentally swapped. In fact, these are the same stats he had in 2007, so much for character development. :) The movie, by the way, doesn't explain the tattoos at all, or why half the characters are covered in some variant of them, despite the fact they're symbols that NO ONE ALIVE CAN READ. It's like those idiots who get random Japanese tattooed on themselves without knowing any of the language. D'oh. Of course, on the list of Things That Make No Sense in the movie, this is pretty far down. Twist-ties: Two to get the blister off the cardboard tray, three more to get the jet off the blister. One more on the missiles. A secondary shell is held on over the tail with another twist-tie that's hard to get at (you have to pull the arms down or use a wirecutter), and two rubber bands hold the wings together. Vehicle Mode: Well, he's pretty much given up on disguising himself, being all covered in Cybertronian tattoos. The "Reign of Starscream" comic explained these as the equivalent of taking notes on his own body, as he carved bits and pieces of the AllSpark on himself so he could use the glyphs to reproduce his own cube. Ergo, even if he can't read the symbols, he has a reason to put them on himself, as he was rote-copying them. But some got damaged in a fight with a briefly revived Wreckage in the Alliance comic, so he could no longer use them to try a second time (he apparently has a faulty memory and couldn't re-copy them...maybe there's something to that INT 4). He's still an F-22 Raptor, and now is lacking the huge underbody kibble that the 2007 version was saddled with. In fact, about the only robot kibble he has to worry about are his hands and forearm cannons sticking out the back. Oddly, this makes him resemble the Fast Action Battler version, but on that toy it's his feet sticking out the back rather than his arms. 8.5" (21.5cm) long and 6.25" (16cm) wide, he's a little bigger than the 2007 version and slightly shorter proportionally-speaking. He's almost entirely made of that brownish "french gray" plastic with a few bits of black plastic and a lot of dark french gray paint (it looks black at first glance, but is actually a brownish charcoal). He has small non-rolling landing wheels that fold out from the rear underside (robot upper arms) and a nose gear that unfolds in two sections from the front. And he's a mass of panel lines that presage his origami-like transformation, which causes some stability issues. Still, it's a much-appreciated sleekening of the design. And rather than having to store his missiles sticking out the back of the launchers, they can peg onto hardpoints on his wings, nice touch. As mentioned above, almost entirely light french gray plastic. The cockpit is clear amber, the nosecone is rubbery light french gray. The bottom half of the nose gear and all of the rear wheels are black plastic, as are a couple of round bits on his air intakes (that become part of his Mech Alive). The other bits of black plastic visible in this mode are all robot parts and except for the claws are only visible from underneath. Most of the top surface is covered in dark french gray tattoo patterns, plus a Decepticon symbol on the right wing and a prominent non-pricepoint glyph on the mirroring left wing position. There's also a few stripes on the leading edges of the tail. Note that other than the one prominent glyph, this is all stripes and circles and stuff, no other glyphs. The landing gear can fold away, otherwise there's no meaningful action features in this mode. You can mess with the alignment of the tailfins, but that's more bug than feature. Oh, and you can pull the arms down partly to make a sort of gerwalk/bird mode. The rubbery part of the nosecone will even fold down to be a beak. Silly, but hey. Too bad the cannon no longer moves out of the way to let the wrists bend to be better talons. Transformation: Wow. If there's any toy that captures the Bayformer aesthetic of "explode into pieces and then reform as a robot" while remaining entirely connected (i.e. not a partformer), this is it. And other than getting the official positioning of the wings on the back and pulling out some chest pieces, I was able to figure it out without looking at the instructions. What's really clever is that the chest isn't made by unfolding panels in the middle of the fuselage...it's made by wrapping bits of the fuselage sides around the tail section! Going back to jet mode isn't terribly hard either so long as you paid attention when exploding to robot mode. The only tricky bit is getting all the parts of the shoulders and upper arms in the right positions so they connect together properly. A bicep out of position and nothing will fit right. Robot Mode: This one is a mixed blessing. On the one hand, it's rather movie-accurate, with the right general proportions and overall look of movie Starscream. On the other hand, it's rather movie accurate with the topheavy body and tiny feet. Still, this toy does show that the design team used their time since 2007 well, creating a much better (for all its unavoidable flaws) robot in addition to the sleeker jet. And while digitigrade as he's supposed to be, it's a much subtler effect since his true ankle is only about a centimeter below his knee, so you can give him more normal legs if you want. 6.25" (16cm) tall even with legs fairly straight, he's significantly shorter than the 2007 version. He's only 6" (15cm) across the shoulders as well, making him smaller overall...but with much less wasted material. Pretty much every jointing piece (elbows and the lower part of the upper arms, shins, shoulder links, hips) is black plastic, and the Mech Alive gears in his chest are clear amber (as is his lightpiping), otherwise french gray. Most of the mech detailing in his chest is painted the same color as his tattos, a color also used on his lower face and some tattoo marks on his head. Some details on the chest are pale gold, as is his "mouth" area. True, not a lot of extra paint for this mode, but plenty of the tattooed surfaces from jet mode are priminent in robot mode. Stability is decent, as some of his pegs are actually T-shaped slots that can't pull apart. The head turns, which turns the gears in his chest for the Mech Alive gimmick, a fairly understated one. No waist articulation, but that's kinda inevitable given the transformation. The shoulders are somewhat weird universal joints, with a hinge and swivel that are intentional for articulation and one more hinge that's for transformation but can let him lift his arms higher. Upper arm swivels, hinge elbows and hinged wrists. The hands can just flop down, though, which is a bad look for him. Universal joint hips, thigh swivels, hinged knees and "reverse knees", plus a hinge on the apparent ankles down at the ends of the legs. A jet panel that normally covers the feet can be used as a heel spur to partly compensate for the poor stability of the tiny feet. If you transform the wings correctly, the pegs for holding the missiles are blocked, so they need to be stored in the launchers. The launchers are molded to look like 8 barrel rotary cannons when the missiles aren't loaded. Unfeatured Documentation: Okay, normally there will be some feature on a toy that's not in the instructions, but here we have something in the instructions that was removed from the toy. In the instructions, the forearm cannons can rise up on struts, but those struts are molded solid (much like the panels on Skids's right arm were fused). Of course, given how many joints the toy actually has, I don't begrudge them removing a few. Overall: Really, my only problems with this toy are the ones forced upon it by the design of the character, which they executed admirably. They even sort of find a way around the tiny feet, although I'll probably need to stiffen up the joints a little. The hand design has problems, but was probably intended to go along with the removed feature mentioned above...having some room to fold the other way would have helped a lot in the wrist department. DECEPTICON: DEMOLISHOR Altmode: Excavator Licensor: None Previous Name Use: Armada, Energon, Cybertron Previous Mold Use: None Mech Alive: Spinning Gears Function: Constructicon Motto: "This world belongs to the Fallen!" DEMOLISHOR isn't very bright, but he knows when to fight, and when to run and hide. Arriving on Earth to find MEGATRON destroyed, hiding seemed like the best option. Since then, he';s taken a few smaller DECEPTICONS under his protection, and built quite a little community. It hasn't been easy, hiding among the humans that creep like a disease over this planet, but he and his companions are content to wait until a new DECEPTICON leader emerges to guide them back to glory. STR 10 INT 6 SPD 4 END 10 RNK 8 COUR 8 FRB 8 SKL 4 Avg 7.25 There are apparently two Constructicons with this vehicle mode in the movie...in fact, two of all of them. One set is seen with individual robot modes, the other only shows up to combine into Devastator. So it's possible that the two teams are mutually incompatible...the Demolishor that this toy represents cannot merge into Devastator. That's my fanon, anyway, and I'm sticking to it. The community mentioned in the bio note is probably meant to refer to the other Constructicons, but it can also mean Sideways, whose own bio note mentions Demolishor. Twist-ties: 3 that go all the way through, plus three rubber bands (one of which holds a blister bit over the driver's compartment). Vehicle Mode: This is the same sort of giant power shovel as Steamhammer from Energon. And I do mean giant. If one assumes that the safety railings on the sides of the control section are a meter high, that makes this a 1:160 scale toy. That's Mechwarrior (clickyMech) scale. That's "use N-scale railroading scenery for diorama" size. That's "to scale with the tiny Optimus Prime that comes with Stratosphere" size...Legends Prime is nearly 50% too big to fight this version of Demolishor. If you have any WSTs around, they're about right. [Later note: Demolishor was played by an O&K/Terex RH400 Hydraulic Mining Excavator, which is 32 feet wide. That makes the toy more like 1:100 scale, and some of the fine details are molded the wrong size.] This mode is 4" (10cm) wide with treads 3.75" (9.5cm) long and a main body 3.25" (8cm) tall. With the shovel arm stretched out as far as it will go the total length is 8.25" (21cm), and with it scrunched in all the way the length is 5.5" (14cm). It's mostly barn red in the body, light gray on the shovel arm and dark brown-gray and black on the treads. Most of the main body is a barn red plastic. A dark gray (70% gray at a guess) plastic is used on the tread cores, the safety railings around the decks, and various jointing bits. Careful with the railings, I've already got stress marks on mine, they look like they'll snap off if you store the toy carelessly. The control chunk on the left side deck is made of clear plastic, tinted magenta on the windows and otherwise painted over. The shovel arm is mostly ghost gray, with some dark brown-gray joints and the teeth are black plastic. The treads are rubberized black plastic, but do not roll. Side panels just above the treads are painted ghost gray, as is most of the control shack, and it's a decent match to the ghost gray plastic. Hazard stripes are painted in black on the side panels, and black is also used for some hydraulic hoses on top of the shovel arm. Black airbrushing on the scoop makes it mostly black with some gray fade at the back, then the "forearm" section of the arm is lightly airbrushed with black for a dirty look. The upper arm piece has no airbrushed black, so it clashes a little. Rotating cam pieces inside the upper arm piece are painted silver, and I don't know what plastic color they are under that. Panel details on the gray-painted side bits are painted gold. A small black Decepticon symbol is printed on the left side of the main body, about a centimeter under the deck level. The robot face is visible looking out the back end. The root of the shovel arm is ratchet-hinged with four clicks covering a 45 degree range. Two clicks are below the lowest level the arm can depress in vehicle mode, though, and are just for robot mode. The middle joint is a smooth hinge with a 90 degree range, and bending at this joint makes the cams visible inside the upper arm spin for the Mech Alive gimmick. The wrist of the shovel arm bends through about 105 degrees. The teeth are on very stiff hinges and can bend 90 degrees, mostly to look like curled fingers in robot mode. No articulation of the tread deck. This mode is reasonably stable, although the right and left halves of the shovel arm separate a little over time. There's a couple of struts hanging off the back, but otherwise no real problem with robot kibble. Transformation: Because his altmode is non-humanoid, transformation is more a question of "when do I stop?" If you follow the simple rule of "move every joint and peg every peg" you get pretty close, though. The gray- painted side panels swing down to become sort of a chest, and the control deck pieces rotate so that machine details hidden in vehicle mode become the front of the shoulderpads. Keep a close eye on where things start! There's a lot of ways things can move around on this toy, and only one configuration will let you go back to vehicle mode. It's easy to get things turned upside down while messing with robot mode, and then you find it doesn't seem like it can possibly transform back. :) Robot Mode: Other than the wheels being pretty obvious deformed treads instead of big balloon tires, this is pretty close to the movie's version of the character...which isn't necessarily a good thing if you're not keen on the design. Unlike Deluxe Chromia, there's no provided base to give stability, so you have to tripod him with the arms, and it's not always that stable. The head is about 4.5" to 5" above the table (11-13cm), but the wheel over the head brings the total height to the vicinity of 8" (20cm). The treads have deformed into wheels around 2.5" (6-7cm) in diameter with a tendency to flatten if you don't put the tread core vertical on the support wheel. Not a lot of new plastic in this mode, pretty much just the head (barn red) and lightpiping (orange). More of the dark brown-gray plastic is visible in the underarms, too. There's black paint in some of the facial details and on the shoulderpad mech details. Turbine details on the shoulders are painted silver, and there's some random gold bits under the turbines. There's no new Decepticon symbol here, just the vehicle mode one that ends up on the back of the right shoulder. Articulation is...ehn. Each arm retains all the joints of the shovel mode, but the shoulders lift to the sides. There's a ratcheting swivel that would let the arms swing forward and back, but this also moves the shoulderpads and undoes most of the chest. Of course, you really can't stand it up without at least one "hand" on the ground, and even that requires some fiddling about with wheel position and a leaning posture. The wheels can be positioned around on hinges, and they do spin on soft ratchets. The AllSpark Fixes thread shows how to remove the ratchet bit so that the wheels will spin freely. Bicycle Mode: In the movie, he alternates which wheel is on top, and sometimes has both wheels on the ground at once. The toy can more or less do this, although the head is a bit lower in two-wheeler mode on the toy than in the movie. His wheelchunk IS rotationally symmetric, though, and there isn't a wrong way up for the wheels (just everything between the wheels, keeping in mind that transformation warning). Overall: This is one of those odd situations where I like a toy but can't really recommend it to others, since I like it for idiosyncratic reasons (an affection for 1:160 scale, "reviewer's bias" towards anything new and different, etc). It looks like the Legends version, which will hopefully come out here, is pretty accurate as well, so you might want to wait for that one if you're tiring of wheelbots. AUTOBOT: IRONHIDE Altmode: GMC Topkick Licensor: GM Previous Name Use: G1, G2, BW, RiD, Armada, Energon, Universe, Movie1, Universe2 Previous Mold Use: Movie1 (retooled) Mech Alive: None (being a retool of something with Automorph) Function: Weapon Specialist Motto: "Are you certain you wish to point that at me?" IRONHIDE has never been happier. It's hard on a warrior to be on the defensive all the time, but that's just what most of the war was - one defensive action after another. With MEGATRON defeated, and the DECEPTICONS on the run everywhere, it's high time the AUTOBOTS went on the offensive. Working alongside the humans to hunt and destroy DECEPTICON hideouts around the world is the most fun he's had in ages. STR 8 INT 6 SPD 5 END 9 RNK 8 COUR 9 FRB 6 SKL 5 Avg 7 Lots of not-making-sense in those techspecs. This retool mainly replaces his weapons with new ones that become a bed-mounted turret in vehicle mode rather than trying to store under the doors. On the box back, the weapons are either photoshopped to be MUCH darker, or the prototype used the same medium gray on the weapons as on the rest of the truck. Mind you, the whole thing looks much darker on the box than in the actual toy. Twist-ties: 3 that go all the way through and hold the truck. Another two are just on the blister and hold the gun, but the gun is only snapped onto the truck and you can get the truck out separately before dealing with the more inconvenient ties. If you fiddle around a bit, you can even get the gun out without undoing those ties. Color Swaps: I could be flip and say that the original is all black, but it's not. However, enough of it is black that it's clear from this redeco that there were multiple mold dies, not all of which got changed over to gray on this version. So I'll just describe the new color arrangement from scratch. In vehicle mode, the clear plastic is now a medium to light blue. Some parts are still black: wheels, front bumper, the front half of the bed cover (the part the gun attaches to) and the bit at the back of the bed that has the molded Autobot symbol. The rest of the truck is medium gray plastic. It's worth noting that the headlights are clear blue plastic and not painted over, unlike the original which painted them silver. For the robot, it's a fairly even mix of gray and black. The head, forearms, chest/abdomen front, waist, hip ratchets, knees and most of the lower legs are black. The fists, upper arms, pelvis and upper legs are gray. The black bed cover pieces end up between the legs, the rest of the vehicle shell pieces are gray. Paint Apps: In vehicle mode, the gray paint on the clear plastic pieces is a little darker than the gray plastic. The front grille is painted a lighter gray, a color that would have been nice on the exhaust pipes...but like the original, this gets no paint on the pipes. The GMC logo roof lights, taillights and some stripes along the bottom sides are red. The turn signals are amber, but only the fronts are painted, unlike on the original. Each door is adorned with what is probably meant to be the NEST logo, a confusing mix of symbology. The main shape is an upside down kite that evokes the crossed square and compass of the Freemasons, with crossed lightning bolts behind it. Inside the kite is a globe (latitude and longitude lines) surrounded by the olive branches of the U.N. flag. On top of THAT is an Autobot symbol wearing a red beret. In red letters under the globe is "SPECIAL PROGRAM". Other than the red parts, it's all in white. It's like they asked a New World Order conspiracy theorist to design the most sinister Autobot-related logo they could come up with.... The tiny eyes are light blue. The only other robot-specific paint is the same amber as on the turn signals, done for raised details on the forearms, bee-like stripes on the abdomen chunk, and some bits on the tops of the feet. Remolds: The main changes are the new gun and its accoutrements, and the new head. The old guns still fit fine on the new toy in both modes, and no changes had to be made to the truck bed since the new gun pegs onto the four expansion slots in the bed cover where the panels have joints on their other side. More on the gun below. The head is a new mold, more movie-accurate, made all of black plastic. There's no lightpiping. The gun: Most of this is black plastic, with a gray plastic missile. It can split into two pieces for arm-mounting. The bigger piece has the missile and uses light gray plastic in its core and barrel-opening section. The smaller piece has a sliding core that's mostly light gray plastic with a black cap at one end. The smaller piece is designed to give him two options for weapons, sliding inside the frame and snapping into place at each end (although mine isn't as stable in the configuration with the black cap forward). The bigger piece fires in an interesting way: push forward on its core and the tip spins around as it moves forward, firing when you push it all the way. It's meant to evoke a rotary cannon with recoiling barrels, as the ten barrel tips are staggered unevenly as if in the process of springing back and forth after firing. It has cutouts along the front centimeter or so that get "filled" by a wider part of the core when you get all the way forward, I suppose to make it look like energy inside. It'd have been more effective with some paint, though. I do like that you have to push ALL the way forward to launch the missile, so accidental launches are a lot harder to cause. Ironhide doesn't prematurely launch for anyone. The small piece has the connector for vehicle mode, and the big piece pegs onto it. When connected, the launching piece can rotate on its peg pretty well, and has an additional swivel to elevate. The pegs that connect to the truck bed aren't as strong as I'd like, though, I might need to do the nailpolish trick. Both pieces have the two unequal-sized peg holes that let them peg firmly onto Ironhide's arms in robot mode. Neither piece can attach to the arms in vehicle mode, though. The smaller one has a third peg hole between the truck bed clips that is used when you have it in black-cap-forward configuration, since the twin-peg system is non-reversible on purpose. The peg that connects the two pieces is a little too large to fit into Ironhide's fist, and the "super gun" mode is meant to attach via the single peg of the small piece, so it's not very stable. There's no paint on the weapon pieces. Other Notes: The chest is still as problematical as in the original. Overall: I kinda wish they'd done a little more re-engineering of the torso to stablize it better, but I do like the new guns. Worth $20 or so for a redeco? Eh, barely. If you have the Premium version from last time around, you might want to get this just to do a head swap. If you have no version of the mold yet, it's marginally worth getting. DECEPTICON: THE FALLEN Altmode: Cybertronian Destroyer Licensor: None Previous Name Use: Titanium Previous Mold Use: None Mech Alive: Slide-out energy absorption panels Function: The First Decepticon Motto: "Feh, squishies." For millennia, he has waited. Thousands of years have dragged by as he recruited proxies, one by one, to scour the cosmos for the artifact he required. Now he finds he must return to the primitive, flesh-slug infected planet on which his quest begasn. Nothing will stand in his way this time. If need be, he will scour the surface of this disgusting world clean in the fire of his rage, and search through the blasted rubble for that which he seeks. STR * INT 10 SPD 10 END * RNK 10 COUR 10 FRB * SKL 10 Avg n/a * is an infinity symbol. For all that he's infinitely strong and so forth, he seems pretty vincible. Unlike the other Voyagers, this one is packaged in robot mode. Probably because he really only gets screen time as a robot, and it might be hard to sell it in a mode no one recognizes. Unfortunately, the "landscape" proportions of the box mean he's hunched over even more than he should be, with legs splayed weirdly. He also doesn't have his arms tied to his waist, since that wouldn't fit very well either, but the official robot mode does have a connection from forearm to waist. I am amused by how closely the Legends version manages to capture the transformation and vehicle mode. Like the second wave Deluxes, the "wave 1.5" Voyagers have the poster/ catalog. Twist-ties: One that goes all the way through, so you have to undo the inner blister tray or get out the wire cutters. Six more ties keep the robot in the blister. In removing the toy, the right foot fell off. Also, a tie is threaded through the left kneecap, but not the right. There's a rubber band keeping the head from nodding forward, and another holding his fanny pack together. The left arm has the shield down over the hand, the right has it up and away, oddly. Robot Mode: Making this an all-black toy would have been the easy way out, and I'm sure a lot of people expected that. However, while I'm not sure it looks better this way, they seem to have been shooting for an ancient metal look here, with a dark green-gray akin to the patina that seawater puts on bronze. Of course, such patinas are rarely so uniform as seen on this toy, which is why I don't think the effect works. The Fallen is meant to be a sort of ancient variety of Cybertronian, deliberately not looking like the other movie-style Transformers. In fact, he looks more like something that stepped out of Bionicle, complete with Kanohi Mask in the general shape of a pharoah's crown. Insert your own joke about Optimus Prime collecting Kanohi Masks. :) He's weirdly spindly even by movieformer standards, with proportions deliberately pushed further from human in order to emphasize his alien-ness. Of course, this can get silly, such as the waist joint that's practically at his chin level. I suppose he really IS ancient, if his belt is hitched up all the way to his chin! Getting a height on him depends on how crouchy you make him, of course, and he's certainly squatting down a lot in the box. But a reasonably crouched pose yields a height of about 8" (20cm) in a good digitigrade stance. Most of the toy is that tarnished bronze color, although some of it is rubbery green plastic (hands, antennae, face frill, some connectors on the forearms and waist, spiky bits on the nosecone/tail, shoulder spines). The wrists, toes, shoulder joints, landing gear and some bits on the calves are silvery gray plastic. Clear red plastic is used extensively, on the lightpiping, the various energy collector panels and the shinguards. Gunmetal paint covers most of the shinguards, plus it's on conduit shaped detailing on the shoulders and forearms (in fact, the forearm pieces seem to have been dipped in paint, so might not be green plastic), and some bits on the abdomen and fannypack. Orange paint fills many of the panel lines on forearms, abdomen and thighs, plus is used for details on the hands, pelvis and forehead (a not-quite-Decepticon symbol is molded as his forehead crest, but only a wishbone-shaped segment of it is painted). The fact that the orange paint is on some of the rubbery parts proves that they could have painted his frill metallic blue to better match the movie. Articulation does depend a bit on how you hook him together, since making the belt-to-wrist links (which are more movie-accurate) renders his arms and waist nearly immobile. Also, he's got those auto-closing feet seen on the 2007 Leader Class Megatron...while not as finicky as Megatron's, they still make it hard to just set him down on a surface unless it's smooth and rigid like metal or glazed tile. Even glossy paper is too rough to let them slide apart on their own. [Later note: Voyager Megatron 2007, not Leader.] The head just nods forward to let you deploy the "energy absorption panels" inside of it, but there's a "waist" joint just below the shoulder level. The shoulders can shrug up on a transformation joint, have soft- ratcheting forward-back swivels and a soft-ratcheting lift-to-sides joint on each. There's a swivel just above the elbow, but it's a peg that can pop off if you turn it too far and get the energy panel hinge blocking the elbow hinge. There's additional hinges in the forearm for transformation that can let you pose the arm a bit more extremely. The wrists are swivels at their base and then a hinge for the actual 8-fingered hands. The hips are ratcheting swivels with limited hinges on either end, but the pointy bits on top of the thighs get blocked by the weird winged pelvis, so the hips can't move backwards, just forwards. And since the head is pretty much limited to "look down" and "look WAY down", it'd be nice to be able to lean him back a bit. If you flip his fanny pack up against his back and fold the rubbery connectors back you get hip rotation back, but lose the "waist" joint. That's kinda the guiding principle on this toy, by the way...you can't get everything to move at the same time, but you can pick which joints get blocked off. There's a peg swivel above each ratcheting knee, and the shinpads are on sliding connectors so that they don't restrict knee motion. The ankles of these digitigrade legs are swivels (well, totally restricted ball joints) for transformation, and while the toes are in three hinged chunks they're all spring-loaded and effectively have no useful articulation. It's tempting to see if I can yank the springs and stiffen up the joints, but between the pins and the extreme looseness of the joints sans-springs, it strikes me as Not Worth It. There's a few clear red plastic "energy absorption panels" that can flip out. If you nod the head forward, the pair stored inside the head flip out to flank the head. A few on the upper arms are hinged to swing up, and if you pull the forearm armor out a bit it reveals a few more. My first impression of this mode was that it was really floppy, but it's really just a couple of joints: the ankle swivels, the toe springs and the peg swivels on the arms. And none of them really prevent stable posing, they're just a bit offputting when handling the toy. This is certainly a toy that will end up in pieces destined for the vacuum cleaner if given to a kid under 6, though. :) Transformation: Whoog. On the one hand, it's not too hard to get things in roughly the right positions by referring to the package photos. On the other, there's a LOT of subtle joint adjustments and segment rotations that need to be done in order for all the pegs to line up with all the holes. Until you get these things all lined up, though, it's REALLY floppy and will fall out of alignment in one area while you work on another. Oddly, while the forearm armor is on struts that let the pieces move down the arm, neither official mode uses this. I suspect they were supposed to cover the hands more in vehicle mode, but it was decided later on that it looked better with the pieces left back. They do provide some customization potential as you can decide for yourself where they look best. I was thrown for a bit by the misleading similarities to the Legends version. On the Legends version, the hands point backwards as thruster flames, but on this toy the hands face forward. Vehicle Mode: It's like a hybrid of G1 Jetfire and a Shadow craft from Babylon 5, especially if you move the arm armor plates forward so they booster pack resemblance is heightened. The look is a bit marred by some open parts from the robot pelvic region just sitting there with exposed screws and joints. With all the sliding panels, you'd think there'd be one more to cover that. Or at least let the rubbery bits that connect to the arms in robot mode fold over 180 degrees to fill in the space a little. There's just a general excess of stuff that's supposed to be hidden from view being right out in the open, from screws to hollow parts. 7.5" (19cm) long and 10" (25.5cm) wide as a nearly equilateral triangle sort of shape (the leading edges of the triangle are 9"/23cm long). The feet end up as the wingtips and the arms as thrusters, there's very little of the robot mode not visible here. The fannypack unfolds to more or less cover the head. There's clear red cockpit-window-like pieces on the nose and on the head cover, and silvery gray landing skids that fold down from the nose and shins. There's a winglet on the fannypack piece that's mostly painted gunmetal, otherwise it just takes advantage of the orange panel lines of the robot mode. Of course, since this is a pragmatic travel mode rather than a disguise, it doesn't really need to look different. Even with all the pegs firmly in place, you have to be a little careful picking this up, since some of the pegs don't hold all that well. For instance, don't pick up the toy by the robot forearms. Also, the nose is only loosely held down by a slight "bump" in its hinge, so pressing down too hard causes it to collapse. The silvery gray pieces on the calves look like they should fold out somehow to add to the spikiness, but they don't. However, the instructions do miss a pair of horns flanking the cockpit that DO swing out a bit. Overall: The robot mode gets in its own way a lot, although it's not as bad as I first thought. Transformation is a game of "find the peg hole" but otherwise not too bad for an arbitray vehicle mode. The vehicle itself is more of a "good start" than a good final product, and feels unfinished in a lot of ways. Dave Van Domelen, was going to wait until he'd finished all the smaller toys to do the Voyagers, but Hasbro kept releasing more toys! Gah. A year's worth in a month!