Dave's RotF Rant: Voyagers Group 2 Megatron (tank/spaceship) Mixmaster (cement mixer) Stratosphere (C-17-sorta) Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/RotF/Voyager2 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. All the redecos that I didn't review are listed in Group 1. It does look like the next batch is reasonably stable, just Long Haul and Grindor (Blackout redeco). So I'll call that Wave 3. :) Of course, I'll probably only be reviewing Long Haul. CAPSULES Megatron: A bit weird, apparently on purpose. Has some minor stability issues, and the legs aren't particularly moveable, but it looks nice and the gimmicks don't get in the way of anything. Recommended. $21.96 at Walmart. Mixmaster: Nice vehicle mode, unstable robot, total shellformer transformation, and a third mode that's very bad and hurts the robot mode in many ways. Mildly recommended. $21.96 at Walmart. Stratosphere: Pretty good in both modes, nice tiny Prime accessory, but the transformation has little room for error and might be susceptible to the sorts of quality control problems that haunt Mudflap. Recommended. $21.99 at Target. RANTS Packaging: Same as wave 1, co-sells are pretty erratic as one might expect from the fact that this isn't one official wave. None of mine came with catalogs. Megatron has an official Function, I made up the rest. DECEPTICON: MEGATRON Altmode: Cybertronian tank Licensor: None Previous Name Use: Yes Previous Mold Use: None Mech Alive: Twist waist to activate internal gears Function: Leader of the Decepticons Motto: "You will know pain before you die, boy!" Trapped in the black, crushing depths of the sea, his mind inert in the grip of stasis lock, MEGATRON knew nothing of the desperate search mounted for his remains by the other DECEPTICONS. When he was finally brought back online, their effort and sacrifice meant little to him. The only thing that had any meaning was revenge. He would have his vengeance against the human boy who cheated him of his prize, and he swore to celebrate over the smoking wreck of OPTIMUS PRIME. STR 10 INT 10 SPD 10 END 10 RNK 10 COUR 9 FRB 10 SKL 9 Avg 9.75 Packaging: One big tie holds through the back of the cardboard, and it's so tangled up I ended up grabbing the wirecutter. Four more through the blister piece onto the tank, two of which are on the barrel and a bit tricky to get to if your hands are adult-sized. There's a secondary blister piece keeping some of the turret winglets in place, and a rubber band holds the turret top to the barrel of the cannon, with another at the back of the turret keeping the sword from popping out. I cut both bands with a scissors rather than try to unwrap them. It's pretty clear that no one really knew what to do with the turret shell pieces in robot mode. The instructions are somewhat vague about them, and the photo on the package just swings them back and hides them behind the robot, so they're not even visible. Vehicle Mode: While RotF Megatron is a tank in general, there's one scene in the movie where he flies off in spaceship mode. This toy seems to be an attempt to create a vehicle Fuzor of tank and jet, with a wider body and winglets sticking out (backward swept canards at the front of the non-rotating turret, forward swept winglets at the halfway point between front and back). There's secondary smaller treads at the front, closer together than the main treads. They don't like to rest on the table properly, though, and are mostly decorative. The overall effect is kind of like a horseshoe crab moving in reverse, with the cannon being the tail, although I suppose the robot head sticking out the front might make it more turtle-ish. And while the other Megatrons are a mix of silver/gunmetal/black for the most part, this one is a greenish gray called viridian...rusted copper. All in all, they seem to be shooting for an aquatic theme here, just as the previous Voyager Megatron was all about the ice. Show the means of imprisonment on the Voyager toy, leaving other size versions "clean". Unlike smaller versions of the character, the head stuck between the front treads is the actual robot head, not a secondary head molded there for the sake of the vehicle mode. It's surrounded by a sort of cage, though, so at least he won't lead with his face in rough terrain. Not counting the gun barrel, it's 6" (15cm) long with a wingspan of 7.75" (20cm). The loaded gun increases the length to 8" (20.5cm). The armor shell on top is all angle-panely in the movie aesthetic and is primarily viridian, while the treads and winglets are black. There's silver, gold and gunmetal accents here and there, and a few bits of red. Both sets of treads, all the winglets and the struts holding the canard chunks on are black plastic (which can also be seen in some internal bits). The spiky bits at the tip of the barrel and a prong that comes down from the turret top to the barrel are made of rubbery viridian plastic. The missile, the trigger and the ball joints where the face cage pieces connect are clear red plastic. There's some silvery gray plastic pieces visible inside the tank body. Otherwise, the toy is made of rigid viridian plastic. There's thrusters on the rear of the turret that could be any color plastic, since they seem to have been 100% painted over before being riveted on. There's gunmetal paint on the rear-of-turret thrusters, accents on the turret top, and the head cage seems to be dipped in the paint. A "driver's hatch" atop the turret is painted silver, and there's silver airbrushing on the trailing edges of the canards and the main thrusters, plus on the robot face behind the cage. Metallic viridian paint is on the outsides of the main tread pieces and the insides of the front treads. There's one little bit of red paint on the rubbery prong that covers up the barrel root, and a V of gold ahead of the driver's hatch. There's no Decepticon symbol visible in this mode unless you look at the underside. If you have it all pegged together correctly, it's fairly stable, although the canard pieces just sort of rest on the front treads and don't lock anywhere. As long as three of the wheels are on the same plane, it rolls okay. The turret doesn't turn, but the robot's elbow joint where the barrel of the cannon meets the turret lets the gun elevate. Transformation: For the most part, it's pretty straightforward. The treads become legs and the arms are tucked away inside the turret. Annoyingly, the heel spurs are created in such a way that you pretty much have to have all the leg hinge joints bent to maximum so that the toy can stand. When going back to tank mode, be sure to peg the wings onto the treads carefully, otherwise the toy won't roll properly. The instructions really aren't clear about how to deal with the backpack, but I think I've got it worked out. The rubbery tab at the front of the shell piece needs to go between the head cage halves to secure the top of the backpack. Be careful doing this, the cage halves may just pop off their joints. While there's a lot of ways to arrange the rest of the shell, I prefer a sort of BW Rampage look with the winglets all spread out and pointing up. It's too bad the Rampage name is already in use in this line, a redeco as Protoform X-Rampage would be pretty cool. Warning! Part of the joint that holds the shell backpack onto the small of the robot's back is made of clear plastic. While not as bad as Gold Plastic Syndrome, there've been reports of older clear plastic joint pieces snapping more easily. So be careful with this piece when transforming the toy. Robot Mode: As mentioned, it's kinda Rampage-y, what with the crabshell backpack. Also, the right arm ends in what amounts to a big crab-style claw, furthering the resemblance. The head, though, is purely Movie-style Megatron, with an open mouth that has molded teeth and a lightpiped mouth (along with the usual eyes). The legs are digitigrade, with the main thruster halves becoming thigh and calf armor chunks. Ignoring the backpack, he's 6.5" (16.5cm) tall. In full Spiky Robot Peacock display configuration, the backpack raises his total height to 8.75" (22.5cm) with a span of 8.5" (22cm). The color balance is about the same as the tank, although more of the light gray is visible and there's a new color of plastic in some gears. On the right arm, the extending "finger" claw blade and the thumb claw are made of rubbery viridian plastic, the scissoring struts and cannon barrel are black plastic, and the gears inside the forearm are a sort of dark dull gold plastic. The outer shell of the forearm and upper arm are rigid viridian plastic, but the "bone" of the upper arm is light silvery gray plastic and it's mostly visible through gaps in the viridian (the swivel joint is at the low end of the upper arm, so that the viridian piece rotates while the bone inside stays still). The shoulder itself is rigid viridian with light gray inside the joint. The left arm is pretty much the tank gun barrel, with light gray on the joints. The head, outer shell of the torso, the pelvis, hips thighs and some armor plates on the outsides of the shins are rigid viridian. Light gray plastic is used on the neck joint, hip joints and the struts that the heel spur treads swing in on. Clear red is found on the head lightpiping, the collar area, a joint that holds the backpack on, and possibly other places with full painting on them. The lower legs are mostly black plastic, including the toes. The dull gold plastic is also found on gears inside the torso, visible for the Mech Alive gimmick. The airbrushed silver paint look continues in this mode, on the left forearm, the shoulders, the hips and the pelvis. There's standard silver paint on the border of the face and some details on the chest. Gunmetal is used on the chin and the tablet on the crest of the helmet. The face is dark gold, and the teeth seem to be white. A black Decepticon symbol is printed on the right thigh armor. While mounted on a ball joint at the end of a stalk, the head doesn't really have much room to move thanks to the cage pieces flanking it like a high collar. Mainly it can look up, and wiggle to the sides a bit. The waist turns smoothly. Both shoulders are universal joints with hinges at both ends (the shoulders can shrug on transformation hinges). The right shoulder's swivel is ratcheting, probably to help keep it from flopping out in tank mode. There's swivels above both of the hinge elbows. The thumb on the left hand is hinged, and the Mech Alive gives it a claw joint as well. The hips are ratcheting universal joints, with smooth swivels at mid-thigh. The knees bend, but have to be most of the way bent to let the figure stand, so practical articulation range is only about 15 degrees either way. The ankles have to be fully bent, and the toe hinge is pretty much just ornamental. There's two Mech Alive gimmicks, not just the one listed on the package. If you turn the figure at the waist, the gears inside the torso turn, but you need decent lighting to see them. And if you straighten the left arm, the blade inside the forearm swings out to become a bayonet, although at halfway point it looks more like a proper crab claw. You can also ratchet the blade in and out manually. Overall: A little on the weird side, and the legs are essentially bricks, but at least they're bricks that can support the toy. The gimmicks add to the toy without subtracting in any significant way, which is sadly a rarity these days. I wouldn't be surprised if we get a more standard gray deco later on as a Premium Line or some store exclusive, but I kinda like how the viridian scheme sets him apart from the rest of the Horde O' Megatrons. DECEPTICON: MIXMASTER Altmodes: Cement Mixer, "Battle Mode:" gun emplacement Licensor: None Previous Name Use: G1, G2 (TFA in cartoon only, no toy) Previous Mold Use: None Mech Alive: Spinning gears (in torso) Function: Chemist and Explosive Expert Motto: "You want to just shoot them? How boring!" Resident chamist and explosives expert for the elite among the DECEPTICONS, MIXMASTER has spent his entire life learning all there is to know about chemical interaction. He can make thousands of poisons, explosives and deadly gasses [sic] from the materials around him. The other DECEPTICONS rely on him to fashion powerful warheads for their missiles, and dangerous venoms in which to coat their blades. STR 6 INT 9 SPD 3 END 7 RNK 8 COUR 3 FRB 6 SKL 9 Avg 6.375 Packaging: There's a sticker on the window part of the box front proclaiming him a Triple Changer (TM), on the strength of his gun emplacement mode (which got a brief scene in the movie). Since the launcher really only makes sense in this mode, it's not an afterthought third mode, but it IS a "you need to look at the instructions to tell when you're done" mode. Two ties through the cardboard tray, again requiring wirecutters, but those are all that holds the vehicle in place. A single tie holds the missile to the blister, and another tie wraps around the mixer drum. There's a rubber band around the cab and another around the cement chute at the back. Vehicle Mode: Other than the huge Decepticon symbols on the cement barrel, it's a pretty realistic cement mixer of the longnose cab and rear dispensing variety with six wheels. It even has a positionable chute for dispensing the cement, although the barrel doesn't turn. The only kibble consists of some joints...even from the underside there's little obvious robot stuff aside from the launcher. By the way, the launcher can be pulled out without transforming the rest of the toy, so you can load the missile or have Mixmaster fire on pursuing Autobots. It's about 6.5" (17cm) long, which makes the toy somewhere between 1:48 and 1:64 scale to base it on the length of real mixers, but I think those have longer drums proportionally speaking. Making some estimates based on cabin size, 1:42 to 1:48 seems a more reasonable range. It's mostly very dark gray and brownish light gray with some silver and purple. Stability is okay on the big parts, but the fuel tanks and smokestacks are loose to flop around. The drum and most of the cab are made of charcoal gray plastic. The tires are a dark gray that looks brown under LED white light. The rear deck, most of the rear support and the "put stuff into the drum" funnel are light brownish gray plastic. The grille, roof, smokestacks, fuel tanks and numerous joints are light silvery gray plastic. The side mirrors, ladder at the rear and part of the dispensing appratus are rubbery silvery gray plastic. The windows and headlights are clear purple plastic, a bit too dark for the headlights. Silver is the dominant paint color, used in two broad bands around the cement drum and on the wheel hubs, plus there's a silver Decepticon symbol printed on the hood. The roof of the cab is painted to match the rest of the cab. There's dull dark purple Decepticon symbols on the sides of the drum. Brown paint is airbrushed on the nose of the cab to make it look dirty and used, but a lack of similar paint on the grille kinda negates that effect. There's some black paint on the grille, plus red hazard stripes on the fuel tank steps. A red and white hazard stripe runs along each side of the rear deck. The cement chute is hinged at the middle and connected to the back by a ball joint and strut. It only has a little range of motion, but having some is nice. Transformation: Going to robot mode is mainly a matter of "unfold everything" and then position the drum and deck sections to be as inobtrusive as possible. A bit of a shellmaster, most of the cab just hands off the butt and the drum splits into quarters that hand off shoulders and forearms. Going back to vehicle mode is a bit tricky, especially since the drum quarters have to connect around their root piece rather than being able to connect and then snap onto the root, but as movie-style shellmasters go it's not terribly bad. For the gun emplacement, I just went right to the instructions, which have you start in robot mode. And they're not much help, either. But in carefully examining them, I found that the strut that connects the cab chunk to everything else is installed wrong, set to bend the wrong way. Not that it really worsens the stability of Battle Mode, which is horrible anyway. Robot Mode: It's the Bonecrusher of the line, in the "really long arms that just want to stran...er, hug you" sense. While mostly a shellformer, they do cleverly fold up the fuel tanks and smokestacks to form the torso sides. The color balance lightens significantly, with a lot of the limb pieces being silvery gray, plus a few new paint colors are added in. Total height depends on how much he squats, but with fairly straight legs he comes out to 6" (15cm) tall at the head, 6.5" (17cm) at the top of the back-mounted launcher. The maximum arm span is about 13" (33cm), although it's hard to straighten them completely due to the drum shell pieces. I can't find the spinning gears advertised on the box, it's possible this was an accidental "left on the template from another figure" thing. The closest we come to spinning gears is the "light colored strut inside dark armor shell" trick on the thighs that Megatron's upper arms used. The thighs are dark gray with light gray "bones". The majority of the other limb pieces are light gray plastic, with some medium cool gray peaces on a lot of the joints and struts. The head is brownish light gray with purple lightpiping. The claws are rubbery silver-gray plastic. The chest and the leg armor panels are right light gray plastic, and the "ascot" is medium cool gray. There's a dark metallic red on the leg guards and chest, and a dark copper on the abdomen and several of the joints. The head has some gunmetal stripes and dark gold on the forehead. A dark metallic green is painted on the finger claws. The head is sunken in and only wobbles a bit, but it can rise up on a transformation joint (for the battle mode) to look around. The waist doesn't turn. The arms are a profusion of hinge and swivel joints (5 hinges and 3 swivels), plus the claws are hinged with two fingers and one backwards-bent thumb on separate hinges. Universal hips, hinge knees and ankles, the toes have hinges too but have to be at an extreme one way if the robot has any hopes of standing. While the legs aren't floppy per se, they're just not strong enough to hold up all the mass here. Plus, the topheavy nature means that you need the legs as straight as they'll go and the toes up as far as they'll go in order to lean the figure so the center of mass is over the feet, otherwise use the cab-shell as a chair or just put in external support. This toy WILL fall over if you just set it on the shelf expecting it to stand on its own. While the cannon can't really be used in this mode, you can make the proportions look a little less hug-prone by folding back some of the joints near the shoulders and making the upper set of drum shells into something like beetle elytra (wing covers). Battle Mode: In rough, this is the robot kneeling down with hands forward as stabilizers and feet over the back as...something...with the cannon set up to fire off the back and the robot head moved up to be under the barrel kinda like the secondary head on B'Boom's third mode. A whole lot of work for...well, crap. Dren. Slag. Call it what you will, this is a waste of engineering. Frankly, just about any fan mode will be about as good, and some may be better. I found a sort of six-legged mode that uses the smokestacks to keep it propped up in the center and turns the cab chunk into a carapace, for instance. I'm not even going to bother listing dimensions, because it's not stable enough for the measurements to mean anything! http://www.dvandom.com/images/mixmasterbeetle.JPG for my fanmode. Overall: Maybe if they'd given up on triple-changing and concentrated on making the robot mode more stable, this'd be a good toy. But the robot mode suffers too much instability because of the extra joints needed for the battle mode, and the battle mode is a total write-off. Fanmodes on toys that weren't intended to have third modes are better than this, and this third mode is clearly intentional. AUTOBOT: STRATOSPHERE Altmode: Cargo Plane Licensor: None Previous Name Use: None Previous Mold Use: None Mech Alive: Moving internal gears (in torso) Function: Transport, Ground Support Motto: "When it absolutely, positively, has to be there...and be accompanied by supporting fire." When the AUTOBOTS need to be delivered to the front lines fast, they rely on STRATOSPHERE. His cargo bay has enough room for an entire AUTOBOT strike team, and his engines have enough power to get them all the way to the other side of the world in only a couple of hours. High altitude weapons allow him to deliver a punishing barrage against DECEPTICON targets on the ground as his comrades move in for the finish. STR 10 INT 7 SPD 8 END 7 RNK 6 COUR 8 FRB 8 SKL 5 Avg 7.375 Packaging: Stratosphere is packaged in vehicle mode, but Mini-Prime is in robot mode, probably so people can be assured it does transform. The tail pieces are actually mistransformed in package, they're supposed to be mostly horizontal like Cybertron Jetfire. Two twist-ties and a pair of shells taped over the tail pieces hold the jet into the package, but the ties have an extra twist between blister and cardboard, so you either have to carefully cut them from the top, or undo them, remove the blister, and undo them again. Also, the tie for Prime goes through the cardboard, so he has to be removed first if you don't want to cut Stratosphere out. Vehicle Mode: Well, he's not exactly a C-17 Globemaster thanks to the weird tail assembly, but this toy is clearly meant to be the cargo jet from which Optimus Prime deploys in the Shanghai fight scene of the movie (continuing the tradition the first movie toy line established of turning all non- Transformers vehicles seen in the movie into Cybertronians). Heh, this and Rollbar both need to be redeco'ed as licensed UPS vehicles. Anyway, it has a weird tail similar to Cybertron Jetfire's, and there's two rows of cockpit windows, a second chunk tacked on above the normal C-17 windows. There's also some odd intake scoops on either side of the nose, but the rest of the plane is pretty close to the Globemaster. [Later note: There's definitely elements of the Antonov An-225 in there, notablye the tail: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonov_An-225] 9.5" (24cm) long, wingspan is 9.25" (23.5cm) and the tailspan is 5" (13cm). That makes it roughly 1:220 scale, or Z-scale to use model railroading brackets. So he's not quite to scale with Demolishor, who's more like 1:160 (N-scale). The dominant color is a medium-light gray with some darker gray bits, silver accents and orange-red on the front of the jet intakes that makes them look like they're on fire or about to be. It rolls on a fold-down nosewheel and two little wheels at the rear. There's panels that can fold up to reveal rows of molded but non-turning wheels ahead of the actual wheels, sadly lacking in paint. I may fix that even if I do nothing else to this toy. Other than hinges and seams, there's no obvious kibble in this mode, even seen from below. Most of the toy is a light-to-medium gray plastic. The cockpit windows are clear turquoise blue. The engines and a few of the connecting joints are dark gray plastic, and the wheels are black plastic. A couple other plastic colors (dark blue, red-orange) are visible on the underside but are part of the robot mode. Silver paint is used on the upper cockpit section, the leading edges of the wings and the insides of the jet engine intakes. The outer cowling of the intakes is painted a reddish orange with airbrush fadeaway. The sides of the tail bits are painted matte black with large Autobot symbols left as negative space. The nose tip is also painted matte black. Printed on the wings are winged black Autobot symbols, and "G.C.R.D. 6-77" is printed on the nose section on either side of the cockpit. This isn't meant to be a designator in the way C-17 is, else it would be a glider. :) Rather, it's probably either the initials of some designer born in June 1977, or it means something like Giant Cargo Robot Design. The main action feature is the cargo bay door at the back. Tilt the tail back and it pops open, releasing mini-Optimus Prime. It can be tricky to get Prime to go in without popping his feet/spoiler off, though, and he won't always come out on his own if his front end gets hung up in the front. As an aside, I found that the little cars that come with Mega Blok's latest stunt car sets fit perfectly in the hold as well. They're closer to 1:120 scale, but being cars rather than trucks they fit fine. There's a 5mm peg hole on the top between the wings, although the toy comes with no accessory that plugs into it. [Later note: according to TFWiki.com, he originally had a space shuttle that turned into a gun. That would make him a 747, which is rather larger than a C-17.] Transformation: Getting started is tricky, because the place where you're supposed to start opening up is pretty stiffly connected, and it can feel like you're breaking stuff. If you lead by lifting the wings and their attached bits of fuselage up to the sides, though, most of the other stuff can be done in any order. Getting the feet disconnected from the legs takes a bit of force, though, and you have to be careful to avoid breakage. There's a bit of automorph in which swinging the shoulders forward makes the nose shell spread apart to reveal techy details inside. Going back to vehicle mode is a real challenge. The arms need to be positioned EXACTLY in the right position to fit inside. Even a tiny bit off and you'll have to almost start over, since panels won't quite close and you have to unfold a lot of stuff to reposition the arms. I recommend taking very careful note of their positions, such as which side of the shoulders face which way, when transforming to robot mode the first time. Robot Mode: Not a total shellmaster, since the feet are formed from part of the fuselage, and the nose becomes the chest, but an awful lot of stuff ends up on the backpack. The wing chunk on the back is reminiscent of things like some of the Gundam booster wing setups (like the 0-Raiser). Like many movie toys, he's digitigrade and has internal struts in the arms that are visible as the arm swivels turn. Due to a panel getting in the way, you can't store Prime in the tail section in robot mode, although the Mega Blok mini-cars can fit in there. As with all digitigrades, the height depends on whether you straighten the legs out, but with the legs in the canonical configuration he's 7" (18cm) tall at the head. The wings can also be moved around, but as per the instructions they stick almost straight up, giving the toy a total height of 10.5" (27cm). Front to back it's about 5.5" (14cm) deep due to the backpack. I get the impression that this is Beast Wars Depth Charge redone in movie drag. :) Additional colors come out to play here, with dark orange-red on the arms and a few accents, plus extensive brownish light gray. The top of the head (the secondary cockpit window chunk) is clear blue plastic, and with the chest open you can see that the main cockpit windows are separate pieces bolted inside the nose, rather than making the nose all clear plastic and painting over it. The collar/spine piece, the rest of the head, the outer armor of the upper arms and forearms, and the hands are dark reddish-brown plastic that matches the paint on the jet intakes. The pelvis, the torso core and the shoulder roots are the same light gray as the fuselage shell. The medium gray used on the jet engines is also used on the legs below the knees, the elbow joints, the inside of the shoulders and the insides of the hips. A light brownish gray plastic is used on the outsides of the shoulders, the outsides of the hips, and the thighs. The thighs use the same sort of bone-inside trick as many limbs in this line, but the fact that both pieces are the same color makes it more subtle. Very dark blue plastic is found on the ankle joints and several gears inside the upper arms and forearms. The head is almost entirely painted, I had to check the screw hole to tell what color plastic the lower head is made of. :) The face and much of the top are silver, with the sides and back black. Red-orange "scars" are below the eyes, which are lightpiped. There's some red-orange painted conduits on the abdomen and thighs, and black paint on piston details on the lower thigh fronts. The head turns, the waist does not. The shoulders are universal joints with a little bit of "shrug backwards" motion available on transformation hinges. There's upper arm swivels with the usual "bones" inside. The elbows are double hinges, but can't bend more than about 150 degrees from straight. The clawlike fingers are hinged as a group, and the thumb hinged separately, while the wrist can bend backwards a bit on its own hinge. The thumb has about 3/4 of a 5mm peg hole, so while Stratosphere doesn't come with a separate weapon, he can hold borrowed ones. (In fact, I suspect the design originally DID have a separate weapon, intended to plug into the top in vehicle mode, but it got yanked for cost reasons.) Universal joint hips, with swivels just below them. The knees and ankles are smooth hinged, and the "false ankle" toe joints are semi-ratcheted hinges with only a few stable positions. The boatlike feet are big enough to keep it stable despite the backpack. For posing, the ankle joints do the job of knees, since the actual knees need to stay bent 90 degrees. The package suggests the Mech Alive is in the torso, but it's actually a series of gears in the upper arms and forearms, connected to teeth on the elbow joint. Because they're so dark, it's kinda hard to notice, but they're there. Mini-Optimus Prime: This is almost more of an Energon Rodimus, with the robot feet forming a sort of optional spoiler (they can fold away entirely, but you can't hide the arms, so might as well run with the Rodimus version) and the robot arms looking vaugely like the jet engines. Based on the official length of the vehicle mode, this toy is pretty much to scale with Stratosphere after all, 1:220 give or take ten. So we don't have any Prime toy that's quite to scale with Demolishor...the Legends is too big, this one is too small. Ah well. In vehicle mode, it's 44mm long with the spoiler, 40mm without. The wheels are black plastic, the hubs are metal rivets with "nuts" molded onto them, the rest is dark blue plastic. The front windows, grille and bumper are painted silver, as are the robot arms in back. The hood top is printed red with blue flames left open. All six wheels roll, and do so pretty well. If you leave the spoiler out, it makes it harder to keep the vehicle in Stratosphere's cargo bay, plus the spoiler tends to pop off. Oh, and the jointing of the arms is a bit angled, so you can't raise them both up as faux smokestacks. To transform, fold the rear down as legs, flip the spoiler forward as feet, fold the arms around to the front and flip the head up. Similar to but simpler than G1 Optimus Prime. The legs fold out 135 degrees so that the grill is pointing downward not straight forward...if you try to leave the nose horizontal then the head and shoulders are too far back. The robot is about 2" (54mm) tall. The faceplate is silver, as are the arms, no other robot-specific paint. The arms are hinged at the shoulders, and the neck and waist can bend on transformation joints. Overall: This is another of those tightly engineered transformations like Mudflap's that might not work on everyone's copy thanks to the lowered quality control standards at Hasbro's factories, but it mostly seems to be a matter of fiddling around until things fit (I put some small marks on one arm with Sharpie so I could tell which part of each arm segment faces up). It's a fairly solid vehicle mode other than the tail, and an interesting robot mode that requires a tall shelf or the top shelf for display. Dave Van Domelen, plans to do Human Alliance Bumblebee next out of the main toys, but might take a break to review Universe Swerve (Chevy Aveo) or some of the candy products.