Dave's Transformers RotF Rant: Voyagers "Wave 3" Long Haul (Dump Truck) Grindor (Blackout redeco, not reviewed) Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/RotF/Voyager3 The first "clean" wave to come out in my area, it was just a whole lot of Long Haul and Grindor. So after two loose "batches" I'm just going to call this wave 3, although officially it's a higher number (and I don't care what that number is). Grindor is a Blackout redeco in mostly ghost gray where Blackout was slate gray, and black on the rotors and other such details. He comes with Scorponok, who is redone in the Stalker Scorponok colors but not renamed. Grindor does not have any of the tech-camo details on him that the Legends version has, and is simply clean gray. For my review of the original version, see http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Movie/Voyager1 It's interesting to note that this is one of the rare all-Decepticon assortments. Mono-faction releases are rare in general, but when they happen they're usually Autobot. CAPSULES Long Haul: My only real problems with the vehicle mode would have been fixed by more careful choice of plastic colors and a bit more paint. Transformation is decent, if full of floppy parts when you're between modes. Robot mode has some kibble issues and a loose waist, but is otherwise a nice brute. Recommended. $21.96 at Walmart. Grindor: Original mold was mildly recommended, and this shows no indications of being an improvement. $21.96 at Walmart. RANTS Packaging: Same as previous waves. The cosells on the bottom of Long Haul's box are for Grindor and Stratosphere. DECEPTICON: LONG HAUL Altmode: Dump Truck Licensor: None Previous Name Use: G1, G2, Universe, Classics, Movie2 Previous Mold Use: None Mech Alive: Moving pistons in arms Callouts: "2 swords snap out!" "Working bed!" Function: Transport Motto: "Lift that barge, tote that bale, hoist that yard, bite my shiny metal...." LONG HAUL is too bitter to be an effective soldier on his own. Despite the fact that he is part of one of the most destructive and terrifying DECEPTICON squads of all time, he is too often treated as little more than a cargo hauler. Other DECEPTICONS sling their gear into his bed without a second thought, and order him to carry it around for them. Rather than confront them, he'd rather grumble about it privately, then stop on the way and destroy whatever he's been given responsibility for. STR 9 INT 3 SPD 3 END 9 RNK 3 COUR 8 FRB 9 SKL 2 Avg 5.75 Rather passive-aggressive of him.... Packaging: In a squatting "sumo" type of pose in robot mode, much like the Fallen was. This seems to be due to the truck mode being a little too large in all dimensions to fit into a standard Voyager box. His swords are stowed. There's a rather nice booklet (with staples and everything) inside that is probably the best catalog we've gotten in a while. The instructions are also loose in there. Unfortunately, this is one of those annoying packages where only one twist-tie goes all the way through, you have to undo the blister tray from the cardboard tray to get at the other ties (or resort to the snips). There's a total of 7 twist-ties, all very stiff wire. No rubber bands, though. The back kibble is designed to partially peg into place reasonably securely, but it comes unpegged pretty easily when freeing Long Haul from his packaging, you may want to doublecheck the instructions to see where it all goes. Robot Mode: Well, it's your standard hunchbacked "movie style" robot with a lot of its vehicle mode in a backpack and the rear wheels over its shoulders like cannons. He actually looks somewhat like Brawl in the way his head is nested between armored chunks, although his round head itself looks nothing like Brawl's. The chest appears to be intended as a Bayformering of the front end of the vehicle, although the real front end turns into armor panels on the thighs. The main "deliberately non-human" element is probably the hands, which have two fingers and two opposed thumbs each (thumb/finger/ finger/thumb). The grille panels around the thighs block the upper knee joint (which is really just a transformation joint) enough that you can't really do a digitigrade pose, although the true knees will bend forward just fine if you simply remove the panels to click the false knees back. Measured to the head, he's only 6.5" (16.5cm) tall, but if you count the pipe-organ-looking chunk of his dumper bed that sticks up behind his head the total height is 7.75" (20cm). The general color scheme involves two shades of yellowish green, a light blue-gray, plus black and clear with a few touches of other colors. Lightpiping was designed in, but someone realized that the back of the head was totally blocked by the backpack kibble so they just dipped the lightpiping piece in bright red gloss paint. Most of this toy is made of a yellow-green plastic that's just a little duller than "Constructicon Green". The parts of the dumper bed that don't end up on the arms are a darker shade of yellow-green plastic, though, for reasons I can't fathom (and as noted below, it doesn't work well together in vehicle mode). A faintly metallic light blue-gray plastic is used for several of the backpack's struts and joints, the triggers on the sword holders attached to the arms, hinges connecting the front wheels to the lower legs, and possibly some internal gears. There's matte black plastic and shiny black plastic on the toy. Matte black is seen on the wheels, the outer sleeves of the pistons on the upper arms and a few of the vehicle panels. Gloss is used on the piston cores, all the joints in the legs, the gear inside the chest, and the vehicle panels on the front and back of the thighs. Clear colorless plastic is used for the swords, various bits I'll describe in the vehicle mode, and presumably the lightpiping. There's a metallic silver-blue that's shinier than the corresponding plastic, and it's used for details on the face, abdomen flanks, pelvis, thigh fronts and forearms. On the right and left torso pieces there's matte black stripes with red stripes along their outer edges and the number 1214 printed in white. The thigh armor panels also have red stripes on black plastic and a 1214 on the right thigh. There's a little bit of gloss red on the front of each shoulder, about the only way to tell which side is supposed to face front. :) [Later note: oddly, the RPM version of Long Haul has 0728 instead. Maybe one is the standalone and the other the combiner version?] Articulation is decent, if a bit hampered by kibble. The head turns smoothly, but can only look about 45 degrees to either side before his chin smacks into his collar. The waist is pegged, so it doesn't move on purpose. Shoulders and hips are all universal joints that are ratcheting in the swivel part and smooth on the hinge. There's smooth upper arm swivels, and smooth hinges on elbows and wrists. The big chunk holding the sword gets in the way when trying to move the arms, though. Surprisingly, the panels wrapped around the thighs don't interfere with the thigh swivels. The true knees are smooth hinges, significantly blocked by the thigh armor panels. The feet open up on stiff hinges, but don't get enough extra range of motion to really count as a point of articulation. The listed Mech Alive works pretty much as advertised. There's a pair of pistons on the biceps and triceps locations of each arm, and as you bend the arm or straighten it, the pistons work. Additionally, there's a black gear in the middle of the chest that spins when you turn the head, that definitely counts under the Mech Alive banner. As for more old-fashioned gimmicks, pressing a button on the bed chunk on each arm lets a clear plastic sword blade pop out. Depending on where you have the hands and other pieces, the sword may even come out all the way. The blades have that same "oversized scalpel" look as Optimus Prime's swords, with wider tips and weird curves like the blades that come in assorted X-Acto packs and you have no idea how to use. :) Note, once you deploy the swords you can fold their holded back into vehicle mode position, which results in the blades pointing more in the "Wolverine" direction than the "katar" direction, and you may prefer this. The blades cannot deploy or be stowed when the holders are bent onto the forearms like this, but I think it looks better overall. Stability overall is okay, at least by the standards of RotF toys (i.e. damning with faint praise here). The waist doesn't peg together very well, though, and picking up the toy by the upper half is likely to result in the pelvis coming loose, although the backpack pegging onto the small of the back helps keep the whole thing from falling apart. The backpack holds together okay once you have it in the right position and pegged onto the top and bottom of the back. Despite the rather top-heavy build and smallish feet, I haven't had serious problems keeping him standing. Amusing fanmode: If you flip the bed backpack over the front as an armored apron, his rear wheels also come forward and resemble Cybertron Landmine's vortex cannons. There's just enough space over the top of this apron for a vision slit, making this Long Haul's "riot cop" mode. Transformation: Well, I didn't need to look at the instructions for this, but I did need to do some fiddling around to get everything in place. There's a LOT of pegs involved (at least some of which go into slots that aren't even visible from outside the toy), and ratcheting joints that are hard to fine-adjust if you didn't get it right the first time. You especially need to make sure that the folded up feet go straight up into the cabin piece rather than trying to tuck under the front deck by folding forward. The tabs that hold the arms onto the bed are really just guides, they don't lock on their own and depend on other tabs for stability, which can make for some dicey moments during transformation. Also, the front grille pieces are merely pegged on, so they may pop off during transformation. Vehicle Mode: This is a "dump truck" according to the package, although in truck jargon that name doesn't really apply to the sort of gigantic earthmover mining truck that Long Haul's based on. Like other non-licensed toys, it's not exactly any one vehicle, but this six-wheeled two-axle truck comes pretty close to things like the German-built Liebherr T 282B: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liebherr_T_282B (The front end of Long Haul is flatter than this vehicle's in part to better accomodate the transformation). It's missing a few details of import, such as a ladder connecting the bumper to the deck...ladders are on the bumper stretching down to the ground, but the ladder across the grille section is missing. The Liebherr and others of its ilk are about 14.5m long, so at 14.5cm long (5.5") Long Haul is pretty close to (if not exactly) 1:100 scale. For those interested, 1:100 is the "Deluxe" equivalent scale in Gundam models (1:144 being the "Basic" size). 1:100 is not a standard model railroading scale, although "English TT" (TableTop) scale is 1:106. The closest regular modeling scale is HO, which is 1:87, or the less common 1:120. For gobs of info on scales, see http://www.thortrains.net/scale1.htm (although it doesn't mention Gundams). [Later note: Long Haul was played by a Caterpillar 773, which is 30.5 feet long. That makes Long Haul merely 1:64 scale...he's about to scale with the Legends car Autobots! Heh.] Anyway, the chunky look of mining trucks means that at first glance I wondered if I should be displaying this next to Strong-Bot. It looks more "chibi" than even the Fast Action Battler Long Haul, although some of that may be expectations...FAB Long Haul looks normal for his line, Voyager Long Haul looks chibi compared to other regular movie line vehicles. Long Haul is 5.5" (14.5cm) long, 3.5" (9cm) wide and 3.25" (8.5cm) tall. Given that the box is 3.5" deep, the decision to package it in robot mode was the correct one. The two different colors of green plastic don't really mesh well here, unfortunately, and the division of colors doesn't even lend itself well to possible two-tone redecos. A lack of dirt/dust paint applications makes the vehicle feel out of place as well, just too clean for a mining truck. Kibble issues aren't too bad, although the torso is pretty obvious as a chunk in the middle, and the robot hands are fairly visible at the back. The darker green plastic ends up on the front and middle of the tip bed, but not on the sides, which is a bit annoying. Except for the sword triggers, all of the light blue plastic is packed away on the interior and only visible from below or behind. The wheels, the bar above the grille and the bumper are the main bits of black that stay visible, the rest is internal now. The windows and headlights are colorless clear plastic. The panels on the sides with railings molded onto the top are matte black plastic, pieces mostly hidden in the backpack kibble in robot mode. The main paint color here is matte black, used on the railings around the cab and on the grille. The hubs and the panels above the front wheels (outside face only, and not the railings) are painted yellow-green in a pretty good match to the lighter green plastic. The top edges of the sides of the tip bed have red strips, and the black piece above the grille in front also has a red stripe, with a white "1214" printed at the right end instead of the red strip. Interestingly, there's only one "1214" in vehicle mode. The headlights are painted silver on their backsides, and a black Decepticon symbol is printed below the sword trigger button on the driver's side of the tip bed. Impressively, despite being formed from a bunch of pieces with their own joints, the tip bed can actually lift up thanks to a slider joint in one bit. The arm pistons are in the right place to look like they're pushing the bed up, although the hands get in the way a bit here. The bed is shallower than a real truck's tip bed, but that's fairly standard for Transformers that take this sort of altmode. Gotta make room for the robot bits, after all. Stability, once you have all the bits in place and pegged down, is very good. It rolls pretty well on the big tires, the rear pairs are single chunks rather than two individual tires on each side of the rear axle. Overall: A pretty good design that seems to anticipate and work around a lot of the more common manufacturing problems we've been getting lately, although it's not immune to loose pegs. All in all, the flaws don't make it an unenjoyable toy, and there's plenty of assets. Not a great toy, but a good one. Dave Van Domelen, likely will do the Leaders next, but is really growing disenchanted with that size class in general.