Dave's Star Wars Transformers Rant: Wave 3 Jango Fett to Slave-1 (Not Reviewed) Emperor Palpatine to Imperial Shuttle Clone Pilot to ARC-170 Judging by the co-sells, Anakin and Darth Maul round out the wave. Jango is a recolor of Boba, possibly with minor remolding. See http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/SW/Standard2 for reviews of Boba Fett and Darth Maul. I should note that I cut the design team a fair amount of slack in the first two waves, since they were new (or so I heard, anyway) and working within stricter limits on the vehicle modes. I am not going to be cutting so much slack anymore, so my recommendations may end up a bit lower by comparison to wave 1 and 2. CAPSULES Jango Fett: Looks nice, but unless they did a lot of fixing between Boba and Jango, it's really floppy. Neutral. $14.97 at Wal-Mart. Emperor Palpatine: Very fall-aparty vehicle mode, okay transformation and robot mode. Very mildly recommended, it's better once you get the hang of its many flaws, but this takes patience. $14.97 at Wal-Mart. Clone Pilot: Pretty solid and detailed vehicle mode, good transformation, pretty good robot mode (although with badly proportioned knees). Recommended, mostly on the strength of the vehicle mode. $14.97 at Wal-Mart. RANTS Packaging: Same as wave 1. However, the techspecs are no longer present on the cardback...or anywhere inside either. I suppose they decided it didn't fit their aesthetic. EMPEROR PALPATINE * Converts from Imperial shuttle mode to Sith Master! * Launching missile! The hate is swelling within Emperor Palpatine. It gives him focus, vanquishes his fears and makes him more powerful than the blind and arrogant Jedi Knights. After rebuilding Darth Vader's body and warping his mind, the Emperor uses the Dark Side of the Force to change into shuttle mode. he transport Vader to an undisclosed location in the Outer Rim where he will complete his Sith training and make him the most feared villain the galaxy has ever known. Packaged with the top fin detached and behind the toy, and the wings detached and partially folded under. Has a Star Wars toy catalog (not totally current, though, as it only has waves 1 and 2 of the SWTF toys). Instructions are two color on matte white paper as usual. Saber missile held in just by the blister. 6 H-connectors hold various rubber bands on. Pilot Figure: Made of very dark gray plastic with pale caucasian skintone applied somewhat sloppily to the face and hands. Figure is in his usual robes, with a joint at the hips and arms that are connected inside the torso by an "axle". Stands quite well, as one would expect from a robed figure. 34mm tall. Vehicle Mode: 5" (13cm) long, 5" (13cm) tall, and with a "deployed" (not maximum possible, wings a bit below horizontal) wingspan of about 11" (28cm). For those not familiar with the design, the Imperial shuttle is essentially a flying SUV at its core, with a large swept back trapezoidal fin on top and slightly swept wings that are maybe 20 degrees sloped below horizongal in flight mode and that can swing up to touch the top fin for landing. It's made of very light gray plastic for the most part, with a few medium gray bits and a smoky clear cockpit window. There's a few medium gray panels and stripes, plus gunmetal on the small cannons at the wing roots and on the rear. The front end has a more silvery paint on its grille. The lightsaber "missile" is made of a cloudy translucent red plastic, painted gunmetal and gold on the hilt. There's some little bits of dull copper detailing at the fronts of the pontoons, and tiny gun's molded on the front tips. The wings and top fin assembly (which includes the missile launcher) are very loosely held on, going WAY overboard in the "pop off before it breaks" school of toy safety. If you want to move the wings, for instance, you should grip the rotating collar they clip to, not the wings themselves. And you might as well remove them all before transforming, since they're coming off anyway. Okay, they're all SUPPOSED to come off in transformation, but more on that later. In addition to the looseness, the side pods are gappy, there's no real effort to make everything fit together tightly. The little dual cannons on the wing roots can swivel to the sides to aim, and the cockpit window opens up to let a figure go inside. It's possible to put a figure in while the missile is loaded, but tricky, as the missile doesn't go in very far. Unlike most saber missiles, nearly half the blade is still visible on the handle side when loaded, it doesn't go all the way through the launcher piece and out the other side. Makes it look like it's freezeframed in the process of launching. Also, there's two little gunmetal painted landing feet on the bottom that fold out. There's fixed sliders on the bottom of the robot hear piece for forward gear, or you can transform the robot arms so that the pegs on the upper arms face downward for a more level set of landing gear (the intended ones result in a slight nose down posture). The best thing you could really say for this mode is that there's very little robot kibble. Even on the underside, it looks plausibly vehicular. One possible attraction this toy has is for kitbashers. Without the fin or wings, it looks kinda like a G1 Cybertronian ground vehicle. Another kitbashing suggestion for display, drill two 1/8 inch (3mm) holes about .63 inches (16mm) apart in a block to make a stand for vehicle mode. Then transform the vehicle mode so that the abovementioned upper arm pegs face down, and you can plug them into this block. Otherwise, there's no way to display the toy on its own with the wings in flight mode. In theory you could hang it from the ceiling by the hole through the top fin, but the connection between the top fin and the hull is way too weak for that to be a good idea. Alternately, it just so happens that the holes in Lego cylinders and cones are 1/8" in diameter, and the 16mm is the center to center separation of two Lego pegs with one peg between them, so you can just build a Lego base for it. (http://www.dvandom.com/images/legoswtf1.JPG is one I just threw together without really searching to make sure all the parts looked good together.) Transformation: Fairly simple. Remove all the wings and stuff. The arms fold out from under the center hull, and the legs fold out from the rear fairly obviously, with a "pull out to lengthen" trick that can end up pulling the leg off completely if you're not careful. They loves them their peg attachment joints. The cockpit section folds down, pulling the head out into place. The feet have toes and heels, but the heels are purely decorative: they do not lock into place. Oh, and rotate at the waist and then the thighs, to get the proper pelvis details. The arms can be a bit tricky, being so much more poseable than they need to be, but you want to make sure that the pegs on the upper arms are facing outward. Officially, the wings clip onto new spots on the hips, becoming an armor skirt of sorts. However, while this makes it hard to use the top fin as a shield, I like the looks better when the wings stay clipped onto their vehicle mode locations, becoming shoulder wings. Robot Mode: 6.5" (17cm) tall at the head, ignoring any wingplay. The head is painted gunmetal (cowl-like helmet parts) and wrinkly yellow (face) in a not very good evocation of Palpatine's face. The eyes are red and the teeth white. Due to some unfortunate vehicle mode detailing, he looks like he has a robotic smiley face on his codpiece area. The shoulder joints are universal, and on mine they squeak fairly loudly. (Now I can't help but hear Dick Cheney saying "Oil Can!" in the role of the Emperor.) There's upper arm swivels, ratcheting hinge elbows that bend both ways for transformation, forearm swivels and ball joint wrists. The head and waist turn, the hips are very stiff universal joints, there's thigh swivels (really just peg joints, which pop apart easily), and slightly ratcheting knees. Proportions are good overall, and the hands are actually pretty substantial, unlike most SWTF hands. However, they're SO substantial that it's very difficult to get the light saber into either one. The missile launcher is supposed to be handheld, but it isn't held very well. There's pegs on the upper arms for attaching the top fin as a shield, and as mentioned earlier his wings are supposed to go on his hips. However, on his shoulders and using the joints in them to fold them up and over, they make the robot mode look like some sort of evil white angel. Recommended accessory loadout: shield on left arm, saber in right hand, launcher clipped to back, wings on shoulders and folded so that the shield fits in under them. Note, leaving the launcher on the back means you can't turn the waist. Overall: This toy has a LOT of flaws and design issues. Once you figure out how to work around them, though, it's actually fairly cool. But NOT a toy for anyone with low patience, or for a small child. I suspect the fins and wings would end up as impromptu Batarangs in either case. CLONE PILOT * Converts from ARC-170 starfighter mode to clone pilot! * 2 launching missiles! This skilled pilot is part of the Republic's most elite military force. Using a cutting-edge morphing technology developed during the Clone Wars, he is able to engage his enemies on the ground, then quickly morph into ARC-170 mode and bring the battle into space. Comes with the same catalog as the Emperor, and the same style of instructions. 7 H-connectors, and the missiles are tucked under the wing. Pilot Figure: A pilot variant of the Ep3 Clone Trooper style. The torso/head piece is white plastic with black and gray details, a caucasian face (odd, given that the clones are swarthy) and yellow goggles. The arms and legs are medium gray plastic with white paint for the gloves and boots, and black paint on the soles. The arms are connected internally by an axle, and the feet connected by a bar at the bottom. The figure does not stand well. It's 34mm tall. Vehicle Mode: The ARC-170 is a three-man fighter from Star Wars Episode 3, and looks kinda like a missing link between the Ep2 troop carriers and an X-Wing (in the same way the Jedi Starfighter of Ep3 looks like a missing link between the Ep2 Jedi ships and a TIE fighter). It's mostly very light gray plastic, with black guns and engines, and clear cockpits. A sort of brick red paint is extensively used, as is a dark gray paint, plus some white trim on the windows, yellow in the wing insignias, and silver on the servodroid. The ship is 7" (18cm) long if you include the rear guns, and has a wingspan of 7.5" (19cm). The only obvious robot kibble is at the bottom sides of the engines, where the robot hands stick out. The vehicle mode holds together pretty solidly, a nice counterpart to the Emperor. Of the three windows, only the middle one opens up to admit the pilot. The rear gunner seat is mostly filled by the robot mode head, and the front cockpit does not open or really have room for a full figure. The fighting foils on the tops and bottoms of the wings open up, and the two rear guns can be swiveled and elevated. There's no landing gear, but I think the ARC-170 is a ship-based fighter and not designed to land on a regular pad. Could be wrong, though...my geekery doesn't really lie in the Star Wars direction. The missile launchers are pegged onto the bottoms of the wingtips in such a way as to keep them from rotating it too much. They fire VERY weakly, which is unsurprising given that the springs only compress about 3-4 mm. The triggers are at the very rear. Transformation: Turn the engines into arms first, folding the wings down a bit in the process. This frees up just about everything else to move in whatever order you want. Like the Emperor, the legs suffer from the "you need more force to lengthen them then you need to pull them off at the thigh swivel" problem. In a nice "waste not, want not" gesture, the rear guns pop off the tail and reattach on the robot shoulders. The front cockpit becomes a buttflap, the nose section becomes armor skirts, and part of the rear fuselage splits to make shoulderpads. Robot Mode: 6" (15cm) tall at the head, a little taller if you count the shoulderpads. The 6-foil effect of attack mode is repeated here, with the main wings remaining at the center of the head-on appearance, with the shoulderpads and armor skirt pieces acting as attack foils. While the hands are the standard puny C-shape things endemic to the line, they hold the guns pretty well. The head is a pilot's helmet in white, with red clear visor and silver face. The arms are mostly black, the legs mostly gray and brick red, the torso light gray. The "real" cockpit forms the chest, making this an ideal toy to kitbash into a Star Wars Starscream. The head turns in theory, but is blocked in so securely that it barely wiggles. The waist turns as well, but is limited a bit by the buttflap. Universal shoulders, but the kibble up there gets in the way some. Hinge elbows and wrists, swivels on upper arm and forearm. Ball joint hips with peg swivels in the thighs. The knees, unfortunately, are nearly a centimeter too low...the legs look fine straight, but bad when bent. They're also fragile looking, and while I haven't had any problems with them, that doesn't mean they won't shatter with too-rough play. Hinged ankles are limited to the toes pointing up (transformation joint). [Later note: it's been pointed out to me that you can have the rear guns held in the hands and put the main guns on the shoulders, but they're a poor fit on the shoulders.] Overall: The only serious flaws are the knees and the excessive kibble around the shoulder area. The hands are a minor flaw on an aesthetic level, but at least they do work. One of the few SWTFs I would recommend on its own merits, and not just "good for a SWTF". Dave Van Domelen, now has only the Millennium Falcon left to review from his 7/1/06 shopping spree.