Dave's Star Wars Crossovers Rant: Standard Wave 4 Darth Vader (TIE Advanced, reship) Emperor Palpatine (Imperial Shuttle redeco, not reviewed) Captain Rex (AT-TE) Clone Pilot (V-19 Torrent) Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/SW/StandardC4 Wave 3 was all redecos with a slight remold in there. The Clone Pilot (Republic Gunship) was redone with a "monkey lizard" nose art, the AT-AT Driver (AT-AT) was remolded with a new head and given jungle grime deco for Return of the Jedi looks, and Palpatine (Imperial Shuttle) was redecoed in black to make the mech mode more accurate. The Palpatine redeco reshipped in wave 4. [Later note: I've been told that the Gunship has some significant remolds, replacing the side ball turrets with an enclosed troop compartment.] http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/SW/Standard1 - Darth Vader (note that this version lacks the minifig) http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/SW/Standard5 - Palpatine and Clone Pilot (Gunship) http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/SW/Standard6 - AT-AT Driver CAPSULES Captain Rex (AT-TE): Good vehicle mode, simplistic transformation, and the robot mode is hampered by a number of bad design choices that could easily have gone a different way. Mildly recommended. $15.99 at Target. Clone Pilot (V-19 Torrent): Nice if a little floppy vehicle mode with two configurations, interesting transformation, robot mode decent considering how much wing space needs to be dealt with. Mildly recommended, although that's pretty good for a SWTF. $15.99 at Target. RANTS Packaging: Same as Wave C2, with the four in this wave shown on back. (http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/SW/StandardC2) There's a little catalog folded up alongside the instructions, and amusingly while it shows old SWTFs it shows the non-transforming versions of the AT-TE and V-19. Color scheme: These are both Republic vehicles from the Clone Wars era, so they share the same color scheme of some light gray with barn red as the main accent color, plus bits of various darker grays and black. CAPTAIN REX + Converts from AT-TE mode to Mech mode! + Launching projectile! Captain Rex marches into combat against the droid army, firing his blaster into the thick sea of battle droids and super battle droids. The clone captain is surrounded on all sides but has a devastating surprise for the unsuspecting droids: he changes into a huge AT-TE and blasts the enemy with his projectile cannon! Oooookay. At least on Grievous and the TIE Bomber pilot it was implied that they were already in transformable vehicles. But apparently Rex has a new super power aside from the awesome power of being Named (and therefore far less likely to randomly redshirt it). Packaging: Two rubber bands with H-connectors help the blister hold the vehicle mode in. The "horn" of the cockpit is protected by a bit of blister shell. A single rubber band with no H-connector holds the missile into the blister, and another holds the launcher. Either the prototype had a significantly different paint job, or they photoshopped it so severely that it might as well have. Vehicle Mode: The AT-TE (All Terrain Tactical Enforcer) is squat six-legged walker introduced in Episode 2 and used fairly often in the Clone Wars cartoon. It's kind of like a beetle crossed with a chameleon (the front end is very reminiscent of a chameleon's head). According to Wookieepedia, it's 13.2m long, presumably this is the main hull length not counting the cannon. The hull length of the toy is 6" (15cm), for about 1:90 scale (22mm scale for you wargamers out there, making the potential 33mm tall pilot figure 50% too big). Despite lacking a pilot figure, it still has a cockpit, so you can put older pilot figures in if you want. And, even more cruelly, the cannon has a usable gunner seat and no gunner for it. HASBRO HAETS MI! ;) Mostly made of light cool gray, although some white plastic from the mech mode shows through gaps in the side armor. The cockpit cover and the root of the missile are made of clear colorless plastic, and the six smaller cannons are a slightly darker cool gray (more of a slick joint-suitable plastic than the armor). The front end of the missile/blaster is medium gray plastic. The cockpit has a slightly too light gray paint on it. Plenty of brick red accents in various places, plus some medium gray that's pretty close to the missile's plastic, and a very few black shadow-emulating bits on the flanks. There's a false accordion joint in the middle (like found in a two-section bus or between some subway cars) that's painted a lighter brick color. The Republic/Imperial 8-pointed logo is printed on both sides just rear of the cockpit. As often happens with SWTFs, the missile is actually the barrel of a blaster cannon, so firing it results in disarmament. :) Fortunately for the AT-TE, it has a number of other smaller turrets (four on the front, two on back). Each small turret is essentially a big ball joint with about a 1/6th of a sphere range of motion. The four front ones can all train on a single target within abotu 20 degrees of straight ahead, while the rear guns' "binocular" cone is closer to 40 degrees. The main cannon is on a peg and can swivel all the way around. Other than the guns, the articulation is in the legs. The front and rear pairs have limited hip swivels and that's it. The middle pair have hip swivels, knee swivels and ankle ball joints. They also have big mech fists sticking to their insides, the only serious mech kibble. The cockpit opens to accept the non-existent pilot figure. Stability is pretty good, and the missile has a nice "locked but not loaded" position where it'll stay in firmly without being launchable. I like that in a missile launcher. Transformation: The rear section transforms like a standard Autobot car, just unfolding to make the butt part into boots. The rear legs just hang off the back, with little feet unfolding from armor panels. The legs inevitably pop off thanks to weak thigh swivel pegs and strong knee ratchets. The front half of the armor shell just unfolds on the bottom and swings away to become a backpack, leaving the middle vehicle legs as the robot arms and letting the head pop up out of the chest. We're talking TMNT turtle morphing here. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be any way to lock the backpack in place. It just sort of flops loosely there. They could easily have put dents in the torso back for the cockpit hinges to wedge into, but didn't. The vehicle's waist articulation bit blocks the backpack from dropping into a stable position, and rotating the waist to put the buttbag in front doesn't work for many other reasons. Mech Mode: 6.25" (16cm) tall, wearing most of the vehicle mode as a backpack. At least it looks reasonably passable as a backpack. The arms are a bit weird as part of a compromise to not look as blatantly obvious in vehicle mode, and it suffers from tiny feet and moderate back-heaviness. An extra joint in the rear vehicle legs would have let them act as heel spurs, compensating for the tiny feet. Like the AT-AT, you can repurpose the vehicle legs as jetpack nozzles, making the backpack a little less of a problem. Pretty much all of the newly revealed pieces are white plastic: robot head, torso, upper arms, fists, thighs, feet and the strut that holds the backpack. There's some light gray paint on the upper arms to let their armor panels blend into the vehicle mode, and even lighter gray on the abdomen. The vision slit, chest armor borders and fists are gloss black. Various helmet accents are medium blue with a couple little yellow rank indicators, and the chest armor has light blue pseudo-windows. The gray vehicle bits are on forearms, shins and backpack, for a decent balance between white and gray. Head and waist turn smoothly. The shoulders are universal joints with smooth hinges and 8 point soft-ratcheting swivels. There's smooth upper arm swivels and hinge elbows. There's no wrist joints, although the vehicle feet on the forearms can swivel around. Universal joint hips with such strong ratcheting action that merely moving a leg can shake it apart at the thigh swivel peg! Clone Trooper, now with auto-amputation action. Time to disassemble the legs and use various means to make the pegs more solidly attached, since I don't have to worry about child-safeness. Fortunately, the gun has a regular 4mm peg for a grip rather than a slotted peg as so many SWTFs have for gun attachment. The gunner seat looks a little odd in this mode, though. Overall: Looks good in vehicle mode, okay in mech mode. Simplistic transformation hampered by some design flaws (no locking for the backpack, legs pop apart trivially easily). At least it's not horribly spindly like so many SWTFs, but it still could have been a lot better. CLONE PILOT + Converts from V-19 mode to Mech mode! + 2 launching projectiles! The clone pilot flies his V-19 Torrent starfighter toward the Separatist army, pouring down blaster fire from the sky above. The Separatists launch their own fighters into the air, sure of an easy victory against the lone attacker - until the clone pilot morphs his fighter into a powerful mech that quickly scatters the Separatist forces in all directions! I find it ironic that the only canonical transforming fighters in the setting, the Vulture Droids and their bigger cousins the Hyena bombers, won't actually be part of this line. At least, not as themselves...maybe they'll make a Vulture that turns into a Battle Droid. Packaging: Four bands with H-connectors (someday I'll figure out something to do with these, I've got a film canister full of 'em) hold the main vehicle in place. The bottom fin is held down by the vehicle on top of it, and hte missiles are held in by a rubber band each. The wings are folded under and the bottom fin is detached in order to let the toy fit into the blister. Vehicle Mode: The V-19 is strictly a non-live-action ship, appearing in the good Clone Wars cartoon, the not-so-good Clone Wars cartoon and a bunch of video games, novels and comics. According to Wookieepedia, it's 6m long and 26m wide, with a hyperdrive. The actual toy is 12.5" (32cm), making this about 1:80 scale (and therefore the cockpit is exaggerated in size) if you go purely on wingspan. However, it's a bit short-winged compared to the images I've seen of the Torrent, so the length of 4.75" (12cm) in flight mode is probably a better indicator of scale, putting it at 1:50 instead. The cockpit is still big enough to handle a 32mm tall figure, which is 1:60 scale. The main plastic color here is a light warm gray, noticeably lighter than the AT-TE and almost verging on tan. The engines and gun (including the obligatory "fires its barrel" missiles) are very dark gray, the cockpit is smoky clear plastic. A slightly lighter dark gray plastic is found on the clips that hold the wings on. There's some white and light cool gray plastic on the underside, but this is all mech legs, so it has an excuse for not color matching. I wouldn't really call it kibble, though, as it's fairly unobtrusive and has reasonable vehicle detailing, even if the canonical V-19 may not be as big down there. The light cool gray plastic is also used on a few joints, at the wing roots and where the wings fold in the middle. Lots of brick red paint, naturally. There's some dark gray paint on the joints where the engines connect, to match stuff up, and some bits of white and gold on the engines. The lower fin's engine has dark gray intake and thruster. There's a lone bit of ick green-brown at the front of the cockpit and gunmetal on the controls inside the cockpit. Republic/Imperial logos on the wings. The wings are pretty floppy, although the actual plastic is nice and solid. They connect to the engines with single C-clips that have 8-point very soft ratchet action (basically 5 ribs spaced 45 degrees apart that settle into slots on the engine). There's double-hinges at the midpoint of each wing, but the wings are not supposed to flex there in vehicle mode, they're just a sort of inverted gull wing a la the F4U Corsair that I read was partial inspiration for this ship. The underside wing is on a multiply hinged strut that lets it fold up and back into a sort of oversized tailfin for landing mode, and a pair of landing struts fold down to stabilize that (although the spinal mech legs do most of the actual supporting). The cockpit opens, but I need to use a knife to do it since my fingernails are insufficiently iron-like. In flight mode, the lower wing snaps securely between the mech shins. Now I'm wishing I hadn't thrown away the stand-up clips that came with some of the later Toybiz Marvel Legends figures to hold up the scenery formed by their cardbacks. It strikes me that one of those would be just about right to support the vehicle in flight mode. I suppose it'd also make an intersting bookshelf topper, since the bottom inch (2.5cm) of the lower wing can be stuck between two books. Sadly, my bookshelves are too cramped to try that. The missile launchers have a "safe" position like the AT-TE's, although it's not quite as stable. They connect with that sort of slotted peg used on way too many SWTFs, rather than a solid peg. This makes them a bit too easy to knock off, and they don't stay very well in the hands in mech mode either. Transformation: The legs fold down from the underside, the wings all fold back as best they can, and the head is inside the chunk behind the cockpit. What makes the transformation interesting is the dance of folding panels that turns the central chunk of what's essentially a flying wing into a solid torso. And the engine struts on the side collapse inward so that the arms aren't hanging way out to the sides. They don't lock into position, though, so the arms slide out easily. The instructions never really show a side angle of mech mode, leaving the positioning of the bottom wing something of a game of guesswork. It'll stay put pretty well all the way up against the backpack, but you might want to have it swing down to act as a third leg, given the back-heavy nature of mech mode. Warning, when going back to V-19 mode, the shoulders can cause problems. They need to be fully pulled out to give clearance for some gap- filling tabs, but if you don't get them all the way out before swinging them into position, trying to finish the job after the fists are in place is more likely to pop the shoulder joints off entirely at their pegged roots. Mech Mode: 6.5" (16.5cm) tall at the head, more at the backfin depending on where you place it. It does have the spindly look endemic to most SWTFs, including particularly narrow ankle and knees and thin legs, necessary to fit within the licensing requirements of "make the vehicle mode look as good as possible". The head is a softer white plastic, while the hands, shins and feet are a more rigid white plastic. The elbow joints, shoulder joints, thighs, hip joints and knees are light cool gray. Otherwise, as per vehicle colors. The visor is dark orange with brick red and black accents on the helmet. There's white on the cuffs and light cool gray paint at the boot tops to make the boots stop before the top of the shin pieces. Other paints as in vehicle mode. The head turns smoothly, while the waist is on a soft 8 point ratchet. However, kibble keeps it from turning more than one click either way. The shoulders have 8 point ratcheting swivels, plus there's wiggle room on the collapsing strut to allow some movement out to the sides. 8 point ratcheting swivels just above the elbows, which are 8 point ratcheting hinges with 180 degrees of range (although you have to get the wings out of the way to bend the elbows backwards). The wrists swivel smoothly. Hips are smooth universal joints, but stiff enough to not need ratcheting. The mid-hip swivels are on 8 point soft ratchets. The knees are smooth hinges, and the ankles are soft ratcheting 8 point hinges that only go forward. Despite the huge backpack and tiny feet, though, the figure can stand up without extra support. It helps to move the arms forward, though, so that the arm wings aren't so far back. I took apart a thigh to see if I could shim the peg, but it turns out that it's an intrinsic problem with the design. The peg has to squish along the slot to let the hexagonal peg turn in a hexagonal slot, which makes the peg almost narrow enough to slide right out, at which point it takes very little force to pop it. Melting the tip of the slotted peg might work, but I found that Dremeling out a tab in the upper half of the joint turns it into a smooth swivel turning on the top rather than the bottom. Thus, the slotted peg doesn't need to be stressed, and pops out far less easily. The new joint is a bit loose, but can be stiffened via the usual means if you need it to. http://www.dvandom.com/kitbash/ATTEthigh.JPG shows the mod I made. You will also need to open up the lower thigh and shove the slotted peg apart a bit, maybe shimming it with a piece of plastic, to strengthen it. Overall: Well, it's floppy and spindly, but that's kinda the way the game is played for SWTFs. Within those limitations, it's pretty good. The vehicle mode looks very nice (as usual), and the robot mode is passable. Dave Van Domelen, may go ahead and try to build a backpack peg for the AT-TE too, later.