Dave's Transformers Studio Series Rant: Deluxe Wave 4 Dropkick (AH-1 SuperCobra) KSI Sentry (Stinger retool) Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Studio/Deluxe4 While Dropkick and Shatter in the Bumblebee movie were triple-changers, Hasbro didn't try to make triple-changing toys. For Dropkick's car mode, check out the One-Step toys. Meanwhile, the KSI Sentry is meant to represent the nameless grunts from the final fight scene...they don't really look the same, any more than the Shadow Raiders looked like the movie designs, but having everything be shades of gray is no fun. Note, the next two numbered Studio Series figures are reissues of Last Knight Bumblebee and VW Bumblebee in a Target exclusive 2-pack. If there's any differences, they're small, so I won't be getting those. https://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Studio/Deluxe1 - Stinger mold CAPSULES $20 price point. Dropkick: A bit spindly, and oddly missing the flight stand 3mm peg hole that most Transformers have, but otherwise a good toy. And a surprisingly well-proportioned helicopter altmode. Recommended (and better than the Sentry). KSI Sentry: Original mold was recommended. This is a pretty good update, with an improvement to the roof-claw weapon, but kinda pricey for an army-builder. Recommended. RANTS Packaging: Same as previous Deluxes. DECEPTICON: DROPKICK Assortment: 22 Altmode: AH-1 SuperCobra Transformation Difficulty: 24 steps Previous Name Use: Movie1 (and various non-toy uses) Previous Mold Use: None Movie: Bumblebee Scene: Autobot Pursuit DROPKICK detects the signal of a high-level Autobot criminal and prepares to close in on his target. As mentioned above, they didn't go for triple-changer toys, but in the movie Dropkick's robot mode looks way more like he turned into a helicopter than a car. Packaging: 7 ties on the robot, one each on the two rotary cannons. The backdrop is of an aerial battle that didn't really happen in the movie. A bunch of attack jets, one of them exploding thanks to missiles. It really looks more appropriate for Shatter's jet mode. The instructions and package photos show more paint apps on the legs than the toy has, plus a Decepticon symbol on the abdomen (nose of the helicopter) that is not present. Robot Mode: A very spindly robot, as one might expect from something that turns into a helicopter with (as noted below) something like correct proportions. Most helicopter Transformers cheat badly in some way in order to get a decent robot mode. The movie cheats quite a bit, resulting in a much beefier robot mode (although he does generally keep the helicopter blades in robot mode even when transforming directly from car mode). The arms probably suffer the worst from making this all work, I think it actually looks better if you leave the tail end pieces unfolded...it plays into the insectile facial motif of most Bayformers, plus how the helicopter blades in back look like furled insect wings. He has a pair of rotary cannon pistols formed from helicopter mode cannon pods. 5" (12.5cm) tall at the head, the engine cowling pieces form a sort of high collar that rises about a centimeter higher. The dominant color is light gray, with some deep blue and black, and a little silver. Black plastic is used for the main rotor blades, the tail rotor, the cannon barrels, the landing skids in the backs of the boots, and several joints (shoulders, elbows, hips, neck). The head, feet, parts of the inner faces of the boots, and some vent pieces on the backpack are deep blue plastic. The canopy pieces on the chest and butt are clear colorless plastic. The rest of the toy is light gray plastic. There's a fair amount of light gray paint (good match) on the torso, every bit that's not supposed to be a window in vehicle mode. There's gloss black paint on the pelvis, hands, and the shins. The face has silver details and red eyes, and there's red dots inside black painted squares on the shins. The collar cowling bits have medium blue paint on the top parts, with black on the insides of the intakes. There's white skull and crossbone logos on black flags on the sides of the boots, and intake warning details printed on the sides of the cowlings. There's some other printed details on the sides of the torso that are mostly meant to be visible in vehicle mode. As noted, there is no Decepticon symbol on the abdomen (cockpit nose), but that's fixable via Reprolabels. (Okay, fixed now.) The neck is a ball joint, there's no waist. The shoulders are ball joints on shrugging struts, and the hips are similarly constructed but the hinges are ratcheting to only two positions (leaving them at 45 degrees works a little better aesthetically, IMO). There's swivels just above the hinge elbows, mid-thigh swivels, and hinge knees. No ankle joints, which makes it hard to stand up in dynamic poses. There's a lot of panels with hinges and ball joints and stuff, most of them hold together pretty well but can get in the way. The main rotor is on a double hinge for transformation, which gives it decent range of motion if you want to pose it more dramatically, like a flaring cape or something. The hands hold 5mm pegs, and that's it for connectors. The hand cannons are 1.5" (3.5cm) long, with their pegs near the rear. No paint on them, and they do look hollow from one side because the barrels fold into the housings. (Mine started off incorrectly assembled, so the barrels popped out very easily...once I got them snapped in the RIGHT way, though, it was quite solid.) Transformation: Very origami, and it relies on a lot of very short pegs and holes to hold things together, meaning small mistakes in alignment can't just be overcome by mashing pegs in. Still, despite the complexity and the fact a lot of bits rotate or fold that don't immediately look like they should, it's a fairly smooth transformation once you figure it out. If you just transform the tail end parts of the arms first, the robot gets mantis arms. Vehicle Mode: Other than the fists partislly poking out the sides of the tail, this is a pretty kibble-free AH-1 SuperCobra. All the little bumps and protrusions are otherwise correct, and the color is mostly typical of service Supercobras, although the extra blue is unique to Dropkick. The center of mass is almost behind the back of the skids, which can be a problem on surfaces that slope the wrong way. 7.5" (19cm) long with a rotor circle of 8" (20cm), making it about 1:67 scale. And unlike most helicopter transformers, it's properly in scale on everything, it doesn't have a stubby tail or shrunken rotor. Mostly gray, with blue at the front and back ends of the turbos, plus the winglets are blue. The nose cannon is black plastic, every other part was visible in robot mode. There's a USAF rondel on either side of the fuselage just behind the cockpit windows in red and blue with "001" below that in blue. The pirate flags from the boots are on the sides of the nose below the windows. The turbo intakes have "DANGER" and "JET INTAKE" printed in light gray on a chevron. The main rotor turns stiffly, the tail rotor spins freely. The nose cannon can swing back and forth a little bit. There's 5mm pegs on the underside of the winglets, for the closed cannon pods to mount. Strangely, they didn't try to put a 3mm peg hole anywhere on the toy, this really would benefit from being able to rest on a flight stand. Overall: I'm not as enthused about this as some people, but it's definitely a good Deluxe. If only we'd also gotten a Deluxe class for the car mode, that'd be a decent replacement for trying to make an impossible Triple Changer work. DECEPTICON: KSI SENTRY Assortment: 23 Altmode: Pagani Huayva Transformation Difficulty: 19 steps Previous Name Use: None Previous Mold Use: Studio Movie: Age of Extinction Scene: Hong Kong Pursuit Hijacked by the DECEPTICONS, the KSI SENTRY combat drones flood the city in pursuit of the Seed. Packaging: 7 ties on the robot mode, one on the claw weapon, and one more that doesn't seem to go anywhere. Maybe they were going to include one of the wind-fire wheels but cut it from production after finalizing packaging? The backdrop is the same one that came with Stinger. The shoulderpads are flipped up rather than folded down, and this is matched by the instructions and the box back, so I guess they changed the transformation slightly to further distinguish it from Stinger. Oddly, the instructions don't show the backpack struts at all, I guess maybe they planned to remove that piece entirely but found it was cheaper to not do so? Of course, that means no guidance on how to get them positioned on the underside in vehicle mode. Of course, as I found on Stinger, they're not pinned in place, so they can just be snapped off and set aside. Color Swaps: At first glance, you'd think that red plastic becomes blue plastic, but both the rigid and softer red plastics actually look to have changed to black plastic, most of which is heavily painted blue. The smoky clear plastic is now clear colorless, and the black stays black. Paint Apps: In vehicle mode, there's blue paint on most of the vehicle shell aside from the roof part. The roof, the posts, and a bit of trim around the front of the windshield are painted very dark gunmetal. This color of paint is also used on the front grille, the rear bumper and taillights. The lower sides of the doors and the center of the roof are unpainted shiny black plastic, but it blends well except under very bright lights. The headlights are painted dark silver. In robot mode, a even more blue paint. Much of the chest, the biceps, the shins, the abdomen, and much of the back. There's also dark silver on the chest, upper arms, and some thigh details. The shoulderpads carry over from the car paint apps, and it's clear the entire piece is dipped in blue paint first. It makes sense that there's no Decepticon symbols, since these are technically KSI property. Mold Changes and Other Notes: There's a new head, and the wind-fire wheels are replaced by a single claw weapon that's designed to go inside the folded roof to make it a more credible weapon. It can also be held separately. (The claw just sits on tbe trunk of the car mode, they don't try to find room for it on the inside or underside.) The head is all made of clear colorless plastic...maybe. The front piece is totally painted over, so I guess it might be black plastic. The rear and the goggle eyes are left unpainted, so it has lightpiping. The front is dipped in blue, and then has gunmetal on the forehead, eyebrows, and ear caps, plus parts of the lower face. Most of the lower face is silver. The claw weapon is a single piece of black plastic 2.5" (6.5cm) long, with two tines that end in sort of thicker triangular cross-section claws, like bent spearheads. It has a 5mm peg near the back, a rectangular tab on the underside just behind where the claws extend, and slots in the sides in between those two for tabs of the folded roof to go. It's a little awkward to get the weapon installed in the folded up roof, but a good solid fit once it's in. Note, the claw is soft enough plastic that if you remove the backpack "drone" from the figure, it can be held between the blades in vehicle mode. Overall: A decent, if someone hasslesome to transform, mold, with a good retool to fill a gap in the line. $20 is a bit much for army-building, although I suppose the people who go in for that have a lot more money and room. Dave Van Domelen, almost finished this in 2018.