Dave's Transformers Animated Rant: Activators Wave 6 Soundwave Fireblast Grimlock Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/TFA/Basic6 TF:A LIVES! MUAHAHA! Ahem. Several molds got made but not released at the tail end of the line, the reasoning being that they didn't want to compete against the Revenge of the Fallen toys too much. But they're slowly releasing these remnants, although they may be hard to find. Target's carrying these two, though, so it should be possible to get them without paying scalper prices. CAPSULES Fireblast Grimlock: Original mold was Recommended, and this is a dynamic if somewhat oddball redeco. If I had to choose between the two color schemes, I'd stick with the original, but it's a decent try at finding a way to reuse the mold. Mildly recommended. $7.99 at Target. Soundwave: Surprisingly show-accurate in both modes, just lacking some paint for robot mode (and the proportions are a little too lanky). Fairly standard Activator transformation, a bit unstable unless you get everything right in vehicle mode. Recommended. $7.99 at Target. RANTS Packaging: Same as Wave 1. All the call-outs are the same as in several earlier waves, including "vehicle to robot" on Grimlock. The co-sells are the other one in the wave plus one from Wave 5 (Soundwave shows Cliffjumper, Grimlock shows Dirge). Functions and mottos by me. AUTOBOT: FIREBLAST GRIMLOCK Altmode: Tyrannosaurus Rex [sic] Function: Molten Warrior Previous Name Use: None ("Grimlock" alone has been used a lot, of course) Previous Mold Use: TF:A Grimlock Motto: "Me, Grimlock, loosen some Lugnuts!" When LUGNUT dropped GRIMLOCK into a volcano, he thought he'd seen the last of the DINOBOT. GRIMLOCK loved the hot lava, and absorbed its power into his body. His supercharged flame breath can melt asphalt into tar in seconds, which GRIMLOCK plans to use to trap LUGNUT on the ground, where he can't escape. Packaging: Five twist-ties. Color Swaps: Gold plastic becomes golden yellow plastic. The gray plastic splits into black, bright red and dark red, though. Bright red: top of beast head, beast neck, top of robot shoulders, inside bit of robot upper arms, robot boots, beast tail. Black: beast jaw, robot head, robot torso front, outside of robot upper arms, robot forearms, robot feet. Dark red: both beast body shell pieces. Paint Apps: The beast neck and the fronts of the robot shins have black "cracked magma" patterns printed on them, and the borders around the eyes are black (the beast eyes themselves are blue). Dark red paint is on the chest and collar, and on the shoulder "gems". Golden yellow paint makes magma cracks on the chest, and the Autobot symbol on the chest is outlined in golden yellow. The robot visor is red, and red paint is blended on the upper part of the beast torso shell to better mesh with the red neck. Other Notes: He looks a lot like Cybertron Repugnus in overall looks. This Grimlock is a red neck in both modes. :) This one holds together less well in dino mode than the original, but that may just be a case of getting a good one the first time out and Hasbro's usual QC issues. Overall: Well, it's a dynamic recolor, and holds together better than it might have given the bright colors. However, the original is still available in a lot of stores, and it's better looking. DECEPTICON: SOUNDWAVE Altmode: SUV Function: Sonic Saboteur Previous Name Use: G1, G2, Cybertron, Titanium, RotF Previous Mold Use: None Motto: "You will succumb to my block-rockin' beats." SOUNDWAVE is a master of manipulation. He twists sound to his own ends, imitating voices, wrecking radio broadcasts, or causing machinery to malfunction. He does it all just to play on the fears of his victims. He takes delight in causing friendships to collapse, and his favorite sounds are a voice raised in anger, or a scream of panic. Packaging: Yeah, they continue to officially call him an SUV on the package, even though he's clearly based on a Scion xB, which is a compact. Three twist-ties. Robot Mode: This version is actually a little *less* Gorilla-like in proportions than the show model or the Deluxe toy. Oddly, they made no real attempt to make the speaker cones on the shoulders look show-accurate, instead molding perfectly circular speakers. 4" (10cm) tall at the head, add another half inch (1.5cm) for the roof chunk sticking up behind the head. He's 80% the height of the Deluxe, and generally less squat. A mix of "Soundwave Blue" (a somewhat dark medium matte blue) and black, with accents in a sickly metallic olive green and red Kamina-shades visor. The neon cyan and pale gold of his vehicle mode is suppressed here, visible from the back or sides but not really meant to show up from the front. The roof backpack is a little taller than in the animation model, but it does have molded (but unpainted) speaker rings on it. The head, chest, abdomen front, shoulders, forearms, lower legs and backpack are blue plastic. Everything else is black plastic. It looks like the abdomen is mostly black with a blue detail panel attached to the front by two screws and maybe some glue as well (the packaging shows this blue panel to be black, interestingly). The dominant paint for this mode is a sort of sickly metallic olive, used on hi faceplate, shoulder speakers, chest details and toes. The chest door is gloss black, his visor is red, and a pale gold Decepticon symbol is printed on the center of his chest. There's no paint on the molded tapedeck controls on his abdomen. Of course, thanks to the AllSpark Almanac, I can correct these deficiencies and others (such as the lack of paint on his forearms) should I so desire. Articulation is decent for the size class. The head turns but not the waist. The shoulders are universal joints (swivel and hinge) plus the arms can pull back on transformation hinges (but those hinges have springs, so they slowly snap back...I'm surprised they didn't advertise "slapping action!" on the package). There's a swivel above each hinge elbow. The hips are ball joints, there's a swivel above each hinge knee, and the transformation joint for the foot gives some ankle range. Transformation: To vehicle mode, it has the fairly common Activators trick of pulling up the chest onto the backpack as a first step, which clicks into place. The arms need to be moved around to act as doors, and the legs peg together with the feet swinging under the car. It's a bit fiddly, and everything has to be in the right places or it'll spring back apart. It wouldn't take much of an assembly defect to make it impossible to keep in car mode, but mine is fairly solid once I get it juuuust right. Going back to robot mode, just push the button on the rear of the roof and it springs open most of the way. Just move the arms out a bit, separate the boots and flip down the feet. Vehicle Mode: A boxy van-like vehicle clearly patterned on the Scion xB, on which the garish detailing would look perfectly normal. :) As with most Activators, there's some ugly and obvious hinges sticking out. And from the rear there's a big gap. But otherwise it looks fairly good once you get it together...although again like many Activators, it doesn't hold together very firmly on purpose, since a tight fit would make it hard to auto-convert to robot mode. A little under 3.5" (8.5cm) long, it's about 3/4 the size of the Deluxe version, or about 1:48 to 1:50 scale. Other than the wheels, the only black plastic showing through here are some hinges near the rear. They didn't paint the trigger bright red (a trick they seem to have phased out in most of the later molds, like Grimlock), leaving only the neon cyan, pale gold and gloss black colors for accents. None of the metallic olive is really visible here, unless you count looking through the gap in the rear to see the robot shoulders. The front and side windows are painted gloss black. The molded "on" button on the roof and the molded tape deck controls on the grille are painted pale gold, and a pale gold Decepticon symbol is printed on the hood, just to the passenger side of center (rather than being split in transformation). The various raised details on the hood and roof are painted neon cyan, and the cassette tape details on the doors (which are askew slightly, oddly) are also painted neon cyan. There is no paint on the wheels. It rolls along nicely, but it doesn't take much in the way of rough handling to make it start to fall open. The most susceptible part is the doors, if you press in near the tops when picking the toy up they tend to swivel. On the other hand, once you do get everything in the right place, it can be dropped onto a carpeted floor without popping apart, provided it doesn't land right on the activation button. Overall: The mold does a great job of getting show-accuracy in both modes, it really only needs more paint, a common problem with pretty much ALL Transformers, so not something to hold against this mold. I'll probably do a touchup once my cold passes and I don't need to worry about coughing and messing things up, assuming I can get a good match for the cyan. Dave Van Domelen, got these right after seeing "9"