Dave's Transformers Animated Rant: Deluxe Wave 2 Autobot Ratchet (Ambulance) Blackarachnia (Mecha-spider) Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/TFA/Deluxe2 This is more of a running change swapping in the two new figures on Wave 1 (specifically, Wave 2 cases have one each of the Wave 1 toys and two each of the new ones). Because of the "street date effect", most stores got all six toys of Waves 1 and 2 at the same time. Unlike the Movie toys, though, I'm keeping 'em split into two reviews. CAPSULES Autobot Ratchet: Decent vehicle mode, although there's some color issues. Okay transformation with some nice tweaks, good robot mode with a lot of accessories...which sadly don't store in vehicle mode. Still, it gets a Recommended from me. $9.96 at Wal-Mart. Blackarachnia: The spider-mode's mouth bits tend to pop off too easily and the "auto-retract" on the grapple isn't as good as implied by the package, but otherwise a very good spider-former. And at least a little pervy. Recommended, would be strongly if I hadn't already had to chase mouthparts around a half dozen times. $9.96 at Wal-Mart. RANTS Packaging: Same as Wave 1. Ratchet's cosells are Bumblebee, Prowl and Blackarachnia, while BA's cosells are Bumblebee, Ratchet and Cybertron Mode Optimus Prime. Lockdown gets no love, and Bumblebee doesn't deserve all the attention. AUTOBOT: AUTOBOT RATCHET Altmode: Rescue Vehicle Function: AUTOBOT Medic Previous Name Use: Universe, Movie (Just "Ratchet" also G1) Previous Mold Use: None Callouts: "Tools store in backpack!" "Interchangeable arm tools!" Motto: "Hold still. This won't hurt a bit." Galactic Powers & Abilities: > Huge array of surgical and mechanical tools. > Once considered most talented medic on CYBERTRON. > Trained at Protihex Medical Mechanics University. AUTOTBOT RATCHET was, at one time, one of the most promising medical minds on CYBERTRON. After his experiences with LOCKDOWN though, all he wanted to do was disappear. An assignment to a deep space repair crew was just what he was looking for. He never wanted to be in the middle of a new war against MEGATRON, but if that's where fate puts him, he'll do his best to keep his comrades safe and sound. Packaging: One twist-tie holds the ambulance mode into the blister. The four tools are held into the blister just by the plastic. Bleh, I got a stress mark on the can-opener tool when prying it out of the blister. The photo on the back pretty much matches the toy, but has been photoshopped to bring out contrast in several places, notably the head. Vehicle Mode: This is your basic van (like a Ford Econoline, but with beefed up fenders looking more like an HHR) with an ambulance conversion (slightly raised roof, lightbar added, side windows covered) plus a winch and a brushguard on the front to make it a more general "rescue vehicle". 4.75" (12cm) long, 2" (5cm) tall, 2" (5cm) wide, it's about 1:45 scale if we assume it has the wheelbase of an Econoline (it lacks the long "butt" of most E-series vans, though). The color scheme is mostly light gray and darkish red, with clear blue windshield and lightbar. The gray and red are clearly meant to evoke an aging effect, with the implication that he was once white and bright red, but has faded with time. The body shell is mostly light gray plastic, with the front half of the roof and the rear fenders being red plastic, the wheels being black plastic, and the windshield, taillights and lightbar being clear light blue plastic. A dark red paint that doesn't quite match the plastic is used on the hood, rear roof, running board/fenders, and the medic symbols on the sides (a sort of EKG "beep" zigzag in light gray on a red circle). The side front windows are painted bright blue, but the window slits on the back are unpainted. The headlights are painted yellow with black "bags under the eyes" lines around them, and the winch is also black. A silver Autobot symbol is printed on the hood. The hood has a pretty obvious seam because the red paint doesn't wrap around the edges of the panel boundary, and the winch paint is applied somewhat sloppily. The only serious "kibble" issues in this mode are hinges along the sides, some significant gapping at the back, and those obvious unpainted seams mentioned above. On the plus side, all four wheels will rest on the table at once, and there's driver's and passenger's seats molded behind the windshield. Okay, they're kinda close to the windshield, and a lack of paint makes them fade into the background a bit too much, but I appreciate the effort. There are no action features, and no way to store the tools in this mode. This is a VERY compactly designed vehicle mode, without the kinds of gaps inside that you'd need for accessory storage. In fact, it's so tightly bound that the front wheels tend to grind up against the fenders unless you're careful about easing the panels away. [Later note: Tim Lakin pointed out that if you fold his robot toes out, the hollows inside are just right for sticking the ends of the tools into for storage. It's not as elegant as internal storage, but it'll keep 'em around if you'd rather display the toy in vehicle mode. Here's a picture I took of it: http://www.dvandom.com/images/aniratchetstow.JPG ] Transformation: Fairly standard "bent backwards at the waist" style of transformation, with the legs pulling out from the underside and the arms folding out to the sides from the top, with the hood forming the chest. But there's some clever bits, such as an autotransform where snapping the backpack into place makes the head pop up, or a little fold in the hood that reduces the stereotypical "can't reach past your own chest" effect. And gives him something of a pot belly. Interestingly, he gets heel spurs, rather than letting his vehicle bits act as heels. Getting the folding side panels past stuff can be tricky, for both forward and backwards transformation. Robot Mode: 6.5" (16.5cm) tall at the head, more if you count how his shoulder panels stick up above his head, he gets a lot of robot out of a little vehicle. Between his broken helmet crest and the way his tools fan out from his backpack like war banners, he looks like a battered old samurai. Light gray plastic makes up his: head, torso (except for pecs), upper arms, fingers, thumbs, lower thighs, toes, shoulder panels, outer backpack. Darkish red plastic forms his: abdomen, pelvis, upper thighs, boots, forearms, inner backpack. Black plastic: elbow joints, shoulder swivels, tools, knee joints, hip joints, wheels on belly and ankles. The side-out hinges of his shoulders are clear light blue plastic lightbar pieces (not visible in vehicle mode), plus the clear light blue plastic is used for his lightpiping and on his upper chest. The windshield on his upper chest looks hinged and openable, but it isn't...they just used a pin arrangement to make it less likely to pop off. Significant disassembly would be needed to get inside his chest and paint the seats. There's not a lot of paint here that isn't part of the vehicle mode. There's dark red paint on his upper arms (the lower half of the gray piece) and on much of his head. His face is a light blue, and his "stubble" is molded but kinda hard to make out on the light blue. There's some black panel lines on his thighs and kneecaps. The head turns, but the waist does not. His shoulders are universal joints, with a ratcheting (appropriately enough) forward-back joint and a smooth out-to-the-sides joint. There's an upper arm swivel, hinged elbows, hinged finger chunk and hinged thumb. The hands don't have a great grip, but that's okay, since the tools plug into his palms anyway. The hips are universal joints, there's an upper thigh swivel (which is an easy to pop out peg), hinged knees and hinged feet. Amusingly, he has a second hinge above each knee to let him put his legs together for transformation, but it goes a lot farther than it needs to, and his knees bend sideways about 60 degrees. "Crippled by a sideways blow" action feature! His main gimmick is his assortment of tools: a claw-peen hammer, an adjustable wrench, a flat-head screwdriver or chisel, and...a can-opener. Think of it as his scalpel. Each ends in a C-shaped clip on a hinge that can bend 90 degrees one way, and is meant to plug into the root of his magnetic generator prong, preventing the prong from flipping out. The hand just closes around it for looks. There's four pegs on the backpack to let you store the tools, plus enough space in the backpack to drop a spare body part or two from a junker TF. Additionally, he has spring-loaded prongs that flip out into his hands from his forearms. These are supposed to be the magnetic generators seen in the cartoon, but there's three major problems: 1) they're black unpainted plastic, 2) they're shaped more like pliers than the spiky prongs in the cartoon, and the big one, 3) there's only one per arm, not a pair. I mean, as long as they're giving him a bunch of other stuff that can't be stored in robot mode, why not avoid the touchy spring gimmick (there isn't a real trigger as far as I can tell, you just push on it until it pops out) and give him clip-on prongs that better resemble the show model? [Later note: Turns out that the trigger for the prongs is to bend his elbows to about 80 degrees. On mine, only the left elbow trigger works, though.] A nifty undocumented feature is that not only does he have the hole in his left forearm seen in the cartoon, it will in fact hold his EMP generator once you take it away from Lockdown. I've heard some cases of it not staying in well, but mine works fine. It's rare that we get this sort of toy complementarity, especially in a little thing (as opposed to obvious "armor up mode" stuff). Overall: I'll admit it, I'm big on being able to store all the bits in vehicle mode, which this can't do. I'm also not happy with how easily his thighs pop apart, and his magnetic prongs are kinda disappointing. However there's more plusses than minuses here, and I feel I can recommend this toy without serious reservations. DECEPTICON: BLACKARACHNIA Altmode: Spider Function: DECEPTICON Trickster Previous Name Use: BW, BMac, Universe Previous Mold Use: None Callouts: "Figure 'climbs' up auto-retracting web line!" "Retractable grapnel hook!" Motto: "My sting will be the last thing you feel." Galactic Powers & Abilities: > Generates organic webbing stronger than steel. > Mech-venom paralyzes mechanical victims. > Feeds on raw energon siphoned from machines. BLACKARACHNIA started out as a promising young recruit at the AUTOBOT Academy. Accidentally abandoned on a hostile alien world by her teammates, she did the only thing she could - merged with the organic monsters that swarmed the caves in which she was trapped. Emerging as a technorganic mutant, she vowed revenge on the AUTOBOTS that had left her behind, and joined the DECEPTICONS in their war of conquest. Packaging: A whopping seven twist-ties hold the spider into the blister, with a little plastic shield over the abdomen to keep the tie around the body from causing damage. Her grapnel is held into just the blister separately. Odd that there's no mention of her power-stealing ability from the show. The techspecs have generally been good about matching the show. Beast Mode: Well, it's a mecha-spider in black, purpls and gold with red eyes and red hourglass on the top of the abdomen. From pedipalps (the big "fangs") to the tip of the abdomen is 3.5" (8.5cm). Squishing it out all the way gives a maximum "leg splat circle" of about 7" (18cm) from one rearmost leg tip to the opposing front leg tip. Less squished, she's about 5" from front to back, 4.5" (11.5cm) side to side, and 2.5" (6.5cm) tall. The toy is mostly black plastic, a mix of rigid and rubbery (the font two pairs of legs and the pointy bits on the rear two pairs being rubbery). The root segments of the rearmost legs are purple plastic (with black oval "pods" on them), as are the pedipalps. The claw on the spinneret unit is clear red plastic, and its attached to a white nylon string. The tips of the legs are painted gold, and there's a gold "U" shape on the head behind the eyes. There's a gold Decepticon symbol with white border printed on the piece that connects the head to the abdomen. There's four diamond-shaped eyes painted red, and red paint on the tiny hourglass symbol on the abdomen. The abdomen is painted purple, a good match to the purple plastic. There's also purple paint on the root segments of the third pair of legs, and on the robot hands visible on those legs. Articulation is pretty good. The checilcarae are on ball joints, but pop off pretty easily and fly quite far when this happens. The black chelicerae (what spiders have instead of mandibles) are on hinges, and can also pop off. The abdomen is hinged and can flex up, although this does expose the robot head. The front two pairs of legs share a root swivel, but each hinge off it separately at their "shoulders". The front pair also has hinge "knees", but the second pair has none. The third pair hsa ball joint hips and knees, while the rear pair has ball hips and hinge knees. The grapple stores as a spinneret, using a ratcheting action like those tape measures they sell for sewing and for miniatures gaming (which has led to sights like someone measuring the lines of fire for their Imperial Jump Marines using a flowers-and-kitties-decorated tape measure). The string is only 3" (8cm) long, and you have to press a rod through to release the ratchet, so you can't push on both sides at once...only one. I've tried various tapping tricks, but I haven't managed to get it to "auto-retract" while BA is hanging from it. It's really only good for reeling in prey held in the two-hinged three-fingered claw. A light touch will let it retract all the way with only a light load, but BA herself is too much for it. Okay, now looking at the toy from the underside, it's plain that the designers have a twisted sense of humor...her robot head's lips are planted on the robot mode's butt underneath the abdomen shell. Kinky. Transformation: Very simple. Open the flap on top of the abdomen so the head can come out, and unfold the spider, with the mouthparts being at the robot waist. The rest is really just fiddling with details: rotating bits on the robot arms and legs to reveal hands and make feet, getting the front four legs into proper decorative position, and moving the pedipalps so that they won't pop off as easily (but they'll do so anyway, as will the chelicerae). [Later note: there seems to be some variability here. Some people, so long as they're reasonably careful, get no popping at all. Others, no matter what they do, have the things practically bouncing off the ceiling with depressing regularity...and I do not exaggerate here, one of mine did bounce off the ceiling once, although I seem to otherwise be in the middle of this particular spectrum.] While it's not clear in some of the pictures, you need to have her toes and heel as widely separated as possible, or the heels won't actually touch the table. This gives Blackarachnia the most extremely spiked heels ever for a Transformer (BMac BA doesn't count, she was all spike and no foot, which you could replicated on this toy by simply not transforming the lower legs). [Another Later Note: Several people have offered suggestions for keeping the pedipalps from popping off, mostly involving two things: turn the pedipalps around as the very first step in transformation, and shove the chest up before swinging the legs down. This helps a little, but on mine at least the slightest shock from something popping into place can make a pedipalp spring off. At least following those two steps reduces the range from "bounce off ceiling" to "pop into my hand", though.] Robot Mode: 5.75" (14.5cm) tall, of which 1" (2.5cm) is spiked heel. :) The beast head becomes her chest, with the pedipalps emphasizing her hourglass figure. Also, she doesn't get to say, "Hey, my eyes are up here!" because they're also on her chest. Another point to the pervy designers. The spider abdomen snugs up against the small of her back, resulting in the smallest "bustle" of any version of Blackarachnia. The head is black plastic on the front half (painted mostly gold with purple lower face, red hourglass on the forehead, and lightpiped eyes) and clear red plastic on the back half. The part with her Decepticon symbols is now at the base of her neck. Her pelvis is black plastic with a red hourglass "belt buckle" and some red ='s flanking it. She has gold spikes on her shoulders (which are mostly hidden in beast mode), and gold stripes along the edge of her toes. [Later note: the paint applications on the upper arms are pretty sloppy. Tamiya makes a purple that's a good match, from what I hear, if you want to do touch-up.] She can get fighting claws by swinging the tips of the legs on her forearms around. The grappler can either be left on her bustle, can plug into a slot on the back of her neck, or into slots on either of her forearms. Since her hands don't have wrists, the arm mounting gives her a sort of open-palmed Spider-Man effect. The head is on a ball joint, and the whole neck assembly is hinged to dip forward and back. The waist turns pretty high up, but you have to de-snug the bustle to let it turn. Ball joints on shoulders, elbows and hips, hinged knees, complicated hinging on the feet that doesn't really give much range of stability. No wrists, as mentioned earlier. There's a swivel just below each hip, although it can only turn about 90 degrees in total. In theory the pedipalps can still move, but they'll mainly just pop off. The front pair of spider legs is hinged so that they can fold over her shoulders to zap someone she's close enough to. Like, already touching. Overall: Aside from the pedipalps and chelicerae popping off, this is a good toy. It fits the animation models very well in both modes, looks creepy as a spider and feminine (and creepy) as a robot. They push the limits of what's feasible with slender female limbs, and avoid a lot of the ugly compromises seen in previous spider-mode toys (about the only other one to avoid those problems was the BMac Blackararachnia mold, which had other problems). ONLINE CONTENT As per Deluxe Wave 1. And as then, the Decepticon gets the short end of the stick. I briefly wondered if maybe the online content was synthesizing entries from multiple toys, but Lockdown gets an Activator too and might have more content on that toy's cardback, so that doesn't seem to be it. AUTOBOT RATCHET He is short-tempered, grizzled, and seemingly older than the ALLSPARK itself. RATCHET is the team's medic and drill sergeant, and acts as OPTIMUS PRIME'S second in command. He is an expert healer but a little rough around the edges. Spend some time with RATCHET and you will instantly understand that he has seen it all. ROBOT MODE POWER: "Magnets" RATCHET'S primary power is his magnetic abilities. Two magnetic prongs that extend from his arms, they attract and repel any metallic matter or create a strong force field. RATCHET can manipulate, control, destroy, rip apart, or re-assemble anything metal with his powers. RATCHET also serves as the team's gadget guy. BLACKARACHNIA Just the bio note from the packaging. Dave Van Domelen, really thinks Blackarachnia is astonishingly pervy for a kids' toy. ;)