Dave's Transformers Legends Rant: Animated Series Wave 1 Optimus Prime (fire truck) Bumblebee (sports car) Prowl (motorcycle) Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/TFA/Legend1 With Universe extending to cover all sorts of stuff for the 25th Anniversary year, they decided to include the TF: Animated Legends figures under Universe (which has other Legends) rather than make a new trade dress for TF:A Legends, I guess. CAPSULES Optimus Prime: Pretty good in both modes, an interesting twist on the standard G1 Prime style of transformation. The only real problem is a lack of paint apps. Recommended. $3.99 at HasbroToyShop.com Bumblebee: Decent robot mode, clever transformation, very good vehicle mode. Recommended. $3.99 at HTS. Prowl: Odd plastic color choices, unstable bits and a vehicle mode that doesn't quite look like a motorcycle add up to this one getting a Neutral recommendation. There's only so much slack I'm willing to cut for a Legends toy, and this one uses it all up and then some. $3.99 at HTS. RANTS Packaging: Same as the "Classics 2.0" Legends packaging, but with "Animated Series" on the lower right front of the card and the upper right of the back. There's no TF:A style line art, just photos of both modes on the cardback. The instructions are on the cardback as well, as usual for this class. As usual, the cardbacks have name and techspec numbers, but nothing else. However TF:A packaging doesn't have tech spec numbers, so this gives us our first stats for the characters. AUTOBOT: OPTIMUS PRIME Altmode: Fire Truck Previous Mold Use: None Previous Name Use: Yes Techspec: STR 10 INT 9 SPD 7 END 8 RNK 8 COUR 10 FRB 8 SKL 8 Avg 8.5 Gasp! An Optimus Prime with only two 10's! I don't think that's ever happened before. He's faster than most Primes, mind you. Packaging: Three twist-ties. One on each arm, one around both boots. Robot Mode: 3" (8cm) tall, by far the smallest transforming TF:A Optimus Prime (the minifig that comes with the game pack is smaller, but doesn't move much less transform). It definitely shows signs of economizing, with loads of places where there should be paint but isn't. The main plce where it could stand to have some extra paint is the abdomen, which is totally unpainted. The forearms suffer the most from kibble issues, with some cab panels and the front wheels attached to them. The cab windows in the chest are a little too small, like his chest is squinting. Otherwise, a pretty good translation down to the size class. Oddly, despite red being a major color in the design, there's no red plastic. Most of the toy is medium-dark blue plastic with a moderately strong UV glow. The wheels are medium gray plastic. The chest, abdomen, pelvis front and the bottom parts of the upper arms are gunmetal plastic. There's red paint with a strong UV glow on the chest front and the fronts and tops of the shoulders. Silver paint is used for stripes on the shoulders (mainly to match up in vehicle mode), the faceplate (with the eyes left unpainted), the thighs (which seem to have been dipped in paint, since they're fully covered) and some vehicle bits that are visible in this mode. There's bits of yellow on the helmet and the toes, but not the headlights on the chest. The chest windows are black, but the soles of the feet are left unpainted. In any case, this toy calls for some touching up. (Seen here: http://www.dvandom.com/kitbash/legtfaopv.JPG, http://www.dvandom.com/kitbash/legtfaopr1.JPG and http://www.dvandom.com/kitbash/legtfaopr2.JPG) No neck and no waist (there's a chest swivel for transformation, but it doesn't allow much motion in this mode). Ball joint shoulders, upper arm swivels, hinge elbows, ball joint hips. The toes point for transformation, but since there's no knee joints there's not much useful there. Still, the articulation is pretty good for a Legend. Transformation: Very clever trick to have distinct grille and abdomen while also minimizing the number of transformation-only joints. The chest rotates around, so that the abdomen swaps places. The lightbar is on the robot back and is attached to the head, flipping up as the head flips down. The arms and legs transform in the G1 Prime style. Vehicle Mode: 2.75" (7cm) long, and pretty close to Hot Wheels scale. With the front wheels lined up with the back of the cab, this comes closer to matching the animation model than most Optimus toys in this line, but the two sets of wheels are still too far apart. The silver paint from the outsides of the arms lines up with the front bumper in this mode pretty well, and the silver stripes of the shoulders run into the gunmetal abdomen bits okay. The lightbar is unpainted blue plastic, a bit dark to really work. A big Autobot symbol is printed in silver on the middle of the lightbar, making this the only one of the three to stick to the metallic symbol motif of TF:A toys. The headlights are still unpainted in this mode. Overall: A bit bland due to the lack of paint, and the elbow wheels stick out a bit, but pretty good for the size class. AUTOBOT: BUMBLEBEE Altmode: Sports Car Previous Mold Use: None Previous Name Use: G1, G2, Classic, Movie Techspec: STR 5 INT 7 SPD 9 END 5 RNK 4 COUR 7 FRB 6 SKL 6 Avg 6 Packaging: Three twist-ties, same pattern as Prime. Robot Mode: 2.75" (7cm) tall, with a definite Micromaster feel in terms of the arms being molded on the insides of the doors and the legs going into slots in the front grille of the car. It has a bit of a backpack going on with the roof of the car mode just being stuck on there, but neither of these issues is a big deal. The oddly dark face, however, is a somewhat bigger deal. Not sure why they used a very dark gunmetal instead of silver on the face, it's not like the color is used anywhere else. Strangely, despite having another fake chest, the stripe on the chest is on the wrong side! I guess they decided it was better to just do a mirror Bumblebee and have the chest stripe line up with the boot stripe (which has to be on the wrong side because they don't twist things around in transforming the legs). Yellow plastic on head, chest, backpack, arms, boots. Decent UV glow. The wheels, thighs and torso core are black plastic. Matte black paint on the face border, eye rims, chest stripe and boot stripe. The eyes are bright blue, the face a dark gunmetal paint. The window bits are a dark metallic gray-blue. A red and white Autobot symbol is printed on the left side of the chest, making this one of the few TF:A toys to have a red Autobot symbol (the Elite Guard symbol is the main source otherwise). The head tilts up and down, the waist does not turn. The shoulders and hips are ball joints, with the shoulders also having a transformation joint to allow shrugging. The knees are hinges. Transformation: Shares the cheaty fake-roof chest as the Deluxe version. However, I don't really mind, because the transformation itself is pretty cool. Like the Legends movie Autobot Ratchet, the torso swings around on the backpack to face the other way after unhooking from the pelvis, which gets the head into the center of the underside rather than sticking out the back end. The boots don't directly peg together, instead using the robot hands and some bits on the backpack/roof as tabs to get everything firmly together. Vehicle Mode: At 2.25" (6cm) long, it's just a touch bigger than Hot Wheels scale. In fact, it's shorter then the Mazda 2 Matchbox car I picked up the other day, but a bit taller and wider, plus it's a coupe where the 2 is a sedan. All told, I'd call it 25% bigger than a Hot Wheels scaled version of the same vehicle. There's a screw hole in the roof 4mm wide, I suppose you could put a gun in there for an attack mode. A tab where the pelvis and abdomen connect sticks out the rear, and the front grille has gaps for the legs to come through, but it's otherwise a tight vehicle mode without lots of kibble. Almost of the black robot bits are hidden except from underneath or from the very front, where you can see in through the gaps in the grille. A bit of the black torso core is visible at the rear, though. The painted black stripe runs from the hood onto the roof, with a red police flasher molded into the roof over the driver's seat. The windows are metallic blue-gray. It rolls smoothly on its wheels, and while I haven't tested this, I think it may be just barely narrow enough to drive on Hot Wheels tracks. Bonus feature: in vehicle mode it sits securely atop the vehicle mode of the Deluxe mold, with the gap in the underside fitting over the police light. Overall: While this may count as damning with faint praise, this is my favorite Bumblebee mold so far. At least its faults are excused by the tiny size, and they do some reasonably clever things in terms of engineering. AUTOBOT: PROWL Altmode: Motorcycle Previous Mold Use: None Previous Name Use: G1, BW, MW, Universe, Alt, RiD, Armada, Energon, Classic Techspec: STR 7 INT 9 SPD 7 END 6 RNK 5 COUR 9 FRB 5 SKL 9 Avg 7.125 Packaging: Four twist-ties, one for each limb. He's not quite packaged in robot mode, his shin wheels are pushed too far forward because the kibble behind them has to get out of the way to fit the toy in the blister. Robot Mode: A lanky 3" (8cm) tall in black, gold and a sort of really light sand color. There's kibble sticking out the backs of the boots, but otherwise does a good job of looking like Prowl should in robot mode. The only really big color error is that the thighs are black instead of gold, and since those are totally hidden in vehicle mode, I have no idea why they decided to split up the sprues that way. In terms of engineering, the wheels don't really lock into their proper position in the shins, and the tab holding the pelvis together is made of plastic mixed with fail. Definitely needs some nail polish to make the fit better. The upper arms, pelvis and torso core are made of a light sand color, rather than gold. Everything else is black plastic. The wheels are painted gray with gold hubs, plus there's gold stripes on the chest and wings and a gold crest. The face is painted the same gray as the tires. The hands are painted light sand. The visor is bright blue, and a red and white Autobot symbol is printed on the abdomen. Raised details shaped like post-it tabs (the ones with a point at one end) are on his forearms, the right one painted medium-dark blue and the left one painted bright red. His head can nod, but the waist isn't supposed to turn. The arms lift to the sides on hinges, the elbows and hips are ball joints, and the knees are hinges. Transformation: The arms raise over the head and peg together, the hollow biceps covering most of the face. The pelvis swings down and the legs bend at the knees to push through the wheels, which lock in place. Vehicle Mode: 2.75" (7cm) long, it's not a very convincing motorcycle. I mean, it has two wheels and an aerodynamic cowling, but the entire top part looks too much like a couple of robot arms stuck together. The mix of gold paint and sand plastic is more jarring here, and the lack of paint on the windshield or headlights hurts the illusion as well. The lightbar is, of course, totally wrong, but you can't expect them to pull of the meshing trick at this size. The left side of each wheel is part of the same piece as the strut, but the right side is a separate piece that's free to spin, and is a teeny bit larger so it's what touches the table. An interesting solution to the drop test issue, I suppose. There's a sort of kickstand piece ahead of the rear wheel, but it's not quite long enough to let the thing stay upright. If you pull the rear wheel down a little to depeg it, the kickstand does now rest on the table, but it's barely enough, and it'll tip over at the slightest provocation. Overall: Some of the problems with this toy are inevitable at this small size, but a lot were correctable in either the design phase (make the thighs the right color) or the painting phase (a few more apps would have helped the vehicle mode a lot). The missable one of the wave. Dave Van Domelen, has Legend Starscream on order for December delivery.