Dave's Transformers Animated Rant: Voyager Wave 1 Megatron (spaceship) Starscream ("harrier" jet) Bulkhead (SWAT truck) Optimus Prime (Firetruck) Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/TFA/Voyager1 Update: Wave 1.5 added Optimus Prime as a running change. CAPSULES Megatron: The vehicle mode isn't as bad as Movie Megatron's, but that'd damning with faint praise. Okay transformation, fairly good robot mode, but needs some kitbashing to work like it was intended. Mildly recommended. $19.96 at Wal-Mart. Starscream: Somewhat kibbly jet mode, transformation is almost entirely automorph (but a nice automorph), robot mode is very nice if you leave aside all the parts that tend to pop off. Recommended. $19.96 at Wal-Mart. Bulkhead: Good vehicle mode, nice use of automorphing transformation, okay robot mode with some weak gimmicks. The main "flaw" is that he's too short to stand next to any Deluxes without looking out of place. Recommended. $19.96 at Wal-Mart. Optimus Prime: Decent vehicle mode, but still not show-accurate and the "trailer" is weak. Fairly standard Prime transformation with a few flourishes and an automorph. Decent but unspectacular robot mode. No glaring flaws, but no stunning assets either. Recommended. $19.99 at Target. RANTS Design Theory: In the Deluxe Wave 1 Rant I commented on how they seemed to be ditching line-wide gimmicks like auto-transformation in favor of just focusing on looking good in both modes. Looks like that only applied to the Deluxe size, as the Voyagers are rife with auto-transformation. Packaging: Once again, it's a weird variation on the basic box idea. This time, start with a rectangular box 11" (28cm) wide, 8" (20cm) tall and 4.5" (11.5cm) deep. Much of the front and part of the top are plastic window, otherwise it's fairly sturdy cardstock. Now, to get the weirdness, you'll need to "subtract" two triangular shapes. From the upper right, remove the corner at an angle so that you lose the top 2" (5cm) and right 1.5" (4cm) chunk. In other words, you subtract away a triangular prism 2" high, 1.5" wide and 4.5" deep, with a right angle at its upper right. The other piece to remove is more complicated. Remove a triangle 6.5" (16.5cm) tall with shorter sides 5" (13cm) and 2" (5cm). The longer of the two short sides is the upper right, the shortest side is lower right, and the longest side is the left. The point of this triangle is at the upper left corner of the box. So, you get three facets on the left (short vertical at the bottom, almost as short sloped towards the center of the box, long side sloped back to the upper left corner) and two facets on the right (long vertical at the bottom, slope to the left at the top). The front has three edges not part of the window. The left border has the "Ages 5+" warning, the conversion difficulty (3) and the identification as ">Voyager Class" (with the > in there...there's a lot of angle brackets in the packaging design). Along the bottom are the TFA logo and a call-out of some feature of the toy. Along the right is an animated-style drawing of the character, with their name, faction and faction symbol in a banner above them. The bottom has legalese and co-sells of the first wave of Deluxe toys. The top repeats the front art and a longer name banner. The upper right facet has some blurb about the character, and the lower right facet has a closeup "bust" shot of the character with their name. The bottom left facet has "Transformers.com", the middle left facet has the other two first wave Voyagers as co-sells, and the upper left facet has a large faction symbol and ">Voyager Class" again. The back is laid out similarly to the Deluxe cardbacks, but without the co-sells and with the vehicle picture at the center-bottom with the Galactic Powers & Abilities to the right of it. Inside, the vehicle mode is twist-tied to a blister backer held to the backing card by tabs inserted through slots and taped down. It's best to open the right side, which is secured by only one piece of tape, although there's some tabs you might want to be careful with lest you rip 'em. Unless you don't care about being neat, of course. Instructions can generally be found inside the right side, loose. The inner corrugated cardboard tray covers pretty much all faces except the front and part of the top, and is very well-constructed. No worries about crushed boxes like in Cybertron. DECEPTICON: MEGATRON Altmode: CYBERTRON Fusion Fighter Function: DECEPTICON Tyrant Previous Name Use: Yes Previous Mold Use: None Callouts: (front) "Cannon converts to sword!" (top right) "MEGATRON wields his fearsome fusion blade!" (back) "Fusion cannon converts to sword!" Motto: "The AllSpark will be mine, and Cybertron will tremble at my feet." Galactic Powers & Abilities: > No known weaknesses. > Scientific, strategic and engineering genius. > Fusion cannon can disintegrate up to 40 feet of solid steel. Back on CYBERTRON, when it is late at night, and very dark, robots tell each other stories of the war. They spin stories about the deeds ot MEGATRON, and though robots don't feel cold, the listeners shiver. The only ones who don't enjoy a scary MEGATRON story are the old ones, the ones who were there. Those old AUTOBOTS remember the real MEGATRON. Many of them bear scars sustained in the heat of his fusion cannon, or dents delivered by his powerful swords. To those old robots, MEGATRON is no monster; he is a warrior so vicious and terrible that monsters pale in comparison. Packaging: Two twist-ties all the way through to the back of the cardboard try hold the Fusion Fighter in place. However, the single missile is twist-tied to the blister, requiring either removal of the blister from the card or simply cutting something to get the missile out. It's not packaged in the official vehicle mode, although it's your basic mid-G1 "it's a space ship because we slapped winglets on it" pile of parts, so you really can't tell if it's correctly transformed or not. Interestingly, the instructions show a version of the toy without the strut-blocking addition mentioned below in the transformation section. The picture on the back shows an extra bit of charcoal paint on the forearms not seen on the final toy, and the mold of the head is slightly different (picture has closed mouth, toy has open mouth). Vehicle Mode: Okay, points at least for the name "Fusion Fighter" rather than something more generic. Not only is there the literal fusion cannon aspect, but also the implication that it's a fusion of roles, like a fighter and destroyer or heavy fighter. Where Starscream has the speed and agility, Megatron is more like the spaceborne equivalent of heavy cavalry...charge in with his lance and smash through whatever's in front of him. Nothing lives to GET behind him, so maneuverability isn't as important. [Later note: we only get about two seconds of this mode in the cartoon, but while there's similarities between the toy and the cartoon, they're not the same design.] Whatever it is, it's 9" (23cm) long and with a "wingspan" of 7.25" (18.5cm). There's a LOT of fiddly pegs to get into place all at once or it just falls apart under even the lightest handing. And, um, the main cannon points backwards, I guess it's supposed to be the primary engine in this mode. All told, while I can see how they're trying to presage the VTOL helicopter Earth Mode in general shape, it really looks like it should fly the other way (with cockpit at the very back like the Ep2 Jedi Starfighter). I will say that this toy gives a rotten first impression, because all of those little tabs come loose in-package and it's difficult to massage them back into place while it's mostly transformed. Once you transform it to robot mode and back it's a bit more stable. Anyway, it has a roughly diamond shape when seen from above, longer than it is wide. On the two side "points" are what appear to be VTOL ducted fans but without blades, possibly meant to be antigravity pods. Short winglets stick out from the sides of these pods. At the rear point two smaller diamonds act as tailfins (or canards if you adopt the reverse direction). The top centerline is composed of the fusion cannon (acting as a main engine in canonical configuration, or as a cannon in reversed mode) and a cigar-shaped cockpit section flanked by a pair of energy blades. Maybe they're for ramming. There's two wheels permanently deployed under the cockpit flanking it, and a third wheel that can flip out not far behind the other two. When resting on its wheels, the cockpit is pointed slightly upward (like, less than 10 degrees), evoking the nose-up of a WWII bomber on its tricycle landing gear. The predominant color is a dark charcoal gray. The rear half is mostly made of this color plastic, as are the winglets and fusion cannon. Several of the other bits are also painted a very good color match to this gray. The front lower end is mostly made of very light gray plastic, as are some struts in the tail and the winglet tips. There's also a lot of clear red plastic (mostly rigid, but the energy blades are flexible), including the blades, the cockpit (which is mostly painted over in silver and charcoal), the antigrav pods, the tail vanes, bits I will charitably call intake vents and some random connector bits. The missile is also clear red, and some vents on the cannon are clear red. There's silver on the antigrav pods and the cockpit, all other paint visible in this mode is charcoal. You can kinda see a gold Decepticon symbol on the belly, but it's really meant for the robot mode. No real articulation here. Oh, the winglets can theoretically sweep forward or back a bit, but the joint slides against other bits very stiffly and makes the whole thing come apart if you're not very careful. The tail vanes can be tweaked a bit. And you can fold the landing gear away. The missile fires backwards, making it a bit uncharacteristic for Megatron... another reason to have him fly the other direction. :) All in all, though, the vehicle mode is in the "nice try" category. There's not a lot of reason to leave the toy in vehicle mode for any reason, it's not even a sturdy storage mode, since the pegs come undone pretty easily even when you've put it together carefully. Transformation: The rear half unpegs from the sides and becomes the boots...the thighs are tiny bits hidden inside. The arms separate and pull apart, automorphing the torso (the top and bottom halves fold together and the head pops up). The rest is pretty much just aligning all the spiky bits. The tail vanes and the winglets become kneecaps and shinplates. One could argue that the stiffness of joints in the winglets is another automorph, since stowing them causes the feet to slide forward. Note, the cannon attached "permanently" (it'll pop off if you try) to the right arm will not fold flat against the top of his arm, due to a strengthening bit on the strut that gets in the way (a bit that did not exist at the time the line art for the instructions was done, so it must have been added later after drop tests). Instead, it really only works as an under-the-arm weapon, which exposes a lot of kibble and utterly fails to work in blade mode. Much like Lockdown's hands or Bumblebee's stingers, this cries out for kitbashing. To wit: http://www.dvandom.com/kitbash/anivoymegmod.JPG Robot Mode: 7" (18cm) tall with a 6" (15cm) long cannon strapped to his right arm. Fairly beefy in proportions, vaguely evocative of Go Nagai designed Super Robots like Mazinger Z. The only bad thing, proportion-wise, is that his thighs are tiny compared to his shins, much like Cybertron Megatron (in fact, he also has the big cylindrical chunks at the ankles that characterize C.Megs). The general color scheme is light gray on top, dark charcoal gray on bottom, with silver and clear red accents. He has big gaps on his back, it'd be nice if you could disconnect his cannon and peg it onto his back to cover that. Well, okay, you CAN disconnect the cannon and plug it onto his buttflap, but it doesn't really look good there (it's pointing down, for instance) and he still has the strut hanging off his right arm. The head, upper torso, "sixpack", hip flaps, shoulders, forearms, heel spurs and some connecting bits are made from very light gray plastic, which some consider too light given the cartoon color scheme. The inner joint bits of the shoulders and elbows, plus the pelvis, buttflap, torso core, boots and much of the cannon are dark charcoal plastic. The hands and the blades on the cannon are a flexible clear red plastic. The upper arms, abdomen, chest center, lightpiping, kneecaps, thighs, toes, missile and parts of the cannon and boots are rigid clear red plastic. The rigid stuff is darker than the flexible parts, and unless in very bright light just looks too dark. A lot of people have already painted over theirs. There's also some concern with the use of clear plastic on several joints (elbows, hips, knees), given that it's sometimes more brittle. There's some charcoal paint accents on the head, chest and forearms (although not as much coverage on the forearms as shown on the package), plus used for "fingerless gloves" and a lot of border effects on the clear plastic. The hip flaps are painted dark charcoal on the outside. Megatron's face is medium gray, and he has hints of the \|/ shape on his forehead. Silver covers the outsides of the thighs, the rear part of the cannon and the duct fan rings on his ankles. The head turns on a swivel, and the waist turns, but only about 45 degrees either way before the abdomen runs into the pelvis's upper lip. The shoulders are ratcheting universal joints, there's a ratcheting upper arm swivel, double-hinge ratcheting elbows, and smooth swiveling wrists. The hips are ratcheting universal joints, there's a smooth swivel above the knee (it's a peg, and the leg can be pulled apart here if you're not careful), ratcheting single-hinge knees, and stiffly hinged toe and heel joints. The cannon fires a single missile with a simple egg-shaped tip, no weird energy trail effects. If you lift the cockpit end up and fold one of the two blade pieces down, the other piece automorphs on a geared piece so that you get an energy blade running the length of the cannon's underside. The blade doesn't stick out past the end of the cannon enough to be useful for stabbing (in fact, if you load the cannon, the missile sticks out farther than the blade), making this a purely chopping weapon...a rather badly designed gunblade, in other words. Overall: Well, the vehicle mode is a bit of a write-off. The transformation has some clever bits, though, and the robot mode looks pretty good, especially if you fix the cannon strut. DECEPTICON: STARSCREAM Altmode: Fighter jet Function: Air Warrior Supreme Previous Name Use: G1, G2, MW, Universe, Armada, Energon, Cybertron, Classic, Movie Previous Mold Use: None Callouts: (front) "Double sonic shock blast!" (right top) "STARSCREAM uses twin sonic shock blasters powerful enough to pulverize a tank!" (back) "Hidden arm lasers!" "Flip down sonic shock blasters!" "2 firing missiles!" Motto: "Power is its own justification." Galactic Powers & Abilities: > Fastest vehicle mode of any DECEPTICON. > Aerial assault and tactical blitz expert. > Weapons can shatter metal and disrupt electronics. No one really likes STARSCREAM, not even other DECEPTICONS. Who can blame them thought? He'll do whatever it takes to gain control of the DECEPTICONS, even going so far as trying to destroy his commander MEGATRON. Of course, he's also nearly as powerful as MEGATRON, and just as sneaky. He's the fastest flier there is, and even OPTIMUS PRIME would have a hard time beating him in a fight. He's the best there is at what he does. Even so he sometimes overrates himself, and that's why he's still second in command. Packaging: The box was crushed somewhat, and I've gotten reports from sighters who say all of the Starscreams at their store were in crushed boxes too. I have to wonder if there was an accident at the factory or something. Still, it's a testament to the overall design of the box that a little crushing didn't result in toy damage. The only really annoying twist-tie assortment of the first rush of toys. One tie goes through the card, but winds around the underside and can't be removed on its own. Another tie connects the jet to just the blister, so you have to either cut the blister free or use wirecutters on the tie itself (fortunately there's enough clearance to do so without damaging the toy). The two missiles are twist-tied to the blister in such a way that wirecutters won't work, you have to at least cut the blister off in that section, if not free it entirely. A secondary blister is rubber banded over the tail. Removing the toy from the packaging, unless done with incredible care, will pop parts loose and un-transform it. The version on the box photo matches the actual toy as far as I can tell, although it's mistransformed (they didn't pop up the vanes on the back). And the instruction sheet has Scout levels of simplicity. :) Vehicle Mode: The cartoon calls this a "Harrier" (in "Fist Full Of Energon"), but it really has no Harrier/AV-8 elements to it at all. Perhaps they mean to use small-h harrier as a generic term for VTOL? It's more of a futuristic blend of several jet elements (a jet Fuzor?), dominated by the hypercritical wing design seen on G2's Space Case/Strafe mold or the Grumman X-29 (although lacking the canards of the X-29). It looks most like the Conquest X-30 from GI Joe (http://www.yojoe.com/vehicles/86/conquest/) but with the vertical tail fins also being swept forward and still lacking canards. Instead of canards, it has a cockpit area like the F-22 (there's also some F-22-ish radar-defeating zigzag lines here and there). The side fins on the tail have an F-22 styling to them as well. In any case, this frankenflyer isn't a Cybertron Mode, it's a copy of the jet model used by the Crimson Angels exhibition flying team in the third part of the pilot "movie" of the cartoon. Whatever you call this jet, it has VERY hungry engines, though, with three sets of air intakes! It has F-22-style intakes flanking the cockpit, additional intakes at the front of the oversized jets at the wingroots, plus an intake ring around the nose (making the discontinuity where the nosecone retracts a little less jarring) a la the MiG-21bis (Fishbed-N). There's vectored thrust nozzles at the back that evoke the Veritech mold and do the same thing (turn into feet). Unlike the X-29 or X-30, the engines are rather widely separated, and the central fuselage tapers down to a wing trailing edge, continuing the line of the trailing edge of the forward-swept wings. There's a fair amoung of undercarriage junk, though, exceeding even the usual levels of jetformers in the Veritech style. The jet mode is 9" (23cm) long with a 6.75" (17cm) wingspan. The predominant plastic color is a sort of slate blue, which suffers from being nearly white in places where sprue marks are too jagged or anywhere that got stressed at any point. Mine doesn't suffer too much from this, but I've heard reports of it being pretty bad on some samples. The cockpit and missiles are a clear orangey amber, and black plastic is used on the thrust vectors, rear landing gear and some internal bits. Some black paint accents are used on the rearmost intakes, the nosecone, around the cockpit edges, and on the trailing edge of the central wing bit. There's a lot of red detailing on the middle fuselage, stripes along the nose, on the wings and tail. These stripes are on top and bottom of the wings, unlike a lot of jet toys that only get stripes on the top. There's red on the missile launchers as well. An airbrake detail behind the cockpit is painted a sort of pale lavender (also seen on the bottoms of the thrust vectors), and gold Decepticon symbols are printed on the tops and bottoms of the wings. A dark red paint picks out the middle set of intakes to contrast with the bright red around them. The rear landing gear hides in a rather clever manner, but you need strong nails or a prying tool to get them out of the robot shins. The missile launchers can either stay tucked back between the thrusters, or swing forward between the landing gear to face and fire forward. The thrust vector nozzles are on a ball joint (made of clear amber plastic) but it's limited to just moving up or down about 30 degrees either way and rotation around the long axis about the same amount. Cockpit details including a pilot's seat and a bank of displays are visible inside. Generally stable once you have it all pegged together properly and have all the leg joints at the correct angles. The robot arms just hang between the legs, though. Transformation: Total automorph, it's like a big Machine Wars Megatron or something, albeit a bit more involved. Swinging the legs down causes the nosecone to retract, the head to pop up and the arms to swing around into place. All you need to do after that is snap a few bits together (wing piece over back, nosecone needs an extra shove into the pelvis), pull out the vanes on the back and rip the legs off. Er, I mean, properly pose the legs and unfold the feet. Ripping the legs off is just a side-effect. This line has a lot of thigh swivel pegs that aren't terribly secure. Speaking of non-secure parts, there's a good chance you'll pop the vanes off of the back while trying to transform them. The reverse operation is a bit trickier, since you need all the pieces to be in the right places to swing back together correctly. You might want to note carefully the arrangement of the leg joints in vehicle mode before rearranging them for robot mode. The arms need to be in the right places as well, but they're a bit more forgiving since they don't lock down anywhere. Robot Mode: It's the standard Veritech body plan of cockpit and intakes as chest, thruster as legs, wings as backpack. It stands 7.5" (19cm) tall and with a 6.75" (17cm) wingspan. As with the jet mode, it's mainly slate blue with accents in red and black. And along with Prowl, he's the epitome of the "uber chin" head design theme this line has going. The shoulderpads, upper arms, thighs, pelvis, fingers and thumbs are slate blue plastic. The forearms, head, high collar and feet are black plastic, and the rear landing gear pieces form black plastic shin details. The lightpiping for the eyes *and mouth* is orange-amber. I think that's cool, his smirk glows. He has red paint on the right and left torso, pelvis front, shoulderpads and the various wing and tail stripes. The tops of his upper arms and the front of his pelvis are painted black. His face and strips on his toes are light lavender. And because he's got hypercritical wings they don't need to flip over in robot mode, so his gold Decepticon symbols are right-side up. The head can turn on a ball joint, but it can be tricky to grip it properly past the collar. No waist articulation because of how he transforms. The shoulders are ratcheting swivels, and below each shoulderpad is a smooth "lift out to the sides" hinge that's just far enough down to keep me from calling the whole thing a universal joint. Also, it doesn't lift all the way to horizontal. There's a smooth swivel just above each elbow, and the elbows are smooth swivels. The wrists don't turn, making the palm position a little weird to some. It's a "hold something in the palm of your hand" sort of arrangement, rather than a more standard "grip a weapon's hilt" position. The thumb is hinged, as is the chunk of all four fingers. Both of these pieces can pop out pretty easily and can be tricky to get back in. The hips are ratcheting universal joints that are very stiff...and the upper thigh swivels are not tightly pegged in, so if you try to move the leg by grabbing below the swivel, you'll likely pop the leg off at the swivel. The swivels are cut at an angle for transformation, making them less useful for posing. The knees are stiffly ratcheting hinges, and the ankles are severely limited ball joints. To get a natural looking pose, you need to have the hip joints clicked forward one ratchet and the knees bent by one ratchet, otherwise it looks kinda weird and chicken-leggy. The missile launchers can be swung forward for attack or backwards to look like elbow spikes. The whole assembly can be shoved towards the hand, which makes panels on both sides of the forearm pop out. I suppose these are supposed to represent deploying additional laser weaponry for an all-out assault. That, or they're heat sinks. :) The internal mechanisms are slate blue plastic. Overall: The simple transformation may disappoint some, but it does have an elegance to it that I liked. The main flaw in my mind is the large number of pieces that pop off so easily (fingers, thumbs, back vanes, hip swivels). Some of the standard tricks for peg looseness will help on the legs, and maybe the vanes. Secondary to this is the large amount of undercarriage garbage, but that's been the curse of this template since the VF-1J first rolled off the assembly line...Starscream is only a little worse than typical. AUTOBOT: BULKHEAD Altmode: Armored Truck Function: One Robot Wrecking Crew Previous Name Use: Energon Previous Mold Use: None Callouts: (front) "Launching wrecking ball!" (right top) "BULKHEAD battles evil with his mighty ball and chain!" (back) "Ball and chain weapon!" "Pull lever to launch wrecking ball!" Motto: "I kind of broke this thing. And those things. And that pile of stuff over there. Sorry." Galactic Powers & Abilities: > Really amazingly strong. But not very agile. > Talented painter and sculptor. > Can throw or launch smaller AUTOBOTS up to a mile. If there's one thing BULKHEAD is really good at, it's smashing stuff. It's his specialty. In fact, he's so good at it that he's even good at it when he doesn't mean to be. In a fight, you can count on him to smash the DECEPTICONS, nearby parked cars, other AUTOBOTS, low-floating billboards, and occasionally himself. The irony of it is that he's a natural builder who loves to make things. He'd much rather be creating something, but when you're as big and strong as he is, stuff just sort of seems to get smashed. Packaging: Two twist-ties all the way through the back of the card. That's it. No loose separate accessories, no rubber bands. The vehicle mode photo on the back is mirror-flipped (the black rectangle showing on the side door is on the passenger-side door, but the photo shows it on the driver-side). Also, the inside of his "wings" has a lot more paint in the package photo than in the final product. It's hard to tell, what with all the photomanipulation brightness tweaking, but I think the face is just light gray on the package, instead of the pale gold it is on the toy. Vehicle Mode: A SWAT-style six-wheeled armored truck, but with military coloration (olive drab with white stars on the sides)...and a lightbar. Military Police, perhaps? Or just a lot of mixed visual cues. :) Looks like a Star Trek shuttle on wheels, rounded off and vaguely bullet-like. 6" (15cm) long, 3.5" (9cm) wide, 3.25" (8.5cm) tall. A lot of plastic crammed into a small space. The vehicle is cartoony enough that I'm not going to try to call a scale for it based on measurements, but it looks "right" next to Autobot Ratchet, so is probably around 1:40 to 1:44 scale. Kibble isn't much of a problem, other than some hinges. However, he has "anti-kibble" problems, with a big empty piece along the roof where his arms are rounded. Amusing note: it matters which side his wheels are attached. His wheels have "handedness", in that there's a spiral-ish pattern in the hubs that is mirror-flipped between right and left. Mixing the wheels would be obvious. There's generally good "armor look" details such as rivets and reinforced panels. The wheels are black plastic (front ones are smaller than the rear pairs) and everything else visible in this mode is olive green plastic. His hubs and headlights are painted pale gold, there's white five-pointed stars on the sides over the rear wheels, slightly metallic red paint on the lightbars, and a sort of metallic maroon around the grille. The grille on front is silver with black lines, and there's black in some of the tech-y stripes along the side, on the "windshield" vision slit and flanking the grille. Overall fairly drab and simple, but that's kinda Bulkhead's essence. There's no gimmicks in this mode, but it rests well on all six wheels and rolls along freely. It can also be gripped just right to use as a back massager (bumpy wheels kneading sore muscles), and it holds together quite firmly. Transformation: LOTS of automorph. Start by folding down the side door panels (which include the lightbar). Then pull back the rear shell piece. Pull it down far enough, and a switch is pulled that lets the arms spring out and forward, smacking against the driver's compartment (you have to manually peg 'em in place). This will also trip the trigger on his right arm punching gimmick (see below). Pull the front wheels down to get the legs out, and then you can push the front end up and back, which makes the head automatically flip out of hiding. Then it's just a matter of aligning panels and doing a clever little rotation that makes the front wheels into the arches of the feet. Getting the back panels formed into his "wings" involves some pretty stiff joints, and it's possible to overshoot and snap 'em off entirely. It should be noted that the instructions are missing important points and are misleading in several steps. They seem to ignore the arm automorph entirely, and are unclear about how to transform the wings. Robot Mode: His relatively small robot mode size has been dubbed "Bulkhead Syndrome," but to me it calls to mind Beast Machines Megatron, an even smaller Mega (the size class that eventually became Voyager). He's 4.75" (12cm) tall at the head, 6.25" (16cm) tall at the tops of his backpack wings. However, he's also 4.75" (12cm) across at the shoulders, and his forearms are each as big as both of his legs put together. He's a definite MUNKYTRUKK...a gorilla of a bot. His upper arms, thighs and shovel-like fingers (three mutually opposed fingers on each hand) are made of a sort of metallic taupe plastic. There's also an internal strut or two not really visible in either mode made of this metallic taupe. His head is olive green plastic, as are his shoulders. The "palms" of his hands, his wrecking ball, the trigger on his right bicep and the cores of each knee joint are black plastic. The rest of the bits are visible in vehicle mode. A white nylon string is attached to the wrecking ball. Unlike the majority of the toys in this line, there are NO clear plastic pieces on this toy. Not on the lightbars, not for the eyes, not on windows or weapons. Nothing. His face is painted the same pale gold as his wheel hubs, possibly because it was cheaper to do it that way than to add a gray color just for the face. His eyes are painted bright blue, and there's black stripes along the top of his old-style football helmet of a head. His vehicle mode white stars are now on his forearms, and they're joined by two more white stars, one on each shoulder. A silver Autobot symbol is printed on the rotating part of his chest that holds his head, as a sort of bolo tie clasp. There's black trim on his toes and along the tops of his boot and around his kneecaps. All the other paint apps are from vehicle mode. The head is on a ball joint with some hidden second degree of freedom that lets it wiggle around, turn, bobble, etc. No waist joint, but the way his torso pegs together would make it impossible anyway. The shoulders are VERY stiffly ratcheting universal joints, and it's tricky to get the "lift to the sides" joint to work without popping the shoulder completely off its peg hole. There's upper arm swivels and hinge elbows, but the right elbow ratchets as part of its gimmick while the left elbow is smooth. Each finger has its own hinge. The hips are universal joints that ratchet weakly forward and back, and lift smoothly to the sides. The knees are ratcheting hinges. Despite the stubbular nature of his legs, you can actually pose them in a meaningful range of motion and still stand him up stably. The documented gimmick is the ball and "chain" (well, string) weapon that pops out of his left hand when you pull back on a lever that is built into the left forearm (and which is normally concealed). It's a sort of modified "marble shooter" (aka "Cyberjet missile) launcher, and is pretty weak...even without the 6" (15cm) string (an inch of which is inside the arm) it wouldn't fly very far. The ball is black plastic, and looks more like a cartoony rocket-propelled grenade with stubby fins at the back. There's no graceful way to retract the string, you just have to wrap it around the back of the ball as best you can and shove it into the hole, hoping none sticks out around the edges. At least the string is long enough that he can hold the ball in his right hand easily. Bulkhead cannot make the "easy chair mode" seen in the cartoon, where his back wings rotated around to become a seat. Ah well. I hear the Leader Class version can do it. His backpack kibble is generally on the loose side, especially the panels on the sides. Undocumented but obvious feature: pressing a black button on his right bicep makes his arm (if straight) snap up at the elbow for a punching gimmick. Overall: A bit too much kibble in robot mode, a kinda puny main gimmick, and cursed to look the wrong size next to the other robots (like, even Activators Bumblebee's likely going to be too tall next to him, and Deluxe Bumblebee towers over Bulkhead). But some good use of the automorph concept, a solid vehicle mode, and a decent resemblance to the cartoon model in both modes. AUTOBOT: OPTIMUS PRIME Altmode: Truck Function: AUTOBOT Leader Previous Name Use: Yes Previous Mold Use: None Callouts: (front) "Gravity-spin conversion!" (top right) "OPTIMUS PRIME wields his powerful Ion Axe!" (back) "Flip-up face armor!" "Trailer becomes Ion Axe!" "Extinguisher cannon becomes hand weapon!" "Gravity-spin assisted conversion!" Motto: "While I function, Earth is under my protection." Galactic Powers & Abilities: > Supplementary battle armor > Rocket-assisted axe > Grapnel launcher in arm When OPTIMUS PRIME crashed to Earth with the rest of the AUTOBOTS, he didn't really know what it meant to be a hero. He spent most of his time in space dreaming of glory, but it wasn't until he was first faced with the terrible decisions that inevitably come with leadership that he finally understood. He became a true hero - a being who does what he does not for glory and fame, but because no one else can do it. Packaging: Two twist-ties hold the vehicle to the blister, another tie is wrapped around just the rear section, plus two rubber bands (one of which is about as tightly stretched as I've ever seen on a TF). The art on the box shows Prime with his face plate up. The co-sells on the left side are of Bulkhead and Megatron, while the bottom has Wave 2 Deluxes (Blackarachnia, Ratchet, Bumblebee and Lockdown). Vehicle Mode: Well, it's a little closer to the cartoon model than the Deluxe-sized version in the Battle Begins two-pack, but the front pair of wheels is still too far forward. 5.5" (14.5cm) long, it's reasonably stable as long as you leave the bed cover on. Without it properly pegged into place, the cab wobbles a bit. The bed cover, called a trailer on the box, is...kinda sad. Okay, it's at least an attempt to do more than just have another semitractor with no trailer, but it doesn't even cover the entire top of the legs-piece. It does continue the silver (well, gray on the cover) and black stripes along the sides of the cab, and has a place to put his squirt cannon, but it looks kinda weird and very weak. Made of a mix of red, black, medium blue, light gray and clear medium blue plastics, with a lot of paint applications to paper over the differences. The red paint used on the roof (which is a combination of black and clear blue plastics) is a bit brighter than the red plastic used on the cab front and rear. The bed cover is mostly light gray with a red spoiler, and its cannon is all light gray. The front bumper is light gray plastic. The part in the back that's blue on just about every truck Optimus Prime is blue plastic here too, surprise. The wheels and the lower flanks of the cab are black plastic. The roof lightbar and the front windows are clear blue plastic, and there's a sort of circuit pattern molded into the backside of the windows. The front wheels are only half was wide as the rear ones, with molded inner halves on the light gray pieces they connect to, but unpainted. There's molded but unpainted windows on the sides. A silver stripe runs along each side and meets up with the silver border of the headlights, plus the front grille and the hubcaps are silver. The headlights and the bumper lights are painted bright yellow. Much of the water cannon is painted medium blue, and there's some blue rectangles on the sides of the bed cover that seem mainly intended for axe mode. There's black paint on the sides of the bed cover that matches up with the black on the sides of the cab, but the parts that line up with the silver stripes are left unpainted light gray plastic. To look better in this mode, it could use some silver paint on the axe and a little bit more black paint under the silver stripes, where there's a red gap. The squirtgun is just pegged onto the bed cover. On the underside is your standard squirtgun plug, although it's made of such soft plastic that the obligatory T-shaped bit meant to keep it from coming out entirely doesn't do its job. It fires by pulling back on the barrel tip, which is a bit awkward. It fires a cone-shaped spray maybe 30 degrees wide overall and with a range of Not Much. And getting the plug out when wet pretty much requires a knife or long nails. As gimmicks go, I suppose it's themely for a firetruck, but the implementation is weak. Transformation: You can do things in pretty much any order if you want, but to see the "gravity spin" thing, you need to to it in the order from the instruction. Folding out the bumper and side bits frees up the gravity spin, and then you pull on a lever to unlatch things. The rear section will spin around as it drops down into place. From there it's the "standard" Prime transformation: arms fold out from the cab sides, head pops up from inside cab top, pull down legs and separate. There's some fiddly bits to get his wheels on the sides of his feet, though. You can sort of gravity spin back into vehicle mode, but you have to start with the legs facing forward and hold it carefully, lest it overspin and need to be ratcheted past its own gears back into place. Undocumented steps: The gravity-spin transformation leads to a very loose waist, but if you push back on his abdomen it'll lightly snap the waist back into place and keep it from turning. It'll still be unstable in anything but facing-forward, but at least it's stable in one position. Also, you can snap the black panels on the backs of the hands into place on the hands, although this costs you the wrist articulation. Fanmode Note: If you remove his trailer bed, flip out the axe handle and click the "blades" out just one ratchet rather than all the way flat, it looks kinda like a flying drone (Core Fighter?). G1 Prime has Roller, Animated Prime has Skimmer. ;) Robot Mode: 6.75" (17cm) tall, a little shorter than Megatron, but not really to proportion for the cartoon. As with the Battle Begins version, his feet are molded for a pose of leaning forward a bit with knees bent. Shoulders and chest are red plastic. The tops of the forearms, the fists, head, pelvis and boots are medium blue plastic. Thighs, gun, axe and boot kibble are light gray plastic. The backs of forearms and fists, the bottoms of the forearms, the abdomen, the wheels, and pretty much all of his visible joints are black plastic. Clear blue plastic on his chest-windows and his lightpiping. There's a nice balance of yellow paint, between the stripes on the helmet, the headlights on his chest, plus the accents on his belt and on his feet. Putting black paint in the vehicle mode gaps mentioned above would look a little weird in this mode, though, making his upper arms tricolor. He does have the same black "boot soles" as other versions of the toy. There's no yellow on his rooftop lights, though. His face is baby blue. The head and waist both turn on swivels, although the waist is meant to spin for transformation and won't hold a position other than the semi-locked one mentioned above. Shoulders are universal joints with shrugging possible on transformation struts. There's upper arm swivels, hinged elbows and hinged fists that swing inward if you don't snap the backpanels on. Also, transformation hinges on the forearms increase the range of articulation on the arms. Universal joint hips, hinge knees, a swivel below each knee. No meaningful ankle articulation. The thighs are pegged together, probably to avoid breakage in drop tests, but the molding prevents this from being a usable joint. The axe, frankly, looks really bad. It lacks any of the paint applications that would let it at least pretend to be his Ion Axe, and the shape is all wrong anyway. Especially with that spoiler hanging off it. A lot of people just give Battle Begins Prime's axe to Voyager Prime. The gun is held in the hand rather than pegged to the forearm where it would at least kinda mimic the pop-out foam blaster from the animated model. Other than the weapons, his main gimmick is that his battle mask can be lowered. There's a little tab on the back of the neck that lets you fold it out of the way, becoming a sort of chin guard. To get it as far down as it'll go, he has to be facing forward so the chin tip can fit through a slot in the collarbone area, but once it's stowed the head can still turn. There's just a little clearance issue during the stow/deploy phase. You'll note that I never mentioned where his Autobot symbol is. That's because he doesn't have one. Modification Suggestions: Not a lot here, it's a decent toy. Filing off the tip of the mask's chin might let it deploy and stow while the head is turned. You might add dabs of yellow to his rooftop lights. Black could be added to the half-tires in front, and maybe to the gaps on the sides of the cab if you don't mind how this changes the look of the robot. And since his hands use the standard 5mm peg, find him a better weapon. Adding paint to the blank side of the existing axe wouldn't really help enough to be worth the hassle. Overall: It's...okay. A few flaws, and a trailer/weapon idea that deserves some credit for trying, but that didn't really work out. And the gravity-spin is nifty once or twice, but after that is just another case of a gimmick crippling articulation. Overall, though, it doesn't stack up against the Deluxe Cybertron Mode Optimus Prime on any measure other than simple size. ONLINE CONTENT As per the Deluxe Wave 1, although you'll notice Starscream got some more love than most Decepticons. MEGATRON "Stay Tuned" as of June 25, 2008. STARSCREAM STARSCREAM has always lived in MEGATRON'S shadows and it burns him constantly. He feels that he has done much more in the name of DECEPTICONS than MEGATRON, but he simply lacks the charisma to inspire others. STARSCREAM makes up for this shortcoming with lies, deceit, manipulation, and when that fails, MORE lies, deceit, and manipulation. STARSCREAM would love nothing more than to obtain the ALLSPARK for himself, win the devotion of fellow DECEPTICONS, and usurp MEGATRON'S rule. He is driven by jealousy, pure and simple. ROBOT MODE POWER: "Nullray Cannons" STARSCREAM'S main weapons are his arm cannons. He has incredible speed, maneuverability, and hovering capabilities. He flies rings around the AUTOBOTS. In addition, as his name indicates he creates a sonic scream that make powerful sonic blasts of sound that can send enemies spinning through the atmosphere. BULKHEAD Every team needs its "muscle" and BULKHEAD is it, designed primarily for demolition in battle he is your greatest weapon. In everyday situations, hide your breakables. He's not overly clumsy but he doesn't know his own size or strength. At first, BULKHEAD comes off as a dumb jock, but scratch the surface and you will realize that he is a softy at heart. ROBOT MODE POWER: "Wrecking Ball" A massive wrecking ball comes out in place of BULKHEAD'S right hand. It is tethered to his arm by high-tensile cording. He can send it flying for a long distance. He uses his wrecking ball for hitting, crushing, baiting, ensnaring, and over-all DECEPTICON bashing. OPTIMUS PRIME See the Deluxe Wave 1 review. Dave Van Domelen, off to open up Lugnut.