Dave's Transformers Animated Rant: Voyager Wave 4

     Shockwave (Longarm/Crane/Tank)
     Skywarp (Starscream redeco, not reviewed)

     Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/TFA/Voyager4

     By my totally arbitrary labeling, this is wave 4.  Judging by the
cosells, it seems to ship with Grimlock as well, possibly others.
     http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/TFA/Voyager1 has the Starscream mold. 

CAPSULES

     Shockwave: Has some achilles heels as far as stability goes, and the
Longarm mode has weak legs, but it's otherwise a fairly impressive bit of
engineering.  Recommended.  $21.99 at HasbroToyShop.com.  Yeah, this reflects
the line-wide boost in prices that may take a while to trickle down to the
retail level.
     Skywarp: Original mold was recommended, but I think I'll stick to
Activators for the recolors on Starscream.  $21.99 at HTS.com.


RANTS

     Packaging: Same as Wave 1.  The co-sells on the left side are for
Skywarp and Grimlock.  The bottom co-sells are Swindle, Swoop, Blurr and
Blazing Lockdown, Deluxe wave 5 in my parlance.


DECEPTICON: SHOCKWAVE
Altmodes: Tank (Decepticon), LONGARM (Autobot), Crane (Autobot)
Function: DECEPTICON Deep Cover Spy
Previous Name Use (Shockwave): G1, Cybertron
Previous Name Use (Longarm): Armada, Cybertron, Movie
Previous Mold Use: None
Callouts: (front) "4 modes!"  (upper right) "SHOCKWAVE goes undercover
     as the AUTOBOT LONGARM!"  (back) "4 modes!"  "Switches from AUTOBOT to
     DECEPTICON!"
Motto: "Secrets are the foundation of power."
Galactic Powers & Abilities:
     > Expert code breaker and thief.
     > Enjoys blackmailing AUTOBOTS in positions of power.
     > Stole his AUTOBOT identity from old historical files.

     SHOCKWAVE is the ultimate spy.  Able to change his voice, energy
signature, and even his appearance at will, he has spent years infiltrating
the AUTOBOT power structure.  Graduating near the top of the class from the
AUTOBOT Academy, he moved through the ranks of the Elite Guard, eventually
becoming head of the Intelligence Division.  Not once did anyone suspect the
bright, friendly AUTOBOT known as LONGARM of being a devious enemy spy.

     We've had a Double-Spy before (Punch/Counterpunch), as well as a
multichanger who had Autobot and Decepticon altmodes (Doubledealer), but this
is the first time a spy has had two more or less distinct robot modes and two
vehicle modes.  That alone is impressive, regardless of how well it's
actually executed.

     Packaging: It's in tank mode here, and you can clearly see where
Longarm's disguise might have problems, due to the prominent Decepticon
symbol printed on the gunbarrel.  :)
     The instructions are inside the right side flap, be careful you don't
lose 'em while opening.  
     One twist-tie goes through all the way to the back of the inner tray,
but you either need to cut the tape holding the blister piece down or use
wirecutters to get at the other five rather stout ties.  Additionally, a
rubber band holds the gunbarrel to the blister.  Another rubber band keeps
the head together.
     The art on the box is all of Shockwave, who has an even spindlier look
than the actual toy.  Longarm gets no line-art love.

     Tank Mode: Your basic "H-tank" mode, like Armada Megatron.  You can even
enhance the resemblance by flipping out Shockwave's horns and retracting the
head cover.  The main body is 6.5" (16.5cm) long and 4.5" (11.5cm) wide.  The
turret piece is 2.25" (6cm) wide and a total of 5.5" (14cm) long.  Mainly
medium cool gray and black, with a few ghost gray bits, metallic blue accents
and red bits on the secondary cannons and turret vision slits.  The main
barrel vaugely resembles G1 Shockwave's pistol barrel, but also has design
elements in common with TF:A Megatron's cannon.
     Most of the toy is made of a cool medium gray plastic, at least most of
what's visible in this mode.  The turret is mostly black plastic (the trigger
button is gray, and a bit of hook sticking out the top is ghost gray), and a
bit behind the turret is also black plastic.  A few bits are made of ghost
gray soft plastic, but they're pretty much all parts dedicated to other
modes, so I'll leave 'em out for now.
     The treads are painted black.  Metallic light blue is used on the top
center of the turret, as well as on some vents on the barrel.  There's a bit
of metallic blue on the head cover, possibly intended as a window for a
driver (making this a mega-tank).  The barrels of the secondary guns are
painted red, as are a pair of slits flanking the secondary guns.  A
Decepticon symbol is printed on top of the barrel in ghost gray.
     Unfortunately, this mode depends on two little tabs that are easy to
overlook and sometimes hard to get snapped into place for most of its
stability.  If they pop out, this becomes a floppy mess that drags its belly
when you try to roll it along on the usual little wheels embedded in the
treads.  Another stability issue is the turret, which is merely pegged in,
and will fall off if you spin it too fast.

     Transformation to Crane Mode: Pretty simple.  The treads bend down a
notch to lift the vehicle up a bit.  Folding over the main gun barrel makes a
crane arm snap out (you can pull back on a slider tab to go back to the gun
barrel), and the secondary barrels just fold away into the crane turret.

     Crane Mode: His Autobot vehicle mode.  Since the torso is lifted up a
bit, it looks even more like a robot laying down than the tank does.  On the
other hand, it's a bit more stable in this configuration even if those vital
pegs are unhooked, perhaps in part because it has no wheels to slide around
on.  5.75" (14.5cm) long, same width, and a bit taller of course.  Looks
essentially the same, but manages to look like a futuristic mobile crane
rather than just a mangled tank.  It'd work a little better if the crane
could extend farther beyond the treads, though...it's not even as long as the
gun.

     Transformation to robot modes in general: You do need to work from
reference here, if not the instructions, because there's two different robot
modes here, and there's lots of ways to play mix and match (i.e. Shockwave's
legs with Longarm's upper body, or vice versa).  You can see this as either
frustrating, or an opportunity for creativity.  :)
     Punch/Counterpunch lacks this ambiguity, of course, but he also lacks
articulation or really much difference besides "turn around, deploy different
arms and flip the helmet".  :)

     Transformation to Infiltration Mode: This is simple to get to directly
from either vehicle mode, since all you really have to do is straighten the
limbs and do some extension and fiddling.  The hip armor is pegged together
in vehicle mode, and needs to be moved around once it's unplugged.
     IMPORTANT: there's a couple of little tabs that fold in along his
flanks, made of black plastic.  This is mostly a cosmetic thing for the robot
modes, but if you forget to flip them back out in vehicle mode, the stability
goes straight into the slagpit.  It can take some Excessive Force (TM) to get
the pegs to seat firmly when going back to vehicle mode.

     Infiltration Mode: This is Longarm's robot mode.  Great disguise, other
than the Decepticon symbol on the crane that hangs down between his legs.
6.5" (16.5cm) tall at the head, a little bit higher if you measure to the
tops of his tread-shoulders.  With the painted black treads facing forward,
plus the additional black plastic visible in this mode, it's a generally dark
color scheme, with the medium gray mainly on the torso, forearms and toes.
He has hands in a relaxed open-palm pose.
     The middle abdomen, upper legs, inner shins face and elbows are black
plastic.  There's a clear red plastic hemisphere on his forehead.  The
chinstrap sides and hands are soft ghost gray plastic, as are details on his
forearms (which become Shockwave's claws).  In this mode, the crane turret
just stays on his back, he has no weaponry.
     Most of the face is painted ghost gray, with metallic blue eyes.  The
forehead and rings around the eyes are left black.  There's also metallic
blue at the ear end of his chinstrap, and in strips on his abdomen.  The
chest is painted ghost gray in a sort of wing-shield pattern.  At the center
is a black piece of plastic molded with the Autobot symbol, which is chromed
silver.
     Neither the head nor the waist turn, due to the way he transforms to
Shockwave.  The shoulders are more or less universal joints, soft-ratcheting
on 8 points on the swivel part.  Smooth swivel above the hinge elbow, and the
arms can lengthen for transformation or also to weakly simulate his namesake
ability.  The hands are on ball joints, but their soft plastic is both
high-friction and bendy, so you have to be careful to not twist the wrist
apart while trying to move it.  The hips have 8 point soft ratchets forward
and back, and smooth hinges out to the sides.  The knees have smooth hinges,
but unfortunately have them in both directions.  His knees will bend sideways
with little provocation, and the panels on the insides of his boots don't
snap into place to prevent this sideways motion.  The thigh armor doesn't
really stay put very well either when you do this.  There's an 8 point soft
ratcheting swivel below each knee.  The toes and heels are hinged, with the
heels being loose smooth hinges and the toes being incredibly stiff 8 point
ratchets.  Functionally, you get two useful positions for the feet.
     The legs are generally the inheritors of the tank mode's floppiness,
with the arms being much less of a problem.  The hips don't lock into
position, the knees bend sideways, etc.  It can be tricky set the toy down
without a leg giving out.

     Transformation to Spy Mode: The instructions have you go to Infiltration
move first, but neglect to show the step where you transform his face!
Simple enough, though...just pull up on the head to stretch the neck, and the
faceplates will close over Longarm's face automatically.  Lengthening is the
general theme of this transformation.  Pull out the arms, pull down the
flanks and move the thigh armor up, pull the head up, etc.  And then flip
down panels on the shoulders and rotate the faction symbol on the chest.  The
lower legs rotate around as well, mainly to change the color balance.  The
forearm "decorations" become claws, while Longarm's hands become thumb
claws. 

     Spy Mode: This is Shockwave's robot mode.  He's built more like Lockdown
in his lankiness, reaching 8.5" (22cm) at the top of his horns.  Two inches
in height gain is pretty impressive.  Also, a lot of the leg stability issues
are minimized in this form.  The gray comes into better balance with black
here as well, with the shins reversing to be gray in front and the black of
the shoulderpads getting broken up by flip-out modules.  He doesn't have a
cannon arm, but there's peg holes on both forearms to hold his turret.
     The faceplate is now entirely black, with the forehead having dropped
and a piece rising up out of the chinstrap to cover the lower face.  The
clear red forehead dot now lines up with lightpiping (the back of which is
now uncovered), giving him a glowing red eye.  The flipped faction symbol is
now molded into Decepticon shape.  The fingertip claws are soft ghost gray,
with black plastic on the root joints of the fingers.  The lengthened arm
bits are black plastic.
     Pods on the shoulderpads are painted metallic blue with red fronts, and
the Decepticon symbol is chromed gold.  No other new paint apps here.
     Jointing is radically different.  The old hip joints are concealed
within the thigh armor (which clips on securely), and the old elbows now
become joints to let him fold his forearms inward.  The new neck has both a
swivel and a bending-forward hinge.  The shoulders haven't changed, but
there's new hinge elbows (the upper arm swivel is the same joint as before,
interestingly).  The claw fingertips are independently hinged but the black
finger root is one piece on a hinge rather than being separate.  The thumb
claw lacks any meaningful articulation in this form.  The hips are new smooth
universal joints, the other leg joints are the same (although heels become
toes and vice versa).  The shortness of the new toes makes it harder for
Shockwave to point his gun forward without falling over, though.  You can
take advantage of the heel spur joint to pose him leaning backwards while
holding the gun forward, though.  (You can see this rocking-back pose here:
http://www.dvandom.com/images/tfashockwave.JPG)  The non-ratcheting nature of
the hips can make extreme poses dicey, though.

     Defect List: The Longarm mode has rather floppy legs that would have
been fixed by pegs locking his boot panels closed.  The vehicle mode depends
a bit too much on a couple of pegs to keep it from turning into a dishrag. 

     Overall: Two reasonably distinct vehicles, two very distinct robots
(really only sharing the chest in terms of major characteristics), a pretty
impressive accomplishment.  It works in an automorph on the face that doesn't
mess with stability, and has a spring-activated weapon gimmick (for
transformation) that doesn't cause the toy problems or send pieces flying in
random directions.  All told, some stability issues are a minor price to
pay.  


     And now to put in the framework for Skywarp in case I either review him
or get a guest review.  :)  I got some stuff off HasbroToyShop.com's entry,
with the function and motto being made up by me for now as placeholders.
I've also made some comments based on the official pics, but keep in mind
that those get so heavily photoshopped (and are often based on hand-painted
prototypes) that they're unreliable.

DECEPTICON: SKYWARP
Altmode: Fighter jet
Function: Rear guard.  WAY in the rear.  Like, over on that other planet.
Previous Name Use: G1, MW, Universe, Armada, Cybertron, Classic
Previous Mold Use: TFA Starscream
Callouts: (front) "Double missile blast!" (upper right)  (back)
Motto: "NOT IN THE FACE!"
Galactic Powers & Abilities:
     > 
     > 
     > 

     SKYWARP wouldn't call himself a coward.  He'd call himself smart.  So
what if he runs away from combat?  Fighting is dangerous!  All those missiles
and lasers could really hurt someone!  As a clone of STARSCREAM, he's got all
the power and skill of the leader of the DECEPTICON air forces, but none of
the courage or ambition.  He could easily be one of the most dangerous
DECEPTICONS of all time, but since he screams and runs away the second a shot
is fired, he's mostly just a joke.

     Packaging:

     Color Swaps: Based on photos, it seems that blue-gray becomes black or
maybe charcoal gray, black becomes violet, and the clear plastic is
yellow-orange.  The head is black, which may be black plastic, or violet
plastic painted black.  The soft nosecone tip is violet.

     Paint Apps: Silver paint used extensively: face, pecs, shoulderpads,
tops of the launchers, pelvis.  Gold Decepticon symbols on the wings.  Violet
stripes on the wings and tail, on the top intakes, stripes on the upper arms.
The hands are painted so that the claws are black and the palm section is
violet, whichever way that needs to be based on the plastic swaps.  :)

     Other Notes:

     Overall:

     Dave Van Domelen, notes that Activators Thundercracker has a color
scheme awfully close to Voyager Skywarp's.