Dave's Universe Classics Rant: Deluxe Wave 6 Ratchet (Ironhide remold, redeco) Hot Shot with Jolt (Sportscar and mini-helicopter) Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/U2/Deluxe6 It looks like this wave is getting hosed by proximity to the Revenge of the Fallen launch. It's coming out very few places, and seems to be going on instant clearance. I got mine from a trading partner in Montana, whose Target had them on clearance for $7.68, with a marked-down-from price of $10.99. http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/U2/Deluxe3 - Ironhide mold http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Armada/Deluxe1 - original Hot Shot CAPSULES Ratchet: Original mold recommended. This one doesn't fix any of the problems Ironhide had, and may add a few. It's nice, but not worth a lot of effort to find. Hot Shot: Total panelmaster, with an interesting transformation that pays for it by also being frustrating. Loads of articulation in robot mode that is so kibble-restricted that it's functionally no better than Armada Hot Shot. Jolt feels kinda cheap, almost like a knockoff Mini-Con. Mildly recommended, and that mainly for people who like challenging transformations. RANTS Packaging: Same as wave 4. Co-sells are the other new one plus either Smokescreen or Dinobot, suggesting that when they DO ship, it's with those two figures to pad out the wave. Still no catalogs. Mottos and functions are my creations. And just a reminder, when I list previous name or mold use, I only mean U.S. mass market...I leave out Japanese and convention-exclusive releases. AUTOBOT: AUTOBOT RATCHET Series: Generation 1 Altmode: Ambulance Function: Medic Weapons: Medical Dispenser/Combat Blade Previous Name Use: Movie, TF:A ("Ratchet" alone is G1) Previous Mold Use: Universe Ironhide, with mods Motto: "This will pinch a bit. Okay, a lot." Back on CYBERTRON, AUTOBOT RATCHET was the best mechanic and machinist around. The only thing that kept him from true greatness was his constant partying. Years of war and a series of tragic encounters with MEGATRON have tempered his good nature, leaving him with a melancholy edge and a sour bedside manner. He's still the finest medic the AUTOBOTS have at their disposal, but these days he's more distracted by his bad memories than his late nights. STR 4 INT 8 SPD 4 END 5 RNK 7 COUR 8 FRB 3 SKL 10 Avg 6.125 Oddly, even beyond the usual "the guys in charge of coloring have to screw things up" effect seen in Universe2, this one doesn't even pick a single influence. The head isn't the animated colors (white helmet, dark gray crest) or the comic colors (red helmet and silver crest), although it's a little closer to the animation model. The stripes are more like the movie's EMT patterns, and the license plate is a callback to the Marvel comic. The license plate "H3L PU2" is a reference to the sign held up by the merged Ratchet/Megatron monstrosity in #70 of the Marvel Transformers comic, which said "HELP US" but with the S backwards. Packaging: Two twist-ties and a mini-blister cap on the vehicle mode, one tie on the weapon. Color Swaps: The black plastic stays black, which suggests to me that the wheels are on the same tray as the other black pieces. It's also now clear that the chest panel that folds up in robot mode is black plastic, since Ratchet doesn't have it all painted silver. The light clear blue stays the same. The light gray plastic becomes red, making for a somewhat weird rear bumper. Some of Ironhide's red plastic stays red: the piece the head is attached to, lower thighs, wrist joints, lower elbow joints, hip joints, roof strut, the bit connecting the front grille to the hood. The remaining red plastic pieces become white plastic with a strong UV glow. Paint Apps: In vehicle mode, the hood has a red pentagon that looks like it should have an Autobot symbol in it, but doesn't. Stripes bend away from this pentagon in sort of angular U shape. Along the sides are red stripes with movie Ratchet's (and TF:A's, for that matter) "blip" design left blank in it. The center of the hood is painted white, with a silver bit at the intake of the supercharger bump. The main part of the front grille is also silver, although the secondary bits are unpainted. White is used on the roof section as well, and the opaque parts of the windows are the same light blue as on Ironhide. The license plate is printed yellow with blue letters. Robot mode doesn't add a lot of paint. Red on the crest and some shoulder details (no attempt at crosses, though), silver face, a red and white Autobot symbol printed on the chest panel. Mold Changes: The roof gains Prowl's lightbar in light blue plastic, with red and blue opaque triangular strips on the top. The head is entirely new, and the helmet crest is made of a separate piece of white plastic that's been painted entirely red. The face is the same as Ironhide's, but there's subtle differences elsewhere on the helmet that make it clearly not just Ironhide's head with a crest slapped on. The crest itself is very stubby, a thick shallow chevron with only tiny "horns" at the tips. Probably because a more show- or comic-accurate crest wouldn't fit in vehicle mode. Other Notes: Apparently he dispenses medical products at several hundred doses per minute. I was kinda hoping that being white might help with the looks of the vehicle mode, but no such luck. And this one holds together even less well than either of my Ironhides. The "looking down into his chest" problem hasn't been fixed, but it'd have required some pretty significant engineering (as I found out the hard way in my messing about with Ironhide), including replacement of some screws with glue. Overall: Sadly, this looks like it might be the Battle Unicorn of Universe. A decent toy, but not good enough to justify the effort most are going to have to undertake to get it. And if there's actually ones that hold together well and mine is just bad QC, it's not like there's a lot out there to exchange it for. AUTOBOT: HOT SHOT Series: Armada Altmode: Sports Car Partner: MINI-CON JOLT (Helicopter) Function: Second Lieutenant Weapon: None Previous Name Use: RiD, Armada, Energon, Cybertron Previous Mold Use: None Motto: "Seriously, my shoulders are killing me." Impatient, impulsive, and actually sometimes kind of annoying, HOT SHOT is young, but full of potential. OPTIMUS PRIME sees in him the qualities of a great leader, and has taken it upon himself to mentor the young warrior in the ways of command. His MINI-CON partner JOLT tries his best to keep his erratic behavior under control, but HOT SHOT is quite skilled at ignoring the voice of reason. He's also obsessed with something called JaAm, which most AUTOBOTS think is some obscure fuel source, but no one knows for sure. STR 6 INT 7 SPD 9 END 6 RNK 5 COUR 8 FRB 4 SKL 5 Avg 6.625 Packaging: Two ties on the vehicle mode, one on Jolt, who's in robot mode. Armada Series is listed as '02-'03, with the subtitle "The UNICRON Trilogy begins!" I think this is the first on-package official statement that Armada/Energon/Cybertron is called the Unicron Trilogy. And speaking of canonization, "JaAm" (originally jaAm) is from a fan-redubbed version of the first Armada pack-in comic, http://tfwiki.net/wiki/JaAm. Vehicle Mode: 5" long including the dead Mini-Con hardpoint sticking out the back like a rocket nozzle, making this noticeably smaller than the original. For the most part, the coloring is the same as the original, mostly bright yellow with dark greenish blue accents. Unlike the original, it has clear windows...mostly. The side front windows are painted on, and it's kinda jarring. The spoiler in back has a gap in the middle for attaching Jolt, and the gap is also in the windows. Mostly bright yellow plastic. The engine block and wheels are black plastic, and the front bumper and airdam are a dark blue that doesn't have the greenish tint of the dark blue paint. There's three colors of clear plastic, but I suspect they're all colorless clear plastic with paint on the windows and taillights. Some of the robot's red plastic is visible through the windows. The door hinges are a different yellow plastic, a little more golden and with a stronger UV glow. A dark slightly greenish blue paint is used on the side bottom edges, the rear bumper and on a half-hexagon pattern painted on the roof (BAD seam-effects on this paint, with bright yellow lines running through the gaps). The wheel hubs and front grille are a bluish silver paint. The windows are painted clear light blue, except for the parts on yellow plastic, which are painted a sort of light slate or denim blue. The borders of the rear windows are painted yellow, a so-so color match. The taillights are painted clear red, and there's an opaque red Autobot symbol printed on the driver's side half of the spoiler. The license plate on the back is silver with "JAAM" printed in black. The car rolls reasonably well on its wheels, although you have to have all the panels in place or it'll be wobbly. The doors open for transformation, but it's not really a feature for this mode. The hardpoint at the back cannot actually hold Jolt in this mode, it's made for robot mode. Instead, there's a U-shaped slot into which Jolt is supposed to fit, and it's kinda loose in there. No live hardpoint functions here. You can sort of fake the capture claw by leaving the feet out in vehicle mode, though. Transformation: Gah. There are just SO MANY FIDDLY PANELS. Especially when trying to go back to vehicle mode. The one place I'll commend the design, though, is on the way the torso is actually folded open at a hinge on the waist to go into vehicle mode (unfortunately, it doesn't really snap shut firmly in robot mode). The legs form the front end of the car as with the Armada version, but the head is under the engine rather than at the rear of the car. When going back to car mode, you may want a thin knife to help you move pieces into place. The front windshield halves are particularly hard to get positioned. The canonical positioning of the rear fender sections severely restricts arm movement, but if you fiddle around a bit you can get them both to hang down the center of the back, one on top of the other. However, this puts the rear sections facing down rather than up, so Jolt can't really perch on Hot Shot's shoulder anymore. Robot Mode: 5.25" (13.5cm) tall at the head, kibble adds a bit more depending on where you have it. He's just about as tall as the Armada version, but noticeably less chunky. However, he's even more kibbly, with all sorts of vehicle panels hanging off his arms and back. The head, shoulders, shins and assorted kibble are bright yellow plastic, with some of the hinges being the same slightly different yellow as the door hinges. The feet, forearms and much of the boots are dark blue plastic. The lower bits of the forearms, torso front, pelvis and thighs are a dark red plastic. The back of the torso and the elbow joints are black plastic. The lightpiping and visor are clear light blue, probably painted clear colorless plastic. His harness pattern is painted bluish silver, while his face is just silver. It's hard to say, but I think he's smiling. The vent at the center of the chest is painted black, and his shoulders have dark green-blue stripes that look like halves of the roof pattern (although the roof pieces are loosely connected to the forearms). Some of the details on the shin fronts are painted sky blue. In theory, there's a lot of articulation here. But in practice, not as much as it could be. The head is on a restricted ball joint, but the waist doesn't move. His visor is hinged to swing down, and being made of clear plastic makes it actually work AS a visor. The shoulders are odd universal joints...but cannot lower past about 45 degrees away from the sides. The kibble cape pretty much prevents all the actual range of motion, but if you remove or reposition it the arms can lift to straight out to the sides before the spoiler parts get in the way. There's swivels on the upper arms, but the panels on the upper arms and forearms tend to block motion in that direction. The elbows are double hinges, and if you swivel things to keep kibble from getting in the way the arms will bend almost double. Universal joint hips (faintly ratcheting) with well-hidden swivels just below the hips. Hinge knees that bend about 90 degrees, swivels just below the knees. The ankles are hinged, and the toe chunks are also hinged separately, but that joint's a bit floppy. It can be tricky to keep the thighs from being spun the wrong way. There's no gimmicks other than the dead hardpoint, but Hot Shot is positively covered in 5mm peg holes that seem to serve no purpose. [Later note: these are for the Japanese Henkei version, which comes with a pair of guns that can attach in either mode.] However, if you remove the rear fender chunks from his back entirely, they have pegs that will fit snugly into the holes on his forearms. Put the left shoulderpad onto the right forearm and vice-versa to give him Gundam Maxter style punch-gauntlets. You can also simply swap the shoulderpads to make more of a cape in back. http://www.dvandom.com/images/U2hotshot1.JPG (cape mods) and http://www.dvandom.com/images/U2hotshot2.JPG (puncher mods) for pics of some of these ideas. Mini-Con: A decent little four-bladed red helicopter with a fenestron- style tail rotor...but with a fin pointing down rather than up for some reason. 2.5" (6.5cm) long, with a rotor circle 2" (5cm) wide. Maybe this is based on a real helicopter somewhere, but it looks like someone goofed in the design stage. The pods on the side could be weapons pods, or they could be pontoons for a seacopter styling. Mostly made of the dark red plastic seen on Hot Shot, with black rotors and some black joints. The front windows are painted silver, and there's some yellow accents at the back that are pretty much just for robot mode. The Mini-Con connector is on the bottom of the cockpit section. In this mode, he has a slot ot fit into on Hot Shot's vehicle mode, but as mentioned earlier does so badly. It's supposed to peg on to the hardpoint on Hot Shot's backpack kibble. In either case, since the tail doesn't fold down as with Armada Jolt, you have a helicopter hanging waaaaay out the back. Transformation is pretty simple, even for a Mini-Con. Flip down the legs from the underside, fold vehicle in half. It doesn't even peg into position. The arms do peg onto the sides of the nose section when going back to vehicle mode. The robot mode is a little over 2" (5cm) tall, and has to be posed hunching forward a bit to stay standing, thanks to the small feet and huge backpack. The downward pointing fin on the fenestron points backwards here, maybe they felt that having it point up in vehicle mode would make it look too much like Jolt was happy to see you, given that his entire tail section hangs between his robot legs. Mostly red plastic, the upper arms, hip joints and the rotor on back are black plastic. The face is painted silver, including the eyes. The yellow bits from vehicle mode are now his chest pattern. And that's pretty much it. The Mini-Con connector is hidden inside the torso, although you can lift up his backpack (the entire front end of the helicopter) to make a flight pack that could also hook onto a hardpoint. The shoulders are swivels, the elbows are hinged. The hips are hinged to spread the legs apart individually, but the forward and back motion has them linked (i.e. both legs forward or back, no separation). The stabilizer fins on the tail prevent the legs from moving forward very far, he can barely lean over enough to get his backpack over support. Overall: This is a design that really shouldn't have been executed on the current Deluxe budget. Maybe a Voyager would have worked, but it's just too kibbly and fiddly, and the corners that got cut (especially on Jolt) are painfully obvious. Dave Van Domelen, got the $4.99 Sunstorm and purple Shockwave sets at Target today, woot.