Dave's TF Universe Rant

     King Atlas

     Despite almost all sightins of this toy to date being at Targets, I
found this bad boy at K-Mart in the middle of snaffling up SD Gundams.  No
one said K-Mart toy aisle layout was perfect.

CAPSULE

     King Atlas: Okay, it's a brick.  But it's a pretty brick with some nice
gimmicks.  The fact that it's an homage to Dai Atlas is just gravy.
Somewhere between mildly recommended and recommended.  $21.99 sticker price
at K-Mart, but there was a 20% off sale.

RANT

     Rather than refer back to my Machine Wars Starscream review, I'm gonna
go from scratch.  That review is almost a decade old, and embarrassingly
non-thorough by modern standards.  :)
     This is the third time this mold has been sold as a Transformer.  The
first was Skyquake, a European-only toy that led the Predators.  Their
gimmick was view-sights with pictures of stuff in them, and you could combine
them for different views.  Never had a working set of Predators to try out,
so I won't go into details.  Anyway, Skyquake was a victim of late G1 or
early G2 colors, all sorts of neon colors and stuff.  Pretty fugly color
scheme.
     The second time was for Machine Wars, recolored in black and various
grays as the stealth bomber Starscream.  With neon green missiles.  However,
because these missiles were too short for choke-gate standards, they took
away his rifle, turning the missiles into just drop-bombs.  Starscream also
lost all the real viewmastery stuff, although if you're good at it, you can
at least replace his mirror with sticker-foil.  He came with 10 missiles,
most of which I ended up giving to my MW Soundwave (aka Stalker, the one
ground vehicle of the Predators).
     And now we have King Atlas, who still lacks the gun, is missing a few of
the missiles, but has other stuff restored.

     Packaging: The standard Universe Ultra box, 10"x10"x4" (25cm x 25cm x
10cm). The problem is, you can't quite fit either mode into a box this size.
So they fold the wingtips and open up the nosecone to get it to wedge in
there diagonally.
     The toy comes with the poster catalog, still not updated.  The
instructions are two-sided: one side for transformation, one for gimmicks.
Neither really takes too much space.  The bombs are in a baggie taped to the
front of the tray, rather than in a blister or in with the instructions.
     Only three thick twist-ties (and one rubber band) secure the toy to the
tray, but two of them require cutting or a LOT of patience, being double
twisted.  (This is where they twist it up once, then double the twisted part
over and twist again.)  

     There's no techspec for this toy, so I'll make up my own, so there.
Yes, I know it'll be contradicted in the TFU comic.

AUTOBOT: KING ATLAS
Function: Strategic Command
Altmode: High-Altitude Bomber
Motto: "It's all a matter of perspective."

After helping defeat a cosmic threat, KING ATLAS handed the reins of AUTOBOT
leadership back to VICTORY SABER, along with the mysterious Zodiac Energon.
He preferred a role as subordinate commander, and even his temporary command
of all Cybertron had left him uneasy.  Because of his trace connection to the
Zodiac Energon and his skills as a subordinate, KING ATLAS was summoned by
OPTIMUS PRIMAL to help in the dimension-spanning fight against Unicron's Dark
Generals.  Without the Zodiac Energon, KING ATLAS has only his robot and
bomber modes, and in many ways is weaker than before he merged with the
Zodiac.  Highly sensitive scanners let him target enemies on the ground with
his smart bombs from the edge of the atmosphere.  In close combat, however,
he's vulnerable, lacking rifle or melee weapon.  He can channel ambient light
into moderately powerful eyebeams, but can only sustain this sort of attack
for a short time.

STR 8  INT 10  SPD 9  END 8  RNK 9  COUR 10  FRP 6  SKL 8  Avg 8.5

     King Atlas is one way of translating Dai Atlas, the name of the leader
of the Cybertrons in Transformers: Zone (which only had one actual episode,
although the story was told in manga form).  He was actually a quadruple-
changer, with drilltank and base modes in addition to his robot and bomber
modes.  He only gains the base mode from the Zodiac Energon, but I figure the
exertion of defeating Violenjiger followed by surrendering the Zodiac would
have left him more limited than before he got the Zodiac.
     Dai Atlas had a similar color scheme to what King Atlas was given, but
King Atlas has a lot more white and a lot less blue.

     Vehicle Mode: It's a jet, more or less.  Some elements are reminiscent
of a Blackbird SR-71 spyplane, but there's a lot of extra bits that seem to
come from out of nowhere.  The main plastic color is white.  The nosecone is
black (and soft rubberized plastic).  The cockpit windows are dark clear red
in front, painted-on bright blue behind.  Yellow stripes line the sides of
the front fuselage.  The small wingtips have red leading edges and bright
blue trailing edges.  The rear fuselage has a bunch of black panels that can
be slid back to reveal clear dark red "solar panels".  On either side are
combination engines/bomb bays, black in color with light blue "dials" and
thruster nozzles, and red vertical stabilizers.  Red and white painted
Autobot symbols are on the wings.  The tail section is the periscope unit,
led off by a dark clear red piece, flanked by bright blue tailfins and black
stabilizers.  A bit of yellow is on top of the tail piece, and a light blue
eyepiece is at the very back.  Gray scorching details pepper the top side of
the jet.
     From nosecone to eyepiece, the jet is 13.5" (34cm) long, with a wingspan
of 11" (28cm).  There's three small landing wheels, one on the nose and one
on each robot shoulder, all made of black plastic.  The wingtips and tailfins
can be bent roughly 90 degrees up or down for storage or for slimming down
the robot mode.
     Gimmick 1: Clear Plastic - The cockpit plastic doesn't really light up
well, nor do the "solar panels" in the fuselage.  Ah well, the thought counts
for something.
     Gimmick 2: Bomb Bays - Two rotating cylinders are split into four
compartmetns each.  By ratcheting them around, you can drop bombs in
sequence.  There are six missiles, enough to put three in each bay and have
an empty compartment facing down (keeping four in a bay requires some tricky
positioning).  The dark yellow bombs can also fit onto pegs on the wingtips,
two per wing.  A peg is on each side of the fuselage as well, so you can fit
all of King Atlas's bombs on him without using the bomb bays.  Skyquake could
also shoot the bombs out of his rifle.  One nifty addition to King Atlas is
that two of the compartments in each bay have energy patterns painted in
them.
     Gimmick 3: Bombsight - Looking into the eyepiece normally gives you a
red view ahead with a bullseye pattern sight.  The plastic is a bit dark for
this purpose, though.  You can also flip up the front piece for a clear
view.  The slot on top of the sight was for inserting small Predator jets to
get their pictures.  If you rotate the stabilizers at the back, this folds a
mirror into place so you can look down at your bombing target.
Unfortunately, the mirror is warped and a bit unclear.

     Transformation: Just this side of a Mini-Con.  Toes and heelspurs flip
out of the feet, helpful for balancing his big bombsight backpack.  The arms
need to be extended before they can be moved.  And the head comes out of the
chest.  

     Robot Mode: A lot more blue and black here.  Black torso, head, forearms
and boots.  Blue upper arms and upper legs.  White paint on forearms, yellow
paint on mid-arms.  The head has lighter yellow paint on the faceplate and
crest, silver for the rest of the face and the antennae.  An Autobot symbol
is painted on either side of his clear dark red chestplate.  While the
faceplate colors don't quite work for me, the general color scheme does.
     King Atlas stands 10" (25cm) tall and if you fold back the wingtips,
he's 7.5" (19cm) wide.  The arms move at the shoulders, from straight down to
straight across.  That is IT for poseability.  Very much a G1 brick.  The
hands have tiny pegholes that will not hold any Energon or Armada equipment
to speak of.  And here's a mold change from Starscream: the fists now have
screws through them, the tips visible inside the pegholes.  While I was able
to Dremel out Starscream's fists so he could hold the Energon Saber, those
screws would have to be removed before I could do this to King Atlas.  On the
other hand, there's a LOT of screwholes of varying sizes on this toy, and
some of them will accept 5mm pegs snugly.
     Gimmick 1: Clear Plastic - They really dropped the ball on this one.
The dark red clear plastic is just too dark for anything short of sunlight or
shoving it into the lamp.  The white piece on the back of his head can be
moved up to cover the lightpiping, so that he doesn't always glow...but the
eyes barely glow at all in this version.
     Gimmick 2: Bombsight - With the head out of the way, the positioning of
the bombsight in robot mode lets you look out through King Atlas's chest.
Dimly, anyway.  On the other hand, the compartment in his chest is big enough
to hold a lot of the Mini-Cons (one at a time, of course).

     Overall: Okay, normally I dislike toys that are just big bricks.  But
this one looks pretty good and has some nifty gimmicks.  Worth picking up if
you find it.

     Dave Van Domelen, kinda disappointed at the warped mirror, tho.