Dave's War Planets Rant:

     Planet Fire

CAPSULE

     Like the Ice Planet, this strikes me as a really neat idea which turned
out to be impossible to execute without blowing the budget, so you get a
number of flaws and defects including fragility.  The color scheme of the
outer shell, while using good color theory, looks a little stupid on closer
inspection, especially since there's little consistency between crustal
plates.  Still, a decent effort.  Mildly recommended.  $9.99 at Kay Bee.

RANT

     Unlike the other War Planets, Planet Fire does not fold open.  Rather,
it sheds an outer layer of tectonic plates to reveal a battle fortress
(although it does have a bay which can be opened to store stuff, similar to
Remora's). 

     Planet: The outer shell is yellow, orange and purple.  When you look too
closely, this looks kinda goofy, but there's a valid reason for trying this
color combination...yellow and purple are complementary colors, and under the
right conditions the purple parts look like glare-altered darkness.
Unfortunately, when you look more closely or under better light, the illusion
is dispelled.  Also, the plates were not painted with much consistency, and
you can end up with a dull orangey plate next to one with bright yellow
fissures, making it harder to get the desired effect.
     One nifty feature of the outer shell is that there are four sets of
footprints scattered about the various plates, and the Hero figures can stand
in them.
     One not-so-nifty feature is the fragility of plate E, which snapped in
half the first time I tried removing it (thanks to some glue and Sculpey,
it's okay now).  They also don't line up as well as they should, which is
especially irksome around the main cannon.
     Finally, some people have reported that the plates don't always stay
on.  Mine all stay pretty well, but I can see where the quality control can
break down here.
     With the plates removed and the legs extended, it looks kinda like
VinCENT from the Black Hole movie.  If chunkier.  And with some lovely wood
paneling.  Aside from the seams left by poor joining of somewhat cheap
plastic, it does look like a credible planetary fortress...with a mushroom
tacked to it (the volcano-trigger for the main gun is on too long a stalk).
The legs, when retracted, bite into the storage space, but since the tank can
be stored next to the main gun, this isn't a problem.

     Vehicles: Only two, and they're small, since this non-opening planet is
short on storage space.  A small orange "Inferno Jet" and the two-in-one tank
which is about the size of one of the Drones.  The jet slides into a hangar
on the side of the planet, and it seems like the rails inside the hangar were
originally intended to wrap around the jet's tail better and secure it, but
they were shortened.  My guess is that the jet was too hard to remove from
the hangar under the original system, although now it won't stay in.  The
tank's pretty clever, with the turret being able to separate off and drive
around on its own tiny treads.  You can jam a Hero into the lower half as
sort of an armed skateboard.

     Launchers: A fixed-forward main gun fires a missile about 5-6 feet,
which isn't bad.  It looks like it should be able to fold back into the
planet, but it's obvious that this was never intended as a feature of the
toy...the trigger mechanism doesn't allow it.  But this space does leave a
ledge where the tank can fit, or one of the Drones, if you wedge it in.
There's also a turret on top which fires a disc, but the disc barely clears
the planet itself...a rather wimpy spring.  Oh, and the disc goes in dot end
first, not last.

     Figures: The Drones are hunched over lizardy guys with a sort of lava
motif going for them...they wouldn't look out of place in a Mighty Max Lava
Lord set.  The Heroes are humanoids in yellow and black anti-heat armor, and
look pretty cool.  The only real problem with them is that the yellow paint
was applied VERY haphazardly and slops all over.  A minor problem is the
molding "flash" on the soles of the feet, which has to be cut off before
they'll stand well.  And as mentioned above, it's neat that they can stand on
the surface of the planet.  As for the Drones, they can circle the turret
quite nicely, as they already look like they're turning left.

     Storage: Very little, but there's not much to store.  Most of the upper
hemisphere is inaccessible, and a big chunk of the lower gets taken up when
the legs retract.  But all 8 figures and the two missiles will fit inside
fine, the jet has its own place and the tank fits next to the main gun.  The
only real storage issue is what to do with the crustal plates when they're
not in use, there's not really much to do with them.  

     Overall: Some pretty cool stuff and good ideas, but the corners which
had to be cut to bring it in at $10 are pretty apparent.  Because it's just
being put into newer shipments of the original five planets, it may be harder
to find (especially if the scalpers have decided it's worth getting for
resale).  Hence, it may not be worth the effort of tracking down, but if you
happen to run across it, you may want to snap it up.

     Dave Van Domelen, has heard of the Scorpion Tank being in stores, but
not seen it in his area yet....