Dave's War Planets Rant:

     Tek Planet

     Capsule: Your basic micro playset series, the War Planets are planetoids
that open up into battle playsets.  The Tek Planet has a robotic theme, and
in some ways looks like Unicron's kid brother or Bludgeon's G2 ship.  Decent
quality, worth getting if you're into this sort of thing or want more stuff
to interact with your Microverse sets.  $10 at TRU.

     The Series: This is a computer game tie-in, and the first level demo of
the game can be downloaded from http://www.trendmasters.com, but beware, last
time I checked the page it was Frames-heavy and wanted more space than most
screens can give.  There's six small planets: Tek, Rock, Fire/Lava, Ice and
Bone, representing reassembled parts of a larger world destroyed by the bad
guy.  The bad guys are the giant Beast Planet (not available yet, apparently)
which is big enough to eat the other planets...Unicron, anyone?...and the
Remora Planet, which follows after the Beast Planet and scavenges the
remains.  Both evil planets have a tech feel to them as well, but I didn't
pick up the Remora because it looked kinda lame.  There were no Fire or Beast
planets at the store, so I only have their pictures to go on, but I'd rank
them in order of best to worst as follows: Tek, Rock, Beast, Ice, Fire,
Remora, Bone.  Each of the smaller planets comes carded in an involved
blister pack similar to some of the ones used in G2, with instructions and a
trading card listing the game values of the planet, a sort of tech specs,
although it's really just a listing of the firepower of each of its
components. 

     Planet Tek: The overall color of this planet is darkish gunmetal blue
with grey accents, inkwashed dark red missiles, blue and black tanks, and
light grey warriors with black spackle and red and blue accents.  The planet
and tank parts are rigid plastic, while the warriors are floppy plastic.  
     The planet has a mouth-like cargo bay door at the front through which a
platform carrying the "Dual Plane" can be extended.  The Dual Plane is two
jets which snap together to form a larger jet, and resembles the G2 Comic
Cybertronian double jets.  The planet opens up in back, and requires
excessive force to do so...the locking cap on top is hardly necessary, I
usually have to insert a pen or knife into the joint to snap it open.
     The missile launchers have a fairly impressive range for their size, and
the visual design of the launching vehicles is pretty good.  The minelayer
tank was something of a miss, though, and the tiny caltrops are easily lost.
The minelayer is also just big enough that you can't keep the Dual Jet on its
launch pad when stowing everything.
     The warriors, as mentioned before, are floppy plastic.  The bigger
"chicken-legged" ones which resemble an E-Frame from ExoSquad have no moving
joints, and are apparently the "Drones" mentioned on the trading card.
Because of the floppiness of the plastic, some are deformed to the point
where they don't like to stand.  The "Commanders" or "Heroes" have arms that
move on the same joint and legs that move on the same joint (like the legs of
the Microverse figures, but they don't snap in and out).  With their smaller
feet, they're even harder to keep standing.  But at a mere inch tall, the
detail is at least moderately impressive.  Er, it's also worth noting since I
just did this, that the Drones are formed of three pieces which come apart if
you pull too hard, but they fit back together and hold well.  Battle damage,
anyone?  
     The one difference between the picture and the actual toy I dislike is
the "bolt" on top of the locking cap, possibly placed there to make it easier
to pull up, but is makes the closed planet look like a cartoon bomb.  If the
hole in the top of it were a little smaller, you could mount the big missile
launcher in there, but as it stands, that won't work well (mind you, the big
missile launcher has a few inches of range, so it's a bad plan anyway...the
small missile tank has much better range).

     Dave Van Domelen, "Planet Tek transforms into a mighty battle fortress
where heroic warriors command high-tech laser weapons against the evil Beast
Planet!" - trading card