Dave's R.E.V.s Rant Marauder Class: Tengu R.E.V.s (Radically Engineered Vehicles) are Playmate's latest entry into the robot toy game. They're essentially the ultimate expression of Shellformers, with shells that come off completely and can pretty much make vehicles on their own. There's three size classes, with all the toys at a given size class being roughly the same, save for colors and small details (kinda like Bionicles). CAPSULE Tengu: Decent inner robot, so-so car shell, lame combined assault mode. Great packaging and support material. Worth getting one from this size class, but I don't see much benefit in getting more than one. $9.87 at Wal-Mart. RANT General Line Notes: There's ten figures in the first series, five on each side. On one side you have the villainous Syndicate, led by Anarkist. On the other, the heroic rebel MavWrecks, led by Big P. Each side has two of the $10 size class, called Marauders and shelled into street racer cars. They also have two Street Strikers, which are bigger ($15, I'm guessing, but there aren't any on the shelves here yet to check) and shelled as riced out pickup trucks or larger sportscars (two basic frames, each faction gets one of each). Finally, the two leaders are Arsenal Attack class, and shell into big trucks (Hummer-like for Big P, pickup for Anarkist). Marauders all have pull-back motors, a pair of missile launchers, and the robot heads stick up through the hood. Aside from being larger, the Street Strikers seem to be pretty much the same. The Arsenal Assault toys are larger still, and have light-up headlights and eyes. All of them have interchangeable armor bits, and the larger figures can attach smaller ones as limbs. Officially, the biggest combo is just an AA and parts of one Marauder and one Street Striker, though. Like Mugenbine, this strikes me as a line where the play value rises significantly with the number of toys you get...a single one can be kinda lame, but get all five of a side together and the possibilities are more than five times better. Maybe. Marauder packaging: These are on blister cards. The cardbacks are 9" (23cm) wide and 11" (28cm) tall. The blisters are a little under 8" (19cm) square and 3" (8cm) deep. The figures are packaged with one door rubber- banded to their legs with an arrow on the package pointing from the gap in the car to the door. The car bits are held together by rubber bands as well. The two missile launchers are twist-tied into the blister above the car shell. Behind the plastic tray is a CDROM that claims to be compatible with both PC and Mac. Good thing, since I have a Mac at home. The blister is held on with tabs wrapped around the back and taped down, like a lot of Japanese TFs, although the top and bottom tabs are glued down. The cardstock between the inner tray and the outer blister shows a robot acquiring armor pieces and then shelling up into car mode along a swoopying path on the left front. Along the bottom it says "Built your ultimate R.E.V.-BOT!" and has a picture in the lower right of the three-figure combination. Along the very bottom right it says "Includes 14 Pieces and 1 Robot". At the bottom of the inner cardstock is the usual legalese, plus the system requirements for the CDROM. The left side shows the pull-back gimmick and the missile launchers. The right side is a clip-and-save bio card with a photo of the assault mode. The top of the cardback front has the logo, name, faction symbol (the Syndicate's is a stylized eye crossed with a targeting reticule), and a sticker proclaiming the presence of the CDROM. The top of the cardback rear has the storyline blurb: "Forged on the floors of the top-secret R.E.V.s Project, the Radically Engineered Vehicles are artificially-intelligent, armed-to-the-axel robot soldiers built for one purpose: covert urban combat. Feeling this power was too much for an uncaring machine to command, one rouge [sic] engineer, Dr. Tucker, reprogrammed 5 units as honorable MavWrecks: robots driven to pursue what is right and just. Determined to stop R.E.V. project director Lucien Malik and his evil R.E.V. squad, the Syndicate. The war for their survival has begun!" Pretty basic "rogue assets" storyline. Oddly, while the Syndicate does seem to be the Evil Government types, their leader is named Anarkist. The bottom of the cardback rear shows the three size classes, listing names but not saying who's on what side. It also shows a three-combiner and some other smaller combination possibilities. Between these are pictures of the toy inside. It focuses on three main modes, "Fightin' Robot Inside" (car mode), "Remove Car Body Pieces" (base robot mode) and "Time to Armor Up!" (assault mode). The car mode shows again the pull-back motor action, and a view from below, showing the robot inside. The armored up mode looks kinda kibblicious. Inside, glued to the card in a little baggie, is a catalog showing all ten figures. Here's the sides, with their functions/epithets and rough descriptions, since odds are I won't be getting many of this line. :) MAVWRECK: CRUX Class: Marauder (silver and blue car, orange and black robot) Epithet: Focused and Fighting for Freedom! MAVWRECK: KID NITRO Class: Marauder (maroon and silver car, white and maroon robot) Epithet: Blabbermouth with a Bazooka! MAVWRECK: TRAILFIRE Class: Street Striker (yellow and silver pickup, silver/yellow/blue robot) Epithet: R.E.V.'s Re-engineer Specialist! (Their term for medic) MAVWRECK: SIX GUN Class: Street Striker (black and red car, white/copper/red robot) Epithet: Big P.'s Second in Command! MAVWRECK: BIG P Class: Arsenal Assault (taupe and white Hummer, silver and black robot) Epithet: Courageous leader of the MavWrecks! SYNDICATE: INFERNIX Class: Marauder (silver and black car, white and black robot) Epithet: Evil Pyromaniac Thug! SYNDICATE: TENGU Class: Marauder (red car, black robot) Epithet: Shadowy Assassin of Anarkist! SYNDICATE: KNOX Class: Street Striker (green and white pickup, black and white robot) Epithet: Junk Punk of Anarkist's Regime! (he has a spike mohawk) SYNDICATE: HAMMERWISE Class: Street Striker (black and white car, black and yellow robot) Epithet: The Flashy Street-Savvy Thief! SYNDICATE: ANARKIST Class: Arsenal Attack (black/red/silver pickup, black/red/silver robot) Epithet: Vile Commander of the Syndicate! The instructions are simple black line work on white non-gloss paper, double-sided. One sheet is for the toy itself, the other is for making a combiner. Turns out the canonical ones use an Arsenal Assault figure as the base and the upper half of a Marauder for claws and of a Street Striker as shoulder cannons, plus armor bits from all three and a skateboard that uses all three drivetrains. No official five-combiner. I got instructions for combining Big P with Six Gun and Crux, I'm guessing there's also instructions for at least one combiner using Anarkist. Dunno if they're randomly inserted, or if all the Marauders have these instructions, and others come with the other size classes. CDROM: This has an animated comic (Mac and PC versions), a PDF of the comic, an MPG commercial, and a PDF of the "Secret Profiles". There's also a short ReadMe file. The commercial is nothing particularly special...the usual so-so CG animation and timelapse shots of kids assembling and changing the toys. To judge from the group shot at the end, the Street Striker inner robots are about 7-8" tall, and the Arsenal Attack inner robots over a FOOT tall. So, if the price points are 10/15/20 dollars, the big guys are great value. OTOH, it could go 10/15/25 or even 10/20/30. The Mac comic uses a Flash viewer. You click on a thumbnail of each page to see it in more detail and motion, and the art is all at least computer painted, if not rendered. The "animation" is about at the level of the Exo-Force comics...flashing blast effects, some reflections, lens flares, the occasional multiplaning, that sort of thing. There's background music and sounds, and voice actors read all the lines. The voice acting is passable. The comic starts off with the MavWrecks breaking out of the Project with the help of somewhat scruffy but manly Dr. Tucker. "Weaponize" is their command to transform to assault mode, "Motorize" to go to car mode. If you want to just see the pages without all the swooshing around and stuff, there's also the PDF version. There's a cover with themesong and 11 pages of story. A person can ride inside Big P, but they're sitting in his lap. Heh. The story ends with the beginning of the first confrontation between MavWrecks and Syndicate. The Secret Files PDF has the bio car info for all ten figures, pictures of each in all three modes, symbols of the two factions, and pictures of the two main "Superbot" figures, one for each faction. And no, I'm not copying all the bio notes into this review, the one below should be enough to give you a taste of their writing style. Such as it is. Gotta say...the toys may be iffy, but they went all out on the packaging! And now for the one I actually bought. SYNDICATE: TENGU Class: Marauder Epithet: Shadowy Assassin of Anarkist (they mean he works for Anarkist, not that he killed Anarkist) Though in Japanese, the word "TENGU" means "pointy nosed goblin, don't be fooled into thinking that this mercenary machine is anything to laugh at! Built with stealth and efficiency in mind, TENGU has been equipped to take out even the most protected of targets with his ferocious and silent attacks! Connected to a central computer that stores hundreds of the world's martial arts disciplines ready for download, TENGU'S inhuman strength becomes that much more deadly when battling "hand to hand!" Packaging notes: Five twist-ties hold the core robot into the blister, and one each on the two launchers. The car is held in by just two ties, and is rubber-banded around a separate blister piece core. A single band holds the left car door onto the robot leg. The twist-ties are all of the thin and easy to remove variety. As is usual for Playmates, the number of paint apps on the actual toy is far smaller than the number shown in the packaging photos. The guns are shown with silver and blue paint over the black plastic, but there's no paint at all on the real thing. The car itself is pretty much as shown, though, and the inner bot has significantly different paint, including gray apps and a faction symbol not shown on the package. Inner Robot: A somewhat skinny 5.5" (14cm) tall, and made entirely of black plastic, most of which is slightly rubbery (the torso is more rigid). The face is vaguely reminiscent of a new-style tincan Cylon, with green eyes in an eyeslit, gray mask pattern, and a silver blade-like mohawk. The shoulderspikes are painted a slightly metallic blue, and they're meant to stick up through holes in the car hood (as is the top of the head). There's a red dragon-head pattern on the chest. The forearms and thighpads are painted dark gray, and the Syndicate's eye is printed in silver on the left thigh. The kneepads have red dragonwing patterns on them. Poseability is pretty good. The neck is a swivel atop a hinge, a skinny neck intended to let the head bend back 90 degrees. The waist is a double ball joint (a rod with balls at either end). The shoulders are universal joints with smooth swivels and ratcheting hinges. The elbows are ratchet hinges, and the wrists are smooth swivels. The hands seem designed to hold pegs about 3-4 mm in diameter, which jibes with the 1/8" (it's obvious these are measured in inches, not millimeters) peg holes all over the body. The hips are ball joints. The knees are weakly ratcheting hinges. The ankles are a combination of ratcheting hinge and a peg that combines a swivel with some side to side play. The toes are hinged, for that Don Martin shpladoink sort of action. In fact, you have to bend them down like that to get 'em inside the car. All of the ball joints, plus the swivels at neck and ankle, are made to be popped apart. The wrists are not easily popped, so I stopped trying. On the back are three 1/8" pegs and one 1/8" hole, with a bracket thing covering them up. This piece, labeled part 12 (which all of the Marauder robots have), is actually meant to be the dashboard of the car, clever of them. It's a sort of lame melee weapon in Assault Mode. There's two holes on the outside of each thigh, and one on the outside of each calf. It's like a Centurion (Power X-Treme!) Lite. The two missile launchers can either be held in the hands, or pegged onto the holes on the legs (the one hole in the back has a peg too near it to allow this. The launchers themselves are black, with red plastic flame-tipped missiles. Car Shell: This holds together on its own without the robot, but only if all the pieces are in place. So it's a bit tricky to get it all together at once. But it's nice and solid once it's together. It's best to build the sides first (front corner, door, rear corner), snap them together, then add the top and the bottoms. 5.5" (14.5cm) long, the main shell is made of red plastic that glows moderately under UV. The wheel wells and underside are black plastic, the wheel hubs are silver plastic, the tires are black rubberized plastic and the roof is clear brown-smoked plastic that glows greenish under UV. There's black dragon tattoo-like patterns painted on the sides, a black and blue pattern on the hood that integrates with the robot bits that stick out through holes in the hood. The Syndicate eye is on the rear left side, like a butt tat. The bottom edge is painted black all the way around. The headlights and taillights are orange. The front grille is dark gray, the license plate is blank silver. There's a blue dot in the middle of each hubcap. Each piece has a number molded on the side not facing outward in car mode. The launchers peg onto the bottoms of the doors pointed backwards as big exhaust pipes, hence the flame missiles. Pulling the car back winds a spring that lets it zoom forward. My apartment is all carpeted (except for the bathroom, which doesn't have much space to run in), so I can't really say how far it can travel on maximum "charge". The design is already pretty low in ground clearance, and the pegs sticking out the bottom reduce that to less than a millimeter. Car Mode: To Motorize, build the car shell, put Part 12 on the robot's back, and pretty much just stick 'em inside the car, front-down, with a little folding. The butt ends up shoved against the windshield, heh. Sadly, while the shoulderspikes are painted blue to match the pattern on the hood, the BACKS of the spikes are unpainted, and that's what shows. Also, the spikes don't easily poke up through the holes. Assault Mode: All of the pieces except #8 (the bar connecting the doors on the bottom for stability) are used in this mode. The front quarters attach to the boots, the doors to the hips. The motor piece becomes a backpack, with the rear fenders clipping on over the arms and limiting their movement a lot. Very kibbly, little remaining poseability. Not really worthwhile. However...there's more pegs and holes in this set than are really needed, which let you use subsets of the kibble for other stuff. Like making wings from the doors and rear fenders, and pegging them onto the back (okay, they don't stay up on their own, but it's an example). Or use part 12 to hold both guns in one hand, a la Energon Downshift. Or build the car but leave the top off, and have the robot ride in it while holding the roof as a shield. Overall: Not too bad for a ten dollar toy, although getting more Marauders doesn't really look to me like it'd increase the fun level much. Pretty much like getting multiple Toa or Piraka in Bionicle...sure, you can swap parts, but within the same size class that's about it. And the Assault Mode itself is too kibbly for my tastes, pictures suggest it doesn't get any better in the larger sizes. Basically, I recommend getting whichever one Marauder you like the looks of best. But stopping at one. Dave Van Domelen, now has other toys he got today to play with, but won't be reviewing 'em. Gotta leave some stuff just to play with, eh?