Dave's Kiddie Transformers Rant: Robot Heroes Wave 5 (Movie Wave 3) Optimus Prime / Barricade Ironhide / Dispensor Battle Jazz / Megatron AllSpark Bumblebee / Starscream Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/123/RH5 As with the previous wave, I got these from hasbrotoyshop.com (with a 20% off and free shipping coupon code), and I'm listing them in assortment order. As of Movie Wave 2, all the the movie characters had been done, so these are all second (or third) versions of everyone, albeit mostly in new molds. With one notable exception: Dispensor. Dispensor is the AllSpark- animated Mountain Dew machine from the Mission City battle scene, although without any obvious logos (hey, Reprolabels guys!). For the record, this is the third Movie Optimus Prime mold (and fifth appearance, including the Best Buy and Wal-Mart exclusive recolors), the second Barricade, second Ironhide, second Jazz (this one is a recolor of the original, making three color schemes on this one mold, plus the Protoform mold), third Bumblebee (the only recolor of a Bumblebee mold was sold as Cliffjumper), and second Starscream. Interestingly, the previous wave had Bumblebee-with-AllSpark and Starscream packaged together as well. CAPSULES Optimus Prime / Barricade: Decent third mold for Prime, kinda creepy extra-chibi second mold for Barricade. Mildly recommended. $5.99 at HTS. Ironhide / Dispensor: Ironhide is less chibi this time out, and gets points for trying a radically new pose, even if it isn't pulled off with complete success. Dispensor is made of awesome, though...and is also the only toy we're likely to get of this character. Strongly recommended. $5.99 at HTS. Battle Jazz / Megatron: Jazz is just the first Movie Jazz mold with cracks and burns painted on it, the wimp-out of the wave. Megatron is almost totally redesigned from scratch, and the paint job hurts it a bit. Low articulation even by the standards of the line. Mildly recommended. $5.99 at HTS. AllSpark Bumblebee / Starscream: Strictly speaking it's "Allspark Bumblebee" not "AllSpark Bumblebee," but I'm gonna call the lack of capitalization a typo. :) Bumblebee is the Classic Camaro mold, nice to see him get done in a new mold rather than just a repose. Starscream is a bit smaller but largely unchanged save for a weapons loadout and thrust pillar. Decent, though. Recommended. $5.99 at HTS. RANT Packaging: Again, the same style, with the four packs of this wave shown on the back. The only weirdness in the package art is that the faction symbols are cut and pasted in after the fact, and not all that well. Pegs: Still thin. Sigh. AUTOBOT: OPTIMUS PRIME Totally new pose for this one, crouched down and ready for fisticuffs, with battle mask in place but no weapons. The design is largely the same as the Wave 4 (sword-hand) Prime, but with beefier smokestacks, plainer wheels and a different shape of battle mask than the Wave 3 (gun-hand) Prime. Made of the same dark blue plastic as the other Primes, and the paint pattern is almost identical to Wave 4 Prime. The differences are that one side of each forearm is painted red here, and the Autobot symbol is printed (still in red) on the left upper arm. Crouched down with arms and legs bent, he only rises to 5.5cm tall. The shoulders and neck rotate, the standard articulation of Robot Heroes. Given the way the arms are posed, I get a Donkey Kong vibe here. TrukkMunky. DECEPTICON: BARRICADE Cheerfully running to join the fray, a smile on his face. Disturbing. The posing of the arms makes them look bad outside of a fairly limited range, partially negating the shoulder articulation. The head is fixed in place. It stands 6cm tall. One of the more clearly chibi figures in terms of proportions, and his running stance is very childlike. It's really pretty creepy. Made of black palstic with red eyes and turn signals, gold mouth, knees and elbows, silver used extensively (face, fists, thighs, toes), and white on the upper arms and headlights. "POLICE" is printed in silver on the left upper arm door panel, and a Decepticon symbol is printed in silver on the right upper arm. A little subtler is the metallic dark purple on the foreams, outer knees and pelvis. Comparing this to the first version, almost everything is different in proportion. The head and chest are bigger (33% bigger on the head, 50% wider on the chest), the fists and feet are smaller (and the forearm wheels are so small that they're almost gone). Unlike the original, the shoulder wheel struts are attached to the torso piece, rather than the arms. AUTOBOT: IRONHIDE While he's packaged head-up, this is actually sideways. This mold is meant to recapture his rolling dive-and-fire bit from all the ads, during the Mission City fight. He rests on a bit of rubble attached to his left arm, with a missile firing out of his rightt arm launcher as he rolls. He's looking up, legs sort of bicycling in the air. The mold is mostly different from the previous version. New head, new right arm and cannon, slimmer legs, slightly altered chest. The left arm is almost identical, just a few tweaks (plus the added missile being launched). Where the new Barricade is more chibi than the old, the new Ironhide is less stubby than the previous mold. About 6cm tall from head to foot, or 7.5cm from the base to the highest reach of the left arm gun. Mostly made of black plastic, but the rubble base is made of medium gray plastic mostly painted blue-gray with lighter gray smoke out the back of the gun (I cut some paint off the underside to see the true plastic color). The eyes are medium blue, the thigh accents are greenish gold. A bronze color is painted on the sides of the head, the center chest and the front third of each gun. The firing missile (which is kinda stubby) is silver, as is the mouth, the chest sides, the backs of the fists and the feet. A silver Autobot symbol is printed on the back, which is otherwise unpainted. Notable for trying something different, going for an iconic pose rather than just another crouch. DECEPTICON: DISPENSOR Obey MY thirst, puny fleshling! This, by the way, is where all the articulation in the wave went. Okay, Dispensor requires a bit of explanation. During the big Mission City fight, when the AllSpark takes some bad bounces, a Mountain Dew machine comes to life in a rather bizarre piece of product placement. It gets four arms, an insectile general appearance, and a rotary can-launcher weapon. And while not officially named in the movie, Hasbro asked fans at one point for suggestions and Dispensor is the name that got picked. [Later correction: it was suggested unsolicited during a Hasbro tour and panel.] The way they gave this toy four arms was to start with a regular humanoid form, in a crouched pose and arms bent about 90 degrees at the elbow. Then two secondary arms are pegged onto the back. There's some big Y-shaped armor chunks on the shoulders (reminiscent of some of the armor designs in the Aeon Flux cartoon), and a lot of flat surfaces representing parts of the soda machine box shape. The head has a sort of rhinocerous beetle thing going on, with four eyes and a goofy smile. The main arms have the usual swivel joints, forward and back direction (vector directions of rotation being out to the sides). The secondary arms swivel in a "jumping jack" fasion (vector directions forward and backwards), and while they sort of get in each other's way a bit, it's not a big deal. The head also turns. The main right arm ends in a big rotary soda can blaster, and backup cans are molded onto the back. The other three hands end in three-fingered clawed hands. The figure is made of kelly green plastic. A chartreuse "Constructicon Green" is found on the pecs, bis on the face, stripes on the seconadary arms, and the Y-armor pieces on the main shoulders. A Decepticon symbol is also printed in chartreuse on the right secondary forearm. The gun, hands, feet and bits of the face are silver. The teeth are white, and there's yellow strips on the thighs. A pale gold is used on the blaster tips, shin deco, central torso and elbow joints. The eyes are red. I am tempted to buy a second set of this and make a Dr Pepper Dispensor. AUTOBOT: BATTLE JAZZ The name is apparently a more kid-friendly version of "Final Battle Jazz", and he's got even more cracks and burns on him than the Wal-Mart version, but it's still the same mold. Made of light gray plastic (the same shade as Megatron below) with lots of black crack deco. Bright blue visor and metallic blue headlights. There's black on the wheels, medium gray on the face, and gold on the ankles, pelvis, shield center and right palm. A red Autobot symbol is printed on the right upper arm. DECEPTICON: MEGATRON This is a weird one. It's not just Megatron in a new pose...it's remolded in almost every detail. The head is particularly different, unlike almost any version of movie Megatron, with a weird forehead crest. The effect is augmented by the use of dark blue paint on the face, hands, toes, spine and mace. The pose is one of almost going down on one knee while striking the ground with the right hand in mace mode, with a blast effect under the mace head. The left arm is bent acute at the elbow and the two-fingered hand in a claw position. The only joints are neck and left shoulder. His head only rises to 5.5cm, but if he could straighten up he'd be about 7cm. The figure is made of a light gray, a little lighter than the original movie Megatron Robot Hero. In addition to the dark blue mentioned earlier, there's gold on the chest, elbows, knees and "toenails". There's extensive use of silver (face, shoulderpads, forearms, kneepads, feet). The eyes are red, while the energy smash effect is yellow fading into red at the tips. A black Decepticon symbol is printed on the left wing. AUTOBOT: ALLSPARK BUMBLEBEE The battle mask is off, and he's holding the AllSpark over his head, energy crackling around it as it shrinks down to a size Sam can carry. Oddly, this is the Classic Camaro version of the character, which never came into contact with the AllSpark. Still, nice to see that mold get some Robot Heroes love. The shoulders and neck are swivels, but the fact the hands are glued to the AllSpark reduces effective articulation. The main figure is made from yellow plastic, and the AllSpark is a separate piece glued to the hands. Can't really say what color plastic the AllSpark is, since it's painted all over in metallic jade with AllSpark Blue lightning crackles...and there's no unobtrustive place to cut away at as with some of the other fully painted pieces. The eyes, headlights and wing windows are also AllSpark Blue. Some forearm bits and the insides of the knees are metallic jade. The face, toes and Chevy symbol on the front end are silver. There's a red bit on the helmet top and a red Autobot symbol printed on the right upper arm. Otherwise, the dominant paint color is metallic blue, present on the sheels, backpack core, knees, backs of hands and much of the legs. No black paint on the tires, oddly. There are black stripes printed on the chest, though. I'm not sure if it's a subtle bit of sculpting or a painting error, but Bumblebee seems to have a skeptical quirk to his eyes, as if he's thinking, "Wait, so the AllSpark can shrink down on its own? How CONVENIENT." DECEPTICON: STARSCREAM Arms to the side, either rising or landing on a pillar of flame and smoke. His left hand is in the same claw shape as on the first RH Starscream (with the addition of a rotary cannon mounted on the foream), but his left hand is in weapon mode, much closer to how it looks on the Voyager toy's launchers. The mold is largely similar in details, but maybe 10% smaller than the original. The thrusters are repositioned, and the shoulder tailfins are much smaller and rectangular. The "wires" on the head are parted differently, too. The main figure is made of the same taupe colored plastic as the first Starscream movie figure, while the thrust pillar is made of the same medium gray plastic as Ironhide's rubble chunk. And like that chunk, it's totally painted over, mostly in white near the bottom with yellow in the middle and fading to red-orange at the nozzles...kinda like an exploding candy corn. Paint apps on the figure are identical to the original, except that the black spot on the small of the back is unpainted on this figure. While molded a little smaller than the previous version, the pose is larger and more open, 6cm tall with an arm span of 9cm. Has the standard three points of articulation, but the left arm is sticking straight out so spinning it around doesn't do much. On the other hand (literally), he can carry another RH figure in his right arm. Dave Van Domelen, now has four Robot Heroes Bumblebees and two Cliffjumpers...swarming!