Dave's Alternators Rant: Fishbowl Wave 1 17. Autobot Skids - Scion xB 16. Prowl - http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Alt/Prowl 5. Autobot Tracks - http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Alt/Tracks 18. Sunstreaker - http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Alt/DeadEnd (sort of) With the new year, Hasbro has decided to change not just the packaging of the Alternators, but also they way they are shipped. Instead of one or two at a time trickling out, they're doing waves like the rest of the Transformers. This first wave in the new packaging is a mixed bag: one totally new toy, one recolor, one recent toy, and one classic that got bad distribution initially. I'm not buying another Prowl or Tracks, and I presume that the toys themselves are essentially unchanged. Sunstreaker has no mold differences from Dead End, and is simply recast in yellow...which looks not so good. The hood doesn't match the fenders. So I'm not buying that either. Therefore, the entire new wave rests on Skids. I will reproduce my Capsules from the other toys below, though, for convenience. [Later note: I am told that the Sunstreaker color matching issues aren't as bad under incandescent light, but it's still noticeable. Under fluorescents in the store, through, it's glaring.] CAPSULES Autobot Skids: Decent vehicle mode, very nice transformation, good robot mode. Has Ironhide's head, though. Recommended. $19.96 at Wal-Mart. Prowl: Several relatively minor flaws keep me from gushing about this, but both modes are pretty good and the transformation is complex without being frustrating. Recommended. Autobot Tracks: Sleek vehicle mode, somewhat kibbly transformation and robot mode, but good G1 homage. And the kibble is less of an issue than I initially thought. Strongly recommended. (Probably the best of the three versions available, really. Battle Ravage is number two, Swerve number three.) Dead End: A significant remold of Side Swipe. Looks really good in vehicle mode, and pretty good in robot mode. The transformation is even slightly different. Recommended. (Sunstreaker drops to Mildly Recommended, however, based on the iffy color matching.) RANT This is the third major packaging style, so the section on packaging will perforce be more detailed this time out. PACKAGING In a major break from previous packaging, Hasbro decided to go with something that would stand out better on the shelf, a style that has been dubbed the "fishbowl" by fandom. While still stackable, they are far less easily used for later storage, being essentially glorified blister bubble cards. The base is a corrugated cardboard box 9.5" (24cm) long, 5" (13cm) wide and 1.25" (3.5cm) tall. Opening it reveals the bag with the instructions, and I presume any other loose parts (such as the top-down piece for a convertible) would be stored here. The outer bubble is almost vertical on three sides, slanted inward only a little. The front is a quarter cylinder shape with a radius of 3.75" (9.5cm). The blister is 3.75" (9cm) tall at its highest, 8.5" (22cm) long at the base, 4.25" (11cm) wide at the base. The flat part on the top is 5" (13cm) long and 3.75" (9.5cm) wide. The flat part is long enough that the boxes can be stacked while horizontal. However, since the packaging is irregular now, they cannot be stacked in any other orientation. Under the bubble is a fairly standard Alternators double blister sandwich, held down by taped tabs. Unfortunately, if you want to undo these tabs in a reclosable fashion, you have to totally open up the base box. In short, while you CAN reuse the packaging for storage, they've made it about as difficult an inconvenient as possible without actually preventing it. I suggest getting some large rubber bands. There is no plastic strap around Skids. Before I go into describing what's on the packaging, I need to define some terms. :) When I talk about front, back, etc, that refers to the orientation with respect to the vehicle. Left is driver's side, etc. Inside the bubble is a folded piece of cardstock at the rear of the vehicle. The background is a slightly mottled light gray with a border that's red tech-greeble at the very edge and silver chrome-pattern between the red and the background. On the right and left it shows a drawing of the robot mode, an Autobot symbol, and an Ages 5+ advisory. The top is just a narrow strip, with a silver oval that has a red and white tech burst inside and "SCION xB" in black over "Autobot Skids" in red". The rear has a cut-out circle bordered the same way as the sides, and through the hole you can see the rear of the vehicle. The upper left says "SCALE 1:24" and the upper right has a yellow triangle with a red 17, the toy's designator number. The top of the box base (i.e. under the vehicle) is a long oval with a chrome pattern border and filled with a red tech-greeble burst. (Greeble means just random techno junk patterning, kinda like the surface of a Star Destroyer.) The front has the xB logo in chrome pattern and the Alternators logo. The rear just has the Alternators logo. Right and left have the same elements, which are from front to back: Alternators logo, Hasbro logo, the nameplate from the bubble top, choking hazard warning. The bottom of the box has the sort of things previously found on the back of the red boxes and blue boxes. The background is the mottled light gray, and there's photos of robot and vehicle mode, plus an inset box showing off various features ("Street graphics decals!", "Detailed interior!" and "Removable engine becomes a weapon!"). A new feature is a mugshot inset with a motto quote. Skids's motto is, "Speed is immaterial when you've got intelligence. And killer rims." No bio note or techspecs, however. There is also no room for a co-sell picture on the new packaging. I have seen complaints from several people that the instructions that come with Autobot Skids are inadequate, especially compared to those of the Binaltech versions of this mold. VEHICLE MODE The Scion xB, aka the Toyota bB in Japan, is a box on wheels. It out- Volvos the old Volvos. You either think it's fugly, or you're insane. :) But it would be hard to find a vehicle better suited to Skids, all things considered. His original Honda City Turbo vehicle mode may not be quite as boxy as the xB, but it's pretty close. 6.5" (16.5cm) long, 2.75" (7.0cm) wide at the wheels, 2.6" (6.8cm) tall. It masses 234 grams. The body is a very dark blue, and they did a very good job of matching the paint and plastic colors (some parts are molded dark blue, others are molded clear and painted dark blue). Under blacklight, the solid blue pieces look a little reddish, while under fluorescent light the painted parts look a little purplish. None of the pieces really glow under blacklight, although the windows do it a little bit. (Aside: I wonder if the bad color matching on Sunstreaker is something that only shows up under fluorescent?) The windows are all tinted. There's a little bit of gold flake mixed into the plastic, and a faint red tint added along the tops of all the windows. The density of gold flake is, unfortunately, inconsistent. The tires are Cybertronian Radials, thinner rubber layers for wide rims. The rims themselves are 7-spoked with a slight spiraling in, painted silver. It has a pretty huge turn radius, as the front wheels only turn a little bit either way. OTOH, since the wheels don't separate in robot mode, the connection between the two doesn't have to disconnect, and stays solid. The most obvious bit of decoration is the pair of flame "decals" on the sides (they're actually printed on, but represent real life decals). The image is of the Scion logo without text in red, with weedy flames that fade from red to metallic gold as they travel from the front door to the rear door. Rather than a smooth fade, though, a deliberately dot-printing style is used, with small dots of gold growing as you move back, eventually meeting and becoming solid gold with increasingly small red dots. Other than the decals, the only details of note on the sides are the turn signal lights embedded just ahead of the front doors. The main grille in the front is black with horizontal line pattern molded into it, and a silver Scion logo in the center (in lieu of a hood ornament). There are 2 cross-hatched grilles in airdam below, the top one flanked by pale amber turn signals. The main grille is flanked by the headlights, which are mostly clear colorless over silver headlight details, but the turn signals on the outside are pale amber. The decals overlap the hood a bit on the sides, but there's otherwise no detailing on the hood. The red-tinted part of the windshiled has "SCION" in gold printed across it. The roof has five 1.75" (4.5cm) long ribs spaced evenly and running lengthwise, for helping stabilize rooftop loads. The rear view mirrors are silvered, and the wipers molded into the bottoms of the front and rear windows are painted black. On the back, the taillights are silver with clear covers, and metallic orange and red paint over the bits that represent the turn and brake signals. The license plate in back is silver, with a red Autobot symbol on the left and "SKIDS" on the right. Unlike most Alternators, the license plate does not split for transformation, as the entire rear hatch stays together. Above the plate is a Scion logo (printed only, not molded). Mine has a splotch of silver paint just to the left of the right taillight, musta been put together on a Friday. :) The tip of a muffler is found under the right side rear bumper, painted silver. A lot of stuff opens up on this toy, and all of the joints (at least on mine) were really stiff. I needed to use a slim blade to get things started, except for the front doors...and that's because the frame opens up too. To get just the door opened also required a blade. All four doors open and have the "panel slides out to accomodate opening wider" trick, although the rear doors are blocked a bit by the front seats (warning: the rear doors are only connected by a single pin, others have reported this pin snaps a little too easily). The hood and hatchback also open, with the hatchback opening a full 90 degrees. The robot feet pretty much fill the storage space in back. Unfortunately, once I opened everything the first time, the hood and front doors didn't really go back to flush against the rest of the vehicle, leaving gaps. Inside, the front two seats fold forward together, connected by the armrest that doesn't move on its own. The seats also pop up off the floor a bit. The steering wheel doesn't turn, but it does raise and lower. Be careful, though, as the controls on the column are really skinny. The rear seats fold down independently, although it's kinda hard to get at them unless you have really thin fingers or use a tool. Under the hood, most of it is robot head and arms, with a small engine plate (the gun) made of dark blue plastic with a silver section on it painted. On the silver area are molded and painted black the Toyota logo and "VVT-i", for the Variable Valve Timing with intelligence. VVT-i acts to adjust the timing of valve opening/ closing in the engine as RPMs increase, for maximum efficiency. For Skids to have an engine with intelligence seems fitting. Especially considering his new motto. TRANSFORMATION This is a good example of the "explode everything apart and then collapse back into the other mode" style of transformation, although I did have to resort to the instructions for a few steps. (While literally following the instructions may be insufficient as some have claimed, the instructions were enough to carry me over the points I didn't figure out on my own.) The windshield, roof and hatchback all sort of fold into a backpack with multiple twists and folds, and some bits concealed on the underside of the roof become panels flanking the head and covering the gap between chest and back. The arms are straightforward enough in principle, but you really have to explode out the front end to get them free. There's a long strut that connects the front end to the main body, with the robot head halfway along it. The front doors are also on multiple joints, which have to be fiddled around to get the arms free. Once the arms are out, everything folds back down into a torso, with the head locking onto the top of the chest with a clip that keeps it from untransforming (although it doesn't lock down very firmly elsewhere). After all that, the legs are pretty simple. The abdomen on down just folds 90 degrees down, and you pull the boots down to reveal the thighs. The feet have a VERY stiff hinge that has to fold all the way forward, and in transforming back to vehicle mode you can easily pop the foot off the ball joint below the hinge. Transformation back to vehicle mode is pretty easy, compared to some of the other Alternators. The arms are the only really fiddly bits. It's also a good idea to raise the seats during transformation, since it's harder to get the rear ones up once everything is snapped back together. My one real complaint about the transformation is that the rear doors don't really do anything. They just sit there, big slabs on the sides of the boots. Silly aside: if you don't remove the engine/gun during transformation, it gives the toy a gun head reminiscent of BMac Mirage or G1's Defcon (fie on the bowdlerized spelling with a v!). ROBOT MODE 6.75" (17cm) tall at the head, a bit more for the backpack or the front door wings. Instead of sticking out horizontally like most hood chest Alternators or folding straight down like Prowl, his chest is tilted down 45-50 degrees. Well, maybe more...I pose the figure leaning back a little at the hips, to avoid a too-hunchbacked look. The general look is very close to G1 Skids, although there's some places where they could have been even closer but avoided it. For instance, his arms are painted red with black shoulders, elbows and hands, but the original had blue arms and red hands. And the hips have the shape of G1's, but slightly different painting. The head mold, oddly, is completely wrong for Skids. It is, in fact, an updated cartoon model G1 Ironhide head, suggesting he might get a red recolor later on as Ironhide. It's black with a silver face and silver on the front half of the crest, with gold eyes. [Later note: the cartoon model and some comic appearances of Skids did have a head closer to this one. However, the "mohawk" is very distinctly that of the G1 Ironhide cartoon model (as expressed on the Ironhide PVC I compared Alt.Skids to), so at best this is a fusion of Ironhide's head and the Ironhide-like heads Skids has had in some appearances. It's absolutely nothing like the G1 toy Skids's head.] The flame decals on the doors make him look like he has flaming wings in robot mode, a nice effect. There's an Autobot symbol printed on the left shoulder. The pelvis is painted red, and there's silver paint on the black thighs. The kneecaps are long and painted silver with golden yellow accents. The rear bumper halves turn into a sort of "gundam spats", over black feet that have red-painted tops. The gun is dark blue for its engine bit and black for the barrel and handle. It is easily the smallest Alternator weapon to date, a mere 3.5cm long in total, 1.9cm of that being actual gun barrel. One correspondent labeled it the "Noisy Cricket" in reference to the tiny gun in the first Men In Black movie. It pegs into the palm of either hand, but the hole is on the side of the palm that folds out with the fingers, so it can be a bit fiddly to get it firmly seated. Stability in general is okay, although the neck and shoulders area can come unclipped pretty easily. No problems with the rest of the parts, though. The neck is a limited ball joint, and there is no waist joint. Each shoulder is a hinge and swivel universal joint, there's an upper arm swivel right below this. The elbows are double hinges, and can bend either way (backwards for transformation). The wrists are limited ball joints that mostly swivel, but fold inward for transformation. A single hinge folds the hand open and closed, with the index finger moving on its own and the other three joined together. The hips are also universal joints, and the front seats that form a buttflap do fold out of the way somewhat when needed. The joint holding the seats on is fairly easy to pop off, unfortunately there's no way to have him hold it as a shield. To remove it, by the way, just slide it up (forward) until the slot it's in widens enough to let the tab out. There are thigh swivels, single hinge knees, and ball joint ankles. As mentioned earlier, there's a transformation joint on the ankle as well, but it's not useful for posing. The heel spur can be folded down to stablize poses as well. OVERALL Skids gets points for being different, at least. Only the second "root" Alternator not based on a car (Hound/Swindle/Rollbar's jeep being the first). While certainly having flaws, it's still a good toy, and worth picking up. Dave Van Domelen, notes that Skids was the only pre-movie Transformer without a practical function. Even Perceptor (Scientist) and Beachcomber (Geologist) were more about applied science. Skids was a Theoretician. Let others worry about making useful stuff, he was all about the pure thought. This version seems a little more vain, though.