Dave's Artifact Rant: Revenge of the Fallen Keychains Wave 1 Optimus Prime Bumblebee (not reviewed) Megatron (not reviewed) Starscream (not reviewed) Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Artifacts/Keychain4 In general, the quality level seems to have dropped compared to last year, and the paints are definitely not as good. So after initially dropping all four in my basket, I reconsidered and put back all but Prime, who is in "Jetfire Upgrade" mode. CAPSULE Optimus Prime: Decent enough mold, if lacking in paint and made of gummy plastic. Mildly recommended. $4.99 at Toys R Us. RANT WARNING: This toy is a spoiler for the movie, in that it depicts a configuration that depends on a late-in-the-movie plot point. I will be discussing that plot point in describing the toy. So if you haven't seen the movie yet and don't want to know what I mean by "Jetfire Upgrade", stop reading now! The packaging discussion will act as spoiler space. Packaging: Very similar to a Scout blister card, but only 7" (18cm) tall and 5.5" (14cm) wide. The blister is simpler, just a truncated square (think an octagon, but with the diagonal sides really short) and some relief out at the bottom for the insert. They all have Bumblebee's head on the insert card at the bottom of the blister, in addition to their name and correct faction symbol. On the front of the card behind the upper right of the blister is a circle with some call-out. Prime's is "REALLY WORKS! POWER UP MODE!" I suppose it really works in that there's a real keychain attached. :) The blister is glued all the way around. The back of the card is mostly the same for all four, the only differences being their name in the upper right and a circle in the upper left showing some special feature. The upper right has the following text on all of them: "The battle for Earth has ended... but the battle for the Universe has just begun. Who will win this epic battle between good and evil? The Revenge of the Fallen has begun." And yes, the space after the ellipses and the capitalization of Universe are theirs. Across the bottom are pictures of all four, and then the legalese. Prime's inset shows how you can lift up the wings for "fighting position," with the text: "Shift Optimus Prime to 'Power Up' mode by positioning his engines up to fighting position." The insert in the blister is a heavier cardstock than Hasbro uses (BasicFun makes these under license), and it has the "not under 36 months" warning printed on the back. Inside the blister, there's a secondary blister bit holding the legs down, but no twist-ties or rubber bands. General Description: Late in the movie, Jetfire gets fatally wounded. As a final sacrifice, he tells Optimus Prime to uses his parts to upgrade himself so he can take the battle to the skies. This is NOT a combination mode in the usual sense. It's a rather ghoulish "make power armor out of my corpse" configuration. That said, it's reminiscent of the Victory Sabre combination, with various bits of Jetfire attached as jetpack, random armor bits, boot add-ons and a Big Horkin' Gun. Start with movie Optimus Prime and an SR-71 Blackbird jet. Cut the front quarter off and slice it in two lengthwise to make shoulderpads. Mount the wings on Prime's back, with the cowling partly separated from the engines themselves (and on struts to further separate). Then hammer the rest of the fuselage into random angular panels and attach them to the back, butt and ankles as aerodynamic control surfaces. The remaining guts of the plane become a big gun attached to the right arm and a smaller gun on the left forearm. Oh, and bolt a keychain into the small of the back. It's just an eye screw attachment, you can remove it without tools, although you may want to leave it in so he can hang from a hook or something. The connection point is far enough above his center of mass that he'll hang reasonably upright. The clip itself is ferromagnetic, so you can attach him to a fridge magnet too (the four 2007 keychains are, in fact, attached to my refrigerator in such a manner). Like most novelty keychains, it really doesn't work as a means of keeping one's keys together, being far too big for a pocket and too likely to get hung up on stuff for a purse. [Later note: with the arms raised, the center of mass gets close enough to the attachment point that you can hang him in a flying pose.] The mold has a pretty good amount of detail, but the paint job (or lack thereof) tends to obscure that. And some of the details are a little weird, like bundles of what look like Battletech-style myomers on the arms, or lots and lots of parallel striations on what should be smooth pieces of Blackbird hull. Dimensions: 3.5" (9.5cm) tall at the head, 4" (10.5cm) at the top of the backpack when it's in stowed mode. The wingspan of the backpack is 3" (7.5cm), a few millimeters narrower than the shoulderpads. When the wings are raised to fighting position, the total height becomes 4.5" (11.5cm) and the wingspan increases by about half a centimeter or so. The big gun on the right arm is 2.25" (6cm) long and wraps around the forearm. Plastic: Wow, this is incredibly soft and rubbery plastic, I half expect it to stretch like a gummy candy. It's all made of a faintly metallic dark gray plastic that's reasonably stiff when it's more than a millimeter thick, but there's a lot of places where it's thinner than that. The one exception is that the struts for "fighting position" on the engines are made of a more rigid gunmetal plastic. But since the engine pods they're linked to are themselves on gummyplas struts, the whole assembly tends to flop around. I doubt there's anything that could be done at home to make the plastic more rigid without also making it crumbly. A shell of clearcoat nail polish would probably be a horribly bad idea, since softer plastics seem more susceptible to the "permanent stickiness" issue that nail polish can cause. One possible fix if you're willing to do some physical modding would be to cut off the thin struts that hold the engine pods on the back and replace them with sections of styrene sheet. The struts look like they're meant to be ailerons or something, but they're mostly hidden and any lost detail wouldn't be a big deal. Paints: Blue, red and silver, and not a whole lot of any of them. But the main areas on Prime that need blue and red get 'em, including most of the flame decos. The chest windows and lower half of the head are silver. No eyes, making this sort of the Daredevil of Optimus Primes. Even if you assume Jetfire is all gunmetal rather than black, some black paint for the tires would help quite a bit. And actually painting the vehicle shell parts of Jetfire matte black would help a LOT. I'm not sure how well the rubbery plastic would hold paint, though. Articulation: Not quite as good as the 2007 version, although it does spend a lot of its joint budget on the backpack. The head does not turn. Shoulders, waist and hips are swivels. The hips are in that V-shaped configuration often seen on female action figures, so that when he sits down his legs are spread apart about 90 degrees. The shoulderpads are separate from the arms, but they only block the shoulder joints a little. The winglets are on double struts hinged folding-gate style so that they remain parallel to the engines, and there's little nubs meant to lock them in the deployed position. On mine, though, the left winglet pops back down after a few seconds unless I push rather hard on it. Overall: Well, unless you're looking to drop $90 on the Leader versions of Optimus Prime and Jetfire, this is probably the best depiction of the combined mode you're likely to get, gummyplas and all. (The Legends versions are designed to hook together, but it's really just Prime wearing a jet on his back, none of the extra add-ons are present.) And, hey, it's five bucks, so not too bad even given the quality. Dave Van Domelen, taking a quick break from Deluxes.