Dave's Transformers Bumblebee Rant: Power Plus Wave 2 Soundwave (panel van) Ironhide (pickup truck) Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/BB/Plus2 Yeah, neither of these showed up in these vehicle modes in the movie, but ya gotta stretch it out. I was originaly going to do full reviews, but I was sufficiently UNimpressed to do extended capsules instead, as I did with Power Series wave 2. CAPSULES $13 price point. Soundwave: The good things first. The Igniter is a gray boombox with the trigger being a jagged sound blast, so it will let some figures carry a boombox around. Not Soundwave himself, though, at least not convincingly. The other good thing is the sticker on one side with airbrush-style art of a panther and a condor, nice homage to Ravage and Buzzsaw/Laserbeak. But the fact it's a sticker is a hint at the bad. There's very little paint in vehicle mode, just the windshield, the border around it, and the headlights. No paint on the side windows, none on the various molded speakers inside or outside, none on the spare tire, none on the boombox. A particular pity in back, since there's what looks to be a plate bolted over the license plate, but with no paint or printing it's unclear what the point of that was. Pushing down the middle of the roof pops the rear doors open to reveal more (unpainted) speakers. It goes pretty far when you use the Igniter Core, at least. Transformation is pretty simple, and it might look better if you could fold the roof panel in, but that forces the rear door to pop open and sit next to the foot. Robot mode has the fake windshield on the chest painted in reference to a tape deck door, but they didn't mold tape deck buttons on the belt. There's a molded cannon over the left shoulder, painted silver, and some silver details on the shoulder fronts. The right hand has a regular 5mm peg socket fist, the left hand is a Shockwave-style cannon with a 5mm muzzle. Looks okay for a cheap paint job toy. Only the elbows bend, no other articulation. Overall, it feels like a cheap knockoff of a real Transformers toy, never a good sign in an "authentic" piece. Great concept, pathetic execution. Very mildly recommended. Ironhide: Still basically a Topkick, and not the sort of pickup truck you'd see in the late 80s unless you had a customizer anticipating trends. I suppose "customizer" could also explain how the body is an uneven mix of black and red because they wanted certain plastic colors for robot mode but couldn't find the money to paint the black bits red to match the red. (Would probably have been better if they just gave up and went with movieverse all black). At least the front and side windows are all painted, and the front end has decent use of silver. The bed cover has too much robot mode silver, though. Pushing down on the centerline of the bed cover flips up multibarrel cannons and clears the way for the Igniter. The cannons are patterned on the ones used by the regular movieverse Ironhide, with Allspark Blue paint on the front edges. Unfortunately, the fact that pickup trucks are front-heavy kicks in hard when you use the Igniter Core, it tends to lift up at first rather than pushing the truck forwards...even being as careful about it as I could, I still lost some distance when compared to Soundwave. Reasonably involved transformation, resulting in a few more points of articulation in robot mode. The robot looks pretty good, and has heel spurs (not deployed in-package) to help if you want to store the Igniter on the figure's back. With ball joint shoulders, hinge elbows, and a swivel waist (plus hips that wiggle in and out a little), it has pretty good articulation for a Power Series figure. The color balance is decent, although it would have been better if they'd gone with all black. Like Soundwave, the right hand ends in a fist while the left forearm is a cannon (based on the non-multibarrel one). I'm gonna put this at the low end of mildy recommended, an all-black one would be better in both modes IMO. Dave Van Domelen, back to Studio Series reviews....