Dave's Bot Shots Rant: Launchers Wave 2 Ironhide Launcher Starscream Launcher Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/BS/Launcher2 Refreshingly, the second wave is two new launchers, not Optimus Prime and one new one (an all-too-common pattern of late, with the second assortment being Optimus or Bumblebee from wave 1, plus one new thing). CAPSULES The price point has crept upwards a little, along with most of the Transformers line, expect $9-10 most places now. Ironhide Launcher: A bit weird-looking, but amusing. It'd have been much better if it used redeco of Ratchet and called it Trailbreaker, but I suppose Ironhide is one of their Must Use trademarks. Mildly recommended. Starscream Launcher: The only serious problem with this set is that the colors don't match up, so instead of looking like a boosted Starscream, it looks like Starscream is being eaten by another jet. Mildly recommended, boosted to Recommended if you're willing to do some paint work. RANTS Packaging: Same as wave 1. These come with codes for points, but only 100,000 points, same as a regular single-pack. AUTOBOT: IRONHIDE Altmode: Truck Launcher: Halftrack Trailer Series: 1 Number: BL003 Fist: 505 Sword: 880 Blaster: 235 Using his weapons engineering know how, Ironhide has built the ultimate battle launcher. Made from indestructium, Ironhide can charge through any barriers his opponents may be hiding behind. If theres [sic] a wall you can count on Ironhide to bring it down. Packaging: One rattan string holds the trailer into the blister, one rubber band holds the robot in. Oddly, his versus on the package is launcher Megatron, not Starscream. This continues on the back, showing Ironhide launching against Megatron. Previous Mold: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/BS/Single4 Robot Mode Changes: Main plastic is medium gray, secondary is black. Upper arms are dark gold on the front facing, face is silver, eyes medium blue. Vehicle Mode Changes: Rather dodgy, hard to keep in this mode. The bumper and grille are dark gold, the windshield and front side windoes are medium blue. Launcher: Start with an RV-style back end. Now give it tank treads instead of wheels, a dual cannon (based on the two pieces of movie Ironhide's weapon, so one has 8 barrels and the other has one big barrel) on the top back, and just for those particularly rugged campsites, a huge (1"/2.5cm diameter) buzzsaw on a strut on each side. The struts don't reach out past the front of Ironhide when he's attached, though, but I suppose the tactic would be to ram someone and as they flip up over the hood, the saws catch 'em. The launcher itself is 3.5" (9cm) long, and when you attach Ironhide the whole thing is 5.25" (13cm) long. It's mostly made of the same gray plastic as the included Ironhide, with the cannon/spoiler and some hinge bits being black plastic. The treads in back are totally covered in dark gold paint, the windows on the sides are the same blue as Ironhide's windows. The sawblades and some tech greebles that they cover when stowed are painted silver, and a large Autobot symbol is printed in red on top of the front half of the trailer. The saws are on swivels, not ball joints, which limits their ability to reach targets. There is enough clearance (barely) for Ratchet to fit into the front of the trailer in Ironhide's place. Some of the cars can be wedged in (the Bumblebee mold, for instance), but Jazz's spoiler is too big to fit. The Optimus legs have an incompatible connector, the various jets and tanks are simply too wide for the opening. Sentinel Prime, however, fits, more or less. Leadfoot is a bit awkward of a fit, but is almost the right color to blend in. All told, if you ignore color the best fit is probably Ratchet, who blends more smoothly into the opening (Ironhide leaves an obvious gap). Pushing down on the cannons makes the sides fall open. Usually. It can be a bit tetchy. The top surface of the ramp and its fold-down front end are painted dark gold, and the launch bars are black plastic. Swinging the sawblades forward in this mode makes them a somewhat more plausible close defense weapon. The launcher in this mode is 4" (10cm) long and 5" (12.5cm) wide. You can kind of get a robot mode Bot Shot to stand in each side piece, although they'll tend to block the launcher. There's missile pods molded to flank the base of the cannon tower, but they're not painted. As usual, the launcher has a safety so that it won't fire unless a button on the underside is pushed in. Overall: Well, it's a weird vehicle, but that has some appeal. And given that dodgy springs are a line-wide issue of quality control, I can't really blame this set for that problem uniquely. Still, if you only want one Ironhide, go for the single-pack, not this one or the upcoming Super Bot version. DECEPTICON: STARSCREAM Altmode: Fighter Jet Launcher: Booster Pack (the Harbinger) Series: 1 Number: BL004 Fist: 230 Sword: 800 Blaster: 590 Starscream's battle launcher, which he nicknamed the Harbinger, fires him like a missile straight towards his opponents. Using his launcher, Starscream can gain a massive amount of speed and be a force to be reckoned with. As long as his aim isn't off. The PDF checklist has been getting progressively worse. Large chunks of Starscream's note are missing/unreadable in the latest version. Fortunately, a friend was able to crack open the PDF and extract the text for me. Packaging: One string on booster, one band on robot. And the packaging continues Ironhide's example by setting Starscream against launcher Optimus. Previous Mold: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/BS/Single1 Robot Mode Changes: The main plastic is light gray, the secondary is a slightly darker gray. The helmet, feet and fists are painted gloos black, the face is silver, the eyes and chest are darkish red. Vehicle Mode Changes: Cockpit is silver, and dark red is on the leading edges of the wings. While a little lacking in red, it does seem closer to the Armada/Energon/Cybertron color scheme than anything else. It's mainly the lack of blue that makes me think of that color scheme. Launcher: On the package, it looks like one jet humping another, but it looks a little more like a booster unit in person. Part of the problem is that the launcher is almost entirely painted silver, so it doesn't blend in with Starscream's jet mode very well. On the plus side, that means any Starscream-mold jet will work equally well (or poorly) with it. The original single-pack Starscream is as far in the "too light" direction as the included Starscream is in the "too dark" direction, so it's not really an improvement. I'm tempted to paint the included Starscream silver to see if it looks better. I'd have to find a different color for the cockpit, though. The trigger piecer combines some tail fins, three booster thrusters and a large gun molded to look like G1 Starscream's Null Ray. There's two more booster engines on the sides, at the wing roots. The wings themselves are swept forward, with a trio of rockets mounted under each wing. The launcher itself is 3.5" (9cm) long with a 4" (10cm) wingspan, and it has a faux cockpit that lets it stand alone as a chunky chibi jet on its own. With a Starscream-mold jet attached, it's 5.5" (14cm) long and locked closed by the tailfins stuck in slots at the front. The unified vehicle turns Starscream's main wings into canards, and other than the color issues it does work pretty well as a chibi-style jet. The top shell is made of a gunmetal shiny plastic that is almost entirely painted over (only the undersides of the wings, the side thrusters and some exhaust pipe detailing on the top sides are left unpainted). The trigger piece and wheels are made of a faintly metallic gray plastic that's not quite the same shade as either of Starscream's grays. The underside and rear trigger are dark red plastic that matches the dark red paint on Starscream pretty well. There's also a couple of cannons on the sides of the deck made of the same plastic as the trigger, but in this mode they're supposed to be pointed backwards, with rocket pod details molded on their rear ends making them into underwing weapons. Actually, the instructions ignore the existence of these guns entirely, making me think the people making the instructions didn't realize they were able to move. Almost the entire top surface of the shell is painted silver, with dark red on the leading and outer edges of the wings, a medium gray paint on the faux cockpit, and purple Decepticon symbols on each wing. Because of the way it's constructed, with slots specificaly for the Starscream style tail, it will only work with that mold. Jetfire and Powerglide have too much junk in the trunk, as it were, and pretty much any car spoiler will get in the way. Pressing down on the trigger when Starscream isn't plugged into the front makes the shell pieces spread out to the sides (the hinges are vertical at the back, unlike Ironhide's launcher, where the hinges are horizontal on the bottom sides). It barely wants to hold together without a jet locking it. The total length in this mode is 4.25" (10.5cm), and total span of 6" (15cm). The shell pieces give more the impression of hangar walls, and you can barely get a jet under each "wing", and only at the cost of blocking the launch ramp a bit. The front facings of two of the trigger's boosters have molded missile pods, and those cannons on the sides of the deck can swivel up and down to reveal their wide (4mm) barrel openings (although lift them too high and they get knocked down by Starscream's wings when he launches). The deck has a silver stripe painted down the middle, otherwise no new paint (they kinda blew the paint budget on the outside anyway). Overall: Really, this would have been much better if they'd molded Harbinger's shell in the same gray plastic as Starscream, so it looked more unified. It's actually a pretty good accessory once you get past the color mismatch. Dave Van Domelen, off to paint Starscream. [Later note: and done - http://www.dvandom.com/kitbash/harbingerss1.JPG http://www.dvandom.com/kitbash/harbingerss2.JPG ]