Dave's Cybertron Rant: Scout Wave 6 Lugnutz Scrapmetal http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Japan/GD13 - Ramble review. Scrapmetal is essentially the red one, but I expect some small differences. CAPSULES Lugnutz: Very good vehicle mode, interesting transformation, rather kibble-laden robot mode. And he named his rifle. Recommended. $6.94 at Wal-Mart. Scrapmetal: Slight recolor of Ramble Red, a very good toy. Strongly recommended. $6.99 at Target. RANTS Packaging: Standard Scout packaging, with the Space Camp contest stickers added. No winner on Lugnutz, got another Prime sticker. Got the Megatron sticker with Scrapmetal, also not a winner. At least now I have a complete set of the stickers. :) Both have the Beast Map. The catalog side has: Galvatron, CD Red Alert, Wing Saber (with inset pic of Sonic Wing Mode for Optimus), CD Scattorshot, Leobreaker, Dark Crumplezone, Thunderblast, Swindle, Wreckloose, Serve, Downshift, CD Hot Shot, Backstop, Undermine, Snarl, Crosswise and Brimstone. Yep, the map's already almost out of date, and doesn't include the toys it came with. The map side has Leobreaker, Brimstone, Snarl and Undermine down the right side border. The map itself forms the lower right quadrant of the combined poster. Scourge is, of course, the featured character. His blurb is not the same as his bio note: "The brutal, incredibly powerful ruler of the Jungle Planet, SCOURGE is an adversary of almost unbelieveable strength, ready to destroy anyone who gets in his way - including the AUTOBOTS. All the violent rage festering within SCOURGE is on terrifying display when he morphs into his fearsome Three-Headed Hydra mode - complete with blazing eyes and a blood-curdling scream." The Jungle Planet blurb is identical to the one on Scourge's box (and other larger Jungle Planet toys). There's three inset pictures pointing to various locations on the cloud-shrouded planet (which is mostly land, no large oceans). Inset one shows Overhaul turning into Leobreaker, with the caption, "With a mighty battle roar that echoes for miles around, OVERHAUL becomes the powerful lion warrior LEOBREAKER!" Inset two shows Megatron beating on Backstop as Snarl runs to help. Caption is, "Determined to let nothing stop him in his quest for the lost Planet Keys, MEGATRON attempts to take on AUTOBOT heroes BACKSTOP and SNARL in a single savage skirmish." Finally, with the throne room pyramid in the background, Optimus fights Undermine and Sideways, with the caption, "Ambushed by the predatory UNDERMINE and the always mysterious SIDEWAYS, OPTIMUS PRIME battles back with the help of LEOBREAKER and his razor-sharp robo-shredder claws." DECEPTICON: LUGNUTZ Planet: Earth Altmode: Roadster motorcycle Prior Name Use: None Prior Mold Use: None Key Gimmick: Boost engine/grenade rack Key Code: s3y6 A loner, a renegade and a rebel. His only true friend is his assault rifle, "Dutch." He much prefers cruising the dusty back roads of Earth, doing crimes and terrorizing the populace to running missions for MEGATRON, but if it means a chance to blow something up he's willing to swallow his pride and take a job. A powerful dual-stroke engine and specialized exhaust filters allow him to generate enough engine noise to overwhelm AUTOBOT audio receptors and shatter reinforced glass in a 100 foot radius. STR 4 INT 7.5 SPD 7.5 END 9 RNK 4.5 COUR 8.5 FRB 6 SKL 8.5 Avg 6.94 You know, it's entirely possible that Dutch has a built-in brain and really IS Lugnutz's friend. Also, as an aside, the Lugnuts are the minor league baseball team in Lansing MI, so I expect this toy will be popular there. Key Code Info: Lugnutz is a special kind of robot. A Decepticon not truly by choice but more out of a boredom to see what that scene is like. Like Burroughs and Kerouac before him, Lugnutz is a road scholar and he loved nothing more than to drive out into the desert, start a raging bonfire, stare into the infinities of space and write some deep poetry - musing on the life of the common Cybertronian. Lugnutz has a REAL hard time dealing with the L7 lifestyle of the other Decepticons and longs for the nanobrew shops of Iacon city where he could snap away the night listening to the poetry of metal men and women. (Also shows the color guide. The plastics are black, gunmetal, Pantone 1665 orange and 8001 light gray. The paint apps are black, 8223 light blue, 1235 metallic yellow, 8001 light gray, 876 orange and 186 red. However, the 1235 metallic yellow is not actually on the toy...the triangle over his Key slot is unpainted. I now want to see a poetry jam between Lugnutz and Sky-Byte.) Packaging: 2 twist-ties hold the cycle in place, one more holds Dutch separately. Two rubber bands hold the front end together. Planet Key: Standard Earth Key Vehicle Mode: This is a touring motorcycle, with a V-twin engine and panniers (those hard-shell things flanking hte rear wheel that look like saddlebags) for cargo. It's likely based at least in part on the Harley- Davidson Road King Custom, with the usual tweaks to avoid violating Intellectual Property. It's a little over 4.5" (11.5cm) long, which would make it about 1/20 scale (1/24 scale figures look a little small on it, but 3.75" figures like GIJoe are too big). Once all properly pegged together (despite the rubberbands, it may come a bit loose in package), it's pretty solid. Dutch is a bit easy to knock off, and the handlebars swing more easily than I'd like, but everything else is solid, unlike many motorcycle TFs. Because of the transformation jointing, the front wheel cannot turn side to side, but it does spin freely, as does the rear wheel. Dutch's hand peg forms a kickstand, although you have to get it just right to avoid having the cycle tip over the other way. The handlebars, front signal lights and most of the engine/exhaust system pieces are a dark gray plastic (666666 in web code), with light gray (CCCCCC) plastic on the front fork (this piece also includes the front fender), headlight, license plate and the top of the gas tank. The rest of the gas tank and the rear fender are made of orange plastic (FF6600), and anything not mentioned is either black plastic or painted completely. None of the plastics reacts strongly to UV. The front fender is painted orange, as is the outside of the right pannier. This orange paint matches the orange plastic well, but while the orange plastic does not glow much under UV, the orange paint lights up quite nicely. Gold paint flames decorate the front fender, the sides of the gas tank, and the right pannier. The left pannier has silver paint and doesn't really look like a pannier, instead looking like what it is: a Planet Key slot. There's silver paint on the wheel spokes and a few bits under the seats. The spokes of the rear wheel may actually be silver or light gray plastic rather than black plastic painted silver, it's hard to tell for sure. The headlight is a somewhat light blue (336699) and the taillight is painted dark red (CC0000). The license plate is painted white with a purple (6633FF) Decepticon symbol. None of the paints aside from orange react to UV. Inserting the Key in the left pannier causes what had been a section of the right side exhaust to swing up out of the pannier and become a "boost engine". However, given that it's off-center, I don't think it'd be too helpful in that role (visions of K.I.T.T. weaving across the desert on one thruster). On mine, the Key slot is tight enough that I can put the Key in partway and be stable without popping the booster out. As a weapon, it's aimed about 15 degrees above horizontal and has three obvious rounds in the feed plus one in the spout. (In Car Wars terms, probably a Rocket Launcher with the Concealed Port placed in a Weapon Pod R or something.) [Later note: The exhaust pipe segment that ends up on the left leg is only pegged on, not glued on, and can be popped off. However, there really isn't anything you can do with it once its off. It's too narrow to be held firmly in either hand.] Transformation: Motorcycles present significant challenges as Transformers, because they're generally slim and it's hard to fit everything into them without cheating. For instance, Ransack is loosely based on a real motorcycle, but cheats by stretching the rear half out to almost double its normal length to make room for legs. Lugnutz actually manages to get a complete robot out of the existing frame without warping it, but does sort of cheat by taking the entire rear wheel and panniers section and making a backpack of it. The front wheel and fork split to just hang off the shoulders. Cleverly, the V-twin engine forms the arms, although it does end up being wider than it should be so that the arms aren't too spindly. The legs start at the seat and wrap under the engine, with the heels pegging in just below the handlebars. The top of the gastank pops up to reveal the head in a way reminiscent of BMac Scavenger, and the back of the seat pegs into a slow behind the head to give the torso stability. Essentially, the robot is made from the middle 40% or so of the vehicle, with the front and back becoming kibble. Robot Mode: 3.75" (9.5cm) tall at the head, he can hang out with GIJoes. His backpack adds a little more to his height. The only new color revealed in robot mode is his yellow visor (FFCC33). His face is otherwise silver with a slightly frowning mouth, and the helmet detail around his face is painted black. Dutch is unpainted dark gray plastic, which is a shame. Maybe I'll chrome mine up (and the rest of the pipes). Poseability is acceptable for a Scout, although the front wheel chunks hanging off the shoulders really get in the way. The shoulders and hips are ball joints, the elbows are double hinges, and the knees are single hinges. The arms are kinda short, and the trombone-looking part of Dutch means that to hold his gun straight, Lugnutz has to keep the relevant arm pretty straight as well. The heelspurs are long enough to compensate for the massive backpackage, but the lack of swiveling (or a ball joint knee) limits your options for posing. The grenade launcher becomes a shoulder mounted weapon in robot mode when it flips out, and it's stopped by hitting the "collarbone" area, so it ends up pointing just a little below horizontal. Overall: Good vehicle mode and transformation design. Robot mode suffers from kibble issues in a big way, but is hardly the worst robot to come out of a motorcycle. Worth picking up even if you don't live in Lansing. TERRORCON: SCRAPMETAL Planet: Cybertron Altmode: Spider Tank Prior Name Use: None Prior Mold Use: None Key Gimmick: Vibro-Saber Key Code: sf2x SCRAPMETAL is little more than a beast. Once, they were merely a dangerous breed of mechanical vermin from the depths of CYBERTRON, but he and his TERRORCON brethren have been mutated by the power of the black hole. Much larger than they once were, and far more dangerous, these creatures now swarm on the surface of CYBERTRON, led by SCRAPMETAL, who has gained the ability to reason, and plot. Now that he has tasted the power that comes with command, his only desire is for more power. STR 5.5 INT 2 SPD 6 END 10 RNK 3 COUR 4.5 FRB 8 SKL 5 Avg 5.875 (So...one of them is marginally intelligent, the rest are totally mindless. And the INT 2 one is probably the bright boy.) Key Code Info: A mindless drone. A merciless killer. A species of metal munching insecticons - the Scrapmetal are legion and they never take prisoners. Displaced and mutated by the effects of the black hole, these hive-minded creatures want nothing more than to sate their thirst for electrons and neurons as they try to eat their way through Cybertron and anything that gets in their way. There was a ancient tale that these creatures evolved from an experiment that was performed millions of years before. There was once a race of insect-like Transformers that had clone minions...could the Scrapmetal be descendants of these three bots? That is a story for another time.... (Heh, the plural of Scrapmetal is...Scrapmetal. There is no visual content to the Key Code Info.) Packaging: Standard Scout class blister. Seven total twist-ties: one around the end of each leg, one on the upper segment of the front legs, and one around the middle that also twists around the gun. There's a plastic shield rubber banded to the toy to protect the cockpit windows. The blade is deployed and pokes through the inner tray. The main gun is called a disintegration cannon on the packaging and in the instructions. Somehow, I find a disintegration blast more intimidating than a vibro-saber. :) The art of the character makes him look kinda bucktoothed. Planet Key: Cybertron Decepticon. Mold Changes: None that I can find. Even the little bit of what seems to be mold flash that secures the vibro-blade in place is the same on both. (Aside: I suspect that wearing this nub off is what makes some blades get loose and turn into missiles.) Color Swaps: Based on Ramble Red, no significant plastic differences. The gray plastic may be a TINY bit different, but well within batch variation limits. Note that both the opaque and clear red plastics react strongly to UV light. The clear simply glows red, the opaque glows orange. The two types of gray plastic are non-reactive. Paint Apps: The red paint applications are significantly darker on Scrapmetal, a CC0000 red instead of the FF3300 scarlet of Ramble Red. This is a good thing, as it keeps me from having to do anything special to tell mine apart. :) Other Notes: I apparently forgot to mention this in the Ramble review, but the peg for the blade has a flattened side and the hole has a nub inside it, so the blade can only be inserted in the correct orientation. The joints on my Scrapmetal are significantly stiffer than those of my Rambles, especially the transformation joints. It also takes a bit more force to store the blade. With both, you can leave the Key all the way in without triggering the blade, just lift up on the Key to pop the blade. The little tab and slot that connects the shoulderpad to the back of the cockpit in vehicle mode is no stronger, however, but it didn't cause me any problems in combination with the stiffer joints. Overall: I can't see any reason not to get this, unless it's completely identical to Ramble Red and you have that toy already. Dave Van Domelen, no hablo Pantone.