Dave's Transformers Cyberverse Rant: Battle Class Wave 1 Prowl with Cosmic Patrol (police car, spaceship) Jetfire with Tank Cannon (jet, tank) Sky-Byte with Driller Drive (shark, drilltank) Starscream with Demolition Destroyer (jet, bulldozer) Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Cyberverse/Battle1 Ah, a brand new gimmick that doesn't rely on hamstringing the toy! But will it spark joy in the same way it sparks armor? (Okay, technically not entirely new, the Construct-A-Bots had partners that turned into armor too.) CAPSULES $15 price point. Basically a $10 main figure and a $5 accessory. Prowl with Cosmic Patrol: Suffers more than usual from the lack of paint, but good molds and only a slight tendency to get in its own way. Mildly recommended. Jetfire with Tank Cannon: Vehicle mode is weird, but the partner is good and it's probably the cleanest execution of the Battle Class. Recommended. Sky-Byte with Driller Drive: Good robot and beast modes, kinda lazy partner design. Best of the main figures, but doesn't really exploit the Spark Armor gimmick very well. Recommended, just behind Jetfire. Starscream with Demolition Destroyer: Decent robot mode...and that's about the only good point. Weak jet mode, so-so partner who turns into the least satisfying of the armors. Plus Starscream is bad at borrowing any better armors, due to his unique elements. Not a horrible toy, but definitely very mildly recommended and the runt of the litter. RANTS Okay, new(ish) concept. While the Warrior class isn't ending, it's being joined at this price point by Legends-sized figures with vehicle partners that split up into armor pieces. (Larger Spark Armor classes have vehicles that just transform into armor without breaking apart.) We'll have to wait for these to appear on the show to know for sure what level of awareness the Spark Armor partners have, but I suspect we're looking at non-intelligent drone partners with limited ability to act independently. Do they have their own sparks, or are they just to help protect their wearers' sparks against some plot device? Too bad they stopped putting fiction on the packaging. The packaging claims that the Spark Armors are all compatible with each other, and they are...mostly. Even the helmets can be pulled out of the harness pieces and swapped around, although once you overcome the initial stickiness they tend to have trouble staying in place. There's a few armor pieces that are customized to their main users, and not all sockets are present in the same places on all main figures. But you CAN take an arbitrary set of armor and get it attached somehow to any of the figures, although it might not look great. They seem to be deliberately going for complementary altmodes here, so that each partner can go where the main Transformer might be weaker or unable to go. For instance, flying Transformers get ground-based partners, ground-based Prowl gets a flyer, and sea-based Sky-Byte gets a tunneller. They're on standard blister-style cards that are wider than they are tall, 9" (23cm) wide by 8" (20cm) tall. The main figure is on the left in robot mode, while the partner is in vehicle mode on the right. The blister insert is reminiscent of the Crash Combiners packaging, with arrows pointing at each other holding the names of the two, pointing at art of an armored robot in the middle. If the art is show-accurate, robots will change color on parts not directly armored up (e.g. Starscream's thighs turn yellow to match Demolition Destroyer's peices). As is usual for Cyberverse, the art looks cooler than the actual toy, and has features not found on the toy (again to use Starscream as an example, the dozer blade splits into two gauntlets in the art, but the toy just holds the whole thing in one hand). Each card has un-armored robot art in the upper left on the front side, and energy-crystal-y patterns behind the toy, with a 20-sided spark crystal in the middle (roll the dice, I want to see if I eat your spark). The left side of the blister insert has just the generic faction group shot, along with "Battle Class" in four languages. The relevant faction symbol is in the upper right, so overall it's pretty easy to find what you want in a deeply stocked peg. The card backs have photos (or renders) of the robot in both modes on the left, the partner in vehicle mode on the right, and the armored robot in the middle. The cosell in the lower left shows the other three in the wave, has the Spark Armor logo, and claims cross-compatibility. The upper right of the cadback has the name and the function. Weirdly, there's two conflicting assortment numbers. The lower left of the cardback has a PN000351** (35 through 38) number, while the bottom panel has the usual E4298/E4219 style. They're almost the same order, but Starscream is first in the PN numbers and last in the E numbers. Both the robot and the partner are held into the blister with the now-usual plastic strings, and the instructions are folded up on the underside of the blister tray. The instructions continue the eye-hurting bright yellow, teal-blue, and white color combination that looks like it was left out in the sun for a decade. Spark Armor Common Elements: All of the Battle Class partners follow the same basic plan, with only slight variations. The vehicle splits into four main pieces: core, two sides, and front. The core becomes a chestplate and helmet piece, connecting to 5mm sockets on either side of the robot's head. The chest piece snaps onto a groove or slot on the chest, but these are unique to the robot and don't always lock down when borrowed by a different figure. The piece that covers the head folds back at least 180 degrees to reveal a helmet piece. The helmets are really just a faceplate and sides, being open at the top to accomodate taller heads like Sky-Byte's. The need to allow for variations does mean that the robot's face is well back of the helmet opening, making it hard to make out the face from most angles. The helmet piece can be removed and swapped into a different harness, but I did find with Prowl's that once removed the first time it doesn't stay in place as well. They almost all have 5mm sockets on the struts that have the harness pegs, which are used to hold the side pieces in vehicle mode (Starscream's is Special, of course). Other connections vary by individual. The bit that has the pegs for the shoulder sockets is on a hinge, and on some of them it can be folded out to let someone hold the entire vehicle as a weapon (Starscream's needs to be folded out before attaching the treads, and Sky-Byte's has it at the front with the drill bit in the way). The sides are what makes the vehicle go, be they treads, wheels, or wings. They have single 5mm pegs that let them attach to various places on the robot figure or other parts of the armor. They tend to have preferred locations, and not all of them will fit on all possible places. The front end becomes some sort of weapon, held via a 5mm peg. Other connectors depend on the individual figure. All figures can hold all weapons, obviously, although there's some unique features here and there. To accomodate Spark Armor, all the figures have a pair of 5mm sockets flanking the head, one on each outer face of the boots and one on the outer face of each forearm. Other sockets vary with the figure (all but Sky-Byte have 5mm sockets in the fists, Sky-Byte has his tail/weapon as his left hand and while it has a 5mm socket in it, it can't really hold any of the weapons very well if at all...his forearm sockets are at the elbows to let things clear that hand). AUTOBOT: PROWL Assortment: E4295 Altmode: Police Car Spark Armor: Cosmic Patrol (spaceship) Transformation Difficulty: 8 steps Previous Name Use: Yes Previous Mold Use: None Function: Military Strategist Packaging: 4 ties on Prowl, 2 on Cosmic Patrol. The cardback shows the yellow paint as more of a gold, and has it on the bottom point of the helmet's star (the actual thing only has five points painted). Robot Mode: Like most modern Prowl toys, but unlike most Cyberverse Prowl toys, there's no shoulder cannons. But that's because they're part of the Spark Armor, so no real worries there. Otherwise, it's a pretty standard "car hood is the chest, wing doors, rear half boots" design with a predictable dearth of paint apps. No rear window paint, nothing at all on the arms, no headlights, etc. Still, it doesn't take a lot to be recognizable as Prowl, and is meets that minimum standard. The general feel, and this is common to all four in this wave, is "slightly better than Authentics." I trust that even Authentics are child-safe from drop tests, but there's a hard to define cheap feel to the plastic nonetheless. If Authentics are the lowest grade that passes safety tests, this is one or two steps up on a fairly finely-divided scale. 4" (10cm) tall in mostly black and white with some red and blue bits. Black plastic is used on the forearms, thighs, and shoulder struts. Everything else is white plastic. The face is painted silver with red helmet horns and medium blue eyes. A red Autobot symbol is printed on the chest. The pushbar parts of the bumper are painted matte black. The lightbar halves on the toes are painted blue (slightly darker than the eyes) and red (same as the horns), with light blue side windows visible on the sides of the toes. The wheels are dipped in black paint, to the point I initially thought they were black plastic until I was examining their snap-in connections carefully. No neck or waist articulation. The shoulders are ball joints on the end of shrugging struts, the elbows are hinges. Ball joint hips, hinge knees. No upper arm or thigh swivels. Note, while the elbows are snap-on, the knees are pinned. The doors are also pinned, which is a good thing given how much force it can take to open them back up when transforming from vehicle to robot mode. Lots of 5mm sockets, as suits the gimmick. Fists, forearms, flanking the head, sides of the boots, sides of the shoulders, and one on the back of each wing. To put a weapon in either head-flanking hole requires the weapon be very narrow or have a rather long handle. No 3mm sockets. Note, a screw hole on the abdomen hidden by the chest in this mode is slightly wider than 5mm. Transformation: Tab the boots together and fold at the knees to make the back end. Lift up the chest and work the arms to the inside (requires a little maneuvering to fit the shoulders inside), then secure the forearms onto tabs on the sides of the abdomen. Then fold down the center of the hood and close the doors. Everything snaps together reasonably easily at that point. Vehicle Mode: A coupe police car, not the sort with a back seat for perps. It looks...okay, I guess. The front wheels have white centers while the rear ones have black centers, the front fenders have black chunks due to the shoulder strut pieces, and as noted earlier there's no paint on the rear window. The distinctive Japanese highway police pattern on the hood, which is present for the Warrior Class version, is glaringly absent, making this a pretty generic white car with a lightbar. Also, the center of the lightbar is not painted silver, it's just a red half and a blue half. It has the usual mostly-missing rear bumper that happens with this sort of transformation. 4" (10cm) long, mostly white. The only black plastic visible is not supposed to be black (front fenders). The front and side windows are nicely done in light blue, which only makes the lack of rear window more obvious. No paint on the sides of the car, just clean white all the way. NO ground clearance, you need a pretty flat (or upwards curved valley style) surface to get all four wheels to roll at once. Of the various pegs, two are accessible on the hood and one on each rear fender. There's four 5mm sockets on the underside now. Note, while the partner is only designed to attach to the robot, if you remove the side pieces and put them on the rear fenders, the rest will fit snugly on the hood. Spark Armor Partner: Cosmic Patrol is molded to look like a one-man heavy fighter with minimal wing surface swept way back for some atmospheric work and two huge (proportionally speaking) guns flanking the fuselage. The fuselage part is vaguely reminiscent of a Colonial Viper (1979 version), while the main guns are of a sort of "tuning fork" shape that suggests the tines are used to focus a beam that otherwise would spit out of the center barrel and rapidly diffuse. 3.25" (8cm) long with a 3.75" (9.5cm) wingspan, mostly medium blue with some bits of black and yellow. Some internal struts are black plastic, all the "shell" pieces are blue plastic. The only paint is found on the upper tines of the guns, yellow paint with surprisingly (for Hasbro) crisp application. No paint on the cockpit windows, annoyingly, and the general lack of paint makes it LOOK like a cheap knockoff even if it feels nice and sturdy. There's a 5mm socket in the top of the canopy, and one on either side. The two 5mm pegs on the bottom are too short to do much, but the harness piece can fold out to make what amounts to a pair of grips in back. Prowl lacks the flexibility to hold both pegs at once, and lacks the elbow strength to hold it up in one hand. Armored Mode: Officially, the side pieces go on the forearm pegs, which forces the arms into a straight position lest it look weird, plus they kinda get in the way of the weapon being held in either hand. If you put them on the boots, they're a little too long and interfere with stability. Using the shoulder sockets looks a bit weird, but doesn't interfere much. Using the wing connection points is...meh. The harness is unique among this wave in that the lid part can fold all the way back and hang down behind the figure, rather than sticking out like a Micromaster platform or something. It also gives Prowl his shoulder cannons, pieces that are molded to look like rockets or something in vehicle mode, and which are locked down in that mode as well. Now they can elevate on hinges, and their tips are about 3mm in diameter...if you're careful, you can usually get Siege Fire Blast pieces to stay on the ends. The black plastic is confined to the harness section, with the helmet, shoulder cannons, and chestplate still being blue plastic. Star motifs on the helmet and chest are painted yellow, although as noted above there's a sixth point molded on the helmet that is left unpainted so that both stars have five points. If you want to retain the range of motion on the shoulders, it's a good idea to fold the car door wings back. Overall: A decent execution of the concept, with the main deficiencies being the usual cheaped-out paint budget, but also a little bit of parts interfering with each other. The actual mold looks good enough, even if the paint and articulation issues let it down. Worth picking up. AUTOBOT: JETFIRE Assortment: E4296 Altmode: Space Jet Spark Armor: Tank Cannon (tank) Transformation Difficulty: 6 steps Previous Name Use: Yes Previous Mold Use: None Function: Mighty Air Guardian Packaging: Five ties on Jetfire, two on Tank Cannon. The package picture/render on back is fairly deceptive, making it look like the face might be painted (it isn't) and changing the shade of blue in two places to make it look like there's two different blues (there aren't). Robot Mode: Loosely based on G1 Skyfire, complete with a fake cockpit and intake vents on the chest, but due to the smaller part count the backpack doesn't fold up. In fact, that part looks more like the G1 Jetfire toy's super armor gear. The design does a pretty good job of making three separate pieces look like they're a single backpack. 4.25" (10.5cm) tall at the head, with the thrusters on the backpack sticking up a few millimeters higher. Mostly red and white with a few blue details. The three pieces of the backpack (center is the jet nose, each side has a wing, thruster, and the shoulder root) are bright red plastic with a bit of metalflake. The rest of the toy is white plastic. Interestingly, while it's a nice bright white, it doesn't glow under UV...but the red plastic turns almost orange. There's bright blue paint on the eyes and the fake cockpit window, a darker blue stripe on the top of the head. The shins are painted bright red, and a dark red Autobot symbol is printed on the chest above the fake cockpit. No neck or waist articulation. Ball joint shoulders and hips, higne elbows and knees. The toes can bend down for transformation, but this is not useful articulation. Has the standard 5mm sockets (fists, forearms, sides of the head, sides of the boots), plus one on top of each thruster and one on the back of each thruster. There's a 3mm socket in the center of the backpack. Transformation: The instructions leave out a step, in which the legs shorten via a hinge inside each boot. The result is still way too weird-looking, but the shortened legs help a bit and allow for the hands gripping pegs on the boots for further stability. Of course, gripping those pegs basically erases the tail fins molded onto the boots. A nose wheel folds down out of the front. (The rear wheels are fixed in place, though.) Vehicle Mode: It looks like Super Valkyrie style Jetfire but with the boot ends on the same level as the fuselage rather than slightly underslung as in the VF-1S. The boots are a little too long as well, putting the wings at pretty much the halfway point between front and back. The fake cockpit on the chest is not covered up, making it look like it has a rear window. 5" (12.5cm) long with a wingspan of 4" (10cm), the red parts mostly forwards. The nose end, thrusters and wings are red plastic now. The nose wheel is white plastic. There's some white paint on the nose end, and a bright blue cockpit window. There's white stripes along the leading edges of the wings. The thruster top sockets are accessible, but the ones at the ends of the thrusters are a bit boxed in. Narrow Fire Blasts could plug in, though. The forearm sockets are also accessible on the sides. There's a hexagonal 3mm socket on the center of the underside, plus the backpack 3mm socket is on top of the fuselage just behind the cockpit window. The tips of the thrusters end in cannon muzzles. They're not quite 3mm studs, but official rubbery Fire Blast pieces from Siege can fit onto them snugly. Tank Cannon can't really connect in any meaningful way to the vehicle mode. Spark Armor Partner: Tank Cannon is a heavy tank with dual cannons mounted in its turret and smaller cannons mounted on its fenders. It's plausible for it to be at the same scale as Jetfire's vehicle mode, a rarity in this line. Note, the turret doesn't actually turn, unsurprisingly. The chassis is 2.25" (6cm) long and 2" (5cm) wide, the total length including the cannons is 3.25" (8cm). It's mostly light khaki brownish-gray with some black and gunmetal, plus weird white bits at the back. The armor harness pieces, mostly but not completely hidden inside, are white plastic. The rest is khaki plastic. The outer surface of the treads is painted gloss black, but not the edges. Most of the length of each main cannon is painted dark gunmetal. Some gunmetal on the drive wheels would've been nice, but that'd be asking way too much from a Hasbro paint budget. The top of the cannon piece has a 5mm socket, and there's a 5mm socket on the outer face of each armor fender. The harness piece can fold out without needing transformation so that the whole thing can be held as a weapon. All of the gun barrels end in 3mm studs, but the main cannons are so close together that only the narrowest of the Siege Fire Blasts can go on both at once (or even one at a time). If you remove the cannons, there's a 5mm socket underneath that can kindasorta hold Driller Drive's drill. No real articulation, although there's some play in the cannon's socket so the barrels can be wiggled back and forth a bit. Armored Mode: While Cosmic Patrol's chest connector tab is horizontal, Tank Cannon's is vertical, so neither can lock solidly onto the other's partner's chest. The chest armor is the tank front deck. The helmet has a crescent-shaped crest and molded micro-missile launchers on either side of the head. The crest sides are painted black, the only new paint in this mode. There's a 5mm socket in the center of the chest from where the cannon fit in vehicle mode. The weapon is mostly the barrels with a little bit of connection at the root, and looks better attached to the forearm than held as a pistol. While the tank treads officially go on the arms, they can fit on the legs too, or go on the backpack. The arms are really the worst-looking place for them, IMO. The harness sockets are possible, but awkward. Putting them into the thruster nozzles turns the smaller cannons into shoulder weapons. This also flanks the turret lid and makes it look more like a feature than a bug. Overall: Not keen on the weird jet mode, but a decent robot mode, a solid partner, and plenty of options for the Spark Armor mode. Not particularly fussy nor prone to getting in its own way. If you just want to try out the concept, this is probably the best one to pick up. DECEPTICON: SKY-BYTE Assortment: E4297 Altmode: Robot Shark Spark Armor: Driller Drive (drill tank) Transformation Difficulty: 10 steps Previous Name Use: RiD01, Gen Previous Mold Use: None Function: Harbinger of Doom Packaging: Four ties on Sky-Byte, with a sneaky one just through the right fist, and three on Driller Drive. There's also a rubber band around Sky-Byte's neck and dorsal fin. The cardback shows the armored mode with DD's wheels attached to the forearms, where they don't work very well, but the instructions place them on the upper arms instead. Robot Mode: This actually looks credibly like a simplified version of Generations Sky-Byte if you left the shark head untransformed on the chest. Obviously, it lacks quite as many colors as that toy, but the mold is definitely inspired by this rather than by the Robots in Disguise (2001) toy. The proper shark head chest and the details on the symmetric shoulders are the main telling points. The left arm ends in a spinny four-finned tail claw thing. 4.25" (11cm) tall in a mix of golden yellow, deep blue, and light blue, plus some silver. Light blue plastic is used on the shark head chest, the thighs, and the shark shell wingpack. Darkish blue plastic is found on the forearms, feet (with long heel spurs), abdomen, shoulder roots, and the strut holding the wingpack on. The torso core, upper arms, spinning tail/claw, and shins are golden yellow plastic. There's silver paint on the lower "face" of the sharkhead chest, on the sideburns of the robot head, and the sharkfin crest of the helmet. The brim of the helmet is painted dark blue in a decent match to the plastic (if a little darker and a little glossier). The robot eyes and shark eyes are painted red. A purple Decepticon symbol is printed on the nose of the sharkhead chest. As usual, no neck or waist, although the figure can tilt back at mid-torso on a transformation hinge. Ball joints for the shoulders, elbows, and hips. Hinge knees and ankles (ankles not really useful joints), spinny swivel left wrist. The ball elbows make this figure slightly better articulated than the rest of the wave. The right fist has a 5mm socket, and the center of the spinny tail on the left arm is a 5mm socket (Lionizer's chainsword mode can be held in it, although I'd need to tighten the elbow a lot to keep it from sagging). Sockets in both forearms near the elbows, and on both upper arms near the elbows as well. The usual harness sockets flanking the head, and sockets on the outer faces of the boots. There's a 3mm socket in the back of the pelvis. Transformation: A lot more thought was put into this than was first apparent. Like the little tabs on the tail that go into hollow spots in the robot toes to hold them all together. The dorsal fin on the head doesn't become the actual shark fin, the whole head is hidden and there's a bigger fin on the wingpack. The only part of the transformation that I can't get to work properly is how some tabs on the pectoral fin panels are supposed to go into the stress slots on the robot hips, but mine won't stay in place. The shoulder spines hold the pieces in place well enough, but it's still a little annoying. Beast Mode: If you're feeling charitable, this is a somewhat chibi shark. If not, it's a fat shark. Assuming he's supposed to be the size of a male great white shark, he's around 1:32 to 1:36 scale...in other words, about to scale with most Deluxe/Warrior class cars. 4.75" (11.5cm) long in the same mix of colors as the robot mode. The light blue is on the top of the head and a band around the midsection, dark blue on the lower jaw and the rear spine area, the rest is yellow plastic. The dorsal fin is painted silver, but the pectoral fins and their molded guns are unpainted. This mode has no articulation at all. The harness sockets are accessible, the elbow-area sockets are on top next to each other, and the boot sockets are on either side rearward of the pectoral fins. The socket in the tail is still accessible, of course, so you can put a Firedrive-style Fire Blast from Siege into it for a rocket-powered shark. Sadly, the 3mm socket on the pelvis is buried inside, there's no way to mount the figure on a flight base in this mode, at least not a standard 3mm tip. If you have a 5mm tip, you can connect to one of the boot sockets. The spark armor wheel sections can't really be placed on the sides at all, but if you flip the drill bit upside-down and fold out the harness pegs a little, the shark can wear Driller Drive as a hat. Sharks with frickin' drill tanks on their heads. http://www.dvandom.com/images/drillshark.JPG Spark Armor Partner: A "drill tank" of the sort that often appears in fiction but would never work in practice, because the conical drill bit is not as wide as the rest of the vehicle. It could poke a hole in something, then get stuck. Good for breaching walls, I guess. It runs on eight giant tires arranged four on either side, two then a chunk with a 5mm socket and some random tech detailing, then two more. It's actually backwards compared to the other partners, with the chestplate being the rear of the vehicle rather than the front (or mid-front). Based on the molded details, I'd estimate it as being about 1:200 scale (10mm wargaming scale), with the eight tires being slightly taller than a human. So, if Sky-Byte were at the same scale, his shark mode would be about long enough to go from the back of the rear tire to the front of the tire in front of it...maybe a bit longer. 3.75" (9.5cm) long and fairly low-slung. The chassis is mostly golden yellow (same as Sky-Byte), the drill and tires are both metallic black, and there's some medium blue bits visible in the gaps. The harness bits, mostly hidden inside, are made of darkish blue plastic (also same as Sky-Byte, making this the best color-coordinating of the partners). The rest is golden yellow plastic. The drill is painted all over in metallic black, but the paint doesn't quite fill the entire interior. The wheels and the 5mm socket sections between the wheels are also painted metallic black. No paint on the small windshield in the driver's area. There's a 5mm socket on either side amid the wheels as described earlier, and that's about it. There's three 5mm pegs on the underside, but they get in each other's way unless you flip the drill upside down (which puts a 5mm peg on top). No articulation or moving parts of any kind. Armored Mode: While the drill bit has a 5mm peg on the side, it's designed to fit snugly over Sky-Byte's right fist. Oddly, it wouldn't have taken too much more to let it clip into the left claw and be able to sort of spin, missed opportunity there. The helmet facade has eyes and upper jaw fangs, and weirdly has yellow paint on the eyes (and "nose") over silver paint (for the rest of the face bit) rather than trying to mask so that those parts were just unpainted. As with Jetfire, the wheel units can also go on the legs rather than the forearms. I actually like them best on the sides of the harness piece, though, makes it look like he's in a power loader. I also leave the lid piece up only a little bit, just enough to show off the helmet but without it sticking awkwardly out in back. Overall: This probably put the most effort into making a good altmode (Prowl's car mode is the easy setting for transformation, neither jet really tried that hard), and it's really a pretty good shrinking down of a Voyager concept. It missed a few beats, and the drill tank is a "didn't try hard at all" design, but I'd put this a close second to Jetfire. The main robot is actually the best of the four by a wide margin, but it doesn't do as much with the Spark Armor gimmick. DECEPTICON: STARSCREAM Assortment: E4298 Altmode: Jet Fighter Spark Armor: Demolition Destroyer (bulldozer) Transformation Difficulty: 7 steps Previous Name Use: Yes Previous Mold Use: None Function: Scheming Second-in-Command Packaging: Three ties on Starscream, two on his partner. The art shows the dozer blade split into a pair of cestus-like wrist weapons, which would actually be reasonably cool. Sadly, they cheaped out and just made the entire dozer blade and engine cowling into a single stupid-looking weapon. Robot Mode: Well, mold-wise it looks much like the other Starscreams in the Cyberverse line (except Ultra Class), but they made a weird choice to paint the wing stripes purple instead of red. There's also no paint at all on the arms or legs. Just as the lack of paints makes Battle Class Prowl look like a different character, the same effect applies here. It's like he's a different seeker jet entirely, and the cartoon certainly has precedent for generic seekers being all over the place. Maybe headcanon him as Stormcloud. The whole nose end just hangs down in back. And from the back it looks pretty bad in general, with hollow boots and landing gear sticking out to the back. 4" (10cm) tall in mostly medium gray with some red, silver, amber, and purple paint. All the plastic is medium gray, and most of it also has a faint metal swirl to it (the thighs, shoudler roots, and some struts are notably not metal swirled). The helmet is painted gloss black with a silver lozenge on the forehead, the face itself is unpainted except for red eyes. The fake intakes on the chest have red borders, and the front of the pelvis is also painted red. The fake cockpit on the chest is painted slightly metallic amber. There's purple stripes and purple Decepticon symbols on the wings. As standard for this class, he has no neck joint, but he does have a swivel waist for transformation. Ball joint shoulders and hips, pinned hinge elbows and knees. The toes fold down on transformation joints, not very useful articulation unless you're going for Don Martin feet. Shpladoink. There's 5mm sockets on either side of the head, the fists hold 5mm pegs, there's 5mm sockets on the forearms and the outer faces of the boots near the knees. There's two 5mm sockets on the back side (underside in vehicle mode) of each wing. No 3mm sockets. Transformation: Spin the waist 180 degrees, fold the toes down and peg the boots together. The nose end hanging on the back folds up and after you fold the wings down the nose end settles down over the head. The wings fold back and tabs on the trailing edge snap under the robot kneecaps. Tabs on the underside of the wings go into slots on the underside of the forearms after the shoulder struts have folded down 90 degrees. Then fold the nose wheel down. Pretty solid once everything is in place. Vehicle Mode: Well, not the worst jet mode for Starscream, but he has a long history of some pretty crappy "the robot is all that matters" jet modes. It basically looks like "what if they forgot to do anything about the thighs" so that the tail end is moved backwards significantly. At least with Jetfire, there's support for this sort of deal when you look back at the Macross/Robotech source material...here it's just a sign of giving up and then being very careful to position the package photograph to obscure the problem. 5.25" (13cm) long, about 2cm too long because of the boots, with a 4.25" (10.5cm) wingspan. It's a melange of fighter jet elements, but about 1:144 scale give or take. Again, almost entirely gray, and now there isn't even any red. In addition to the purple on the wings, the true canopy is painted slightly metallic amber, and the tip of the nosecone is medium blue. On closer inspection, there's a load of greebly surface details on the wings that the paint apps pay no attention to. The 5mm sockets on the wings are pretty close to the arms, but there's room for some weapons to fit. The forearm, harness, and boot sockets are blocked, but the fist sockets are available. No way to connect any parts of Demolition Destroyer in this mode without it looking dumb. Spark Armor Partner: Demolition Destroyer is just as much of an "I'm So Unique" prima donna as Starscream, being held together entirely by non- standard tabs rather than by 5mm pegs. It's a bulldozer in canary yellow rather than construction yellow, and probably its only virtue is that the dozer blade can be lifted up. 2.75" (7cm) long, and again it's hard to estimate scale because it's not a real bulldozer of any kind, but it's plausibly around 1:144 scale, so at least it's about the same scale as Starscream's jet mode. It's canary yellow, medium gray, and black. The mostly internal harness bits are the same medium gray used on Starscream, everything else is canary yellow plastic. The treads and front window are painted gloss black. As noted, the blade can be elevated. There's a 5mm socket on the center of the "hood" area, and one in the center of each set of drive wheels on the sides. The harness pegs cannot just be swung out, but if you remove the treads you can swing them out and then replace the treads. The treads attach via two small rectangular tabs near their fronts, while the blade chunk connects with a single long tab. Armored Mode: The tread pieces have slits in them specifically to allow the treads to go on the boots. There's no 5mm sockets on the harness, so there's no option to place the treads over the shoulders like I did with Sky-Byte's wheel chunks. The helmet is canary yellow plastic with no paint, looks more like IDW Drift's helmet than anything else, and the chest armor has vents molded into it so he still has some kind of chest vents. The weapon is just the front end of the bulldozer, and looks like he saw everyone else with Spark Armor and decided to just quickly dismantle a nearby bulldozer to fake having his own. The lid over the head looks like a pannier for carrying an Enigma or folded up Prime Master around. With his big tail fins, Starscream is the prima donna of the set, unable to wear any leg armor but his own, as they lack the slots for his fins. He also lacks upper arm/shoulder sockets entirely, so any drive chunk armor pieces would need to go on his forearms or on the back of his wings. Overall: Weakest altmode, most disappointing Spark Armor (being closer to the package art would have helped here), worst at wearing other Spark Armors...all in all the clear worst of the set. Still not horrible (I mean, at least it has elbows and knees), but if you're not going for the complete wave, this is the obvious first one to exclude. Dave Van Domelen, now has an overflowing to-be-reviewed box and posted a poll to the AllSpark message boards regarding what order to tackle it.