Dave's Transformers Cyberverse Rant: Deluxe Wave "3" Siren Shot Prowl (police car) Seeker Strike Starscream (jet) Sound Blast Soundwave (armored SUV) Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Cyberverse/Deluxe3 Technically, this is wave 5, but only because the originally planned wave 2 got split up into three waves dribbled out over the year. These three caught a lot of people by surprise, because they hadn't gotten advanced press (and the lack of toy shows in 2020 meant no "Hey, look what's stuck in the corner here!" discoveries). There's no build-a-figure in this wave, probably in part because there might not be another wave (there's still a couple of Cyberverse movies in the works, but no indication of any toys after this). Heck, based on the gap in the assortment numbers, there might have been a cancelled figure in this wave. Instead, they get extra accessories. Ultimately, while head and shoulders above the Warrior class, the Cyberverse Deluxes just didn't feel like a match for Generations Deluxes. More hollow, less sturdy at the joints, thinner plastic and generally a cheaper feel. A few of the molds were pretty good (Cyberverse Deluxe Arcee is better than Earthrise Arcee, although that was a low bar to clear), it still felt like they were doing these on a significantly smaller budget and on a time crunch that prevented proper playtesting. CAPSULES $20 price point. Prowl: Some interesting design elements, but a somewhat weird choice of colors and a frustrating transformation don't help. Mildly recommended, and my early impression was much lower. Starscream: Good robot mode, mediocre transformation and vehicle mode, good Fire Blasts. On balance, recommended. Soundwave: The robot mode would be good if not for the big roof chunk hanging off the back and impeding movement. The vehicle mode is not good enough to justify that. Decent little Laserbeak, though. Mildly recommended. RANTS Packaging: About the same as previous Deluxes, but without the BAF callouts. The package renders don't quite match the actual toys, from color changes to actual mold differences. AUTOBOT: PROWL Assortment: F0506 Altmode: Police Car Transformation Difficulty: 19 steps Previous Name Use: Yes Previous Mold Use: None Epithet/Gimmick: Siren Shot Function: Military Strategist Packaging: One tie and a lot of blister shaping on the robot, one tie across the rifle, one across the two Fire Blasts. Due to being held down by the ties, the Fire Blasts are a bit perma-bent, unfortunately. The paint apps aren't quite the same on the box back as on the actual toy, and noticeably the "POLICE" on each door is in a different font, plus the snap-hubs on the front wheels are black instead of white. More subtly, the blue paint on the front end rises a tiny bit above the headlights in the render, but stops even with their tops on the toy. Robot Mode: I mean...it's recognizably a Prowl, but so many of the small points are just not quite right. He's more of a milky white, and instead of black his main accent color is metallic blue. And then there's the blue-gray parts, some of which are doing a really bad job of replacing silver or chrome. As I note under the vehicle mode (which I reviewed first), it feels like this is a redeco and they never bothered with the regular version. While it suffers from the usual Cyberverse hollow parts, particularly the forearms and rear pelvis, they did cleverly use a folded out bit to create a fake fender on the outer facing of each foot, to make them look a little more solid. 5" (12.5cm) tall at the head, in milky white, blue-gray, black, metallic blue, and some clear blue and gold. Milky white plastic is used on the helmet, upper torso, shoulder struts, shoulders, fists, wings, and feet. Black plastic forms the wheels, forearms, backplates of the boots, pelvis, and hip flap armor plates. Blue-gray plastic is used for the shoulder cannons, the collar area, biceps, abdomen/spine, thighs, ankle joints, and rifle. The backpack hood piece is clear light blue plastic, and most of each boot (front, right side, left side) is also clear light blue plastic with a lot of paint. Metallic blue paint is used on the chest, doors, and some stripes below the knees. The face is blue-gray, the front surfaces of the helmet horns are painted red. The headlights and foglamps are light blue, the pushbar on the chest is black, and a red on white Autobot symbol is printed on the sternum. The badge shapes molded onto the shoulder fronts are painted gold. All but the window parts of the boots is painted very light gray. The neck and waist are both swivels. The wings are hinged and can fold back out of the way if needed. The shoulders are ball joints, there's bicep swivels, hinge elbows, and wrist swivels. The hips are ball joints, with the hip flap armor bits being hinged so they don't impede movement. There's swivels at the top ends of the thighs, hinge knees, and the ankles have dual hinges so they can bend on both axes. The shoulder launchers share an axle and can fold back but the farthest forwards is about 45 degrees up from forwards. The fists can hold 5mm pegs. The shoulder launchers end in 3mm studs, there's a 3mm socket in the back of the pelvis, and a 5mm socket on the backpack. There's also a 3mm stud on the top of the right forearm, near the elbow. Other than the color, the rifle does a decent job of looking like Prowl's G1 rifle. It's 1.75" (4.5cm) long, with a 5mm peg at the back end and a 3mm stud on the tip of the muzzle. Fire Blasts: It bothers me a little that Prowl comes with two non-identical Fire Blasts. They don't even really look like staggered blasts, they're qualitatively different kinds of blast. Both have a blunt spray base (too wide to hold in a 5mm socket) and then a thin blast line emerging, but one is more like a morel mushroom stretched out a bit, with a thicker beam and a wider tip. The other is thin and molded more like a spray. They're both between 1.5" and 1.75" (3.5-4 cm), with the thinner beam being a bit shorter, and they're made of flexible amber plastic. The thin one seems more of a rifle blast, and the thick one a plasma missile or something. The instructions show show both on the shoulder launchers. In car mode, they go onto exhaust pipe 3mm studs to look like mismatched afterburner thrusts. Transformation: Okay, this required MASSIVE excessive force to keep everything in the required spots. I was able to figure it out almost all the way without instructions, but I just couldn't get the arms to stay in place in the final step. Even after looking up which way the arms were supposed to point in the instructions, it just didn't want to stay until I almost injured my hands getting the stuff to all stay in place. And even then, the front wheels are misaligned, trying to get them in the right spot makes the arms pop back out. And then the shoulders just popped out entirely. I suspect some tiny misalignments in pin driving, I tried all sorts of adjustments short of pulling out the dremel and carving away parts, and nothing would make everything go into the intended spots all at once. Okay, after typing the above, I spent half an hour with a Dremel, identifying and thinning out parts that clearly wanted to overlap. So many parts. And even after I'd removed as much as I safely could, it still wouldn't stay together properly. It feels like they designed the transformation before drop tests, then thickened a bunch of stuff afterwards without actually checking that it could still transform. Further investigation found one person who got it to transform fine (Bryan Lackey), and I figured out the main problem I was having. The white bracket holding the shoulder cannons is supposed to fold back so that the guns can go up against the windshield, but on my copy it was almost fused in place. Once I broke past the sticking point, everything worked fine. Leaving in all the above frustration because it reflects what seems to be the most common experience with the toy. Vehicle Mode: It's more of a chase vehicle than a standard cruiser, a coupe with a negligible rear seat. It doesn't really look Prowl-ish at this point, they keep making the blue lighter and brighter each time (Battle Class Prowl used black, Warrior Class used dark metalflake blue), and this one ends up looking like a redeco where we never got the original. The hollowness that haunts Cyberverse toys hits this mode in a weird way, with a bunch of gaps and slots on the rear fenders. 4.25" (10.5cm) long, ins mostly milky white and metallic blue with clear blue windows. Clear blue plastic is used for the roof/windows piece and for the entire rear shell, not just the windows. Those gaps and slots are in clear plastic. The hood, front end, and sides from the front to the back edges of the doors are milky white plastic, and it's clearly duller than the white paint on the clear plastic. The blue-gray plastic of the knees forms most of the rear bumper, and the wheels are black plastic (the front wheels have milky white hubs). Off-white paint on the roof, window posts, and much of the rear end. Metallic medium-dark blue paint on the front end, two incongruous rally stripe bits on the rear, and the center part of the light bar. The sides have a metallic blue stripe, with "POLICE" in negative space on the doors. The lightbar lights are a slightly lighter blue in gloss on the right side and gloss red on the left. The headlights and foglamps are light blue, and bonus points for red on the taillights. A red on white Autobot symbol is printed on the point of the hood, as noted in robot mode. The pushbar in front is painted black. There's a 5mm socket in the middle of the lightbar, and the exhaust pipes end in 3mm studs so that the fireblasts can be mounted as flaming exhaust or something (the asymmetry looks even worse here). Very little ground clearance for rolling even once you find the hinge on the shoulder launchers and fix the transformation. Overall: Ugh. I guess they tried, but Cyberverse design principles don't really mesh with Generations functionality. DECEPTICON: STARSCREAM Assortment: F0507 Altmode: Fighter Jet Transformation Difficulty: 21 steps Previous Name Use: Yes Previous Mold Use: None Epithet/Gimmick: Seeker Strike Function: Scheming Second-in-Command Packaging: No ties, everything is held in by blister shape. And frankly, that's way more than enough, given how it grabs onto the wings. Several bits are different colors of plastic on the render compared to the toy. In jet mode, the bit right behind the cockpit is gray on the render but red on the toy, while the toy has the next bit behind that in gray while the render is red. The lower thighs are darker gray on the toy than on the render. Robot Mode: Well, it's a fairly standard Starscream seen through the Cyberverse leggy lens, but the most noticeable distinct point is that his jet mode's tail pieces are connected together and rise up behind his head. His head has the more angular look typical of Cyberverse versions. His arm cannons go on his forearms rather than on his upper arms or shoulders, though. The worst Cyberverse Hollowness happens on the backs of the boots. (Aside: the blue paint used appears to be the same shade as on Prowl's lightbar.) 5" (12.5cm) tall at the head, but the tail section rises another half inch (a centimeter or so) higher. The main colors are light gray, bright red, and slightly desaturated medium blue. Very light gray plastic is used for the head, the wingpack and fuselage on back, torso front, shoulders, forearms, upper thighs, and boots. A medium slightly silvery gray is found on the upper arms, null ray cannons, lower thighs, and the back parts of the feet. Blue plastic is used for the sides of the torso, the fists, and the toes. An overly bright red plastic is found on the collar area, the pelvis, and hinges inside the feet. The cockpit on the center chest is clear amber plastic, and the Fire Blasts are the same flexible amber plastic as Prowl's. The head is coated in matte black paint, then the face painted silver and the eyes red. Much of the chest and abdomen are painted red, which doesn't match the red plastic. The pectoral turbines and abdominal vents are painted silver. There's red stripes on the shoulders and the outer faces of the forearms. The kneecap vents are painted medium gray (a decent tone match to the plastic, but gloss rather than silvery), and there's other medium gray fdetails on the sides of the boots. The shin details are painted blue, and part of the barrel of each Null Ray Cannon is also painted blue. The cockpit border on the chest is painted dark gray, and the fuselage area round the window is painted light gray. No Decepticon symbol on the front of the robot mode, just the vehicle's one on the backpack. The neck is a ball joint, while the waist is a swivel where the cut is between the belt and the pelvis. Ball joint shoulders, bicep swivels, hinge elbows, swivel wrists. Ball joint hips, mid-thigh swivels, hinge knees that can bend almost double. The ankles mostly have side to side hinges, trying to move them forwards/backwards messes up the loosely folded parts. The wings have hinges to let them fold back in case the shoulderpads would conflict with them. There's 5mm sockets on the fists and the outer faces of the forearms. There's no 3mm socket for a flight base, but the nose of the jet would block anything they might have put on the back of the pelvis. There's two 3mm studs on the torso front, each one under one of the pec-fans. Those are for the missile spam Fire Blast. The Null Ray Cannons are identical and just under 2" (5cm) long, with 5mm grip pegs at the back and 3mm studs on the muzzle tips. Fire Blasts: Two of his are identical and meant to go on the Null Ray Cannons. They're similar in size and shape to Prowl's bigger Fire Blast, but with a larger fireball tip. The interesting one is the third, which is a trio of missiles spreading out from a common point, leaving clear amber thrust trails. The missiles themselves are painted red and are 2cm long each, a bit large to actually fit inside his body. Kind of an Aphrodite A situation. Transformation: This turns into a Cybertronian jet, which means they could really have done just about anything so long as it looked vaguely jet-like at the end...and they still ended up with loads of out of place robot pieces and compromises to the jet mode. There's a lot of parts rotating around and through each other, and ultimately it feels like they didn't really bother refining the design after the first pass. There isn't really a trick to it, and I didn't need the instructions other than to make sure I'd gotten it right (the package renders work hard to hide the ugliness of the back end). Vehicle Mode: As noted, it's a Cybertronian jet, much like the final Warrior mold, but with a more elaborate process to get to it. Your basic science fictiony aerospace fighter with a roughly dart shape, the cockpit and wings both shoved backwards compared to the usual F-16-alike that Seekers turn into. The robot legs and arms are just sort of undercarriage junk, and there's an awkward plate between the tails that forms sort of an air intake on top? It really feels like they started with a robot mode and then just sort of fiddled around until they got something that looked like a jet, then tweaked that. 5" (12.5cm) long with a wingspan of 5.5" (14cm), mostly very light gray with blue and too-bright red, and a little amber. Most of the actual jet parts are very light gray plastic, but the cockpit piece and the area around it are clear amber, the section just behind the cockpit is bright red, and the panel between the tails is medium gray. The underside of the cockpit part of the fuselage is blue plastic. Plus the various robot bits still pretty visible. Like Prowl, it has a lot of paint on a clear piece rather than having just the canopy snapped into an opaque piece, and like Prowl the light gray paint is much lighter than the plastic it's supposed to match. The lower edge of the nose is painted blue, a bit lighter than the blue plastic it's supposed to match. There's red stripes on the wings and the sides of the rear fuselage, and blue paint on the vertical tail bits and on top of the rear fuselage chunks. Dark gunmetal paint is on the main intake vents on either side of the cockpit. A purple on white Decepticon symbol is printed on the nose. Notably, the cockpit window (and the entire area around it) can be lifted up in this mode, and if you rotate the head during transformation then Starscream's face peeks out when you open the cockpit. Unfortunately, doing this keeps the nose from properly staying in place, Starscream's chin pushes it down a little. The guns need to go on the forearm sockets, which technically leaves the fists open to hold stuff. The two smaller Fire Blasts go on the gun tips, and there's a 3mm stud under the cockpit for the missile launch piece. Overall: Good robot mode and Fire Blasts. The vehicle mode is a bit iffy and the transformation different but not actually better than other versions. Still, probably the best of the wave, as much as that might damn it with faint praise. (Assortment F0508 is missing, perhaps an extra Autobot that got pulled or will show up as a surprise new toy in 2021?) DECEPTICON: SOUNDWAVE Assortment: F0509 Altmode: Armored SUV Transformation Difficulty: 16 steps Previous Name Use: Yes Previous Mold Use: None Epithet/Gimmick: Sound Blast Function: Calculating Spy Packaging: Two ties on the robot mode, one on the shoulder cannon, with Laserbeak and the Fire Blast held in by just the blister shape. Laserbeak is not named anywhere on or inside the packaging. I decided to decipher the Cybertronian along the bottom of the instructions in case it was hidden there, but that's just a loop of "OF CYBERTRONCRETS" that probably started as SECRETS OF CYBERTRON but got badly trimmed. Same thing on the other three. The render differences in vehicle mode are subtle, but the line at the top of the chest door is a solid bar on the toy but more of a dotted line on the render, which is a mold difference. Robot Mode: Soundwave with a Hummvee roof hanging off his back, basically. This sort of unfoldable shell stuff is one-step territory. Oh, there's hinged door window panels as a concession to the under-arm wheels, but otherwise it's just a big chunk that gets in the way. The chunk that hangs down behind his legs keeps him from standing stably in some positions, and blocks most of the waist articulation. Anyway, he has the sonar dish/area denial weapon over his left shoulder, and a tab for the cannon over the right. Yeah, he can either hold the cannon in his hand or put it on his backpack, they didn't give him two. The part on the back that holds the cannon doesn't really lock in place on top, relying on the hinge snapping into a stable position that it won't do unless you press in near the hinge. On top of all this, his forearms and boots suffer badly from hollowness. 5.75" (14.5cm) tall, in blue, light gray, and black, plsus some accents in gold and red. Black plastic is used for the wheels, the elbow joints, the top of the waist joint, the hips and the feet. Light gray is used on the sonar rig, the forearms, the thighs, and a grille plate on the butt. Everything else is darkish blue plastic. There's red paint detailing on the upper and outer faces of the forearms (but the wristband paint does not continue onto the inner face), the eyeslit, and a stripe that goes around the cannon. Slightly metalflake black paint is used on the chest window, the cheek vents, the kneecaps, and the waveform details on the shoulder fronts. The shoulder waveform backgrounds are silver, which is also used on the faceplate and much of the shin fronts. There's dull gold border stripes around the chest window, vents below the kneecaps, and stripes on the boot sides. While the tapedeck controls are molded on the pelvis front, they're left unpainted. Swivel neck and waist, although the waist is pretty blocked. The shoulderpad is on a swivel, and there's a ratcheting hinge to let the arms lift to the sides. There's the usual bicep swivel, and then a rather stiff ratcheting elbow. The wrists are ball joints that mostly just swivel, but let the fist stow inside the forearm (as long as it's turned the right way). Ball joint hips, upper thigh swivels, hinge knees. The ankles technically have side to side hinges, but can't really move much, maybe 15-20 degrees. Transformation hinges let the toes point down, they store inside the boots by swinging all the way around. (No doors on the backs of the boots, hence the bad hollowness.) The hands can hold 5mm pegs, that's it for 5mm sockets. There's 3mm studs on the tops of the forearms, on the outer faces of the forearms, on top of each shoulder, and in the center of the sonar dish. Other than the sonar dish, they're all places for Laserbeak to perch. The chest swings open to accept Laserbeak in cassette mode. There's no trigger button or even a tab and slot to hold it closed, it's just hinge friction. Inside, there's molded details that evoke the spindles on a tape player. The cannon is a single piece 1.5" (3.5cm) long and generally looking like a AAA battery with missile ports on the + end. It has a 5mm peg grip near the back, a non-standard slot on the underside middle, and a 3mm stud at the front end. The underside is hollow, so it doesn't look so good in handheld position. Fire Blast: It's a ham. Well, it's got Soundwave's octagonal waveform motif as the front, then it tapers back to a 5mm peg with a 3mm socket in it. The effect is...underwhelming. 3cm long, and the front octagonal face is 1.4cm wide. The plastic is a sort of red-violet shade, technically flexible but generally too thick to bend. Laserbeak: In cassette mode, it looks kindasorta like a cassette, at least to the same extent the Siege versions do. There's the obvious vulture neck down the middle of the front face, but that's hard to avoid. Most of the front is light gray, the back is black. 3cm by 2cm by 0.7cm, it fits snugly inside Soundwave's chest. The front has red paint on what become the tops of the wings, and the cassette spindle holes are molded to look like turbofans. There's 3mm sockets on the right and left edges, what become the undersides of the feet in robot mode. To transform, spread the wings out (you need to lift them up a bit, as they're lightly pegged in place), flip out the head and neck piece, and then fold the feet down. The result is a bit awkward, the wings are too far forwards and it looks like the bird is on weird skis because the feet are molded onto L-shape brackets that make up the edges of the tape mode. The lack of a backpack unit throws off the resemblance as well, but hey, they tried. Wingspan of 2.25" (5.5cm), total length of 1.25" (3cm). There's those 3mm sockets on the bottoms of the feet, but they're way back behind the molded bird feet, so sitting on Soundwave's shoulder studs looks awkward no matter how you do it. It does okay on the forearms, at least. Transformation: Basically folds in half at the waist, with the backpack shell folding around a bunch of bits, the chest becoming the hood and the legs becoming the underbody. For some reason, the robot forearms are left exposed through the hollow rear window, their 3mm pegs visible but too close to the rooftop array to be useful. The side panels are too thin to really mesh well, with one or the other ending up sticking further out where the window and door meet...this part of transformation really feels like a cheap knockoff toy, not helped by the lack of any paint on the window and door pieces. Thin, unpainted, hard to align; feels like an easter basket-level KO. Vehicle Mode: The now fairly standard armored Hummvee-style SUV with stuff on the roof (mix of sensors and crowd-suppression gear). As noted, the rear window area is oddly open. Like some versions of Prime Breakdown, there's almost no ground clearance despite a design that looks like it rides high, there's just robot legs slung between the wheels. The cannon is removable from the roof tab, but has nowhere else to go in this mode. 4" (10cm) long and very chunky, mostly dark blue with bits of black, dull gold, and red, plus light gray. The bumper and roof rack are light gray plastic (as are the visible robot forearms), the wheels are black plastic, everything else is dark blue plastic. The chest detailing remains on the roof. The front windows are slightly metallic black, as are the lower edges of rear windows. There's some more gold double stripes on the rear sides. The headlights are bright blue triangles. That's it. It really needs more paint in this mode. The cannon and sonar dish have 3mm studs available, and you can technically put the Fire Blast on the 3mm stud on the forearm that's behind the sonar dish. The chest can still be opened up in this mode, although it's a little more awkward with the windshield there to get Laserbeak in and out. There's nowhere else for Laserbeak to ride unless you remove the cannon and tilt the sonar dish upward. Overall: The vehicle mode isn't worth the compromises made to the robot mode for it. I almost prefer the Warrior version, despite its lack of paint apps. Dave Van Domelen, done with Cyberverse for the foreseeable future.