Dave's Energon Rant: Mega Wave 1.5 Ironhide Jetfire Treadbolt shipped with Ironhide as Wave 1.0. I've seen Treadbolt, and while Rollbar looks very nice in his G1 Hound color scheme, I'm just not interested in dropping $20 on a recolor of Scavenger. CAPSULES Ironhide: Solid vehicle mode (the roof junk is awkward, but removable), okay transformations, good robot mode, good Powerlinx modes. Sound gimmick takes up a bit too much space for what it does. Recommended. $19.76 at Wal-Mart. Jetfire: Vehicle mode is full of weird gaps. Decent robot mode except for the head. Neither Powerlinx mode is too great, suffering from serious kibble. Not very solid in any mode. Very mildly recommended, you're better off getting two Ironhides. $19.76 at Wal-Mart RANTS Packaging: This is the smallest size to come in boxes, which are mostly black with red gridlines on the outside and the opening gateway graphics on the cardboard tray inside. The boxes are 11" (28cm) wide, 8" (20cm) tall and 4.5" (12cm) deep. The names are clearly printed on the front and sides on red swaths, and on black on top of the box. The card art appears in the lower right of the front and top of the box, and dominates the left side of the box. Wave 1.0 shows a gold-ringed Powerlinx Autobot symbol on the left panel. Wave 1.5 shows a row of four Powerlinx Autobot symbols, with the gold one larger and with a glowy effect. From left to right they're silver, gold, red and black. Silver goes with the Deluxes, black goes with Optimus Prime. Not sure who the red cogs are for, probably a Wave 2 set. In each wave, the right side has the Energon story setup in three languages (basically the same thing as on the Deluxes). Ironhide has a lot of twist-ties and rubber bands holding him to the cardboard tray. Jetfire makes it look like Ironhide is rattling around loose by comparison. I'd be willing to believe that it was delayed until wave 1.5 just so they could figure out all the ways to keep it from falling apart in the box! An inserted bag has the instructions (individual on front, powerlinx modes on back), comicbook and stat cards. The back of the box shows the toy in both main modes with smaller pictures of the Powerlinx modes, and the bottom has Basic and Deluxe co-sell pictures. AUTOBOT: IRONHIDE Altmode: 4x4 Truck Subgroup: Powerlinx Combiners (Gold) STR 9 INT 7 SPD 6 END 8 RNK 5 COUR 8 FRB 8 SKL 7 Avg 7.25 Hm, the Megas seem to have lower stats than the Deluxes. Vehicle Mode: 6.5" (17cm) long blue 4x4 truck with a white strip along the sides, plus dark gray and gold parts, plus some red stripes. And then there's the roof gear. A big bright red turret with searchlights and weapons...and a head. More on this in a bit. The windshield is gold, and the side windows are open to reveal seat detail inside (but no legroom for small action figures). On the driver's side rear window (no window paint detail) is a gold Powerlinx Autobot symbol. On the rear bumper are the spark crystal and a dead Hardpoint. The passenger side rear window is painted pale gold. There's silver paint on the searchlight bar and the hubcaps. The toy rolls well on four 3.5cm diameter wheels, much like Armada Red Alert. A nice undocumented feature is that the front grille/bumper section (which becomes robot mode heels and toes) opens up to grab onto cars. CHOMP! The roof gear rotates on a fine-toothed ratchet, turning a gear that activates one of the sound effects (AAA batteries not included, Walgreens usually has a coupon for cheap AAAs though). The sound it makes is a chattering machinegun sort of sound for the right-side gun (which is removable and looks like it should trigger something, but doesn't...and it has a peg that goes on no other part of the toy). The left-side missile launcher makes its own sound effect when pulled back a little, and fires when pulled back a lot. The head just sits there, you can't even cover it up with a panel or something. However...the roof gear is easy to just pop out, leaving nothing more odd than a red roof panel. Without the roof gear, the truck is 3.5" (9cm) tall. With the gear, it's 5.25" (13cm) tall. Transformation to Robot Mode: The front part pulls down and straightens, with the grille/bumper unfolding into feet. The sides of the rear pop up into shoulderpads, and the rear quarter fold forward as arms. Simple. Robot Mode: 7.5" (19cm) tall at the head, add a bit more for the searchlights. The torso is mainly red with various paint (including a white panel on the mid-chest with a red Autobot symbol), blue on the lower limbs and shoulderpads, pale gold on the upper limbs and head (with gray face and light blue eyes). Ironhide is VERY chunky. Big forearms, HUGE boots, wide shoulderpads with wheels out at the tips (hey, hoverfans!). But this doesn't hinder his poseability. Ball joint shoulders and elbows, ratcheting universal joints for hips, ratcheting hinge knees, swivels below the knees, poseable toes and heel spurs with stiff hinge joints. The head doesn't turn on its own, but the entire roof gear chunk can turn freely (blocked a little if you leave the missile loaded). While both weapons can be removed from their positions on either side of the head, but NEITHER has a peg the right size to be held in his hands, nor can they peg onto his hardpoint (which is on the right wrist in robot mode). Legs Mode: Extend the legs by folding them out to the sides. Bundle up the upper torso, arms and shoulderpads and just sort of shove them to the back, pretending they don't exist. The result is 7" (18cm) tall from floor to Powerlinx connection mass. The proportions are good for straight legs, but the knees are just below the hips (the actual knee only swivels). Upper Body Mode: Transformation is similar in terms of swinging the upper piece around and hiding the robot arms, but split the legs apart into huge arms. The resulting piece adds only 2" (5cm) from connector to the top of the head to the combined mode, but the arms are pretty good. The new hands are thin panels molded into "top of fist" shapes, but they're hinged so you can sort of pose the hands, as well as letting you insert weapons more fully for stability. In this mode, the arms have univeral joint shoulders but can't be raised above horizontal, the elbows are ratcheting hinges and the forearms can rotate on swivels. Powerlinx Ironhide: Snap the pieces together and then fold Ironhide's own regular arms down as far as they'll go. The snapping together triggers a metal clashing sound effect from Jetfire. The combined mode is 10" (25cm) tall at the head, 11" (27cm) tall at the top of the searchlights. The proportions are good, although all limbs have short upper parts and long lower parts. Ironhide's bright red clashes a bit with Jetfire's maroon, but the colors otherwise go together pretty well. I plan to display the pair in this mode, both because it looks better than Powerlinx Jetfire, and because Powerlinx Jetfire won't fit on the intended shelf. }-> Double Ironhide: I don't have two, but this combined mode would be only 9" (28cm) tall at the head, and would make no sound on combining. Overall: Okay, the roof gear looks bad in vehicle mode. But it can be removed, and that's the only substantial problem with the toy. Recommended. AUTOBOT: JETFIRE Altmode: Space Shuttle Subgroup: Powerlinx Combiners (Gold) STR 8 INT 7 SPD 10 END 8 RNK 10 COUR 9 FRB 9 SKL 8 Avg 8.625 Or maybe the writers just don't like Ironhide. I guess we know who wears the pants in this relationship, and who IS the pants. Vehicle Mode: 8" (20cm) long from nose to thrusters, with a 7.5" (19cm) wingspan, it actually looks more like a gray and white shuttle sitting on a gray and maroon booster sled. In fact, you can ALMOST separate the toy into these two pieces, but the small shuttle winglets are attached to the booster sled. The huge gap left in the front looks really ugly, though, and screams "something else should go here!" I tried fitting Skyblast in the gap, but it didn't work. The sled on its own looks like the V-Star rear section of Star Sabre's vehicle mode, and all it would take are a few more pegs to let you pop off the top shuttle and reposition it at the front of the sled. The shuttle plus sled rolls along on small white wheels, and has four positionable white thruster nozzles at the back. There are capture claws on the underside, but they can't open all the way in this mode. There are hardpoints on either side of the front spars of the thruster sled, and peg holes under each wing and under the nose. So you can put Skyblast's big blaster under Jetfire's nose, or put Jetfire's own weapon there, a missile launcher that resembles a clear red Astroscope Mini-Con. A little through- peg thing lets you fire the missile by pushing a button on top of the shuttle. On the port side of the shuttle is the spark crystal, and a red Autobot symbol graces the port side of the tailfin. The starboard side of the tailfin has a gold Powerlinx Autobot symbol. There's little details here and there that evoke Armada Jetfire, but it's generally a very different vehicle. Transformation to Robot Mode: The sides of the thrust sled do a LOT of folding to become the legs. In fact, it takes more work to get them into robot mode legs than it does to get them into combiner mode legs. The upper shuttle turns into the arms and shoulders, with the nose just becoming a backpack. The head flips out of the nose and just sort of rests on the shoulders rather than locking into place. Pushing it down triggers a classic transformation sound, although it's faster and higher-pitched than Overload's (again, AAA batteries not included). The shoulders don't lock as well into place as I'd like, and the way the shoulderpads are positioned is somewhat arbitrary, but the transformation to robot mode is probably the best part of the toy. Robot Mode: 7.25" (18.5cm) tall at the head, with a shoulderpad width of almost 9" (22cm). The color balance is a little off here, too much gray at the top, too little at the bottom. The head looks very vaguely like Armada jetfire's, with a gold clear visor glued over the tiny face and a white "headband" painted on the maroon helmet. The arms rise to the sides, and the shoulderpads rotate to give full range of motion, both ratcheting. The upper arms are really short, the ball joint elbows barely able to bend 90 degrees as a result. Ratcheting universial joint hips and hinge knees, plus a ratcheting swivel above the knee give good leg flexibility. The toes can straighten out, but not bend past 90 degrees. The other gimmick of this mode, aside from the transforming sound, is the chest capture claw. Pull the claw all the way open and it clicks into place. Then press a button on the chest and the claw snaps closed. The claw does not open far enough to really evoke Armada Jetfire's chest, though. Oh, the hardpoints end up on the feet in robot mode, pretty useless. When putting the missile launcher in any fist, you pretty much have to press on the trigger to get it to seat firmly, so unload it first. Legs Mode: Cleverly, you rearrange the feet to boost the leg length for this mode, although this does give the toy short thighs. The rest of the transformation is just a matter of trying to get the head and arms shoved out of the way, and the instructions are kinda vague. I think I found one that more or less works, using the robot arms as thrusters and giving the combined more winged hips. The articulation is the same as in Jetfire's own legs, but with all but the ankles up in the top third of the legs. These are taller legs than Ironhide makes, standing 8" tall at the connector. Arms Mode: Do pretty much the same arm-hiding thing, split the legs at the pelvis and fold the robot head onto the other side from where it goes in robot mode (much like Ironhide's arms mode). The combiner fist tops are molded onto the smaller robot's heel spurs. While these are hinged, they hinge the other way and the peg hole doesn't go through, so any weapons will just sit up in the hold. You're supposed to leave the nosecone pointed up, making this a conehead combiner. Also, the chest piece has the capture claws, so Jetfire adds 3.5" at the head to any combination. Powerlinx Jetfire: A bit taller, this is 10.5" (26cm) tall at the head, a lot taller at the conehead. You can push the cone back, but it won't completely fold down due to Ironhide's shoved-back kibble. Like Powerlinx Ironhide, the upper limbs are short and lower limbs bulky. It will still make the clashing sound on combination, as that depends only on the clips coming together. Ironhide looks not quite as good as legs, and Jetfire looks pretty bad as arms, resulting in a less satisfactory combined mode. Double Jetfire: Well, this would be a tall drink of water at 11.5" (30cm) tall at the head, and a long torso with two sets of capture claws. Hard to shop for shirts. Kinda fugly, especially with all the junk in the trunk. I wouldn't recommend buying two Jetfires to test this. Overall: Fun transformation, but kinda ugly in ways it doesn't need to be, and looks like they changed their minds halfway through design and left some parts out. Make nice legs for Ironhide, but kinda cruddy torso. You might want to get this for completeness, but don't cry bitter tears if you can't find it. Dave Van Domelen, off to open Scorponok....