Dave's Transformers Earthrise Rant: Autobot Alliance Prowl (retool of Earthrise Smokescreen) Ironhide (extensive retool of Siege Ironhide) Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Gen/AutobotAllianceE This is a bit of an oddity, in that it's an Earthrise exclusive from Amazon, but it's not part of the Galactic Odyssey line. It's more like the paired exclusive sets from Siege. https://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Gen/DeluxeS2 - Siege Ironhide https://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Gen/DeluxeE2 - Earthrise Smokescreen CAPSULES $40 from Amazon.com. Prowl: Original mold was on the low end of recommended. Good Prowl version, although missing the shoulder cannons. Ironhide: Original mold was recommended. Clever use of a new roof to help make a minibus altmode while also giving him a shield and a boogie board. Set overall: If you get versions with no assembly defects, it's a good set of molds. If you get versions with defects, good luck getting a replacement. Very much a gamble to purchase. If purchasing from a reseller, insist on them opening the box to check for falling-off bits. RANTS Packaging: As is the case with most of the non-Selects online exclusives, it splits the difference between shelf-ready packaging and warehouse-only brown boxes, with a non-window box that otherwise has the standard Earthrise styling, including the trapezoidal shape. In lieu of a window, the front has full art of the two characters in robot mode, fighting mostly off-screen foes while Dirge flies overhead in the background. They're defending the Ark, and the forest burns around them. The box is 9.5" (24cm) tall, 6.5" (16.5cm) wide in front, 8" (20cm) wide in back, and 2.5" (6.5cm) deep. Other than the lack of window, it has the same trade dress as Earthrise Deluxes and Voyagers, and there's a shared nameplate on the left edge of the front with both names and sigils. On the back, Ironhide's renders are on the top of the panel, and Prowl's on the lower half, with the "Team: Autobot Alliance" in four languages on the middle left. Inside, both are attached to a plastic tray that has the sloped end at their feet rather than to the right or left (putting a window on the front would thereby be weird-looking). Ironhide's shield is below his feet, both guns are below Prowl's feet. Behind the tray are an instruction sheet that covers both, and a plastic bag with the 3-hex map piece and clear red reader. Odd that a $40 set only gets a single Deluxe-sized piece. It has Nebulon Station on it, and is made of thicker stock (corrugated). As with most exclusive sets, the instructions lack the techspecs part. Note, once again it's QC roulette with exclusives you probably can't get a replacement for, just like with the Siege Autobot set from Amazon. On mine, both figures have assembly errors that led to permanent deformations. Prowl had one of the instep plates only pushed in partway, making part of the mushroom peg flatten out, so it won't stay in place. (I fixed it by carving a new notch on that side and then forcing the peg halves farther apart and heating the whole thing, not really something the average owner has the tools for.) Ironhide's leg panels, already notoriously problematic from Siege, are just as prone to problems here. One of mine wasn't pushed all the way into its slot, so the prongs permanently deformed to be super loose. Some time in a clamp and several applications of heat more or less fixed it, but it might snap back to being too loose over time. It sucks that two major characters are only available as pig-in-a-poke exclusives that sell out on pre-order (yeah, just checked, it's listed as "Currently Unavailable"). AUTOBOT: IRONHIDE Assortment: WFC-E31 Altmode: Minibus Transformation Difficulty: 22 steps Previous Name Use: Yes Previous Mold Use: Gen:Siege Weapons: Pistol, Shield Function: Bodyguard Division: Ground Command Unit: Infantry Rank: Captain Packaging: Five ties hold the robot into the tray with a little help from the tray shape (one of the leg panels popped off during removal from the tray), and a rubber band wrapped around the wheels on the back and the neck keeps the head from flopping forwards. The shield is held in by two ties, and the pistol by just the blister shape. The head does actually snap in place, but you have to pull the backpack away a bit first, and pushing it down into its slot requires more force than the factory assembler used. Color Swaps: Medium gray becomes black, light gray stays light gray, clear colorless stays clear colorless. Most of the red gets maybe a little brighter, but the red on the following parts becomes noticeably darker: shoulder struts, biceps, backs of the boots. Paint Apps: The face is silver with blue eyes. The windshield chestplate has red paint around the edges and black on the wipers. The red paint is noticeably brighter than the main red plastic. The grille at the lower edge of the chest is matte black, as is the other part of the bumper on top of the backpack, and the headlights are silver. There's dual yellow stripes (one thick, one thin) along the sides of the chest and the outer edges of the boot fronts. In vehicle mode, all the yellow stripe bits line up along the sides and are joined by stripes on the fold-up panels, other than a gap where there's a hinge. The black front end pieces mesh together. There's a little bit of black at the top edge of the rear window (which is on the shield), but the undersides of the feet are unpainted. There's red paint on the clear bits of the shield that become window borders, but it's the same lighter red as on the chest. So we get two big problems. One, there's three different red shades around the vehicle shell, making it look like a bad repair job. Two, some windows are clear, some are unpainted red, and a little bit of one is black. This was a choice made for robot mode, though, not just cheaping out on paint, because those unpainted side windows are on the robot shins, and they obviously wanted to have the figure look more show-accurate there...even having the yellow stripes is pushing it for the shins to be show-accurate. (I think they decided that the animation's dark gray was standing in for black this time around...or just that black tires were more important than gray hands and shoulders.) Mold Changes: Quite a few even leaving aside the whole "roof piece that becomes a shield." But I'll cover the shield first, since it's entirely new and not just replacing an existing part. It's a long kite style shield that's basically the vehicle roof plus a pointy bit at the bottom formed from the folded in side windows. 4.5" (11cm) long, mostly red from the front but with black in the back. The main shell is red plastic, but the back side has a rectangle of black plastic plus a black 5mm peg that's connected to a slider that pushes out four black missile tubes. Some side windows made of clear colorless plastic are folded against the back side and snapped in place. In addition to the paint mentioned above, it has a white outline Autobot symbol printed on it. The front has a single 5mm socket around the middle, and the rocket tubes are 5mm in diameter although they're too close together to fit multiple Fire Blasts in every socket other than the skinniest ones (Rung's, or the thready energy wisps). There's a pair of 5mm by 2mm sockets near the bottom, which aren't used by anything on this toy, but which can hold Smokescreen's shoulder launchers. (They're used for the lightbar on the Ratchet redeco of this mold.) On the back side is the main wielding peg, which is 5mm diameter and long enough that the figure can hold it as a shield, or as a shoulder-top rocket launcher. There's two 5mm by 2mm tabs that the the passenger side windows snap onto via 5mm sockets, and a 5mm socket at the vehicle-front end that trapezoidal tabs on the front side windows snap into. There's four more 5mm pegs that go into the shoulder and forearm sockets in vehicle mode, and a shallow 5mm peg between them for stowing the pistol. Note, the shallowness does mean that it is prone to pop off when you're trying to get the roof off to transform back to robot mode. Documented feature, for once: flipping the shield over, folding the window bits all the way out, and attaching the pistol to the main grip peg is in the instructions as an approximation of the G1 mini battle station Ironhide came with. And it is possible to use the other pegs to turn it into a hoverboard, but only if the gun is not added The gun is definitely molded in service of the battle station mode, being based more or less on the little chrome gun that went on the front of G1 Ironworks's battle station. In the cartoon, Ironhide was as likely to just retract his fists and shoot liquids out, and he doesn't seem to have had a consistent sidearm otherwise, so might as well go with this. 2" (5cm) long and made of a single piece of black plastic with gunmetal paint details on top of the barrel. It has a 5mm peg to use as a pistol, the butt end is a 5mm peg that ends in a 3mm stud, the barrel ends in a 3mm stud, and there's 5mm sockets on either side of a cylindrical chunk where the main grip is attached. These sockets let it store in the shield/roof, or go on top of the battle station. Alternately, put it in the socket at the other end, with the rocket tubes becoming thrusters, for a flying drone or armed boogie board (which might be intentional, given Cliffjumper's aquatic mods): http://www.dvandom.com/images/IronhideBoogie.JPG At first look the head is the same as in Siege, but it's more smoothed out. It has the same rough profile, but very few surface greebles. The windshield is completely replaced with a VW-minibus style one, and the new one lacks any 3mm studs. The shins and boot side panels are new, and the top of the backpack (the bit that forms part of the bumper) has been replaced with just a bumper rather than a bunch of cannon muzzles. A lot of changes, but mostly the same. Other Notes: He gets an extra accessory in the pack that came with the Centurion set, his "drill gun" from MtMtE part 3. They didn't do anything to the thin tab and slot method used to hold the panels to the sides of the boots, so the connection continues to be weak with a tendency to pop off due to stress. Siege Ironhide cannot wear the new roof in vehicle mode, the new shin pieces on Earthrise Ironhide include a gap for the shield grip to pass through. Overall: If they'd fixed the biggest functional problem of the original mold, this might even be strongly recommended. But as it stands, not only are the loose panels still loose, it's even harder to find a replacement if you get a bad one. Basically, consider the cost of a hairdryer and a clamp (if you don't already have them) to be implied in the cost of this set. AUTOBOT: PROWL Assortment: WFC-E31 Altmode: Police Cruiser Transformation Difficulty: 15 steps (one fewer than Smokescreen) Previous Name Use: Yes Previous Mold Use: Gen:Earthrise Weapon: Rifle Function: Tactician Division: Ground Command Unit: Infantry Rank: Major Packaging: Four ties hold the robot in place, the rifle is held by the blister. The removable lightbar is attached to the robot's back. Does not come with shoulder launchers. The heels are not folded down in-package, but that might have merely been an oversight on the assembly line rather than intentional. Color Swaps: Blue becomes white, clear smoky plastic becomes clear light blue plastic, everything else becomes black. The lighter clear plastic does mean that you can see all the way through the boots, of course. Under bright enough light, the parts that used to be gunmetal on Smokescreen are a slightly different shade of black (dark gray, really), a bit warmer. Paint Apps: The highway patrol black pattern is printed on the front end of the car in matte black, and it continues on the door wings (with "POLICE" left unpainted in negative space), the tops of the front and rear fenders, and around the bottom edge of the rear as well. The helmet horns, tail lights, and light bar lights are painted bold red, and a red Autobot symbol is printed on the chest/hood. The non-window parts of the shins and roof are painted gloss white in a reasonable match to the plastic under normal lighting (it's dull under UV while the white plastic has a strong glow). The face is painted silver with blue eyes. Mold Changes: The head is the "no chinstrap" version, and instead of having the shoulder launches he has a lightbar that is identical to the Siege Prowl's. The front bumper area is replaced by one without the big airdam. All Prowls reportedly also have the running change to the upper boots and roof edge that adds a tab to try to secure roof better in vehicle mode. http://www.dvandom.com/images/ProwlVsSmoke.JPG And as noted earlier, he has the detachable lightbar from Siege, and he can wear it on his forearm as a buckler. Unlike Siege, his gun is not designed to go into the square socket on top other than by using the main grip peg, so it looks iffy there. Other Notes: The mold changes do result in the car holding together better, without the seams wanting to pop open. But I noticed it was a lot harder to get the legs snapped into place for vehicle mode. Overall: A decent remold, too bad the QC is bad. Set Overall: Sigh. "Amazon Exclusive set" seems to be on the verge of being a synonym for "rampant assembly errors, no exchanges possible." Dreading the rest of the Galactic Odyssey sets, that's for sure. It's a pity they didn't pin those panels on Ironhide, although I guess if they had the pins would be mis-driven half the time and the panels wouldn't be able to close. This is a crapshoot...get lucky and you get a set definitely worth the price. Get unlucky, and get crap that falls apart and requires user-end repairs. Dave Van Domelen, still finding new Transformers faster than he can review them, even now that he's on a run of redecos, aaaaaaargh.