Dave's Transformers Earthrise Rant: Deluxe Wave 2 Arcee (Cybertronian sportscar) Decepticon Airwave (battle station/Modulator) Quintesson Allicon (mecha-alligator) Smokescreen (rally car) Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Gen/DeluxeE2 So many retools/redecos coming from this wave. Lifeline and Elita-1 from Arcee, Hot House and Overair from Airwave, every possible 280Z-family car from Smokescreen. Allicon is the only one not getting extensive redecos, only getting one re-use, and that as part of the Pit of Judgement exclusive set. CAPSULES $20 price point, although $18 at Walmart. Arcee: Other than the huge backpack it looks pretty G1-accurate in robot mode, but the shellformer car is not only frustrating to get right, it also is very poorly proportioned in many ways. Mildly recommended, and then only if you can tolerate shellformers. Decepticon Airwave: Suffers a bit from peg tolerances being poor (legs tend to fall off), but it has one very good altmode, one okay altmode, and one pretty bad altmode. Good enough to be worth picking up, but you might want to use nailpolish or floor polish to thicken the knee pegs. Recommended. Quintesson Allicon: Did reasonably well given what it had to work with, although it doesn't really hide the arms not used by a given mode, and it has a bit more hollowness than Generations normally suffers. Mildly recommended. Smokescreen: Interesting twist on the standard "Not-sun" transformation, but it might lead to breakage. A few odd color choices here and there, but generally looks good in both modes. Recommended, not clearly better or worse overall than the Siege version. RANTS Packaging: Same as wave 1 Deluxes. AUTOBOT: ARCEE Assortment: WFC-E17 Altmode: Cybertronian sportscar Transformation Difficulty: 15 steps Previous Name Use: Yes Previous Mold Use: None Function: Commando Division: Ground Command Unit: Special Ops Rank: Sergeant STR 7 INT 6 SPD 9 END 8 COUR 8 FRP 9 SKL 8 Packaging: Six ties on the robot, although the two on the wrists don't need to be cut. The pistol is held in by just the blister shape. She's packaged with the full backpack attached, although the box back shows her standing on it as a hoverboard. Map segment includes Dominus (the disaster planet) and Junkion, although as I discovered later, the Junkion label is a misprint that's all over the place in this wave and the next, grr. The render on the back shows the backpack glider in a different (and less glider-y) configuration than the instructions suggest. It also has a few colors different from the actual toy, most notably gray "door" panels that aren't even in the same places on the glider and car renders (the car render has the gray panels even with the passenger compartment, the glider has them farther back). Robot Mode: Well, by shunting the entire vehicle mode onto the backpack, they were able to create a pretty G1-cartoon-accurate robot mode, although as with many Generations redesigns they made more sharp angles and blocky bits, including forearm panels that look like they might be part of vehicle mode (as they are on the Cyberverse Deluxe), but aren't. The colors are...close. They didn't bother to make her face pale pink, and some of the details on her abdomen are the wrong colors, plus her feet are pink instead of white and her forearms are entirely pink. Other than the feet, though, it'd be easy enough for a determined owner to fix the color issues. 5" (13cm) tall at the head, the backpack only rises a few millimeters higher. She's mostly pink and white with some gray, plus a translucent faintly bluish clear plastic used for the pistol, the windshield, and the little antennae thing that wouldn't normally call attention to itself in this mode if it didn't keep popping off. White plastic is used for the head, torso front, pelvis, biceps, hands, thighs, shins, and some of the hinges inside the backpack. Everything else is pink plastic, including the torso back. Pink paint that's a good match for the plastic is used on most of the chest front and the bikini-pattern on the front pelvis (but not the back). The upper part of the pelvis front is light gloss gray with pink belt buckle area. The eyes are painted gloss blue, and there's a red Autobot symbol printed on the sternum. The neck is technically a ball joint, but only turns, and not very well. The waist turns, although if you have the pistol stored above her butt it tends to knock against the backpack. Just about every other joint is pinned or even riveted, making disassembly for customization difficult. Universal joint shoulders, upper arm swivels, hinge elbows that bend to about 45 degrees acute, wrist hinges with about 180 degree range. The hips are universal joints and there's two thigh swivels: one between the pink hip section and one a few millimeters down between two thigh sections. The lower swivel is really only for transformation, it's neither necessary nor aesthetic in robot mode. Double hinge knees, somewhat loose hinged ankles on the very long feet. The hands can hold 5mm pegs, and there's 5mm sockets on the heels and 3mm sockets under the toes. Those 3mm sockets are for riding the hoverboard, but they also mean that she can stand securely on any other figure with 3mm sockets in the right spots, like Siege Prowl's shoulders. Here's hoping that Kingdom Grimlock has 3mm studs on his back so she can pull a Cyberverse and ride him into battle. Anyway, the only other connectors are on her glider, two 3mm studs on top for riding and two in the back for attaching Fire Blasts as thrusters. The pistol has elements of semi-automatic pistols but isn't quite any of them (in the same way that Smokescreen's altmode is sort of a Datsun Z280 but not close enough to trigger lawsuits), with some Walther-style elements. The grip is weird in the way competition target pistols can be, but that's likely more a function of needing to be held in hands designed for right-angle pegs. Still, given her occasional function of sharpshooter, a targeting pistol would make sense. The grip is rectangular but fits in 5mm sockets, ends in a 3mm stud muzzle, and has a tab on the left side that goes into a slot on her butt. It can also go into the slots that hold her outer backpack onto the inner backpack, which end up as front fenders in vehicle mode. The outer backpack detaches to form a hoverboard, and there's a trigger on the left side of the inner backpack that lets the two halves separate (although I didn't discover it until later, so I guess it's not strictly necessary). Note, getting all the tabs to line up properly is a bit tricky because the tabs are on hinged fender sections. With the outer backpack off, it still doesn't look like the animation model, but it's less bulky. The glider unfolds and flattens out, although it still looks like a car section, including seats and windshield. It s 3" (7.5cm) long and 3.25" (8cm) wide. I'll cover the paint in vehicle mode, since it's just the rear half of the vehicle shell. The position of the top studs (one right behind the passenger seat, the other nearly at the back) means she stands rear of the center of mass if you want both feet connected. Transformation: I managed, eventually, to get it transformed without the instructions, although it turned out I did it slightly wrong...my way with the waist rotated 180 degrees seems to fit a little better. The instructions don't show the pistol storage, but it's pretty obvious. (The fender slots don't seem to be intended, and they're a bit loose, but the storage under the front end sticks out a bit.) Basically, the backpack unfolds into almost the entire car, and then the robot folds up inside with the arms between the shell and the folded up legs. Getting the ankles just right to avoid dragging is tricky. But there's one strut that if cut (or the rivets removed) would give you a complete car and a complete robot separately, unlike Cyberverse where at least a little of the car has to stay on the robot. Of course, the second time I tried to transform it, I couldn't get it to work. There's a big rod that needs to fit into a hole in her back, and that didn't want to work for a while. Altmode: It's not quite on-model even before looking at the colors, but it comes pretty close to the animation model shown in The Ark Archive, but the passenger compartment is positively tiny, about half the relative size as in the model sheet, and the look is generally chunkier. The wheels are practically bicycle tires, very narrow and made of clear plastic. It's possible that the designers of the toy were working off a specific screenshot that was kinda warped, though...G1 wasn't great for keeping characters on-model. Still looks like a futuristic open-topped ground vehicle, but now it looks like it's big enough to drive on both sides of the street at the same time and brush up on the sidewalks. As often happens, the back end is largely open, and the kneecaps are visible. 4.5" (11.5cm) long, but if you take the seats inside as guidance for scale, it's about 1:100 scale...around 11m (37') long and 6m (20') wide at scale. Trying to confine the entire windhield/seating section to what amounts to a hinge on the backpack did weird things with scale, and they might have been better off making it a single seat racecar design. The wheels, windshield, and antenna are cloudy light blue plastic, everything else on the exterior is pink plastic. The paints are decently on-model aside from the lack of gray on the doors and the front grille (and at least the lack of gray is consistent between the real front end and the torso's fake front end). White paint on the front end, and a stripe down the center starting at mid-hood, interrupted by the seats, and then continuing on the back. The seats and the console between them are paitned gloss light gray, and there's a red Autobot symbol printed on the hood. All the glider 3mm studs are accessible, the ones in back are a bit too close together for the wider thrust-looking ones to both be on at once. There's 4mm by 2mm slots on top of the front fenders and same size tabs on teh sides of the rear fenders, but that's just for holding the backpack together...as noted earlier, the gun's side tab is a bit loose in one of the 4 by 2 slots. Once properly transformed so nothing drags, it rolls okay on the skinny wheels. Overall: Well, other than the backpack and a few color nitpicks, it does look like G1. But it's a frustrating shellformer on the level of Car Robots Speedbreaker, and the vehicle mode just looks distorted. Of the two shellformer Arcee toys out in 2020, I definitely prefer the Cyberverse one. DECEPTICON: DECEPTICON AIRWAVE Assortment: WFC-E18 Altmode: Battle Station/Modulator Transformation Difficulty: 12 steps (Modulator), 8 steps (Base) Previous Name Use: None ("Airwave" alone in G1) Previous Mold Use: None Function: Modulator Division: Air Command Unit: Special Ops Rank: Sergeant STR 7 INT 6 SPD 7 END 5 COUR 9 FRP 8 SKL 8 Packaging: Five ties on the robot, and the small gun piece is just held in by blister shape. The map section is a large (and unnamed here) planet in the upper right of the completed map. The box back shows two of the base modes (the airstrip and the mini-Metroplex), the instructions add the G1 Airwave battlestation homage. Both show the Modulator split into components, but there's now guidance for wearing them as armor. Robot Mode: Two things are immediately obvious with this toy. The first is that it's gonna be customized into mini-Metroplex by so many people. The second is that it really needs some work on peg/socket tolerances because it falls apart very easily, even for a "turns into bits" figure. Anyway, it has the same general proportions as G1 Metroplex: long boxy legs, torso that is a wide rectangle on top of a teeny narrow rectangle abdomen. The head is not Metroplexy, so maybe cast it as a Miniplex minion. The head is flat and wide, with a cyclopean face (still has a faceplate of sorts, it's not full Shockwave...although since the right arm ends in a blaster, it does kinda resemble the child of Metroplex and Shockwave). The pecs are open to show pipe and conduit details. The left arm has shield bits that turn into the end of the Land Carrier mode, while the right end terminates in a blaster made from the airport control tower. And extra tower section (not used to make the tower taller in airstrip mode, it's for the battle base mode) just sits on the shoulder like a smokestack. (And now to pause the review to go soak the toy in warm soapy water for a while to see if that helps with the loose pegs. Eh, a little, but the boots are still pretty prone to fall off. Others have reported the same issue, and it looks like the knee pegs are more like 4.9mm rather than 5mm, which is going to cause problems. I got a second one on clearance...yes, Walmart is clearing it out already...and it was also 4.9mm on the knee pegs.) 5.25" (13cm) tall at the head, 5.75" (14.5cm) to the top of the not-a- smokestack. The colors are a mix of light gray, dark blue, gunmetal gray, and orange-yellow (apricot?). Light gray plastic is used for the top and front of the torso, the ramp panels on the left arm (one hinged atop the shoulder, one fixed to the forearm), the little wheels on the fronts of the thighs, and most of each boot. Dark blue plastic is used for the heads, the interior of the torso, the thighs, and a bit inside each boot mostly visible in other modes. Gunmetal plastic is used on the biceps, elbow joint, hip joints, and upper thighs. Apricot plastic is used on the shoulders, forearms, pelvis, knee pegs, weapons, and a peg that can fold out from the center of the chest. Gunmetal paint is used on most of the face, part of the helmet scoop/ crest thing, details on the thighs, runway stripes on the outer and inner faces of the boots, and open duct work details on the chest (under good lighting you can see through the gaps in the chest to the blue plastic behind them). The tank treads on the thighs are painted metallic black, as are the weapon and smokestack pieces, although the pegs are left unpainted. There's a purple Decepticon symbol on each of the ramp ends on the left arm, and a blue box with a yellow "32" in it on the right boot's outer runway section. As is usually the case with things in the Weaponizer evolutionary track, a lot of the joints are just pegs, and turning them too much can make them fall out. The neck is a swivel on a hinged base that lets the head tilt back for transformation, or to look up at things. The waist is a peg swivel, and the peg can also go unto one of two other sockets on the underside for a hip check pose. The shoulders are pegs, with pinned "lift up" hinges inside the shoulders, lower-bicep swivels, and pinned hinge elbows. No wrist on the left hand, but the right forearm ends in a 5mm peg that acts as the "wrist" for the arm cannon. On the left arm, the ramp bit is attached at the top outer edge via a pin hinge. Universal joint hips, mid-thigh swivels, hinge knees that are pegs going into the boots, and the usual-for-WfC sideways ankle hinges. Not even counting all the pegs and sockets used for joints, there's a lot of connectors. There's 5mm pegs on top of the torso, one on each shin, and one on the outer face of the left forearm. You can also fold down a 5mm peg from the center of the chest. Additionally, the "hold in a regular hand" pegs of the arm cannon are reasonably accessible for attaching other stuff. 3mm studs on top of the torso (rather too close to the shoulders for use in this mode), the fronts of the "collarbone" area at either extreme of the front top of the chest. The tip of the arm cannon is a 3mm stud. The left fist can hold 5mm pegs, there's a socket on the right shoulder (meant to hold the extra tower piece), one on the back of the head (which can be used to hold the tower piece if you like), the back of each thigh, the back of each ankle, the inner face of each boot, and the underside of each foot. There's a 3mm socket on the back of the pelvis. There's two partial AIRLock links on the back, and while it kinda looks weird to use them, there's also accessible AIRLock links on the lower outer edge of each boot. There's AIRLock links on the shoulder and forearm ramp tips. (I got a set of 3P AIRLock ramp bits on eBay, and can sort of make a cape for him out of them.) http://www.dvandom.com/kitbash/AirwaveLaunch.JPG with dyed missiles from Prize Inside, using those torso-top sockets. It also shows Overair (Target redeco set) with some Decepticon symbols added on. Transformation: There's three official station modes in the instructions, and I'll just call them Base 1, Base 2, and Base 3. Base 1 is an airstrip with a hangar in the middle, based on G1 Airwave's base mode, Base 2 is a folded up thing based on G1 Airwave's attack mode (and not very convincing), and Base 3 is clearly inspired by a fan mode of G1 Airwave with the runway segments pointed away from the hangar rather than running past it. This has also been compared to a mini-Metroplex battle station mode. I was able to figure out Base 3 almost all the way without the instructions, but some of the specific strengthening connections were inobvious. Base 1 was similarly not too hard to figure out, other than the somewhat arbitrary arm-hiding. I definitely needed the instructions for Base 2, which involves more splitting apart and reversing and still ends up not very stable. It kinda feels like they looked at the first draft design that just did Base 1 and 3, and asked what changes would let them kinda fake a Base 2, like replacing a pinned hinge in each boot with an AIRLock connector so they could be split. It's worth noting that there was no attempt to create an official "armor mode" from this, but a quick check of Hot House's instructions shows that he's got 'em. Base 1: The legs unfold into runway halves, but don't actually connect directly to each other. Instead, the knee pegs go into those sockets at the backs of the ankles. Then the torso top 5mm pegs go into the sockets in the backs of the thighs, with the robot's back being the hangar front (kinda loses a lot of the details due to dark plastic and no paint. The arms just sort of stick under the runway parts as extra support, but they're still obviously robot arms. The arm cannon goes into one of the non-middle sockets on the torso underside as the control tower, and the spare bit just sticks on the side (it's really only included to let there be two identical tower pieces to use as the missiles in Base 2 mode). The resulting runway passing in front of the hangar is 8.5" (21.5cm) long measured from the centers of the AIRLock joints, but only 1.25" (3cm) wide. My Target redeco "Overair" can fit on it, but has to be careful to not clip a wing against the hangar. The tower is 3.25" (8.5cm) tall, and frankly could stand to have a different paint color on its windows. The only "revealed" bits are tread chunks that were inside the boots, dark blue plastic with metallic black treads. Even with two of the runway sockets plugged by robot arm pegs, there's still two sockets available for plug-type Fire Blasts, but none of the 3mm studs is in any useful position. There's a 5mm socket on top of the control tower if you want to make it look like it's on fire or something. Stability is so-so, and it really needs some colors on the hangar and control tower unit to make it look like one, but definitely an acceptable mode. Base 2: This one is really not intuitive at all, and not really worth learning to do without the instructions either. Separate into ramp-mode legs, thigh piece, torso piece (with head turned around and hidden), arms, and weapons. Straighten the left arm and snap the ramp AIRLock ends into it (also a step needed for Base 3). Bend the ankle hinges 90 degrees, then take the thighs piece and rotate the pelvis so that its peg is pointed down, pushing tabs on either side of the waist into slots on the inner thighs. This goes onto some 5mm pegs under the ramp using the back-of-thigh sockets. Now remove the front tread pieces (the boots aren't entirely pinned together, the outer face pieces are snapped on with AIRLock joints) and attach them to those half-connectors on the back of the torso. The sockets on the bottoms of the feet go onto the top of torso pegs. The two tower shaft pieces go onto the knee pegs as cannons/missiles. Now fold out the chest peg and just sort of stick the leftover right arm on back, and put the tower top in the fist, just to keep them SOMEWHERE. You can fold the ankle hinge a little but to raise up the top and be more like the G1 attack base. Unfortunately, there's nothing there to keep the whole thing from sagging at that robot back hinge, although you can cram the right arm onto one of the tread sockets in the lower part to act as a strut. Its "footprint" is about 4" (10cm) long and 3" (7cm) wide, and it doesn't really look much like anything, just a pile of parts with some gun barrels on top. There's a lot of places to connect other things, although no really useful AIRLock links (the only ones accessible are upside down, and AIRLock cares about that). The add-on missiles I got from Trent Troop's Shapeways store turned out to not be necessary to get the basic look of this mode, as the tower pieces are used to act as missiles. Still looks a bit better with the add-ons, but not much could make it look GOOD. I mean, at least it's in the official instructions, unlike Ironworks's battle mode (which was only in the Grease Pit retool instructions, oddly), so they recognize that people buying these would like to create the G1 battle modes...but they didn't put a lot into making them very good. Base 3 is a much better attack mode...and now that I'm done reviewing this, it's never going to be in this mode again. Base 3: This is the Land Carrier that thanks to the tank treads REALLY helps the resemblance to Metroplex beyond just being an homage to the fan mode of the G1 toy. Link the leg runway pieces with the left arm as in Base 2. Prepare the thigh piece as with Base 2, but then attach the torso's top pegs to the thigh back sockets, and insert the knee pegs into the soles of the robot feet (do not bend the ankles this time). Put the right arm under the ramp in such a way that non-standard tabs on it go into slots in the backs of the treads, which locks the ramp into a very solid form. The two tower shafts go into the shoulder sockets, and the lone tower top goes into one of the sockets on the roof (officially one of the side ones, but you can go for symmetry by putting it in the middle if you like). In my opinion, this is the MAIN altmode. It uses all the parts well, and the aircraft carrier styled tabs on the arm panels are now at the front end of a land-based aircraft carrier. This is the only mode that actually uses the little wheels inside the treads, or that even uses the concept of treads. While only 6.75" (17cm) long, the carrier deck is 2.25" (6cm) wide and 5" (12.5cm) long not counting the tabs at the front...enough to hold Overair more plausibly, or act as a skateboard of sorts for a Deluxe bot. There's three usable 5mm sockets on top of the bridge section (one is used by the tower top, but it has its own socket on top), two on the runway for mounting extra guns (like the Shapeways ones), the two shoulder sockets if you choose to move the tower shaft guns elsewhere, and the shin 5mm pets can be used to mount...well, not a lot of stuff has 5mm sockets and would fit there, but the Shapeways missiles do. :) The two 3mm studs on the front of the chest are now in back, and can be used for thruster Fire Blasts. About the only downside of this mode is the lack of useful AIRLock connectors. Overall: Decent robot, if a bit hampered by loose pegs, and the Land Carrier mode is pretty cool. The other modes are more like those bonus builds some Lego sets come with, where the pieces aren't all really used or aren't used well, and they sometimes stretch plausibility. But that's okay, triple-changing is always hard to do. QUINTESSON: QUINTESSON ALLICON Assortment: WFC-E19 Altmode: Alligator Monster Thing Transformation Difficulty: 14 steps Previous Name Use: None Previous Mold Use: None Function: Quintesson Shock Trooper (No sigil for Quintessons) STR 7 INT 2 SPD 4 END 8 COUR 5 FRP 6 SKL 7 Packaging: The tail chunk is packaged by the robot's feet, held in by one tie (there's instructions for assembling the toy into robot mode first). Five ties on the robot mode, one of which helps hold in the spear, which has one more of its own. The map piece has bits of Junkion and Gigantion. Given that Arcee and Allicon both have names on their pieces of Junkion, that suggests that Airwave's planet is unnamed. Significant color disagreement between the packaging and the toy. The render mostly agrees with the art in having light violet in extensive use, but the toy is light gray in most of those places, gunmetal in others. Really, only the green bits agree. Robot Mode: Y'know, between the almost total lack of 3mm studs and the higher than usual incidence of hollow limb syndrome, this almost feels like it was created as a Cyberverse design and then tweaked a little to fit into Generations. (Ben Yee assures me that's not the case, but it still FEELS like that.) Anyway, with two notable exceptions, the mold matches the animation design quite well, once you factor in a slight tendency to make rounded surfaces more angular (mostly present in the feet, and in the torso front being flatter). Those two points are that the backpack rises higher up, and...the beast arms are just sort of hanging out on the robot forearms. No attempt to fold them away or hide them, they just sit there. It also misses several colors found on the animation model, notably all the teal is gone, and for some reason the biceps are purple rather than green. 5" (12.5cm) tall and mostly medium-dark gray, light gray, slightly yellowish green, and a bit of violet. Rubbery light gray plastic is used for the head fin, the beast arms, the spear tip, and the spikes on the shoulderpads (which would make it hard to paint the teal rings on them, but I'm glad they went that way...a 3P Allicon I got nearly drew blood from its sharp and rigid spikes). The middle two spikes on each shoulder are connected by a strip of light gray plastic. (The renders have the rubbery plastic as a very pale violet.) A medium-dark gray plastic is used for the head, the front half of the torso, the shoulderpads, part of the backpack, and the spear shaft. Warm violet plastic is used on the biceps, fists, and pelvis. The rest is a slightly yellowish green plastic, including a flap at the bottom of the abdomen, sort of a belt. There's silver paint on the faceplate, and on part of the "suspenders" style details on the torso front. There's gunmetal paint around the sides and backs of the boots. The centerline of the chest is painted light violet, noticeably lighter than the plastic, and the paint is also used across the top of the faceplate. The upper face is painted extremely light blue, and the eyes are red. The neck is a ball joint, the waist is a swivel and the front skirt is hinged to get out of the way when the hips come in contact. The shoulderpads are swivels, with lift-to-the-sides hinges inside. There's bicep swivels, hinge elbows, swivel wrists. Universal joint hips, thigh swivels, hinge knees. The ankles are double hinged, one joint is the usual "feet lie flat" joint, and there's also a hinge that lets the foot bend up. The fists can hold 5mm pegs. There's 5mm sockets on the upper arms, on the undersides of the forearms (amidst all the hollowness), on the upper center of the backpack, and on the outer faces of the boots. The beast arms can also hold 5mm pegs. There's a 3mm stud in the center of the backpack, and I finally found a second one, on the left shin. I suppose you can technically get some of the longer-socket Fire Blasts onto the forearm spikes, and some Fire Blasts can be jammed onto the shoulderpad spikes. This seems more coincidental than intentional, though. There's a 3mm socket in the back of the pelvis, although it's mostly blocked by the tail backpack. The main weapon is a spear with spikes around the base of the spearhead, 4.25" (11cm) long and 5mm in diameter. It has a 6mm by 2mm slot in the shaft that goes onto either of the tabs of that size on the backpack. As shown on the package, it can be held two-handed. The secondary weapon is a scimitar made from the tip of the tail, where it stays pretty loosely. Not in the sense of falling out, but rather it rattles around. A single piece of yellowish green plastic, it's 2" (5cm) long in total, and has a 4.9mm peg that can be held rather loosely in either hand. Yeah, this wave is just not very good about making sure the 5mm pegs are actually 5mm. There do seem to be some little nubs that are supposed to keep the tail flush when the sword is inserted into the tail, but they require Lego-level tolerances to hold...and Hasbro is not even close to managing that reliably. Transformation: Mainly just turning the waist and hunching over with the backpack folding over the upper body to give it a new head, plus the robot arms lock in place and you're supposed to pretend they're hiding. To be fair, they didn't do a lot more than that in the movie, nor did there seem to be a lot of thought given to creating an on-screen transformation that was physically possible. It'd have been nice if the fists could at least have hidden inside the forearms. The preferred stance is now squatting, helped by those extra joints in the ankles. Altmode: This one is a little less close to the animation model, not just because the robot forearms are just stuck to the sides, but because the horns on the head are missing (they'd be hard to fit under the shell in robot mode, but there's a rectangular socket that the back shell tabs into that someone could use as the connection point of a 3P add-on). It's basically a hunched over bipedal alligator bot with a big chompy mouth. The little forearms kinda stand out by being all light gray with no paint, though. A little under 4.25" (10.5cm) tall at the spike behind the head when fully hunched over. Basically the same colors overall. The upper half of the head is gray plastic, the lower is green. There's gunmetal paint on the back where it blends into the gray neck-covering part. Light violet paint is used along the top of the head, with very light blue panels flanking it on the snout. The teeth are painted a slightly yellowish bone white, and the inside the the lower jaw is painted red. Leg articulation is the same as in robot mode, although there's an assumption of being hunched over. Both the upper and lower jaws are hinged, for a total of 90 degrees opening. There's no neck per se, but you can sort of fake looking up and down by having the mouth open a little and changing which hinge is bent. The teeth mesh together solidly when the jaw is closed, so even if the joints had enough range to bend past the "together" position, the teeth would prevent movement. The new forelimbs just have swivel shoulders, no other joints. Same connection points as in robot mode, although the robot fists and forearms are a bit harder to get at and the new forelimbs easier. The weapons can be held by the tiny rubbery arms, but due to the lack of other articulation in the forearms the spear can only be held one-handed. Overall: Well, given their prominent place in the "Universal Greeting" scene, it's a bit surprising it took over 30 years for them to get an official toy. And it's not bad, really, but it is a little disappointing in places. AUTOBOT: SMOKESCREEN Assortment: WFC-E20 Altmode: Rally Car Transformation Difficulty: 16 steps Previous Name Use: Yes Previous Mold Use: None Function: Diversionary Tactician Division: Ground Command Unit: Special Ops Rank: Sergeant STR 5 INT 9 SPD 7 END 6 COUR 8 FRP 7 SKL 9 (Almost G1, but +1 STR) It feels kinda weird to have the full-and-then-some complement of 280Z molds (sometimes called Praxian, after Bluestreak's home city, but I think of them as Not-suns when they're not actually Datsuns) represented by only one mass-market toy, especially when that one isn't Prowl. Prowl is part of an Amazon exclusive set with Ironhide, Bluestreak is a Walgreens exclusive, and Barricade (a late member of the Not-sun club) is part of a different Amazon exclusive set. Note, traditionally Smokescreen has the number 38 if he has a number at all, but this one has 80. My best guess at this is that 1980 might have been the first year the Electramotive Engineering racing team ran a 280ZX in this color scheme, so it's a year reference rather than referring to any number the car used in races (23, 38, and 83 all show up in early 80s pictures of the source car racing). Packaging: Five ties on the robot, the three weapons (rifle and shoulder cannons) are held in by just the blister shape. The map piece has Paradron...and Junkion? I guess Junkion gets around. (According to TFWiki, the Junkion bits are a misprint that shows up a lot in this wave and wave three, joy.) The package renders and character art show the shoulder cannons in black, but the toy has them cast in blue (an easy enough dye job if you want them black, but they're supposed to be white if they're going G1-faithful). It also has the thighs misassembled and the shins using clear colorless plastic in the windows instead of clear smoky, which results in a significantly different look. (Double checks) Okay, the package render is actually IMPOSSIBLE in terms of the shins, because even if you make the plastic of the read windows clear, there's *nothing* behind them, whereas the render makes it look like a copy of the thigh is inside the boot. That is very weird. TFWiki says there's a variant with altered knees and chest, but I seem to have gotten the original. The knees don't seem to suffer for lack of the extra tab, but the torso is pretty unstable, the tiny tab that seems intended to snap it together doesn't work so well. Hopefully the three retools all use the updated version.... [Clarification: the knee construction is way too subtle to be useful as a diagnostic. Look instead at the rear edge of the roof. The older version of the mold, which I have, has a smooth edge. The newer mold, used on Prowl at least, has tabs added to the edge to help the shins snap into place.] Robot Mode: A pretty good Not-sun robot mode, although the torso is a little weirdly hollow when looked at from the side. They put in a panel in each foot that swings down to give a little more solidity to the appearance of the toes. He has the usual "doors as wings" look, the kind of small shoulder cannons that some of the Siege Not-suns got (these don't combine into a pistol, though), a rifle based on the G1 style, rear windows for shins, hood chest, etc. The head has the more chinstrapped helmet look standard for the Smokescreen tooling (in Siege, Barricade got this head, while Prowl and Bluestreak shared the no-strap chin head). To help with stability, since there's wheels on the feet, there's little heels that fold down at the back to just barely lift the wheels off the surface. If you fold them back up, the figure can still stand reasonably well, and now has heelies. 5" (12.5cm) in the usual red, white, blue, and black, with the shade of blue chosen being the one from the G1 animation rather than the lighter blue of the original toy. There's also some gunmetal gray and a touch of yellow. Given all the red on the toy, it's interesting to note that there is no red plastic at all...and very little white. The only white is on the thighs and a joint inside the backpack. Black plastic is used for the wheels, the forearms, and the pelvis. Gunmetal gray plastic is used on the collar, the torso core (only the abdomen is really visible), the hip joints, the panels on the instep sides of the toes, and the heels. Dark smoky clear plastic is used on the headlights (which end up looking black), boots, and the backpack roof/windshield piece. The rest of the toy is bold blue plastic (chest, head, shoulders, upper arms, fists, weapons, feet, door wings). Lots of dark red paint, on the upper torso, the back, the boots, and the toes. Basically, all the vehicle bits that need to be red are painted, and most of the clear shin pieces are covered in red paint. There's white stripes on the upper torso, sides of the boots, and the top edges of the wings. The face is painted white with the eyes painted green. Not sure why green, since the cartoon has them light blue, the toy had them the same silver as the face, and the G1 box art had them gold. The airdam in the front of the chest is white with black vents. There's a white outline Autobot symbol on the chest, and yellow paint on the helmet crest. The wings have "80" in black on a white rounded rectangle. While I was in the "messing around" phase, I noticed that the seam where the rally front end was attached (so that they didn't have to redo the entire hood for the other molds, just the front of it) wasn't glued in place, it seemed to be a hinge. But it couldn't move in robot mode, or in vehicle mode, only when in transition. So I tried it when the torso was partially unfolded. "Now, what does this chest joint do?" (arms fall off) "Ah." Basically, they didn't pin the front end together, nor are the shoulder roots pinned in place. Thus, if you flex the joint, the arms fall off. Mind you, you have to deliberately engineer a situation where it can even bend, but do be careful during transformation. The head is a ball joint, the waist turns smoothly. The shoulders are universal joints on hinged (pop-off) roots that are part of the fender, so the arms can lift up pretty high. Bicep swivels, hinge elbows, swivel wrists. The wings are hinged and can get out of the way of the arm at need. Universal joint hips with swivels right below them, hinge knees that bend nearly double, ankles hinged both direction. Pretty good range of leg articulation while remaining stable. The hands can hold 5mm pegs, there's a 5mm socket in the center of the back, one on each of the outer faces of the shoulders and of the forearms, the outer faces of each boot (painted over, so might cause tightness issues), plus on the underside of each heel. So...while technically there's 5mm sockets on the underside of each foot, they're badly placed to use Weaponizer boots. The head is flanked by rectangular sockets 5mm by about 2.5mm, these are sort of compatible with the Siege shoulder cannons, but a bit too shallow for them. There's 3mm studs on the frongs of the shoulders and on top of the left forearm. There's the usual 3mm socket on the back of the pelvis, and the tailpipes on the toes are also 3mm diameter by accident. The shoulder cannons are each 1" (2.5cm) long, with 3mm studs at the muzzle tip and on the back end, a 5mm by 2.5mm tab grip (which fits loosely in some of the 5mm sockets and better in others, so they can be forearm cannons or go on the outer faces of the shoulders), and 5mm sockets on either side. The main rifle is 2" (5cm) long with a 5mm grip, 5mm pegs on either side above the grip, and a 3mm stud at the muzzle. All three weapons can thus be combined into a single triple-barrelled cannon, which is actually in the instructions (along with showing the side pegs being used to attach the rifle to the figure's back). So, lots of options to differentiate the Not-suns...the three Autobots should stick with the shoulder cannon arrangement, but it gives several choices for Barricade to look a little different. Transformation: Follows the usual Not-sun plan in broad strokes, legs folding up to be the back end, wings are doors, hood lifts up over the head, etc. But the legs actually fold over much of the torso core, requiring a fair mount of force to snap together over it. As a result, instead of being under the hood as normally happens in the Not-sun transformation, the head is pretty much in the middle of the underside, and the front end is more hollow. Tabs on the forearms are supposed to go into slots on the doors, but they only stay in if the fists are in just the right orientation. If the bottom of the car is facing you, the thumbs should also be facing you, on the inner facings near the robot head. Alternately, when in robot, turn the fists so that the tops of the fist sockets are on the same side of their forearm as the 5mm sockets on the forearms, pointed out to the sides. Any other orientation of fist will sort of fit, but...not quite. And even the right way isn't great, requiring alignment that a Hasbro product can't reliably pull off. There's no internal storage for the weapons, they go on the roof and hood sockets. Altmode: This looks more like a 280Z than most Not-suns manage, although the back end is a little longer, reducing the odd "all hood and roof, no trunk" look of the 280Z. It has molded louvred rear windows, although much smaller slats than the 280Z. Red on top, blue on the sides, white stripe in between. 4.75" (12cm) long, making it about 1:36 scale (1:37 if you want to get picky, but 1:36 is the closest standard scale) for a 280Z. All of the parts that involve windows and roof are clear smoky plastic, the wheels are black, the headlights are clear smoky, and everything else in the body shell is blue plastic. As usually happens, there's no paint on the rear bumper area, so no tail lights or trim. And there's no paint on the hubs, I might put silver on mine. Technically no new paints visible in this mode. It rolls reasonably well on snap-on wheels, and has a 5mm socket on the center of the roof plus the 5mm long rectangular tabs on the front fenders. No 3mm studs are accessible, the forearm and shoulder 5mm sockets are facing the underside and could be used for figure stands that end in 5mm pegs. Overall: Interesting twist on the usual transformation, but it'll make for difficulty in customizing (and might result in breakage, lots of stress on a clear plastic part). Not sure if I prefer this mold or the Siege one, I suppose reviewing three more toys based on the same general plan will help decide that. (Not to mention, transforming all the Siege ones to put away and replace with their Earthrise versions.) Dave Van Domelen, had more than four Transformers arrive in the mail during the time it took to write this review, guh.