Dave's Generations Rant: Thrilling 30 Deluxe Wave 1 Trailcutter (SUV) Orion Pax (truck) Megatron (stealth bomber) Bumblebee (sports car) Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Gen/DeluxeT1 The 2013-14 school year of Generations kicks off the Thrilling 30 line, to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Transformers in 2014. And it's back to more of a G1 feel, although some future waves will include Beast Wars characters and so forth, like the original Generations lines. This wave in particular focuses on the IDW interpretations of characters in the comics, including special versions of Spotlight issues or non-Spotlight comics that nevertheless focused on the character as seen in their new toys. There's some controversy involved, such as changing the dialogue in Trailcutter's comic (a scene that had him change his name from Trailbreaker to Trailcutter is not changed to different dialogue, and we have always been at war with Eurasia), or using a comics-originated design for Megatron without giving the designer credit (or even advance notice). They've been a bit difficult to find in stores. I saw all four once, but passed because it was the week I was moving and I didn't want to have to pack more stuff. After that, for the next month or so I only saw a lone Megatron, and ended up ordering the other three from HasbroToyShop. Of course, the day they arrived, I saw wave 2 in stores, which included reships of all four of wave 1, plus two each of Hoist and Thundercracker. ;) CAPSULES $12-15 price point. The included comics didn't really raise the initial price, but might be seen as a reason to resist dropping it as quickly or as much once the wave has been around a while. Trailcutter: Pretty solid in both modes, some interesting transformation bits, and fairly faithful to the recent IDW redesign. Recommended. Orion Pax: This doesn't feel like it was intended to be Orion Pax, an impression only strengthened by the comic's "special body for just one mission" thing. It's a decent toy with some clever design bits, but some glaring flaws and a general feeling that it was supposed to be something else. Mildly recommended. Megatron: Good stealth bomber mode, transformation is a little too fiddly for my tastes. Robot mode would be good if not for lousy shoulder joints. Mildly recommended. Bumblebee: A decent adaptation of the IDW Bumblebee, but with shoulder problems of its own, some color mismatching and excessive use of interlocking tabs in altmode. Mildly recommended. RANTS Packaging: All new trade dress for the Thrilling 30 line, and the need to accomodate pack-in comics. These are full-sized comics, but in special exclusive cover editions so they can be distinguished from the original IDW releases. Trailcutter's comic is a bit of a weird case, because one of the plot points of the original story was having him change his name from Trailbreaker to Trailcutter, but this version has him start out as Trailcutter and replaces the relevant dialogue with something else. Thanks to the comic covers, there's no need (or room) for character art on the card front. It's a little trickier to cut the blister off, though. Cosells are two of the others in the wave. AUTOBOT: TRAILCUTTER Series: 02 Number: 001 Altmode: SUV Transformation Difficulty: Intermediate (2) Previous Name Use: TF:P Previous Mold Use: None Weapon: Battle Shield Function: Mobile Strongpoint Motto: "Why should it bother me? Oil off a polymerduck's back." Few AUTOBOTS are as well liked as TRAILCUTTER. He's always ready with a joke or a reassuring word - and when neither of those will do, his impenetrable force field usually serves to improve the situation. He sometimes worries that he uses too much fuel, but the other AUTOBOTS are more than happy to take a smaller Energon ration if it means TRAILCUTTER can keep deflecting incoming laser blasts. STR 6 INT 7 SPD 5 END 7 RNK 5 COUR 6 FRB 6 SKL 5 Avg 5.875 Packaging: Two strings hold in the robot mode, one holds the shield weapon roof piece. Comic: A "retool" of Spotlight: Trailcutter from April 2013, taking place between issues of More Than Meets The Eye. So, new enough I didn't have a copy of it already. ;) A decent one-shot, although apparently MTMTE Rodimus is a raging egomaniac. Robot Mode: One of the better-proportioned robots, and it even looks pretty much like the comicbook version. Which is to say, it's a lot more buff and linebacker-y than the portly G1 version. The forearms are a little short compared to the upper arms, but that's the only quibble I have with the proportions. And it uses the head originally designed for Alternators Trailbreaker before it got reassigned to being Alternators Swindle (and, in-storyline, stolen from the Autobots by Swindle). There's a proper force field projector behind the head, and you can mount the shield-gun on the back to recreate the G1-style shoulder guns, but unfortunately the mountain point is on top of the projector, so it has to be pointed up when the shield is connected. I kinda expect someone to use Shapeways to create an adapter to let you mount the shield backpack while the projector is pointed forward, though. Either an extension post for the peg hole in the middle of the back, or a sort of zigzag so the underside of the projector can be used as a connection point. 5.25" (13cm) tall, mostly black, gray and a reddish orange. Light slightly metallic gray plastic is used for the fists, thighs, abdomen, and some struts inside the torso and between the shoulders and the torso. Red-orange plastic is found on the collar, upper arms, and pieces that make up the lower knees and "bones" of the lower legs. It's also used for the handle inside the shield. The head lightpiping and windows around the torso are clear light blue plastic. Everything else is black plastic, including (AFAICT) the forcefield projector. Darkish silver paint coats the forcefield projector, and is used on the face, chest headlights-and-grille, shins, and shield-gun barrels (but not on the hubcaps). Red-orange paint adorns the shoulder fronts and upper kneecaps. A somewhat desaturated blue is found on the shins and the centers of the shoulder fronts. The undersides of the forearms have printed stripes in red and yellow (but not orange) for vehicle mode. The head and waist both turn smoothly. The shoulders are ball joints with slots to let them lift all the way to the sides. There's upper arm swivels, hinge elbows, and the wrists can swing inward for storage, which allows some useful articulation. Ball joint hips with swivels right below them, hinge knees, hinge toes. The forcefield projector is hinged on top of a strut, but the strut itself is fixed in place. Lots of 5mm peg holes. One on each shoulder, one on each forearm, the fists hold 5mm pegs, there's a peg hole through the forcefield projector, and one somewhat inaccessible in the middle of the back. There's also 5mm peg holes on the top sides of the boots, to mount leg weapons or something, I guess. Weapon: The roof-shield has two configurations. Folded closed, it can be pegged onto the folded-up forcefield projector via a very short 5mm peg. That peg can also go onto the shoulder of forearm peg holes, but it's too short for the fist. Folding it open hides that short peg, but lets you fold out an orange handle. It looks right-handed, but can go in on the underside of the fist for a left-handed grip as seen on the comic cover. The instructions show it held in a way that requires bending the arm wierdly. Folded shut, it's 2.75" (7cm) long, with the aforementioned short 5mm peg on the underside near the front and two 5mm peg holes on the top near the back. There's another short 5mm peg pointed forward, but it's strictly for holding into place in truck mode. Folded open, it isn't any longer (the black panel that folds up doesn't quite reach past the gun barrels), and the short peg is now pointed up and inaccessible to any but a few connections. The gun barrels are a little more than 3mm in diameter, in case you were thinking of clipping some weapons onto them. Transformation: The chest does a lot of unfolding and swinging around, it's quite clever while remaining stable and durable. The shoulders are a little tricky, mainly because the swivels on the shoulder roots are very stiff and they have to rotate together to stuff the shoulders up under the hood. One thing to be careful about is the center of the hood, which has room to push in a little, and it's hard to get it popped back out if you push it in while trying to shove the shoulders into place. The boots do a sort of fold-in that a few of the Power Core Combiner commanders did in order to get their legs into torso mode. The last step is to put the shield-gun on as a camper shell...if not for the forcefield projector strut, it'd make a decent pickup truck without the shell, but it's just too unbalanced without the shell. Vehicle Mode: Well, they call it an SUV, but it really does look like a beefy pickup truck with a camper shell, in keeping with the spirit of G1 Trailbreaker. They almost reproduced the classic 70s side deco, but instead of yellow-orange-red stripes, it's one yellow and then two red. Maybe they were worried Menards would sue? The cab windows are actually built like those in a combat vehicle, with an octagonal profile and armored slats on the side windows. The camper shell windows are unpainted black plastic, adding to the armored feel. The rear wheels are the sort of clip-ins seen in a lot of vehicles lately, but the front wheels are riveted on thin discs representing about a third of the tire, with the rest of each wheel being a fixed piece that's part of the upper arm detailing. On mine, one front wheel spins freely, the other is kinda stuck. The heel blocks are molded to look like the upper taillights, although none of the three taillight chunks has any paint. While this is definitely not a street vehicle (the guns can't be hidden, for instance), it's closer to street legal than the spiky plow- equipped TF:Prime version of Trailcutter. 4" (10.5cm) long, and assuming it's meant to be as big as the GMC Topkick (movie Ironhide), that makes it 1:64 or 1:72. If "only" as big as a Sport Utility like the Honda Ridgeline, though, it'd be more like 1:48 or 1:50. (At 1:32 scale, this would be the size of my Mazda 3.) Almost entirely black, with a few bits of silver, splashes of red and yellow, and windows that might as well be painted black because there's black plastic behind all of them. A red with silver border Autobot symbol is printed on the hood (not visible in robot mode), a bit of the red-orange collar pokes up at the front of the roof, and there's those yellow and red stripes on the side I mentioned earlier. The forcefield projector and guns are silver, as are the headlights and grille. The winch molded onto the front is unpainted. While there's plenty of peg holes here, they tend to get in each other's way. The ones from the boots and forearms are right next to each other, so you can really only use one of each pair. The two on the back of the camper shell are partly blocked by the forcefield projector. Stability is okay, although the cab doesn't lock down as well as I'd like, and that leads to the camper shell also coming loose at times. Overall: I remember kitbashing a Spychanger Trailbreaker because it didn't seem like we'd ever get another official version, so I'm moderately pleased at the renaissance the character has enjoyed lately. And this is a pretty good toy even without the nostalgia factor...really, the only design element I'd have changed is the forcefield projector strut. I'd have made it either hinged or outright removable. Oh, and I'd have made the middle stripes on the doors orange, and put more yellow-orange-red bits on the camper shell. :) AUTOBOT: ORION PAX Series: 02 Number: 002 Altmode: Truck Transformation Difficulty: Intermediate (2) Previous Name Use: None (leaving aside exclusives) Previous Mold Use: None Weapon: Energon Axe Function: Archivist Motto: "The seeds of our future lie buried in the past." Long before the burden of leadership was forced upon him, ORION PAX was a great thinker, an intellectual revolutionary. He spent his life plugged into a console, sorting, parsing and filing historical data. As the world outside grew darker and more bleak, he saw hope for the future in his world's past. He saw, when no one else would, that CYBERTRON could once again be free - and he has clung to that dream even through the dark times since. STR 3 INT 9 SPD 4 END 4 RNK 2 COUR 10 FRB 1 SKL 9 Avg 5.25 Keep in mind, the G1 Orion Pax was just this guy who worked on the docks. Not a thinker by any stretch, not a revolutionary. The archivist characterization is much more recent, starting with the Optronix identity crafted in the Dreamwave comics, although it's since been grafted onto the neo-G1 Orion Pax (which, frankly, is a much better name anyway). Packaging: Three strings in an oddly asymmetric scheme hold the robot in, plus one more on the axe. The rifle is held firmly in Pax's right hand. Comic: One of the problems this toy faced was that the design picked for it looked nothing like the Orion Pax design used elsewhere in the comics. So the Orion Pax spotlight issue was written to put him in this body for a single mission. I'm glad I didn't buy this comic separately, though, as the story didn't do much for me. Running gag about the lack of faceplate, running gag about Alpha Trion being a font of trivia, running gag about Nightbeat having no patience for either of their crap. Eh. And the art looks like a fan comic, especially whenever Zeta Prime is on-panel. Robot Mode: This brings Thunderclash (aka Machine Wars Optimus Prime) to mind, between the lack of faceplate and the way the chest looks. There's several classic Optimus elements, like the helmet, the general color scheme, and the ||> shapes on the forearms. He has a classic Optimus rifle and an energon axe (but no way to give him an axe-hand). The most obviously non-Optimus design element is the presence of armor panels on the forearms (intended to hide the arms in vehicle mode), and those are removable if you don't like 'em. The overall look is mostly solid, but the forearms are totally hollow. At least they molded tech details on the insides, but that only helps so much. One odd design feature is a single piece of black plastic in the roof panel behind the head, which feels like it might be a placeholder for a retool component (i.e. a spoiler or something if they retool this into Rodimus). It can't be just for a 5mm peg hole, though, because the hole would have to go through a metal pin. 5" (12.5cm) tall at the head, add about a centimeter more for the roof piece sticking up in back. It's the usual Optimus Prime colors. Bright red plastic makes the shoulders, forearms, and part of the upper torso shell. A duller red plastic is used for the bits between torso and shoulders, and the struts in the small of the back that hold the front wheels. Dark blue plastic is used on the head, hands, feet, and all the pieces that make up the lower legs aside from the ankles. The lightpiping and chest window are clear colorless, and I'm guessing the axe is a single piece of clear colorless as well, just with transparent paint on parts of it. The wheels, rifle, wrist roots, collar area and that weird patch behind the head are black plastic. The upper arms, forearm panels, abdomen, pelvis, hips, thighs and ankles are light gray plastic (although I think some of the joint bits are a different slightly duller plastic). In addition to several vehicle parts I'll get to later, silver paint is used on the face and the tech stuff visible inside the chest window. I think the white outline on red background Autobot symbol inside the chest may be a decal. The eyes are painted bright blue, so the lightpiping ends up as just outlines around the eyes. The arrows on the forearms and the rooflights on top of the chest are painted yellow, and part of the abdomen is painted red. The front fenders stuck to the outsides of the boots are also painted glossy red. The axe haft is painted gloss black, while the blade and bit are painted transparent red-orange. The head is on a ball joint, but the panel behind the head restricts this a bit. The waist turns smoothly. The shoulders are universal joints, but the pegs that keep them in place aren't very strong so they can pop out of position easily. There's upper arm swivels, hinge elbows, and the wrists can swivel and fold inward. Be careful with them, though, the hinges are just snap-in joints, and trying to get a weapon out of the hand can lead to the entire hand popping out of the forearm. The hips are ball joints with swivels right below them, the knees are hinges, and the ankles are ball joints on the end of swivel struts. The kneecaps are hinged so that they don't impede knee movement. Weapons: The axe is 4" (10.5cm) long. The last inch or so of the haft is slightly thinner than 5mm in diameter, with a short section of it being thickened up to 5mm above that, so a two-handed grip will be a little loose. There's a 5mm peg up near the head, intended for vehicle mode storage. It'd be nice if there was a peg hole on the back for storing it in robot mode. Resting it between the wheels works, more or less, but isn't as nice as a dedicated post hole would be. The rifle is 2.5" (6cm) long with a single grip peg. There's no way to mount another weapon on it as a bayonet, or combine the axe and rifle into some sort of superweapon. As with the axe, there's no solid place to store it in robot mode if you want to have Pax wielding the axe with both hands, but it will stay put between the wheels on back if you're careful. Transformation: The chest becomes the cab window, as usual for an Optimus, but the hood is actually the outer layer of the boots, with the sides of the truck being panels that are also on the boots. Once you get the torso and arms transformed (which is a little tricky, especially since the arms do not actually peg to each other, but only to the legs), the boots unfold to make a shell around everything else. The feet turn around and fold back inside the backs of the boots, hiding them quite nicely. However, there's thrusters molded into the undersides of the feet, so if you leave them out in robot configuration it doesn't look too bad either. A certain amount of massaging is needed once all the parts are close to being in the right places. Vehicle Mode: With only four wheels, it's more of a pickup truck than a semitractor, and the panels that hide the arms make it look like a scaled down version of the Shockwave jet truck that inspired Energon Rodimus. The armor panels don't really hide the arms so much as they declare "nothing back here is supposed to look normal, ignore any robot bits you may see." The armor panels also help break up the color balance, which is more mixed than the traditional "red in front, blue in back" Optimus Prime truck. Instead, the middle of the hood and the rear fenders are dark blue, while the top middle and the front/middle sides are red, and the back is more gray thanks to the panels. While plausible for an OP (either expansion of the initials), it doesn't clearly signal either strongly enough that they'd have trouble making a different character out of a few minor retools (new arm panels, do something with that roof bit). Oh, and the black rectangle on the roof looks like it should be a rubsign. One oddball detail in the molding is the rear view mirrors, which are too far back to actually be useful even if someone were able to sit in the cab (they're the pegs the shoulders connect to). 4.5" (12cm) long, it really relies on a good match between the red paint and the red plastic, since something like half the red visible in this mode is paint. Fortunately, the match is good. Unfortunately, that duller joint plastic red doesn't match well. The sides and hood are all dark blue plastic, just painted over. There's gloss red paint on the front fenders and doors, silver on the front bumper, door tech details, grille, and hubcaps (making this one of the few recent toys with painted hubcaps). The headlights and rooflights are yellow. One 5mm peg hole sits ahead of each rear wheel, intended for mounting the weapons. It's awkward (and the axe haft is supposed to be a cannon barrel or something in this mode, but it looks more like he's transporting an electric guitar), but at least there's a place to put 'em. Stability is pretty good once everything is in its proper place. Overall: It's okay, but when the question "what will this get retooled into?" engages me more than the toy itself, that's not a great sign. It's a little too old-school in the way it has nowhere solid to put the weapons other than in the hands, and the included comic makes it feel even more like it was never really supposed to be an OP toy in the first place. DECEPTICON: MEGATRON Series: 02 Number: 003 Altmode: Stealth Bomber Transformation Difficulty: Intermediate (2) Previous Name Use: Yes Previous Mold Use: None Weapon: Fusion Cannon Function: Decepticon Leader Motto: "Idealism is a luxury no true leader can afford." There was a time when those who wore the DECEPTICON badge did so with pride, and not fear. There was a time when the name of MEGATRON was honored by many across CYBERTRON. He was a scholar, a warrior and a hero, fighting for the freedom of the oppressed. But power inevitably corrupts, and none are so powerful as mighty MEGATRON. Long ago, he forgot he was a hero, and became nothing more than a tyrant. STR 10 INT 9 SPD 8 END 10 RNK 10 COUR 10 FRB 9 SKL 9 Avg 9.375 One of the things the comics started and Hasbro ran with was the idea that the "golden age" of Cybertron was actually a gilded age, with a horribly corrupt government and a rigid caste system. Optimus/Orion Pax and Megatron both started out trying to fix things in their own way, brothers in arms, with Megatron's fall being a major source of angst for Optimus. Oh, and speaking of the comics, this toy has caused a bit of controversy in the fandom, because this version of Megatron was designed toyetically by Don Figueroa, who wasn't even contacted when Hasbro decided to make it into a toy. Yeah, work for hire, derivative works, etc, but still kinda rude. Packaging: Four strings hold the robot in place, with the fusion cannon attached to the arm, but with the barrel retracted. The heel spurs are folded up. In pulling this out of the blister, despite the blister not being terribly tight, I had an arm fall off at the shoulder. This was a sign of things to come, this toy just can't keep its arms attached. Comic: I stopped reading IDW comics on a regular basis just about the time Megatron was getting his new body introduced post-AHM. This looks to be a flashback story meant to fit in shortly after the time I stopped, though, in which Megatron puts his new body through its paces while beating the scrap out of Starscream (who is in his Masterpiece mold version). Okay examination of the dynamics of the two. Robot Mode: I'll start with what this doesn't have: painted panel lines. The glowing purple lines all over the place are one of the distinctive features of this iteration of Megatron, and it just doesn't look the same without the lines painted in. Of course, the comic cover art (a cropped version of the retailer incentive one) doesn't have the lines either, but all the other original covers did. However, considering just the mold and not the paint job, it's a good execution of the comic design, Megatron as a stealth bomber. 5.25" (13cm) tall, a mix of sparkly dark gray and various shades of purple with a little red added. A metalflaked dark gray (not quite black) plastic makes up most of the toy, but there's a lot of understated slightly lavender silvery gray plastic (shoulder struts, upper arms, inner part of forearms, thighs, part of the inner boots, heels) and some overstated bright warm purple plastic (fists, collar, pelvis, ankle joints). The lightpiping is clear purple. The fusion cannon is almost entire clear purple plastic, with the bright warm purple plastic used for the 5mm peg. They did a really good job matching the sparkly dark gray plastic with paint, to the point I wondered if they'd simply painted all the dark gray plastic with the paint as well (it seems not, but they do need to get a more polished surface to bring out the shine, so the backs of the pieces are duller). This paint is used on the fusion cannon pieces so that when the pieces are used as wingtips they look the same as the fuselage, and also on some armor pads for the thighs. A pale metallic lavender paint is used on the shoulder vents, shoulderpads, abdomen, kneecap vents, face, backs of the forearms, and lower shins. This match was pretty bad, if the intent was to look like the silvery lavender plastic. There's some bits of red on the windows molded into the torso, and a purple Decepticon symbol printed on the center of the chest. Unfortunately, the excellent sparkly gray paint is also a barrier to customizing the toy to look more like the comic design, since the shins and shoulderpads need to be that color as well, and I expect it'd be really hard to match at home. (Of course, someone just painted it up like G2 Tank Megatron, bypassing the issue entirely.) The head is on a very stiff ball joint, and combined with the fuselage piece behind the head, it's hard to turn. The waist does not turn. The shoulders are ball joints on the end of hinged struts, and are the absolute worst part of the toy. Not only do the struts sag (potentially fixable), the ball and socket joints are just badly designed. They simply don't hold very well, and there's plenty of ways to get accidental leverage to help pop the arms off. Even after several times through the transformation, I can't get through it without at least one arm popping off. Moving on, there's the usual upper arm swivels, plus hinge elbows and the wrists bend inward on transformation hinges. Ball joint hips, swivels just above the hinge knees. The toes and heels are separately hinged, very important for stability on this fairly top-heavy figure. The kneecaps are also hinged so they can be kept hugging the thighs. While there's some minor stability problems with other joints, they all pale in comparison to the shoulders. The hands can hold 5mm pegs, plus there are 5mm peg holes on the backs of the forearms. Yeah, that's it. Stealth bombers aren't really designed with obvious external weapon mountings. Weapon: The fusion cannon is made up of the two wingtips pegged together, with an autotransform gimmick that exgtends the tips and reveals clear plastic in the middle. 2.25" (6cm) long at its shortest, 3" (7.5cm) extended. It's a little unstable, relying on the somewhat more rigid clear plastic for both sides of the pegging. The purple peg at the end is hinged to fold away in vehicle mode, and while intended for mounting on one of the forearm pegholes, it can be held in Megatron's hand as well. Transformation: Normally, the "unfold everything that can unfold, disconnect everything that can disconnect" dictum takes you pretty far on figuring out transformations, but there's an awful lot of pointless panel jointing here. I suppose the point is to allow some very small and subtle changes (flaps open on the backs of the shoulders that aren't deployed in-package, make the boots a little wider, make the chest angle a little more), but it felt like making a jigsaw puzzle with a bunch of non-border pieces having straight edges. Going to robot mode, the instructions are missing the step where you fold the back panels on the shoulderpads out to match the package photo (and the comic cover). Vehicle Mode: Inspired by, but not an exact reproduction of, the B-2 Stealth Bomber. It has a built-in vanishing point, with the lines of the thrusters (the forearms) not being parallel, instead angling together. This actually helps the illusion of size...by bringing the apparent horizon closer, it feels farther away and therefore bigger. The vanishing point is only about 4" (10cm) behind the vehicle, so if you hold it even a foot away, it looks like it's three quarters of the way to the horizon. Nice optical illusion. 3.75" (9.5cm) long with a 7" (18cm) wingspan, it's overwhelmingly sparkly black when viewed from above or directly from the front. None of the purple plastic is visible from above, and all of the clear wingtip pieces are painted over from that angle. The lavender-silver paint is seen on the very nose tip, the intake vents, and the tops of the thrusters. The cockpit windows are red. Viewed from the front, there's also some lavender-silver on the front ends of....I guess they're bomb bays or something. Whatever the arms turn into on the underside. There's no Decepticon symbol visible in this mode, just a lot of starry night. The bright purple nosewheel strut swings down with difficulty. The other wheels are just nubs molded onto the undersides of the arms. The forearm peg holes end up on top of the engines, but no accessories that would use them are included. (If you remove the wingtips to make the fusion cannon, the result is even less tank-like than G2 Dreadwing's.) Fairly stable and sleek-looking. Even the underside kibble isn't hideously bad. Overall: Nice vehicle mode, somewhat fiddly transformation, and a robot mode that'd be pretty good if not for the lousy shoulder design. Worth picking up, but not the best of the four. AUTOBOT: BUMBLEBEE Series: 02 Number: 004 Altmode: Sports Car Transformation Difficulty: Intermediate (2) Previous Name Use: Yes Previous Mold Use: None Weapon: Stinger Blasters Function: Autobot Leader Motto: "I may not be the right bot at the right time, but that doesn't mean I'm giving up!" Rebuilt into a new, more powerful form, BUMBLEBEE attacks life - and the DECEPTICONS - with a newfound confidence. His enhanced speed, armor and strength all combine to make him the warrior he's always wanted to be, but he remains devoted to his human friends, and the AUTOBOT ideal of freedom. STR 6 INT 8 SPD 8 END 7 RNK 7 COUR 10 FRB 6 SKL 6 Avg 7.25 This is more or less the form he got in the comics shortly before I stopped regularly reading them, when he got stuck with the job of leading the Autobots who survived All Hail Megatron. It didn't go very well, he made Rodimus Prime look like a self-assured leader. The bio note (and that RNK 7) is doing him a favor by treating him more like the Beast Hunters version. Packaging: Four strings hold the robot mode in place, and one each on the two stinger blasters. Even in package you can see that the bane of yellow toys is in full force here: yellow paint on a darker plastic almost never matches the yellow plastic, and in this case it's quite dire. It's like they didn't even try to match up the yellows. Comic: This could be summarized as "How Bumblebee learned to stop sucking as a leader," or "How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The B-Plot." The art is so-so...decent figure work and layout, but it's missing a feeling of completeness. Robot Mode: WhY mY sHOUlDeRs FlOPpY? Er, another loose shoulder issue, although at least they don't pop apart like Megatron's. The superglue trick helps a little. For the most part it does a good job of adapting the comic design, but because it can't cheat the shoulders are too deep and the torso too thin. The fake hood on the chest just feels too flat (and it has to be, in order to fit inside vehicle mode), and the head is similarly smooshed. 5.25" (13cm) tall, in the usual yellow and black with silvery gray. Black plastic is used for the forearms, shin cores, and wheels. Light silvery gray plastic is used on the inner shoulder bits, upper arms, thighs, ankle joints and most of the stinger weapons. Clear light blue plastic makes up the energy bits of the stingers, the wing door windows, the lightpiping, and various windows on the backpack. Everything else is bright yellow plastic. That poorly-matching yellow paint mentioned earlier is on the forearms and the business end of the stingers (housing where the energy bits emerge). Black stripes are painted on the fake hood and some bits of the front grille visible on the shoulderpads. There's silver on the face, some helmet details, the center of the chest (where the fake hood pieces are split to show robot inside), the headlights on the shoulderpads, and the wheel hubs. The opaque windows on the shins are painted metallic blue. The real taillights on the kneecaps and the fake taillights on the toes (a different style of rear bumper is molded on the toes for some reason) are painted red, although the ones on the toes are painted over a layer of gunmetal and look darker. The toe tips and bits of the rear bumper on the kneecaps are painted a dark gunmetal. A red Autobot symbol with white border is printed on the center of the chest. The head and waist both turn, although the roof kibble on the back gets in the way a little. The shoulders are a combination of several swivels and hinges that allow a lot more range of motion in theory than the shoulderpads permit in practice, but once you solve the looseness issue they're pretty good. Swivels are located just above the soft-ratcheting hinge elbows. Sadly, there's no wrist articulation. Ball joint hips, thigh swivels just below them, hinge knees and separately hinged kneecaps. The ankles are struts with a hinge at the bottom and a ball joint at the top...a bit weird, but effective. The hands can hold 5mm pegs, and there's 5mm peg holes on the undersides of the forearms. That's pretty much it. Well, there's some holes on the boots, but they're not very useful. Weapons: Definitely taking a cue from TF:Animated's Bumblebee, with the dual stingers that can combine into a single weapon (and from his thrusters by attaching them to the sides in vehicle mode). They're identical, each with two pods that emit energy. They can peg together to form a single weapon with four pods. 2.75" (7cm) long, with a hinged 5mm peg at the end. The hinge is so they can be held as individual guns or in combined mode. They can be held like swords too, although they don't look like they were intended for it. It's sort of possible to hold the combined weapon in both hands, but the shoulders look really dumb in the pose required for it. By carefully positioning the pegs, you can set it on one end like some sort of energon plot device gizmo. Transformation: This is one of those designs where the chest slides up, which is why the head has to be so flat. The basic principles of the transformation are pretty simple, but getting all the shellformery panel clips together is difficult. Also, there's a gap in the rear window, you can't slide the window pieces together to mesh properly as some other designs have done. There also does not seem to be a way to lift the fake hood chest up any higher, so the car has zero clearance. The stinger weapons do not store inside the vehicle, or otherwise integrate. You just stick them into peg holes on the rear fenders. Vehicle Mode: A yellow muscle car with black rally stripes, of course. Not a Camaro, though, this one is pretty close to being a fifth generation Ford Mustang, with a few tweaks to avoid lawsuits. The biggest change is that the rear of the hood is bent down, as if someone punched him at the joint between windshield and hood. 5.25" (13cm) long, making it roughly 1:36 scale. It's the usual yellow with black rally stripes, and has clear light blue windows except for the rear windows, which are painted metallic medium blue. So, pretty much the traditional Bumblebee colors since 2007. Once all the tabs are meshed properly, the stability is very good, even if the ground clearance is non-existent. If the peg holes on the rear fenders were a bit deeper the weaponed up mode would look as good as the carefully composed photo on the cardback, but they stick out too far. Oh, and unlike a lot of Transformers these days, all of the wheels are pinned in place and don't pop off. Overall: Well, if there's gonna be the inevitable Bumblebee in the Thrilling Thirty line, IDW's neo-G1 take is at least a little different, combining the muscle car altmode of the more recent versions with the head of the old compact car. The loose shoulders and yellow mismatch are definite issues, though, and the tab-happy transformation can be frustrating. Dave Van Domelen, got a bunch of Tenkai Knights toys and was rather disappointed.