Dave's Transformers Titans Return Rant: Legends Wave 4 Roadburn (Bumblebee retool) Brawn (Hummvee) Also a reship of Bumblebee. Permalink: https://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Gen/LegendR4 https://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Gen/LegendR3 - Bumblebee mold CAPSULES $10 price point. Roadburn: Original mold was mildly recommended. This doesn't suffer from the "yellow paint on black plastic" problems of that mold, but paint application on mine was really sloppy. Mildly recommended. Brawn: Very nice update of the character in both modes. A little partsformery, although this aspect is clearly designed to allow for a distinctively different retool later. Recommended. RANTS Packaging: Standard Titans Return Legion. AUTOBOT: ROADBURN Assortment: C1102 Titan Master: None Altmode: Compact Car Transformation Difficulty: 8 steps (odd, since Bumblebee was 7) Previous Name Use: None Previous Mold Use: Gen Weapon: None Function: Chaser Motto: "Full throttle!" If Decepticons think they can outrun ROADBURN, they are wrong. STR 4 SPD 7 INT 7 FRB 2 Yes, they forgot to put Decepticons in all caps. He's actually got a higher Speed than G1 Chase (or Searchlight), but still low for "fastest one around" so I guess the writers had a rare moment of "maybe the highest numbers should be reserved for flying altmodes". (I checked, the techspec numbers don't match any of the Throttlebots. Plus, why does Goldbug have STR 9?) Interestingly, this was going to be Chase (the Throttlebot, not the Rescue Bot) until so late in the process that it still shows up on some store receipts as Chase. And yet, the head mold is based on Searchlight (not Freeway as TFWiki claims), another Throttlebot. They even have his package art with Roadburn shining a beam of light from his visor. OTOH, the top of the head is indeed kinda like Freeway. I suspect they might have used the comics panel from http://tfu.info/1987/Autobot/Searchlight/searchlight.htm to design the head, since the comics mixed up the Throttlebots a LOT. Packaging: 7 ties, just like on Bumblebee. Color Swaps: Black stays black, yellow replaced by medium red. Paint Apps: Sloppy. In vehicle mode, there's black paint on the bottom edge of the car body all the way around, thickening on the front end back bumper areas, and it paints outside the lines a lot. The rear side windows are also painted black, and a triangle in front of the windshield (basically a belt buckle for robot mode). The front grille is medium gray, and the headlights are somewhat sloppy yellow. The non-window parts on the black roof and door parts are painted red in a decent match for the plastic, but also with little regard for straight lines. A white outline Autobot symbol is printed on the roof. The only new paint for robot mode is the head. It's dipped in dark blue paint, then the entire face is painted a dull brownish yellow, exactly matching the comics design linked to earlier. (The Searchlight toy just painted the visor, not the face, the Chase toy did paint the entire face yellow.) Mold Changes: New head, based on Throttlebot Searchlight/Freeway as mentioned above. It has sort of a mecha-mustache going on. Other Notes: The license plate is not remolded. If you insist on a Cliffjumper from this mold, Prize Inside on Shapeways has a replacement head you can buy. It does feel like they were told to make something that would work as any of the non-Goldbug car Throttlebots and they'd decide later, though. Just as well he got an entirely new name. (Hmmm, headcanon: a spacebridge accident fused Chase, Freeway, and Searchlight into a single robot. Chase's personality dominates the resulting gestalt mind.) Overall: Hey, at least this red retool of Bumblebee isn't yet another Cliffjumper. If you see this before you've bought BB, get this instead, it's not subject to "yellow paint on black never matches yellow plastic" problems. Do check packages to see if you can find one that's not as badly painted as mine, though. AUTOBOT: BRAWN Assortment: C1103 Titan Master: None (although he can always use the Brawn one) Altmode: Hummvee Transformation Difficulty: 6 steps Previous Name Use: G1, Uni2, RotF Previous Mold Use: None Weapon: None Function: Demolitions Motto: "Say hello to my little friend!" BRAWN loves a challenge, even if it's a DECEPTICON ten times his size. STR 9 SPD 4 INT 3 FRB 1 Techspecs match the G1 version. Adding Titan Master Brawn would raise him to STR 14, SPD 6, INT 5, and FRB 3. :) Packaging: 5 ties. The heel spurs are left folded in, and need to be flipped out to get the robot mode correct. Robot Mode: A really good match to the animation model, although they sort of had to cheat and make the rear roof a separate accessory. The hood of truck mode overhangs the head rather than being completely behind it and is missing the yellow bit that would make it more show-accurate. They went a little too far in the G1 homage in one way, as the silver-painted forearms are painted to look like worn chrome on the original toys. A stocky 3.5" (9cm) tall, in dark greeym yellow, and silver (plus black wheels). Dark green metalflake plastic is used for the upper arms, the torso back, the roof accessory piece, and the legs/feet. The wheels are black plastic, the rest of the toy (including the painted-over head) is golden yellow plastic. The forearms are painted mostly silver, with a few gaps or sloppy borders that end up looking like chrome wear, plus some yellow paint stripes along the bottom of the forearm (not unpainted yellow plastic). The head is painted over in dark gray, with silver face and medium blue eyes. Medium blue paint is also used on the belt buckle, and gloss black on the center of the pelvis. There's yellow on the tops of the shoulders, as well as silver paint on the vehicle front-end details on top of the shoulders. A red on silver Autobot symbol is printed on the abdomen. The head turns on a swivel, but it's hard to get a good grip on it thanks to the hood overhang. No waist joint. Ball joint shoulders on shrugging struts, ball joint elbows and hips, hinge knees. The heel spurs are hinged, but not really a useful joint. All four wheels are snap-on. The fists can hold 5mm pegs, and there's 5mm holes on the outside surfaces of the forearms. A fifth 5mm hole is in the small of the back, on the vehicle roof. There's no 3mm pelvis hole for using an action figure stand, but they have a clever workaround. That workaround is the accessory. It's the spare tire on top of the rear roof, dark green plastic with gloss black paint on the tire part. A trio of round details on one end look more like weapon ports than tail lights. It has a single 5mm peg that lets it be held in the fist as a gun, placed on the forearm as a shield, or stowed on the back. The center of the spare tire is a 3mm peg hole, so Cyberverse weapons can be plugged into it. And when the shield is on the back, this hole is available for a stand to plug in. Titan Masters can ride around in the driver's compartment in robot mode. Tweaks to bring it more in line with the animation model: Gray kneecaps (mostly hidden in vehicle mode), yellow on the front of the hood chunk, make the windows light blue rather than black. Reprolabels can probably handle these. Of course, the show model has the wheels vanish, which is beyond the ability of labels or paint to fix. Transformation: Mostly straightforward, with the arms shrugging up against the sides and the boots folding over to make the rear of the vehicle. The only tricky bit is that the forearms need to be rotated so that the painted yellow stripes are on the outward-facing sides. Once otherwise done, snap the shield onto the back end via two non-standard tabs (the 5mm peg just sits between the shins). Note, without the shield it still looks like a regular Hummvee as opposed to one with a "camper shell," so losing the accessory doesn't prevent it from assuming a vehicle mode. There's even side windows molded onto the shins, so we might get a retool that loses the shield and gives him a roof-mounted gun or something. Vehicle Mode: While not licensed, it's basically a Hummvee. In particular, it's the sort that's modified for more cargo capacity in the back, but not the full ambulance mod seen in movie Ratchet (a different shield mold would let you do that, though). The silver arms are molded to look like a combination of fuel tanks and exterior storage, to make up for the fact they can't be completely hidden when they're no longer just skinny claws. 3.25" (8cm) long, so about 1:56 scale. Dark green dominates this mode, with only the front bumper and that stripe on the side of the forearm being yellow, plus silver on the grille and arm chunks. The roof/windshield piece is actually black plastic with dark green paint in a very good match with the dark green plastic. So the windshields are left unpainted, as is a section of the central hood where the hinge is. A small red on silver Autobot symbol is printed on that black bit. The grille, brushguard, and headlights are painted silver, with yellow bumper bits. VERY little clearance, even after they flattened out the chest details. It rolls well on a totally flat or concave surface, though. Only the one roof 5mm peg hole remains accessible in this mode, as the fist holes do not go all the way through. It's easy to get a Titan Master into the driver's compartment, no need to partially untransform like with the Bumblebee mold. However, due to the 5mm peg hole in the roof, you need to lean the figure forward a bit to close the roof. Getting the heel spur firmly in place requires a thin finger and a fair amount of force, though. Possible redecos: Outback/Fallback would probably be a straight redeco, maybe with a head swap. Replacing the shield with a gun could make for a Swindle retool. A different shield would allow for a movie-inspired Ratchet, but I kinda doubt they'll go that direction. I'd really like a very light colored deco so it can be dyed other colors for customization. Brawnception: Yes, you can have Brawn ride in Brawn while using Brawn's tread-jeep as a gun. The plastic colors match very closely, within reasonable batch variation. Overall: Pretty good design and a good update, plus plenty of potential for tweaks in later redecos. Dave Van Domelen, discovered the wave 5 Cosmos is slightly redeco'ed, but not anywhere near enough to get him to buy the mold again.