Dave's Marvel Transformers Rant: Amazing Spider-Man Flip and Attack Battle Hauler Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Marvel/BattleHauler Released as part of the "The Amazing Spider-Man" movie toy line, the other three toys in the line are the Spider Racer (sort of a race car), Spider Jet (kinda Topspin-ish) and Cyber-Lizard (Lizard to chunk with weapons). These are modern successors to the Jumpstarters, with pretty much the same articulation as Jumpstarters...and vehicle modes about as convincing, if not less so because of all the Spider-Man costume details on three of them. At a $10 price point, I wasn't interested, but I decided to pick up one when they went on sale for $8 at Target. CAPSULE Battle Hauler: Well, it's a Jumpstarter. Total G1-style brick, and with the usual molded web patterns that make it more difficult to repurpose or kitbash. It works okay, and little kids will probably enjoy it, but it doesn't have much crossover appeal to older fans. $10 price point. RANT Package: These are in a blister card with an irregular crystal pattern (probably meant to evoke webs) on the left side of the blister. The card is 8.25" (21cm) tall and 5.25" (13.5cm) wide, with the blister being 6" (15cm) tall, full width of the card, and 2.25" (6cm) deep. The toys are packaged in robot mode. The card fronts are all the same, with Spider-Man and his logo at the top, and abstract blue and gray patterns behind the toy. The card insert shows the toy in three photos flipping into robot mode (vehicle on left, robot on right, transitional between) under the Flip and Attack logo. The right side mentions "with TRANSFORMERS technology", so these are and aren't "real" Transformers. I guess they've given up on the umbrella Crossovers brand entirely. The card backs show photos of both modes, with callouts advertising the pull-back motor gimmick. The three others in the wave are in a small inset, robot mode only. No storyline, techspecs, etc. Folded up inside is a single sheet of instructions in blue and red ink. They don't bother giving instructions for transformation (it's a flipchanger, after all), but instead the instructions are for how to reset the latch if it gets messed up. This is quite useful, assuming the owner retains the instructions long enough. :) The blister alone is used to hold the figure in, no ties or rubber bands. If there's several copies of the one you want on the shelf, look carefully for paint problems. They seem to have done these very quickly, and there's red paint splotched on places nowhere near an intentional red area on mine. SPIDER-MAN: BATTLE HAULER Altmode: Armored Personnel Carrier Robot Mode: There's a definite heft to this toy, unlike the Jumpstarters, but they seem to manage it purely by having the legs made of solid plastic, rather than by inserting any metal weights. The look is a lot closer to "Spider-Man Mecha" than the earlier Spidey Transformers, including the chest missile pods typical of Dougram/Robotech style mechs. The head reminds me of some of the Crossovers Spidey heads (looking "normal" from the front but weirdly techy in the back), and there's a lot of web-pattern panels around the suit (not all of them are painted red, though). The pelvis is a cockpit, a common innuendo-inviting element of all four toys in the line. There's tank treads on the arms, and weapons on the legs that are fixed in the "shoot my own armpit" position in this mode. 5" (12.5cm) tall, mostly blue with some red, gray and yellow bits. The head is made from rubbery blue plastic, everything else in this mode is made from a rigid dark blue plastic. The crossbar that holds the feet together is a slightly different shade of blue. Gloss red paint is the most common, used on the mask, center chest, shinguards and some details on the leg missiles. The tank treads and elbow joints are painted light gray, the cockpit windows are yellow. The missiles are white, the guns on the legs are silver. The eyes are white with black borders, and the movie-style spider symbol is printed in black on teh center chest. The missile tips on the chest are silver, as are some details on the backs of the legs. On the underside of one of the feet is a warning sticker about the dangers of it getting tangled in a kid's hair. The arms swivel at the shoulders. The head can be turned a little, but snaps back...the peg isn't round, but it's flexible. The figure can bend at the waist, but snaps back up on a spring. One of the weirder little details is that there's non-functional wheels molded into the toe tips. These fake wheels don't even come close to the surface in vehicle mode, nor would they matter much in robot mode even if they could rolle. I suspect they may have been included purely as a visual callback to the rolling wheels of the Jumpstarters' toes. Transformation: Robot to vehicle, just fold it in half and make sure the arms aren't in a totally dumb position. Vehicle to robot, pull back and let it run, it'll pop open on its own. Just like the Jumpstarters of nearly 30 years ago. Vehicle Mode: The reason I got this one is that, well, it's not trying to look like anything in particular, so "box with treads and weapons" is acceptable. With the legs flipped up on top, the weapons on the sides (two missiles and a long-barrelled machine cannon on each leg) are now pointed forward. Additionally, stubby cannons made of rubbery plastic (and painted silver) are revealed, now flanking the cockpit. And the silver bits on the backs of the legs are probably meant to be additional cannons, although they're painted too sloppily to be sure. The arm-treads are well above the surface, it rolls on a pair of rubber-tired wheels in back and a skid in front (on the skidplate). 3.25" (8cm) long, 3" (7.5cm) wide and 2.25" (5.5cm) tall in this mode. Almost all of the red parts are hidden in this mode...keeping it almost all blue might be why they decided to leave red paint off the arms (as opposed to cutting corners on a different app). I'm not sure if this is unique to the Battle Hauler, but it rolls pretty slowly, probably because of the aforementioned heft. There's no way to adjust the springing up motion (as was available with the Jumpstarters), but mine doesn't seem to have any trouble popping up and staying on its feet. If just pushed forward, it rolls/skids pretty well, and won't pop up unless you've pulled it back to wind up the spring. Dave Van Domelen, notes that pretty much any head that is narrower than the collar area will work, if you want to do a head-swap to make an Autobot Jumpstarter out of this.