Dave's Transformers PRiD Rant: Legion Wave 10 Cyclonus (space jet) Heetseeker (SUV) Autobot Twinferno (dragon jet) Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/PRiD/Legion10 Last wave, it never actually got to any stores near me. I got Twinferno on Amazon, and traded for Heatseeker and Cyclonus with an Austrialian Transfan. This isn't my final review for the 2015-17 Robots in Disguise line, because I gave up on ever seeing Thermidor and Bludgeon in stores and finally ordered them on Amazon too, but I technically do have a review up for them already. :) Easily the worst case of Tail End Charlies I've ever seen, as all three molds are brand new. At least most "never makes it to stores" final waves are dominated by redecos. (Of course, the day after I started writing this review, I did see Twinferno at Walmart. Just one, and no Heatseeker or Cyclonus, though.) CAPSULES Cyclonus: Decent robot mode, clever transformation, vehicle mode that relies a bit too much on tight tolerances but is otherwise pretty good. Recommended. Heatseeker: A few bits of weirdness with how the robot mode is set up, decent vehicle mode. Definitely the best Heatseeker toy, and while that's fain praise, this is still recommended. Autobot Twinferno: Basically a scaled down version of the Warrior toy with some color differences and fewer points of articulation. Weird altmode, but decent for what it is. Recommended. Cyclonus is the most ambitious of the lot, and Twinferno the least, so if you want a ranking I guess it comes down to whether you value innovation or execution more. RANTS Packaging: Mostly the same as previous waves, but no blister inserts. Not sure if that's an artifact of the overseas origins, or penny pinching. At least they all got new show-style art (despite Twinferno never being on the show). [Later note: the one Twinferno I found at Walmart was also like this, so it wasn't a thing just for international sales, it was a cost-saving measure in general for this wave.] No ties, just sandwiching between a molded blister and a supporting partial tray. The instructions have cosells on them. Scanning the code circles gives just Cryostase tickets. DECEPTICON: CYCLONUS Assortment: C2334 Altmode: Space jet Transformation Difficulty: 7 steps Previous Name Use: Yes Previous Mold Use: None Packaging: the cosells are for Heatseeker and Drift, who I guess got reshipped in this wave? Robot Mode: We really didn't get much time with Cyclonus on the show, and his other toy was a combiner core that made a lot of sacrifices to get the gimmick to work, so it's hard to really say if this is an "accurate" representation, but it does look sufficiently Cyclonus-like to work as a stuffed toy for Tailgate. :) The main difference between this and most G1-inspired Cyclonus designs it that the wings are pretty big and almost antler-rack-like in how they split up into gun bits. My only significant issue with the mold is that they decided to give him a goofy lopsided smirk. This is amplified by the fact they didn't paint in his entire eyes, just the vertical slit pupils, so he looks like a weird emoticon face like =/ or something. 2.75" (7cm) tall at the head, about a centimeter taller to the tops of the wing guns, and done in two shades of purple, dark gray, and some accent bits. The shoulders, upper arms, and thighs are very dark gray faintly metalflake plastic. The rest is faintly metalflake bluish purple plastic. There's a more reddish purple paint used extensively on the figure (abdomen, forearm tops, kneecaps, wing leading and trailing edges), but you need decent lighting for the paint to actually stand out against the plastic. The face is painted silver, the pupil slits are painted red. The code circle is on the front face of the left side wing. No neck or waist articulation. The arms lift to the sides at the shoulders, and there's transformation struts for the shoulders that don't lock in place, for some accidental articulation. The spindly forearms attach at ball and socket elbows. The hips are ball joints, the knees and ankles are hinges. The thighs are a lot shorter than the shins, though, so the leg articulation is a bit muted. The hands can hold 3mm pegs. Transformation: Rather complicated for a Legion, although it lacks the tabs needed to snap some of the parts into place properly, leading to a floppy vehicle mode unless you tighten one hinge in particular. The legs snap together and fold up over the torso and face, the backpack unfolds into the nose end of the jet, the shoulders swing down and then the arms rotate around to more or less peg into place on the wings as cannons. There's a tab on each arm and a slot on each wing, but it's very sensitive to manufacturing tolerances. On my copy, one arm slides in okay but doesn't stay that well, while the other has a tab slightly too thick to fit into the slot so it pops out when jammed in. Vehicle Mode: A hypercritical wing space jet with numerous molded gun barrels (nose, one over each wing, one under each wing). The landing gear are just rounded off tabs, no attempt to mold wheels or skids. The very flat cockpit is formed from the soles of the robot feet. 3.5" (9cm) long with a wingspan of 3.25" (8cm), same colors as robot mode. The dark gray ends up as the horizontal tail pieces and the cockpit window (which is painted dark gray). There's more of the reddish purple paint on the top of the nose end, but the small canards out at the tip are left unpainted. Technically the hands can still hold things, but since the arms aren't really locked in place, I don't recommend it. They serve as guns thanks to the fist spikes. There's a gap on the underside which seems like it might allow mounting on a 3mm peg flight base, maybe with the help of a blob of poster putty. (A Lego rod fits a bit loosely, and those are slightly larger than 3mm in diameter. An actual 3mm rod is way too loose to stay in.) Overall: Relied a bit too much on higher tolerances than their factories usually provide, but a pretty good design. A shame it doesn't seem to be getting any significant U.S. release. DECEPTICON: HEATSEEKER Assortment: C2335 Altmode: SUV Transformation Difficulty: 6 steps Previous Name Use: PRiD Previous Mold Use: None Packaging: Cosells are Cyclonus and Drift. Robot Mode: This is actually pretty close to the animation model, all things considered. The door window wings remain attached to the hood-half shoulderpads rather than relocating to the spine, and various other vehicle proportion altering tricks the show uses are impossible, but it's not bad. There's a small painting 'error' in which the headlights are unpainted but their color is assigned to missile tips instead, and for some reason he has a Demolishor-style targeting reticle (or "scouter" to use DBZ terminology) over his left eye that never happened in the show. On the topic of those missiles, they do appear in the One-Step Changer on the shoulders, but in the show the missiles launched from the supercharger hump on the hood rather than from under the headlights (IIRC). One oddball bit about the stance is that the feet don't run perpendicular to the shin fronts like you might expect. Instead, the boot parts are actually about 30 degrees away from straight up and down, meaning the "shin bone" line runs between opposite corners rather than adjacent corners. Similarly, the shoulderpads are clearly intended to tilt down rather than sit horizontally, lifting the window pieces up as fairly tall wings or banners or whatnot. The official pictures do show them horizontal, but they're also taken from an angle where that doesn't look very very wrong. And they do look wrong from most angles when horizontal. 2.75" (7cm) tall at the head, but the wings rise significantly above that unless you reposition the shoulders to be horizontal. Mostly silvery gray and black with garnet red. The silvery gray plastic has a swirly quality to it that reminds me of colloidal suspensions used in some fluid dynamics research. Black plastic is used on the wheels, shoulder struts, and thighs. The rest is swirly silvery gray plastic. There's garnet red slightly metallic paint on the collarbone area, the toes, the wing windows, and some detail on the right arm door panel. The left arm door panel has the code circle. White paint is used on the face, the abdomen, and the tops of the forearms. Almost chrome-like silver paint is used on the bumper details on the shoulders and some fake bumper bits on the chest. The missile tips on the shoulders are painted metallic purple, the targeting eyepiece is metallic blue, and the regular eye is black. Sort of. The actual eye is unpainted, while the space between it and the helmet border is painted black, which makes it look like the eyepiece is covering his cheek rather than his left eye. No neck or waist joints. The shoulders are a bit weird. They're on hinged struts that meet as a shallow V behind the chest, with ball and socket joints on the ends of the struts. But then there's a hinge for the arm that is neither shoulder nor elbow but somewhere in between, and it's below and behind the shoulder socket. With the shoulderpads horizontal, the arms are a bit long and seem to dangle too far back. Rotating the shoulderpads up and swinging the arms all the way forwards against the bumpers looks good, but results in no practical articulation for the arms below the shoulder. The hips are ball joints, the knees and ankles are hinges, with the weird arrangement mentioned earlier. The hands can hold 3mm pegs. Transformation: Not too unusual for ground vehicle Legion toys, and similar to the Strongarm/Ratchet scheme. The arms swing back to meet the window wings, then the shoulder-and-arm chunks swing up and around on the shrugging struts to snap together into the front end of the vehicle, covering the head. Point the toes down, snap the boots together and fold them around to make the rear half. Vehicle Mode: Other than the misplaced missiles, it's pretty close in shape to the show model futuristic SUV. The painting mixes some details up, though, such as not painting the upper half of the brushguard/pushbar, the usual lack of paint on the rear side windows, etc. The front wheels are pinned and the back wheels are snap-on, so there's only silver hubs in front. 2.5" (6cm) long, if it's supposed to be a small SUV like a RAV4 that makes it about 1:72 scale. Some of the colors from robot mode are hidden here, leaving just the silvery gray body shell, garnet red windows and right side door, black wheels, silver bumper and purple missile heads. The toe paint suggests a moon roof of some sort, and the way the paint on the sides just cuts off at the seam is awkward-looking. Rolls pretty well on flat surfaces, and holds together well. Overall: Easily the best of the three Heatseeker toys, but that's not exactly a strong field of competitors (a One-Step and one of the nearly identical boots of Menasor). It's a pretty good mold on its own, though, and as a character who actually showed up more than once he kinda deserved at least one decent toy. AUTOBOT: AUTOBOT TWINFERNO Assortment: C2336 Altmode: Dragon jet Transformation Difficulty: 7 steps Previous Name Use: None with the "Autobot" tacked on Previous Mold Use: None Weird that they had to tack "AUTOBOT" on in front of Twinferno. You'd think that'd be an easy trademark to keep. Packaging: His cosells are for Sideswipe and Groundbuster (aka Groundpounder). That makes no sense at all unless the Australian assortments were a lot different. Robot Mode: There's usually a fairly big difference between the Legion and Warrior/Deluxe versions of a character, but not this time. Oh, there's detail changes here and there, and different coloration in places, but the main difference besides size is that this has fewer points of articulation than the Warrior version of Twinferno. Still basically a robot with wings and with dragon heads for hands. The hinge details are still molded on the dragon jaws, even though they don't move, and the weird grid pattern is still molded onto the wings. The chest eyes are molded but not painted. The standing pose requires his feet be planted farther apart than his shoulders, due to the slope on the bottoms of the feet. The vertical stabilizers don't actually touch the surface in this mode, making them useless as heel spurs. Combine this with the large wingpack, and it's hard to keep the figure from falling over backwards unless the feet are perfectly flat on the surface...bring them together even a little and there's not enough support. 2.5" (6.5cm) tall, mostly red and black with some silver and gold. The shoulders, shoulder roots, thighs, inside-boot struts, and the piece that connects the cockpit backpack bit are black plastic. The rest is red plastic with a faint metalswirl to it. There's silver paint on the face, the abdomen (except for an oversized navel left unpainted, as on the Warrior), and the tops of the forearms behind the dragon horns. The dragon horns are painted black, with a coppery gold paint used on the top half of each dragon head and on the toes. The visor is painted bright blue, and the code circle is on the left wing. The overall result is less silvery than the Warrior. The shoulders and hips are ball joints, with no neck or waist articulation. There are upper arm swivels, but no elbows. Basically, this lets the arms turn so that they can hold borrowed 3mm peg weapons. The knees are sideways hinges for transformation, so functionally no real knee articulation either. As mentioned, the legs need to be in just the right positions of the figure falls over anyway, so not much use for the hips. The wings are hinged to get out of the way of the shoulders. Transformation: This is basically the same as for the Warrior class version, but without as many joints to confuse matters. Cockpit backpack folds over head, arms lift up and snap onto wings, legs spread and bend sideways to become the two tails. Caution note: the black raised rings on the shoulders are made of softer plastic than the raised arcs on the wings that they snap into. I've already seen some plastic scraped off inside the wing side. Vehicle Mode: As TFWiki notes, he doesn't really grasp the whole "in disguise" part of the series title, as this is a stealth bomber with two dragon heads grafted onto the front and a split tail (not needed for a flying wing design) in back. And yes, I expect if he ever flew over an air show in the setting of the story, there would be airplane geeks complaining about the twin tails and not even noticing the DRAGON HEADS. Note, the hollow sides of the forearms face outwards in this mode, because priority was given to having them face backwards in robot mode when the arms were turned to hold weapons. If you'd rather the vehicle mode look better, it's possible (if difficult) to snap the arms off at the swivels and swap them. 2.75" (7cm) long with a wingspan of slightly greater than the length. Red is more dominant in this mode, with most of the black parts hidden on the underside or interior. The cockpit windows are painted bright blue, and the leading edges of the wings are painted coppery gold. While there's no landing gear, they retained the little nubs on the chest from the Warrior mode that along with the toes give a reasonably stable platform for the jet mode on a flat surface. Overall: The scaling down does definitely come with a cost, but mostly in terms of articulation, rather than disproportionate kibble. It's weird that a non-show character would get two toys, but at least they're decent. Dave Van Domelen, might do some of the movie toys that have been backing up in his review box next. Did finally get Cogman.