Dave's Transformers Prime: Robots in Disguise Rant: Warrior Wave 11 Twinferno (dragon jet) Thermidor (blue Bisk retool) Bludgeon (Blastwave redeco) Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/PRiD/Warrior11 I figured I might not see Twinferno in stores, so I ordered it from HTS, and then it showed up in three stores locally before I got around to reviewing it, d'oh. However, neither Thermidor nor Bludgeon showed up in any of these stores, oddly (I think it may have shipped with leftovers of wave 9 and 10), and I decided to not go out of my way to get either. [Later note: The redecos never did show up in stores around here, just a sort of wave 10.5 that had Twinferno and some reships. I finally got the other two on Amazon once the price dropped to a reasonable level.] http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/PRiD/Warrior8 - Bisk http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/PRiD/Warrior9 - Blastwave CAPSULES $15-20 price point. Likely to include aftermarket mark-up, though. Twinferno: Well, it doesn't really have any significant flaws, but neither does it really fit into the cartoon's designspace. Or any designspace. Mildly recommended. Bludgeon: Original was recommended (and did show up in the cartoon), but was clearly intended to be this character. The color choices here are kinda weird, though, and result in a pretty messed up scheme in vehicle mode. Mildly recommended, don't worry much about finding this. Thermidor: Original mold was mildly recommended based on high defect rate. I got a better QC copy this time (and managed to figure I was doing something wrong on Bisk), recommended. RANTS Packaging: Same as previous Combiner Force Warriors. Cosells include Bumblebee, suggesting a reship as part of this wave. AUTOBOT: TWINFERNO Assortment: C2345 Altmode: Dragon Jet Transformation Difficulty: 8 steps Previous Name Use: Gen Previous Mold Use: None Weapon: Dragon Flames Function: Fighter/Bomber Motto: "Ever feel like you were leading two different lives at once?" Packaging: Six ties on the robot, one each on the detachable flames. The code circle scan gives Cryostase tickets. Robot Mode: A fairly good PRiD-ization of the Doublecross/Twinferno look, with goat-horn style dragon heads in the place of hands, but definite jet-style wings rather than dragon wings. The colors are deliberately far brighter than the Generations toy, in keeping with the generally brighter look of the cartoon. And, as is normal for PRiD, he has no nose. The wings are downward-angled, but their roots center on the shoulders, so they rise up above the head a bit. He comes with two flames, which are meant to be stuck in the dragon head hands, no storage for them in this mode. 5" (12.5cm) tall with the wings sticking up a little above that. The main colors are red-orange, silvery gray, and black, with some gold and silver. Red-orange plastic is used for the flames, the head, the torso, the toes, the wings, and the backpack. Black for the shoulder joints, upper arms, thighs, and the hinge for the backpack. The shoulders, forearms, dragon heads, and boots are silvery gray plastic. The robot face and most of the abdomen are painted silver. A sort of dull metallic gold paint is used on the dragon heads, toe tops, some Kirby-ish details on the abdomen, and the forehead tablet. The visor, dragon eyes, and eye-like details on the chest are painted bright blue. The horns of the dragon heads are painted gloss black. The Autobot symbol code circle is on the right shoulderpad. There's an obvious place on the sternum for an Autobot symbol, but nothing there (so, a case for Reprolabels...the smallest size on their 2017 freebie sheet is perfect for this spot). The head turns stiffly on a swivel, no waist joint. Ball joint shoulders, upper arm swivels, hinge elbows. Both the upper and lower jaws of the dragon heads are hinged independently, but there's no forearm swivel to let the heads turn to grip things like hands normally would. Ball joint hips, mid-thigh swivels, hinge knees. There's also sideways knee jointing for transformation, and bending those a little can help with stability in action poses without looking too weird. Each lower jaw has a 5mm hole, so that guns can be held upside down (probably intended for vehicle mode), no other standard connectors. The throat of each dragon head has a 4.5mm slightly truncated square hole specific to the flame pieces, it won't hold a 5mm peg. Each 3" (7.5cm) long flame piece has a truncated square peg on the end, plus a 5mm peg about a centimeter up the way, presumably so other figures can hold the flames. The 5mm peg makes it hard to fit the flames into the mouths horizontally with the hollow side down (yes, there's a hollow side, everything has a hollow side in PRiD). The instructions have the flames oriented vertically (the flat dimension of the flame is vertical), the idea being to pose the figure so that the hollow sides aren't visible while on display. Transformation: The backpack snaps up around the head, the arms lift straight up and the wings snap onto them, and the legs do a sort of W-shape collapse to peg against the wings and butt. The toes flatten inward to form landing skids. The flames go into square holes on the bottoms of the feet to become afterburner effects. Vehicle Mode: This is basically a bright red-orange stealth bomber with dragon heads strapped to it and huge boosters with tail fins in back. So... kinda not stealthy at ALL. Also, it doesn't really fit well into any of the themes of transformation in the cartoon, where no matter how bestial the non-vehicle mode, the altmode is either pure vehicle or pure beast (Dinobots, birds). Ultimately, it looks like one of Grimlock's old buddies tried to do a vehicle mode scan and failed. From underneath, it basically just looks like the robot in an uncomfortable pose, wearing a wingpack. The instructions say to turn the head around, which helps a tiny bit. 5.25" (13cm) wingspan, 5" (12.5cm) long without the afternburner flames, 8" (20cm) with them. Same basic colors as robot mode, but with less black visible (mainly the dragon horns and the hinge between the cockpit piece and the rest). There's bright blue paint on the cockpit windows and some vent details on either side of it, and dull gold on the leading edges of the wings. No Autobot symbol in this mode, nor any obvious place intended to hold one. The top and bottom surfaces of the wings have scored gridlines probably intended to evoke scales, but effectively making them inhospitable to stickers. In addition to the 5mm peg holes on the undersides of the dragon heads, there's a single 5mm peg hole in the center rear of the fuselage, presumably for mounting a Mini-Con in its weapon mode. If you lift up the cockpit backpack in robot mode, one of the flames can be stored here, but there's nowhere for the second to go. Overall: Well, while it lacks the beast mode hip issues of the Generations Twinferno, it's just sort of...there. Nothing really wrong with it, per se, but neither anything that justifies making this mold. It's like it was sort of banged out to meet a contractual obligation to provide X new molds, but no one felt it was important to make a vehicle mode that made sense within the context of the show. DECEPTICON: DECEPTICON BLUDGEON Assortment: C2346 Altmode: Tank Transformation Difficulty: 13 steps Previous Name Use: Movie1, TFP, AngryBirds (without "Decepticon" in G1, RiD01) Previous Mold Use: PRiD Weapon: Sword Function: Electric Warrior Motto: "To know your own limits, you must first know your foe's limits." Did not actually show up in the cartoon, although his predeco Blastwave did show up as a bounty hunter. Packaging: 7 ties on the robot, one on the sword. Packaged with the back cannons pointed down, btu the package photos show it with cannons up. The instructions only show tank mode sword storage, not the storage on the boot side in robot mode. The card art looks a lot more hand-drawn than most from this line. I wonder if it's because there was no official show model to use (the Blastwave toy had the cartoon model, with a non-skull face and a few other details that didn't match the toy). Cosells are Twinferno, Bumblebee, and Power Surge Optimus Prime. Color Swaps: The gray and black plastics stay the same. Most of the green plastic stays green, but the little wheels in the treads are now black plastic. The blue plastic is replaced by yellow-orange plastic. Paint Apps: Bright red, like a screamingly bright red, on the forearms and helmet. It's also on details on the fronts of the shoulderpads, but being on green plastic rather than orange mutes it a bit. Purple paint on the actual eyes and the chest's fake eyes. The skull face is painted white, the boot "spats" are painted silver. There's black paint on the fake tank treads on the shoulders (a detail that evokes the RotF/NEST Voyager Bludgeon where the shoulders really were part of the treads). The cannon barrels and sword blade are also painted silver. The code circle is on the left shoulderpad. (No entry in the game, just two Cryostase tickets...huh, Laserbeak from the Soundwave Activator is classified as a Torpedo-type Mini-Con.) In vehicle mode the only new paint is purple on the butt-skirt eyes in front, but it's worth taking special note of how horribly the colors work in this mode. Blastwave's turret mostly held together because the shoulderpads and forearms were both largely green, so it was weirdly shaped but kinda okay. But now bright red forearms and orange fists stick out the back of the green turret, pretty much screaming "Hey, we couldn't figure out what to do with the forearms!" The green paint from the boot sides ends up on top of black treads, and would have been far better off being painted black. (That was a problem on Blastwave too.) Mold Changes: None that I noticed. This was the intended use of this mold, and any plans to have tweaked it for Blastwave must've been scrapped between sending designs to the animators and actually producing the toy. Other Notes: Not sure why they decided to go with bright red paint instead of a burgundy red that would have been more in keeping with the G1 Pretender shell, or a brick red that would go with the inner robot. The NEST version didn't go in for bright red either. Blastwave and Bludgeon have identical swords, so you could give both to Bludgeon for dual-wielding action. I can't believe I didn't notice a Guntank mode for this mold when I reviewed Blastwave. If you transform just the legs, you get something akin to the RX-75 Guntank from Gundam. Overall: If you're really a fan of Bludgeon, this is a little closer to "correct" than Blastwave was, but still has some weird color choices that are neither G1-accurate nor particularly good ideas. Don't stress yourself out searching for one. DECEPTICON: THERMIDOR Assortment: C2347 Altmode: Sportscar Transformation Difficulty: 11 steps Previous Name Use: None Previous Mold Use: PRiD Weapon: Claw Cannons Function: Scavenger Motto: "Gimme!" Despite appearing in several episodes of the cartoon, he really has no personality other than "generic relic hunter". I mean, I'd forgotten he was even part of Starscream's crew of Scavengers until I checked TFWiki for information, that's how little impact he made. Maybe he had a sort of pirate theme? Packaging: 5 ties on the robot, one each on the pistols. The photo on the back of the card shows more paint on the face-tentacles than the actual toy has. Cosells are also Twinferno, Bumblebee, and Power Surge Optimus Prime. Color Swaps: Black stays black, burgundy becomes a slightly metallic bluish light gray, orange becomes dark blue. The rubbery plastic is also dark blue. Paint Apps: Black fake windshield on the chest, black on the front of the pelvis (but not the sides), and black on the boot cuffs. The kneespikes are painted a bluish light silvery gray in a decent match to the plastic color. Light robin's egg blue is used on much of the face, and pretty sloppily. There's tiny bits of this paint on the face tentacles, but not as much as in the package photo version. The glowing iris parts of the eyes seem to also be light robin's egg blue. The abdomen is silver, the code circle is at the bottom of the sternum. Other colors are meant for the vehicle mode. Unlike Bludgeon's royal eyesore, this works pretty well in vehicle mode. Black on all the windows, the blue-silver paint from the kneespikes stands out a bit on the rear of the car but looks okay. Red "whitewalls" on the tires, black grille with golden yellow main headlights. The "are they headlights or are they weapons" details on the fenders are red on silver. The pentagonal spot on the front clearly intended for a faction symbol is left blank, as it was on Bisk. Mold Changes: Where Bisk's head was a slightly robotic lobster head, Thermidor is more of a standard robot head with some lobstery elements on the helmet part. It has top antennae, but the eyes are on the face inside the helmet, and the chin tentacles are much shorter. It's still rubbery plastic to avoid breakage, which might also explain the sloppy paint...harder to mask softer materials, maybe? Other Notes: While the transformation was still a hassle, I did manage to get it into vehicle mode with no popping panels or other problems, so I may have just gotten a slightly misassembled Bisk. That, or I just didn't figure out the right sequence of things on Bisk, because now that I try transforming Bisk it works fine as well. Huh. Not as many "falls apart during transformation" issues on this, so I guess I did better on QC roulette. Overall: I like the mold a little better now that it's not popping apart as much, and the new head is pretty good. Not sure it's worth hunting through the secondary market, but keep an eye on eBay for shipments that fell off a truck at the gate of the factory in China. Dave Van Domelen, suspects a lot of "knockoffs" are actually official product that was made in excess of orders and sold under the table, especially for tail-end charlies where the orders might have been revised after the factory got ahead of schedule.