Dave's Mutant Beast Rant: Soundwave Snagged this guy at Wal-Mart just before going offline for a week, good toy karma. CAPSULE Soundwave: Pretty good in both modes, fairly simplistic transformation, no real gimmicks to speak of aside from robot face revelation. Uses soft "Animorphs" plastic extensively. Mildly recommended. $9.96 at Wal-Mart. RANT Note: I rewrote the body of the note heavily. MUTANT: Soundwave Function: Warrior Modes: Bat, Alligator Motto: "From the sky to the sea, they will fear and respect me." Soundwave is a welcome addition to the Mutant forces. His bat mode is ideal for stealthy aerial recon missions, with ultra-sensitive sonar and radar arrays that can detect even the slightest disturbances. In alligator mode, his jaws can penetrate every known alloy, given enough time, and by smashing his tail against the ground, he can generate circuit-disrupting shockwaves. Like his fellow Mutants, Soundwave is dark and brooding, with a tendency towards excessive drama in his speech. Rattrap once called him a "drama queen," but quickly regretted it, losing his tail to the swift jaws of Soundwave. STR 6.8 END 6.7 SPD 8.4 END 5.3 RNK 5 COUR 8.9 FRP 7.7 SKL 7.9 Avg 7.1 Bat Mode: A brown bat (not green as in the photos) with yellow accents and a rather long tail, he has a wingspan of a little over 7" (18cm), and stands 4" (10cm) tall if you bend his tail back. The wings can flap a bit, and the legs have decent poseability, plus the tail is on a universal joint. There's a lot of the softer plastic used in Animorphs in this toy, and I think it might have been enhanced if they made the tail a bend-em, as long as they were going for soft plastic. Pressing a button on the back of the toy's head causes the mouth to open and reveal Soundwave's robot face (which looks nothing like the real Soundwave's, so there's no worry that this is supposed to have been THE Soundwave in a new body). Undocumented Feature: Flipping down the chest panel reveals robotic detailing. From the front, it's not a bad bat, although the faction symbol that was an obvious last minute addition to his chest mars the effect some (the symbol is not there in prototype pics). However, from the back it looks like something horrible happened to an alligator. The shins can be rotated so that the fur pattern faces the right way, though. Everything is pegged or otherwise secured pretty well. The "hands" of the wings are loose, but their joints are stiff enough to keep them in place well enough. Oh, and the tail is hooked so you can hang him upside down by it. Transformation: Pretty simple. Rotate the alligator head up to snap into place, pull down the hips, fold most of the wing membrane around to become the gator chest. There's an interesting intermediate mode, if you just transform the head you get a sort of dragon mode. Oh, and there's a little trick to folding in the wing panels. You need to keep them flat and fold them in a good ways first, then fold in the parts that meet, otherwise they might not hold together correctly. Gator Mode: 6.5" (16cm) from snout to where the tail turns around. A brown gator makes a lot more sense than a green bat, so I'm glad for the color change here. With the exception of the oversized front feet, this is a very gator-like mode, with hardly any bat features visible. Although I may need to check this more carefully, it might be a crocodile, not an alligator. The legs have reasonable articulation to them, but the forelegs are hampered by their "wing-ness" some. The jaw is hinged to open, but the way the head snugly snaps over the bat head keeps the jaw firmly shut. Yep, it can only open during transformation, which is kinda weird. It is possible to reduce the effect of the big forefeet by rotating the arms back so that most of each foot is under the legs, but this results in Soundwave's chin being a support point. Everything is very solid, which is good. Overall: Well, it's not a bad toy, it just doesn't do much for me. It's not really worth Deluxe pricing, but it's not inherently bad (like Geckobot). Dave Van Domelen, notes that the snap-on nature of the gator head will make any potential repainting difficult....