Dave's Transformers Prime Rant: Voyager Wave 2 Shockwave (Cybertronian Tank) Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Prime/VShockwave This wave ships with two Shockwaves and one each of Optimus and Predaking. Despite being delayed until the second wave, this is another one with the feel of a delayed pre-BH design, since all the beasty bits are snap-on accessories like Smokescreen's. CAPSULE $20-23 price point. Shockwave: Good robot mode, impressive transformation, okay Cybertronian vehicle mode. I really like the weapon gimmick, and while the beast bits are so-so, they're also totally optional. A number of little design issues dampen my enthusiasm a bit, but it's still Recommended. RANT Packaging: Same sort of box as the first wave, but with a Try Me hole for the spinning weapon gimmick. CHAPTER 11: SHOCKWAVE With MEGATRON gone missing, SHOCKWAVE makes the decision to end his PREDACON cloning program. A force of PREDACONS, united under PREDAKING could spell doom for the DECEPTICONS as well as the AUTOBOTS. He is in the middle of shutting down his Hyperevolution laboratory when he spots an AUTOBOT spy hiding in the shadows among the still-occupied chambers. A plan forms in his precise and brilliant mind: Destroy the AUTOBOT and the lab, and lay the blame for the annihilation of the cloning program at the feet of OPTIMUS PRIME and his soldiers. Such an event would drive PREDAKING into a rage that would doubtless utterly consume the AUTOBOTS in its fury. Comments: Yeah, some grammar errors here and there, and the story has totally diverged from the show, but not bad as its own continuity. DECEPTICON: SHOCKWAVE Series 2: 003 Altmode: Cybertronian Tank Transformation Difficulty: Intermediate (2) Previous Name Use: G1, Cybertron, TF:A, DotM, Gen Previous Mold Use: None Weapon: Hyperflux Cannon Function: Mad Scientist Motto: "There are no failures, merely data." The cunning and brutal DECEPTICON scientist SHOCKWAVE plans to clone an unstoppable PREDACON army! STR 9 INT 10 SPD 3 END 8 RNK 8 COUR 9 FRB 10 SKL 10 Avg 8.375 Hyperflux Cannon * Spinning panels gather ambient cosmic energy to power blast. * Missiles create miniature black holes on impact, totally destroying any target. * Energy collection vortex also creates a heat shield around SHOCKWAVE that deflects incoming fire. Interesting how his short bio contradicts (or at least is rendered obsolete by) his story chapter. Packaging: Six strings on Shockwave, one string each on the three pieces of Beast Armor. The photo of the vehicle mode is mirror-flipped. Additionally, mine was mis-packaged so that one of the soft plastic spines on the backpack chunk was bent to the side, permanently warping it (although it might verrrry slowly return to true, and I might try a hair dryer on it). Robot Mode: With the somewhat gracile designs common in TF:P, the toys are often more bulky and chunky than the show model, simply because scaling the show model down to toy size would result in paper-thin spines and twig-like limbs. Thus, it's odd to see an adaptation that is LESS bulky. Some of this is probably the use of camera angles and so forth, but Shockwave is positively hulking in his show appearance, and the toy is rather less bulky. Not skinny, not by a long shot, but more "Superman" than "Hulk". As mentioned up at the top, this looks like a delayed release design that was adjusted to allow for snap-on beast bits. There was definitely some retooling involved, as I can't see a reason for the slots in the chest panel in a totally non-beast version, but the demonic claws and cyclopean chestpiece are definitely later additions. The chestpiece looks like the face of a centipede demon or something out of Inu-Yasha, and neither it nor the shoulder claws fit with the aesthetic of the main robot, which is almost Shirow-like in character. The head, in particularly, looks like Shockwave reimagined by Shirow, with "facial" features much like insect mouthparts and some extra antennae. 7.5" (19cm) tall and mostly a desaturated purple plus various shades of gray and some clear red. The predominant purple plastic feels a little on the cheap side, but they designed with it in mind and there aren't any sections that feel flimsy or fragile. It may not be hulking, but it's definitely solid. The purple plastic is found on the head, chest front, shoulderpads, right forearm, cannon barrel, backpack shell, thighs and shins. Rigid charcoal gray plastic is used on the right elbow, non-spinning part of the cannon, calves, knee joints, feet, foot-wheels, hip joints, backpack core, and some hinges in the abdomen. The right hand is charcoal gray plastic, but seems to be a firm thermoplastic rather than the thermoset of the other bits. And then there's the floppy rubberized charcoal gray plastic on the antennae, elbow/cannon spines, backpack spines and the treads on the backpack (one of which is made to unfurl and attach as a power cable for the cannon). Light gray plastic is used on the torso core, upper arms, cannon trigger, pelvis, backpack support strut, small wheels inside the treads on the backpack, and the inner shaft and struts of the cannon. The eye (with surprisingly good lightpiping), chest panel and energy effect inside the cannon are clear red plastic. In the really-picky department, it looks like there's two shades of purple, with the cannon and shins being slightly darker than the shoulders and chest, it's not enough to be intentional but may give a hint to the sprue layout. Purple paint that's a good match for the plastic is used on the gray plastic part of the cannon, and a poorer match on the tops of the feet (possibly different batches). There's silver on the barrel tip and some details on the feet. A brownish french gray paint is used on the barrel sides/bottom and on the kneespikes. Some details on the shoulderpads are painted metallic violet. There's no faction symbol. The beast-bits are made of rubbery blood-red plastic. The chestpiece has some of the detailing painted dull purple, with the central eye detail and two side eyes (a triclops, if you will) painted chartreuese ("Constructicon green"). The chestpiece looks like a demonic insect face, while the pieces that go on the shoulderpads are bony claws (four fingers, no thumb). While I prefer the figure without the beast bits, if I must include them I like the looks of putting the claws on the right shoulder and right forearm instead of on both shoulders. The head turns, the waist does not. The shoulders are universal joints, and the center of the shoulderpad is on a spring-loaded hinge so that the arms can be lifted to the sides without losing the shoulderpad detail. Both upper arms have swivels, but they're not the same design, as the left elbow is shaped differently to fit into the cannon. Both elbows are hinged and bend both ways. The right wrist is a restricted ball joint, the left wrist doesn't exist because the left forearm is a cannon. The cannon does spin, though. The hips are universal joints that ratchet out to the sides, there's swivels just below the hip joints, ratcheting hinge knees, and then swivels just below the knees. This arrangement lets you stand the figure in a bow-legged pose with feet flat on the table by turning the hips outwards a bit and then rotating the shins back forward. That's good, because the straight-legged neutral stance is a little too evocative of the G1 Shockwave toy. The ankles are hinged for transformation, but it's not too useful. Interestingly, if you use the transformation slider in the boots, you can give a Bayformer sort of digitigrade look to the toy while also making it a bit taller. The right hand can hold 5mm pegs, with another 5mm peg hole on the right forearm and one on each of the movable shoulderpads. There's also 5mm peg holes on the toes, but they're concealed unless you do the Bayformer trick, and not too useful in robot mode anyway. Weapon: When I was a little kid, one of the type of toys that always fascinated me was the holiday spinner. It'd be a Christmas tree or Easter Egg or snowman or some other more or less rotationally symmetric shape made up of three or four shell pieces on spring-loaded hinges, with the entire thing mounted on a spinning platform. You'd press in a button and make the platform spin, which would force the shell apart via rotational effects and reveal some hidden figure inside. Hey, it was the mid-70s, the competition in that price range was pet rocks. You can still find the spinners sometimes, like in Walmart's cheapo holiday crap aisle. This uses that principle, but in a more advanced way. Instead of having the shell of the cannon barrel simply fold outward, it breaks into two pieces that are on struts that lift forward as they move outward. The inner piece is thus revealed without having to worry about the shell parts smacking against the robot or your hand. The central core also spins, so to get a close look at it you have to manually peel the cannon open. But the mechanism works smoothly, and is very robust. Easily one of my favorite weapon action gimmicks in quite some time. Somewhat less successful is the use of one of the vehicle mode treads as a power cable. Getting it unfurled without the use of tweezers or longer and stronger nails than I possess tends to pop off the wheel inside of it. It's tricky learning how to get it to plug into the cannon so that it stays in place (but it does stay well once you get it right), and the soft vinyl isn't soft enough so it tends to run straight with only the in-tread-housing bends doing most of the bending work. Of course, making them softer would also involve all the other vinyl bits being softer, which would be bad. Transformation: Pretty satisfyingly complex for an arbitrary "Cybertronian tank" mode. The legs become the front end, the chest panel folds down to cover the crotch, the backpack becomes rear treads, the cannon arm folds onto the top side and the right arm goes to the underside. Some panels on the chest slide around to make more of a deck on top. Yeah, it doesn't really try to hide the head (although you do turn it around so that the antennae line up better with the direction of the other spikes), and the right arm just sort of hangs there pegged into the underside, but it's a pretty solid set of connections that feel right for a utilitarian altmode intended for speed and power rather than disguise. I was particularly surprised and pleased by the "where did all that come from?" aspect of the rear treads, which spread apart without looking or feeling flimsy. I do worry a bit about the way the chest locks into slots on the inner thighs. I already have some stress marks on the locking tabs, because it's easy to over-force the connection by accident. When going back to robot mode, rotate the thighs backwards first rather than just yanking the chest panel out. Additionally, when trying to get the cannon pegged solidly in place it's possible to dislocate the shoulder. Vehicle Mode: The box calls it a tank, but it's really a halftrack, with wheels on the front and treads on the back. An H-halftrack, if you will, instead of an H-tank. It does have the look of a crouching beast, something that the beast bits play heavily into, creating a face out of the chestplate and making the robot feet (via the newly exposed peg holes) into proper foreclaws. 8.75" (22.5cm) long without the beast claws, 9" (23cm) with. The light gray of the torso core is more visible as the upper tank deck now, otherwise no significant change in color balance. The various arm and shoulder peg holes are inaccessible or at least impractical in this mode, but if you leave off the beast claws there's 5mm peg holes above the front wheels for mounting extra weapons. The cannon is pegged down and does not turn, and there's no intentional articulation for this mode. Unfortunately, unless you get everything JUST right, the treads in back are a serious drag and the toy can't roll along on its wheels. Even an extra millimeter in radius on the rear wheels would have made a big difference there. Overall: The obligatory beast kibble is better than Smokescreen's and just as ignorable. Good robot mode, decent vehicle mode (all things considered), and a pretty impressive transformation for what amounts to an H-halftrack. I have a lot of little quibbles with it, but that's all they are...little quibbles. Makes up for disappointing Predaking. Dave Van Domelen, probably going to just leave it in robot mode even for eventual storage, though...the vehicle mode is one of those rare cases of being less compact than the robot mode.