Dave's RotF Rant: Deluxe Wave 2 Smokescreen (Pontiac Solstice redeco, not reviewed) Autobot Skids (Chevy Beat Concept, 89884) Deep Desert Brawl (Tank, 89891) Autobot Wheelie (RC Truck, 91612) Chromia (Unlicensed motorcycle, 91613) Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/RotF/Deluxe2 I don't know which Jazz mold was redone as Smokescreen, but probably the arm-fixed one that was used for the G1 Jazz. It comes with the original unimpressive weapon, not the later missile launcher. The color is mostly a dark slate blue/gray with some dark red and silver accents. I passed on it. Short form, this is a somewhat disappointing wave, the best of the lot is a 2007 mold that got fixed up. http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Movie/Deluxe1 - original Jazz and Brawl molds. http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Movie/DeluxeT1 - G1 Jazz remold CAPSULES Autobot Skids: Decent vehicle mode, although the panels can be tricky to keep in place. Very involved transformation, oddly proportioned and kibble- limited robot mode. Mildly recommended. $12.99 at K-Mart. Deep Desert Brawl: They fixed the shoulder problem, original was recommended despite the shoulder linkage flaw. Recommended even if you have the original. $11.99 at Target. Autobot Wheelie: Another toy that falls under the "interesting idea, iffy execution" banner. He really needs more pegs to stabilize his robot mode, although his vehicle mode is decent and quite stable. Oh, and he will cut you. Mildly recommended. $12.99 at K-Mart. Chromia: Good vehicle mode, unique transformation, obvious combiner bits but no official mention of it, oddball but okay robot mode. At least it comes with a stand. Recommended if you're willing to pick up the other pieces needed to make the combiner, mildly recommended as a solo purchase. $12.99 at K-Mart. RANTS Packaging: Same as wave 1, but Wheelie is packaged in robot mode. The co-sells rotate again, with Skids having Brawl, Brawl having Wheelie, Wheelie having Chromia, Chromia having Smokescreen, and I presume Smokescreen having Skids. This time out, there's a catalog of sorts. On one side is a mini-poster of the upcoming Human Alliance Bumblebee, 10" by 16" (25cm by 40cm). On the other is a sort of sampler catalog, showing Ironhide, Desert Tracker Ratchet, Sideswipe, Leader Prime, Leader Megatron, preview wave Bumblebee and Voyager Starscream, indicating which ones have Mech Alive gimmicks. Notably, they all get official functions here too, so I'll have to go back and update those. :) Along the bottom of the catalog page are ads for the non- transforming RPM TF vehicles (showing Bumblebee), the GIJoe movie toys (showing Snake Eyes versus Storm Shadow), and the roleplay equipment for Bumblebee. AUTOBOT: AUTOBOT SKIDS Altmode: Chevy Beat Concept Licensor: GM Previous Name Use: Alternators ("Skids" alone G1) Previous Mold Use: None Mech Alive: Moving Armor Panels Function: Kid Sidekick Motto: "Thith ith tho ecthiting!" Because he is slightly less hyperactive than his brother MUDFLAP, AUTOBOT SKIDS has always thought of himself as "the smart one." He likes to point this out at every opportunity. While MUDFLAP zips around like a maniac, AUTOBOT SKIDS prefers to impress his superiors among the AUTOBOT high command by behaving in a way he thinks of as mature, which usually involves talking nonstop about anything that occurs to him. STR 4 INT 6 SPD 7 END 4 RNK 2 COUR 8 FRB 5 SKL 3 Avg 4.875 In the movie, Skids lisps, while Mudflap talks like a wannabe thug (think Riley from Boondocks, but far less authentic). Note, a lot of these are missing the paint on the buck teeth. On the plus side, the face is barely visible through the side windows. On the minus side, the windows are dark enough to make this tricky, you may want to take yours over to good lighting before buying. I ended up with an unpainted- teeth version because I bought before I heard about the problem. However, A) it's not that hard to fix, and B) I'm not too keen on the mismatched buck teeth anyway. Twist-ties: 2 Vehicle Mode: The Beat is a hatchback coupe, similar to the Mazda 2. It's not as small as the Smart Fortwo, although it's been described as a smart car in the novel. "Microcar" seems to be the favored generic term for cars in this range, with the Fortwo being at the small end and the Beat apparently near the high end. While there's no upholstery inside, the upper section of the vehicle is rather free of stuff in general, so you can see through from one side to the other. 4.75" (12cm) long, which makes it 1:30 scale as best as I can tell (the Beat is a concept car, not production yet, so it's hard to come by details like actual length, but it seems to be about 3.6m long compared to the Smart's 2.7m). It's a bright leaf green, not as yellowy green as the concept version of the real thing seen at auto shows. The green is broken up by a glossy black hood, clear blue windows and black skidmark "car tattoos" on the sides. The windshield, rear top third, rear window and the side windows are made of clear plastic, which I'm guessing is painted clear blue, since the headlights are clear colorless and the tail lights are clear red. The wheels are black plastic, and all the rest of the car mode is a sort of dull yellowy green plastic, although it does light up well under UV and looks a little better under sunlight. The green parts of the windshield and rear top bit are painted neon green, which under incandescent lighting is a poor match for the green plastic, being a lot brighter. However, it barely reacts to UV at all, and in sunlight or LED light the two greens are almost identical. To be more accurate to the concept car, the brake discs should also be painted green, but there's no paint on the wheels. Glossy black paint is used on the hood, the trim around the side windows, and grilles on front and back (this is one of the rare "Disapproving Cars" with downturned ends on the front grille). The skidmark tattoos on the doors are in matte black. The taillights are painted with clear red, but it's thick enough that it almost looks like gloss opaque red unless you shine a strong light on them. The Chevy symbols on the front and back are painted silver, and the license plate is pool blue with "SKIDS" in black. Oddly, given his enthusiasm for the cause, there's no Autobot symbol visible in this mode. It rolls fairly well, but doesn't have a lot of clearance. Also, it's very much a panelmaster, and it's easy to get one or more panels misaligned through casual handling. Transformation: Oddly, he runs counter to the usual RotF trend where normally the toy easily explodes into robot mode and is counter-intuitive to get back into vehicle mode. I actually had to look at the instructions to figure out how the roof folds up in robot mode (in part because you have to force some panels past each other in the roof in a way that feels like you're about to break the toy), but going back to vehicle mode was easy to figure out...it took me longer to massage the panels into place at the end than it took to get everything into the right place otherwise. Robot Mode: From hatchback to hunchback. Between his melted-looking face, hunchback and the oversized right arm, I have to wonder if he's supposed to look like the result of excessive Cybertronian inbreeding. But while the face of the Robot Heroes version looked more like a "Cletus", I'm reminded more here of a robotic post-feeding Mogwai ("Gremlins"), what with the big ears and scraggly tuft of "hair" on top. Having the buck teeth unpainted does help with this image as opposed to Cletus, though. 4.5" (12cm) tall at the head with somewhat stubby legs and mismatched arms, he gains a number of other colors in this mode, including two shades of silvery gray, a bluish gray and neon kelly green. The color scheme is slightly asymmetrical, but it's pretty much all in the arms. He suffers from excessive folded panel syndrome on the lower legs. A neon kelly green (strong UV glow) is used for the head, shoulders, forearms, pelvis, thighs, shins and some internal struts in the torso. A medium silvery gray is on the hands, right upper arm, left forearm gun, part of the shoulder joints, collar, feet and some internal bits. Light silvery gray is on the elbow joints, knee joints, inner pelvis (including the ball parts of the hip joints) and other internal bits. A slightly metallic dark blue-gray is used on the inner shoulder parts, the left upper arm, parts of the knee area and yes, some internal bits. His lightpiping is the same light clear blue as the windows. The only yellow-green or black parts are car kibble. The front of the "hair" and much of the face are painted gloss black, hiding details that are frankly best hidden anyway. A silver Autobot symbol is printed on the pelvis and the ring around his right (larger) eye is painted silver. Otherwise, all paint apps are from the vehicle bits. Skids's head is on a ball joint, but the rear bumper keeps him from lifting his head. No waist articulation, unsurprising given all the folding that goes on to make his torso. Universal joint (hinge and swivel) on both shoulders, plus upper arm swivels and double hinge elbows. The left wrist swivels, while the right hand has hinges so that the fingers (as a clump) and thumb can bend separately. So he can open his hand to hold small objects, like maybe the neck of a 1:12 scale banjo should I find one. Or make one. Actually, the little finger is too tightly curled to allow much to be held properly in that fist, you'd have to wedge something between the thumb and the top of the forefinger. The range of motion in the left wrist hinge is a bit restricted when the hand is stowed. Ball joint hips and restricted ball joint ankles. The knees are a weird combination of three hinges and a swivel each that somehow results in less articulation than a more normal configuration. One of the hinges just bends sideways a little for transformation. The big kibble panels on the lower legs pretty much render much of the leg articulation moot, though. Skids has two action features. The less impressive one is his Mech Alive one, pressing in on the grille in the center of his chest makes panels pop outward a little and his head lurch forward. I suppose it's a battle reaction thing. The slightly better one has his right fist shoot out half an inch (13mm) and lets a weapon barrel built into his forearm swing out to be clear to fire. The instructions show an additional piece onb the forearm popping out when the fist deploys, but that piece is molded solid with the forearm in the actual toy. Probably something that failed the drop test. Standing stability is marginal. The feet aren't all that big and their joints are a touch loose. If you mistransform the leg panels and swing the backs down they can act as heel spurs and help a little. Oh, and until I find or make a proper banjo, here's a little air banjo: http://www.dvandom.com/images/airbanjo.JPG Overall: It's a lot of work to get a robot that's still pretty badly kibble-limited, but I suppose the backpack could've been worse. It's tempting to find a donor head and replace the official one with something less melty, and the vehicle mode has panel-alignment issues. Interesting, but I think it depends a little too much on the hopes that this will be the Bumblebee of the new movie in terms of kids wanting the toy badly (not helped by Bumblebee himself getting two Deluxe molds in the first month!). DECEPTICON: DEEP DESERT BRAWL Altmode: Fantasy variant on M1 Abrams Licensor: None Previous Name Use: Movie1 Previous Mold Use: Movie1 (modified) Mech Alive: None Function: Desert Warrior Motto: "Wait, everyone's in EGYPT? What the slag am I doing in the Atacama?" Hidden deep in the driest desert on Earth, DECEPTICON BRAWL waited for a new DECEPTICON leader to emerge. Though the AUTOBOTS searched for him, they never even came close to finding him. It enraged him that he was forced to hide in defeat. Now that MEGATRON has returned, he is ready to do battle again, and determined this time to destroy as many AUTOBOTS as he can. STR 8 INT 3 SPD 3 END 9 RNK 5 COUR 9 FRB 9 SKL 3 Avg 6.125 The Deep Desert Brawl name and general deco were used for a recolor of Leader class Brawl, but I didn't buy that one. It's not quite the same as Desert Blast Brawl from the Fast Action Battlers set, which I *did* buy at the time. :) I originally passed on this one, but once I heard the shoulders had been fixed I picked up the last one in town. The stats for this toy are identical to those on Decepticon Brawl from the first movie. Oh, and the Atacama in South America is the driest desert in the world. Nothing in Egypt even comes close. ;) Twist-ties: 2 on the tank, one on the missile. There's also a shell rubber banded over the top of the turret to protect the side-mounted rocket launchers. Plastic Colors: The original was mostly olive drab, and DDB splits up the colors a bit more, so I'll just describe what's what now rather than trying to map changes. Also, I missed a plastic color in my original review anyway (clear plastic on the Automorph gears), so might as well start from scratch here. The following plastic colors are used: Clear orange, light tan, very dark brown, black, cream, opaque orange. Both oranges have strong UV response, the cream has mild UV glow, otherwise no glows. Black: toes, heels, front tread bits (the ones that become his collar), rocket pods, slab at the base of the turret. Brown: Secondary gun barrels, rocket pod struts (both parts), mine sifter teeth, wrist blades, knees, elbows, butt, struts that peg the shoulders onto the chest, area under the head, struts that hold the middle "fenders", launcher trigger. Clear orange: Lightpiping, missile. Opaque orange: Several gears inside the torso that operate the Automorph. Cream: Head, upper arms, left arm weapon base, pelvis front, bits on the chest that the shoulder struts peg into, flaps on the side of the main turret that the arms come out through. Tan: Everything else. Paint Apps: There's medium brown paint camoflage patterns on the tank bits, but they're not proper desert "chocolate chip" camo, more like brown seaweed strands were draped over him. There's also a bit of medium brown on his abdomen. The middles of the front tread pieces are painted tan, a good hue match but too glossy. The tan-plastic tread chunks have the tracks painted black, but only on the outside, the inner bits are unpainted. The tan paint is also used on the shoulders to pick out the bladey bits, and the black paint is seen on the forearm details. A black Decepticon symbol is painted at the front of the secondary turret, and the face is silver. Mold Changes: The tabs that connect the shoulders to the chest have been changed so that they snap in more securely, and that's a Big Deal in this case, since it was the main problem I had with the original mold. It's possible that the AllSpark Power redeco had this fixed as well, but I didn't pick that one up. Other Notes: The secondary turret is full of floppy joints on mine, especially the ball joints for the rocket pods, but the axial swivel is also loose. The superglue trick worked okay on the rocket pods (although the results are visible in the form of a whitish layer of dried glue on the ball joint), but the turret is riveted together and can't be disassembled for fixing. I settled for putting some nail polish topcoat into the shaft and hoping it'd gum things up a little. It didn't do a lot. Huh. While working on tightening things up, I notice an additional transformation joint I don't think I ever caught on the original. The tread chunks on the lower legs rotate back to reveal more of the shins and extend the kibble heels backwards for more stability. This is not in the instructions, and the official pictures on the packaging and instructions don't seem to take advantage of this joint. In case anyone's curious, this is generally darker than Desert Blast Brawl, which is mostly cream plastic with some medium brown bits. Overall: Well, they fixed my main complaint, but the bad quality control fairies have definitely been at this one too. The problems that remain are generally fixable, and it's a decent color scheme, if not really desert-ready. AUTOBOT: AUTOBOT WHEELIE Altmode: RC Truck Licensor: None Previous Name Use: Universe2 ("Wheelie" alone G1) Previous Mold Use: None Mech Alive: Changes from Decepticon to Autobot Function: Scrounger Motto: "You lookin' at me, meatsack? Huh?" AUTOBOT WHEELIE never really wanted to be a DECEPTICON. It's just that, when people start yelling at him, he tends to do whatever they say. He's easily startled, and simple to scare. His tiny size makes him an ideal spy, and even though he doesn't like or agree with the DECEPTICONS, they scare him so much he doesn't know what to do except obey. STR 2 INT 4 SPD 2 END 9 RNK 1 COUR 1 FRB 2 SKL 5 Avg 3.25 While the bio note agrees with his depiction in the novelization, his characterization in the movie has a LOT more bravado...even if he's still been threatened into working for the Decepticons. Also? Possibly the lowest overall stats ever. Twist-ties: Five hold in the robot and there's a rubber band around his chest. Rather than a head shot on his blister insert, he has a digitally tweaked photo of his truck mode. In other packaging news, his foot spurs are undeployed, making him a total wheelfoot in package. He actually has heel and toe spurs, so the wheels don't need to rest on the table at all. Vehicle Mode: This is not a toy of a monster truck...it's a toy of a TOY of a monster truck, making Wheelie one of the more philosophically oddball altmodes out there. Typical RC monster trucks of this sort are about a foot long, making this a 1:4 scale figure, practically a Real Gear Robot. And like both real monster trucks and toy ones, there's a bunch of strutwork between the wheels, although in this case it's obviously the robot claws folded up. If you look inside the cab, you can see an Autobot symbol. 3.75" (9.5cm) long, 2.5" (6.5cm) wide and just under 3" (a little over 7cm) tall, it's medium blue with smoky windows, light silvery gray struts and medium to dark gray monster truck tires. The body shell is mostly medium blue plastic, with the top of the cab (windows and roof) being a smoky clear plastic. The roof lights, brushguard, bed floor and all underside stuff are silvery gray plastic. The big (32mm diameter) tires are gray plastic, about 60% or 70% gray. Silver paint is used on the hubcaps and fuel tanks, a very good plastic-match blue paint is used on the roof, and the roof lights and main headlights are painted metallic light blue. Three of the four wheels on mine spin freely, one is a big sluggish and has trouble touching the table. I've fiddled with transforming the rear section enough to be sure that the rolling problem isn't tied to any stresses of being not quite aligned. It's fairly good ar avoiding kibble, although the robot face folded up inside the bed is a bit obvious. The bed's otherwise fairly empty, and could hold a small figure or the right Mini-Con. Transformation: This is a very dense-packed transformation to vehicle mode, and I did end up having to consult the instructions to figure out exactly how to position the claws as underside kibble. In going back to robot mode, it's difficult to get the clear roof pieces to come free so they can unfold to make the robot chest. Also, there's really no pegging together in robot mode, it all relies on joint friction and a few guide slots. Robot Mode: He reminds me a lot of Roberto, the knife-wielding robot from Futurama, mixed with bits of Johnny Five and Movie1 Frenzy. But his knife-like claws definitely tip the balance in my mind to Roberto, who will CUT YOU. Okay, so he's blue and gray instead of orange-brown, but you can't have it all. (Someone's already kitbashed a yellow version to look like WALL*E.) In the recommended squat, he's got a sort of satyr-like feel to his proportions. The height depends on how you pose the legs. In a deep squat like in the package photos he's about 7" (18cm) tall. If you straighten his legs all the way, he gets much more humanlike proportions and stands 8" (20cm) tall. Sort of a reverse-Bulkhead-Syndrome, in which this tiny-in-story character is as tall as the Fallen's figure and towers over all the other Deluxes. His blue parts are mainly on torso, head and thighs, making it look like he's wearing bicyling shorts and shirt. Almost all of his robot mode is pieces visible in vehicle mode. The center of his chest is blue plastic, with an abdomen shaft in light gray and a clear colorless tab at the bottom of the shaft. His arms are all light gray, and his lower legs are that color except for the ankle wheels. The eye chunks are blue with clear lenses (painted amber), but no lightpiping. The mouth section is light gray plastic, but heavily painted. His back and neck are also light gray plastic. The teeth are painted white and the rest of the front of the face is painted blue. A rectangle in the middle of his chest is printed with a slightly metallic red Autobot symbol when the abdomen column is turned to its default position (with nubs in depressions on his thigh panels), or a slightly metallic purple Decepticon symbol if you turn it 90 degrees. The eyes are painted clear amber. Articulation is a bit tricky, because he's held together almost entirely by joint friction, so moving one piece may make another fall apart. The eyes are hinged for transformation and intended to be up in an angry position, but they can droop independently for a sad or puzzled look. The neck is hinged forward and back. The shoulders are highly restricted ball joints, there's an awkward swivel on the upper arm and hinge elbows that can't straighten the arms entirely. There's a thumb claw and two finger claws on each hand, individually hinged. I think they gave him two fingers on purpose rather than three or four, so you couldn't have him flip the bird. The hips are ball joints on the end of struts hinged to swing apart, the knees and digitigrade ankles are hinged, and the toe and heel spurs are separately hinged. The joints in the legs are all stiff enough to keep him from falling over, but I would have liked some ratcheting or notches on the feet to make them a bit more secure. His Mech Alive is that you can switch his faction symbol. Due to the unfortunate shape and placement of the tab that lets you do this, he looks a bit more excited to be a Decepticon than to be an Autobot. Overall: Interesting meta-idea, but the robot mode really suffers from the lack of solid pegging on the torso. I'd rather have dropped the Mech Alive in exchange for proper pegs to connect things together in front. AUTOBOT: CHROMIA Altmode: Motorcycle Licensor: None Previous Name Use: None in mass-market US Previous Mold Use: None Mech Alive: Spinning Gears Function: Pursuit Motto: "You can run, but I'll have your hide." CHROMIA is tough as nails, and always spoiling for a fight. She's been friends with IRONHIDE for centuries, and their reunion on Earth was one of the high points of the war for both of them. Now, they work side-by-side, hunting and destroying DECEPTICONS. Neither of them has ever been happier. The two robots make great partners, and she, along with her sisters, are an invaluable part of the team. STR 7 INT 7 SPD 8 END 6 RNK 6 COUR 9 FRB 8 SKL 5 Avg 7 In the novelization, Arcee is a splitter rather than a combiner, one mind controlling three motorcycles that can become three robots or a single larger robot (or, as someone else described it, "a femme motorcycle Reflector"). They've decided to sell the combiner pieces as separate characters in the toy line, though. Presumably instructions will come with the figure that makes the torso, a redeco of Chromia is coming and will be the other leg/arm. There's no indication on the package other than mention of Chromia's sisters that she's a combiner, though. Twist-ties: 1 around the motorcycle, 1 around the stand (which looks suspiciously like Combiner Kibble). Her missile is loaded in package (but not pushed all the way in) rather than tied down separately. Vehicle Mode: She actually has valve stems! Okay, it's a small thing, but toy motorcycles almost never have valve stems, the tires apparently become magically filled with air. :) That little detail out of the way, Chromia is a fairly standard street bike, with dual exhaust pipes flanking the seat and a chain drive. The main odd detail is that the "windshield" area looks pretty much like a battle helmet head. There's also bit air intakes flanking the gastank that strike me as rather non-standard. They don't really clip in place, some tabs from the flanking panels more or less hold them down. 5.75" (14.5cm) long, making this roughly 1:12 scale. The bike is blue, black and silver, with numerous Cybertronian glyphs printed on the blue parts. There's a very good paint match between blue plastic and paint, and between black plastic and paint, so it's not always immediately obvious if a piece is blue with black paint or black with blue paint. There's a missile stuck between the exhaust pipes when you take it out of the package, but if you push it all the way in you're not getting it out until you transform the toy, since the trigger is buried pretty deeply inside. The missile and the headlights are clear colorless plastic. The handlebars and a couple of connectors at the front end of the engine are light gray plastic. The windshield piece, side intakes, and a piece that combines the seat with the back half of the gas tank are vibrant medium blue plastic. The handle grips are black rubbery plastic. Everything else visible in this mode is black plastic. The rims are painted blue, an interesting choice. The front fender, the top of the "tail" behind the seat and a couple of circles on the engine block are painted blue as well. The seat is painted matte black with a silver Autobot symbol on it (so you're sitting on her Autobot face?). The exhaust pipes, front brake discs and rear struts are painted silver. White Cybertronian glyphs are printed on the ingakes, the gas tank and the left side of the tail. Her stand accessory is a solid chunk, no moving parts. It either clips onto the bottom to act like a treaded carrier, or into slots at the back of the seat to become a cannon pack. It's all made of black plastic with no paint. On one side is a six-barrel rotary cannon, and the other is a mortar or something, with a wide mouth (but not wide enough to hold her missile) with a staggered opening that can hold a 6mm peg shallowly or a 4mm peg deeply. 5mm pegs need not apply, naturally. The wheels spin freely and the front strut can be raised or lowered for a tighter or looser ride. The handle section is on a ball joint, so her battle mask head can look around. The kickstand can flip down and has a stiff enough joint to hold a couple of positions. This is useful in letting you use it in conjunction with the stand to have Chromia...um, "pop a wheelie" sounds just wrong in the context of the rest of this wave, but it's the correct terminology. ;) Transformation: Given that she also has to become a Draias-like limb component for the eventual combiner, her transformation is fairly simple. Pull down the black side panels, pull out the arms, muck about with the resulting gangling bits until they clip together into an upper body. :) The clips that hold the chest together don't do a very good job, even with nail polish, but you can help it along a little with a trick a reader pointed out to me. At the rear of the gray struts that form her pseudo-spine are rectangular tabs on the sockets of the ball joints there. Pressing them inward creates a little more force in the right direction to keep the chest together slightly better. Officially, her front wheel goes over her head in the instructions...and behind her back in the package photo seen in the instructions. In other words, put the front wheel wherever you feel it looks best. I prefer putting it in the small of the back to fill in the gap there. Speaking of the instructions, they even contradict themselves from step to step...one panel shows the "skirt" in front of the wheel when you clip it onto the base, the next has the skirt folded up above the wheel. Getting back to vehicle mode isn't too hard, although some of the joints need to be massaged a little to make sure they line up. There are no instructions for combiner mode, but there's a piece that folds out from the back of her "bustle" strut for which there are no explanations, so I presume it's for connecting to a core bot. It clearly cannot connect to a second copy of the same toy, though, so we're not looking at a weird "any three can become the mergeform" toy. A pity, that, since such a unique combination would at least justify a lot of the weird design elements. :) Robot Mode: She's a tattooed biker girl...in a sheath dress. A unicycle wheelfoot, she comes with a built-in stand. Not just the snap-on piece, I think the whole strut in back of her lower body is supposed to not really be there. She has a lot of pieces that seem intended for the eventual combiner, but that have no use and no explanation here. Also, she's something of a Groinmaster, with the battle helmet head from her cycle mode ending up on her pelvic region. Exact height depends on whether you follow the instructions, the package photo, or some other fan-configuration, but if you go by the photos she's 5.5" (14cm) tall. There's more light gray visible on her arms and waist, but otherwise the color balance is about the same. She has a right hand (clawed, two fingers and a thumb) but her left arm ends in a big weapon formed frmo much of the top of her vehicle mode. The head is blue plastic with clear lightpiping. The lower sections of her upper arms are light gray plastic, as are her flank struts and the inside of her left forearm. The core strut that forms the back of her "dress" and seems mostly intended to be an invisible support is black plastic, as are the upper arms, shoulders and forearms. Everything else is vehicle kibble, with those air scoops becoming shoulderpads. Chromia's face and a Y-shape on her helmet crest are painted silver. The front end of her chest is matte black, and there's black stripes on the top of her helmet. The moving detail on her left forearm is painted gloss blue...and so are the eyes. Yeah, the lightpiping is painted over in front, but not in back. You have to unscrew the head a little to remove the head from the neck, and then the rest of the way to get the lightpiping out. I suspect Hasbro's using the same basic stock of clear plastic all around, so it's probably acetone-soluble like Breakaway's, be careful removing the paint. Also, the eyes aren't flat-surfaced, so you might need to take a few passes to completely clear them...or leave some paint behind as slit pupils like I did. Articulation is so-so, but the tube dress is gonna do that to ya. The head is on a somewhat loose ball joint at the end of a hinged neck. The waist is kinda weird because it's the result of two opposing struts balljointed at either end, so the figure can lean and twist a little at the waist, or rise up like a cobra about to strike. The shoulders are ball joints, with swivels right under them. The elbows are a little weird. There's a side to side hinge above the elbow which seems to be for helping the arms fit in place in motorcycle mode. There's a regular elbow hinge on the right arm, but the left has a combination of struts so that when you bend it a panel inside the weapon slides up and down. If you have it transformed as per instructions and photo, with the weapon barrels aligned vertically, then the left elbow is frozen at 90 degrees and the extra hinge lets it swing side to side...pointless given the upper arm swivel. No leg articulation, but there's a transformation hinge where the stand clips on, and you can use this to make the figure tilt forward or back. For forward, you have to lift up the skirt and slip it past the gunbarrels on the stand. She can hold her missile in her right hand by slipping the trigger slot bit at the end between her thumb and forefinger. There's an alternate way to hook up the stand so it's mostly behind her, held a bit more securely with the kickstand. This makes her look more like a unicycle, but at the cost of a lot of her stability. You either have to use her weapon arm as a cane, or cross it in front of her chest (or over her head) so her center of mass stays inside the triangle defined by her wheel and the two guns on the stand. Overall: Well, it's certainly a *different* cycleformer, even without the mergeform elements. And kudos for including a stand, something that Sideswipe and Demolishor really could have used. On the other hand, demerits for not including combination instructions or even a hint to the consumer that there would be a mergeform. A small silhouette with "Coming soon!" in the instructions would have been enough. With so many resources going into combination, relying on consumers to hear about it elsewhere kinda hurts the perceived value. Dave Van Domelen, getting so many new toys that the old plan of doing all smaller toys before moving on to Voyagers is gonna have to go out the window. Once the wave 2 Legends are out of the way, it's on to the first bunch of Voyagers.