Dave's RotF Rant: Deluxe Wave 3 Cannon Bumblebee (2010 Camaro, 89883) Ravage (Reentry Craft, 92358) Mudflap (Chevy Trax Concept, 92466) Interceptor Barricade (Redeco with replacement for Frenzy, not reviewed) Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/RotF/Deluxe3 Cannon Bumblebee is an extensive retool, with practically the entire upper half of robot mode redone. Interceptor Barricade really just replaces Frenzy with the sensors he extends during the warehouse interrogation scene and tweaks the colors, so I passed. http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Movie/Deluxe1 - original Barricade mold http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Movie/Deluxe2 - original Bumblebee mold Note, there's a running change to Mudflap that changes his license plate from TRAX to MUDFLAP. I got the original version. There's also a running change to Cannon Bumblebee that restores the clear blue plastic to the windows, but I got the original metallic. I hear that the Cannon BB change is because the Japanese-release version has clear windows, and it's easier to rejigger the factory first and just send the new version to both countries than to make more opaque windowed ones and then try to make the changes and ship in time to Japan. CAPSULES Cannon Bumblebee: Well, this is the third major version of this mold, which was recommended at the time. But where the preview wave Bumblebee mainly tweaked bits, this is a significant rebuild. It's a clever redo, but unfortunately requires better tolerances than we're seeing this year, making for a floppy robot mode. Mildly recommended. $11.88 at Walmart (on sale at the time for $9) Ravage: The robo-panther-xenomorph mode is a little loose in places, but is otherwise pretty good. The vehicle is pretty arbitrary, but not too bad as such things go. Recommended. $11.88 at Walmart. Mudflap: Decent vehicle mode, interesting if unstable robot mode, and YOU WILL NEVER GET IT BACK INTO VEHICLE MODE COMPLETELY. This is the worst case of shellformering I've ever seen, and that counts BW Neo and RiD. AVOID. $11.88 at Walmart. Barricade: Original mold was recommended, but it's not really one I want another copy of. The new greebles are interesting, but not ten bucks' worth of interesting. $11.88 at Walmart. RANTS Packaging: Same as wave 1, with the rotating co-sell trick on the bottom. Oddly, none of these have catalogs. AUTOBOT: CANNON BUMBLEBEE Altmode: 2010 Camaro Licensor: GM Previous Name Use: None (Just "Bumblebee" a lot, though) Previous Mold Use: Movie1, Movie2 (modified heavily from either) Mech Alive: None Function: Bodyguard Motto: "Say hello to my leetle friend!" After the battle of Mission City, and the discovery of new DECEPTICONS on Earth, BUMBLEBEE decided to upgrade as many of his systems as he could. With the help of AUTOBOT RATCHET, he added some human missile launchers to his arsenal, and modified his vehicle mode to make his weapons accessible. He was caught off-guard too many times by the DECEPTICONS. Now when they come around he'll be ready. STR 6 INT 8 SPD 6 END 5 RNK 5 COUR 10 FRB 3 SKL 9 Avg 6.5 Despite upgrades, he still has that silly Fireblast of 3. Packaging: Packaged in vehicle mode, but with his cannons popped up. Two twist-ties hold the car in, and a plastic shield piece keeps the driver's side cannon (the one closer to the front of the blister) from retracting, not that they really could even without the shield, due to the way they're set up. The cannons shown on the cardback are much longer than the actual toy's, looking more like cannons (the toy's look more like a magazine for a grenade launcher). So much of the toy is retooled I'm just going to review this like a new mold rather than playing around with color swaps and specific mold changes. The legs are about the same as earlier versions, the upper body is almost completely new. http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Movie/Deluxe2 reviews the original mold, and the leg automorph is still the same as there. Note that this hews closer to the colors of the 2010 preview model in having light metallic blue-gray instead of black as the second major color after yellow. Vehicle Mode: At first glance, the mold is pretty much the same as the original Concept Camaro, other than the seams being in different places on the hood. There's some subtle differences in the grille area, though, but nothing major. The most significant change is that the windows are made of a swirly metallic blue, which is swapped in for clear plastic pretty much everywhere that would be clear in this mode. However, as mentioned above, there's a running change that brings back clear plastic. I kinda like the look of the opaque windows, and even if they're susceptible to a version of Gold Plastic Syndrome it shouldn't cause major problems because it's just windows, not structural pieces. Well, in this mode, anyway. Definitely calls for careful examination of the robot mode to look for hidden formerly- clear pieces. :) 5.5" (14cm) long, essentially the same as the original version of the mold. The body shell is golden yellow plastic, the wheels are black plastic, and the windows are that swirly metallic blue plastic. Gloss black paint is used for the rally stripes on hood and trunk, plus much of the front grille. The headlights, foglamps, hubcaps and exhaust pipes are painted silver. The taillights and the Chevy logo on the grille are red, plus a red Autobot symbol is painted on the part of the left front fender that flips up for the cannons. The license plate is unpainted. The cannons are hard to get out with my adult-sized fingers, and I suspect one reason they're shorter than shown on the package was that the longer cannons would be pretty much impossible to deploy in this mode without the use of tools. The cannon pieces are made of light metallic blue-gray plastic, the same sort used extensively on Preview Wave Bumblebee, and the fronts are painted gloss black. Stability is so-so. The front wheels don't really lock in place, and while the joints of the shoulders to which they're attached are reasonably stiff, they're not locked and so the wheels can wobble in and out (not in a useful "turning" way). This combines with the old-mold section's poor ground clearance to make rolling the toy an iffy proposition on all by the most ideal conditions. Transformation: Obviously, the legs transform the same way as on the original version, including Automorph. The other half is mostly pretty simple and obvious, but there's one bit that requires going in the right order or you'll lock it up. You need to start with the cannons stowed, so that you can flip up the turbocharger bump to unlock the joints underneath it. After you do that, it's pretty easy, although the tabs that connect the front bumper to the abdomen don't lock as well as I'd like. The roof ends up as a buttflap rather than going on the arms, and there's no "middle part of the chest sucks in" trick. The package photo shows the shoulders being left a bit low, they will in fact rise up to look a little less slumpy. Robot Mode: Well, the chest is less detailed and the head is a little weirdly bug-eyed, but it's still pretty much Bumblebee, just with cannons flanking his head. Like the Preview Wave version, it's mainly yellow and a light metallic blue-gray with some black. It's a bit shy on the paint apps, though, especially on the arms, and comes across looking more like a FAB toy than a regular Deluxe. 5.5" (14cm) tall with the requisite door wings and hood-chest. It looks like the head was molded to allow for lightpiping, but the didn't bother taking advantage of that. In addition to the car shell pieces, the following parts are yellow plastic: head (but not the face), upper arms, forearms, fingers, inner parts of the lower legs, toes, heel spurs. Metallic light blue-gray is used for the face, the collar area, all the internal torso bits, shoulder roots, elbow joints, thumbs (which is really weird), abdomen, thighs, the rest of the calves, feet. Black is only on the wheels, and the front wheels are rotated inside the torso. There's no new metalswirl blue pieces, so no worries about "Gold" Plastic Syndrome doing more than cosmetic damage. There's not a lot of new paint in this mode. The helmet crest has a red dot that extreme magnification reveals to be a tiny Autobot symbol, the license plate area on the abdomen is painted white, the eyes are bright blue, and there's a good match to the metallic blue-gray paint on the upper and lower arms. The forearm armor has no paint, though, blanding it out. The head is on a ball joint, but the transformation hinges around it are rather loose and the collar doesn't lock down (it has tabs to keep it from falling in all the way, but that doesn't stop it from popping up). The waist can't turn and tends to fall apart a bit because it doesn't lock together well either. The shoulders are ball joints on hinged struts, so he can shrug or slouch. There's a swivel above each hinge elbow, and the thumbs are hinged. Slightly loose ball joint hips, hinge knees and ankles. The knees are a bit kibble-blocked, though. The cannons can be stowed or deployed as in vehicle mode, and are easier to deploy since the back is open. Overall: Like a lot of movie designs this time around, this feels like it was created on the assumption of somewhat higher quality control standards than actually obtained. The design itself is pretty good, and a clever reuse of part of the older mold, but it just doesn't hold together well given the tolerances Hasbro's factories seem willing to strive for. DECEPTICON: RAVAGE Modes: Reentry vehicle/Panther Licensor: None Previous Name Use: G1, Alternators, Universe2 Previous Mold Use: None Mech Alive: Snapping Jaw Function: Infiltration Motto: "I am in your base, killing your pathetic fleshlings." Bulletting down through the atmosphere at better than 15 times the speed of sound, RAVAGE considers the data he has already amassed on the small, soft creatures that inhabit this planet. They seem weak and fragile, yet they are the ones that destroyed MEGATRON. That is a fact he will keep in mind as he penetrates their most sensitive installation. Against such an unpredictable enemy, stealth will be his watchword. STR 6 INT 9 SPD 7 END 7 RNK 4 COUR 10 FRB 4 SKL 8 Avg 6.875 Packaging: He's in beast mode, which I suppose is its robot mode, although aside from some interesting fan modes, he has no bipedal mode. Seven twist ties (all four legs, neck, waist, tail), and a rubber band holds the left side hip cannon in place. His package art manages to look friendly, in a toothy maw sort of way. O HAI. Kinda like the goth kid brother of Gypsy from MST3K. Panther Mode: It's like a fuzor between a panther and a Giger-ian Xenomorph, all spiny and barbed and vaguely skeletal. It kind of reminds me of TM2 Jawbreaker. All stretched out, it's 9" 923cm) from snout to tail tip, although about 4" (10cm) of that is tail. As one would expect, the dominant color is black, with accents in gray, plus some metallic blues and a splash of dark purple. G1 Ravage is echoed in a pair of cannons mounted above the hips, although there are also some details on the hips themselves that are close to being 5mm peg holes if you want to try installing missiles in a more G1-ish position. The holes are a little too small for actual G1 Ravage weapons, though, I just dug mine out to check. Most of the toy is black plastic. The three rows of rubbery spines on the back are medium warm gray, and the non-rubbery trigger for the Mech Alive gimmick is the same color. Silvery light gray plastic is used on all four hip joints, the lower half of the upper front legs (and is molded like turbines to make it look like things are spinning internally), the lower rear legs, the struts for the cannons and one of the three barbed spikes arranged radially around the tail tip. Invisible unless you pull Ravage apart, the waist joint is also light gray. The lightpiping for the single eye is deep purple. A dark metallic purple Decepticon symbol is printed near the front top of the butt section. Silver paint is used on the teeth, the rear hip sockets and some details on the neck. There's two metallic blues. The duller of the two is seen on the top of the neck, the chest, and bits on the sides of the cannons. A brighter turquoise metallic is used on some ribcage-like details on the small of the back. The last bit of paint may be the duller metallic blue, or it may be a third shade of silvery blue, it's hard to tell. This shade is airbrushed onto the snout, shoulders, hips and part of the pelvis as a subtle brightening to make the plastic look more like polished black metal. The head only has articulation for the Mech Alive, and when the head is all the way forward the jaw is actually loose to flop around. The waist is a restricted ball joint, and its looseness makes the entire toy feel a lot floppier than it really is, tightning it up should help significantly. In the tail are two hinges, a swivel (that pops apart easily) and a ball joint that combine for surprisingly little actual range of motion. The front hips are ball joints on struts that are hinged at their base, while the rear hips are just ball joints. Be careful with them, though, as there's a transformation hinge that swings the entire assembly down and doesn't lock all that well. There's a swivel in each upper foreleg, and a sideways hinge abvoe the elbow that moves only a little, presumably for better fit in vehicle mode. The elbows are hinged, and the toe and heel claw bits are independently hinged. There's hinges for knee, true ankle and toe-ankle on the hindlegs, with the paws being solid pieces rather than bending in the middle like the forepaws. It's possible to stand him on just three legs so he can wave with one of his forelegs, but this requires severely "pigeon-toeing" the other foreleg, since the hip joints on the forelegs don't have enough range of motion to put a paw under the chest without rotating the leg inward at the thigh swivel. The Mech Alive gimmick in this mode involves pulling back (not pressing down) on a lever near the small of his back, which blends in reasonably well with his spines. When you do this, the head moves forward about a centimeter, the jaws open, and the ears flatten back into "angry cat" position. Given Ravage's fate in the movie, the gimmick has a certain irony. Transformation: Well, the forelegs wrap around the head, pegging loosely on his "whisker" plates. The chest splits apart and sprouts wings, while the legs and tail fold forward in between the chest halves. There's a couple of pegs, and the instructions even show how to get one set in place, but otherwise it's a lot of fiddling around to get things to seat more or less stably. For instance, extending the head a little...but not all the way... helps with pegging the forelegs onto the sides. The gray part of the tail spike folds forward and sort of helps as a landing gear. Vehicle Mode: Okay, it's not as pointless as Deluxe Scorponok's never- used robot mode, and Ravage *does* do orbital re-entry in the movie, so while this isn't really what that configuration looked like, at least it's in the same general vicinity of a canonical mode. What we actually get is closer to a War Within seekerjet or lifting body, a stubby-winglet-ed spacecraft that still pretty much looks like a robokitty crouched down and covering his head. Being all black at least helps hide kittydetails, and once you get everything in the right place the stability is decent. I'd still recommend picking it up by the butt, though, to avoid dislodging limbs. 5.5" (14cm) long with a "wingspan" of 4.5" (11cm), the color balance only changes a tiny bit, with metallic blue on the solar panels atop the winglets. The winglets are really the only pieces visible in this mode that aren't visible in panther mode, and they're black plastic with bright metallic blue paint on the top. The head is locked in place, so the Mech Alive gimmick is blocked. The cannons are supposed to be all the way forward, so the rubbery spines get in the way a little, but being rubbery helps. While there's no landing gear per se, various spikes on the underside stabilize the toy on the table. It's a nice enough "aircraft because it has tiny wings and we say so" mode, but I don't expect anyone to display the toy in this mode. Overall: If you can get past the aggressive application of movie aesthetic, it's not a bad toy. Sure, the altmode is kinda weak, but compared to a cassette tape it's not too bad. :) The gimmick is decent and doesn't hinder things. Worth picking up. AUTOBOT: MUDFLAP Altmode: Chevy Trax Concept Licensor: GM Previous Name Use: Cybertron Previous Mold Use: None Mech Alive: Reveals cannon (this is the one documented on the package, there's another one as well) Function: Kid sidekick Motto: "Gonna get all up in ya rigid grille structure!" Young but eager, MUDFLAP has wanted to be a full-fledged warrior under the command of OPTIMUS PRIME for as long as he can remember. He and his twin brother AUTOBOT SKIDS traveled for years to Earth, just in the hopes of joining up with their idols. Being on Earth with OPTIMUS PRIME and the other heroes of the Great War is a dream come true. STR 4 INT 5 SPD 7 END 5 RNK 2 COUR 9 FRB 4 SKL 3 Avg 4.875 Packaging: Two ties hold the vehicle mode in, one more on the missile. Vehicle Mode: Since it's only a concept vehicle, information like the length of the real thing is harder to come by, but I did find out that the Trax has 16" wheels. Based on that, the scale of this car is about 1:22, although 1:24 is certainly possible. As a result, it looks a lot bigger than it should next to other Deluxe cars, which tend to be closer to 1:32 scale. Like Skids's Chevy Beat, the Trax is a smart car concept, which I suppose is ironic given how the Twins are kinda stupid cars. 4.75" (12cm) long, so at 1:24 scale it'd work out to only 9.5 feet (a shade under 3m) long. Coloration is very close to the FAB version, in a metalflake dark orange with medium gray bordering and dark smoke clear plastic bits. The missile can be stored as a smoke cloud coming out the back, something a smart car probably shouldn't have unless it's burning oil. :) The wheels are black plastic, and the windows are separate pieces of smoky plastic rather than relying on painting much of a door dark orange, which means there's no paint match problems for the orange sections. The headlights and missile are also made of smoky plastic. The middle bottom of the front fender is medium gray plastic, and the side mirrors are light gray plastic. The rest of the vehicle is metalflake dark orange. Medium gray is the main paint color here, with all of the front end aside from the hood itself being painted over in it or being made of gray plastic. The bottom border on the sides and most of the bumper are also painted medium gray, although the hinges on the sides interrupt the bottom border paint. The headlights, rims, taillight borders and Chevy symbol on the front are painted silver. The headlight borders are unpainted and look black or dark gray until you shine strong light on them and see that they're smoky clear. The middle bits of front and back bumpers are painted gunmetal, and the taillights are red. The license plate on back is printed "TRAX" in black on a dark orange rectangle. Stability is so-so, and the panelmaster nature of this mode is pretty clear as even casual handling can cause some of the panels to pop apart. The robot hips protrude enough to minimize ground clearance without eliminating it. The hood can pop up a little due to a transformation joint, but can't open fully. Transformation: I was warned about this one. Going to robot mode wasn't all that hard on mine, although since nothing in the torso really locks into position (oh, I can see a tab that's supposed to stick into a slot inside the torso to lock things, but it won't lock, and barely even acts as a stopper!) it's hard to know when you're done. Others have reported more trouble with robot mode, though. Locking the exhaust-pipe-missile hole onto a tab behind the head helps some. Also, it's a total shellformer, with only a few square centimeters of the vehicle mode being integral to the robot mode. Otherwise, it's all wing panels and huge backpack. We're talking Wreck-Gar (TF:A) levels of shellformer. Skids at least wrapped some of the shell pieces into parts other than the backpack and wings. Going back to vehicle mode, however, hits the curse of the shellformer. Getting the hood to all connect up is an exercise in frustration, even for someone like me with plenty of shellmaster experience. It looks like there's a joint in the pelvis that needs to come unclipped to make things work, but it refuses to budge. After NEARLY AN HOUR of trying to get the front end together, including using a knife to pry pieces out when the panels decided they'd rather slide past each other than click together, I gave up. This toy is never going back into vehicle mode. Robot Mode: As mentioned above, this is a shellformer. Shell pieces aside, it's a slightly hunched over form (shoulder joints at eye level) with an oversized left forearm to mirror the big right forearm on Autobot Skids. Sadly, his head is accurate to the movie, so it looks like a partly melted robotic Mogwai. The front side fenders stick out on the sides of the chest in front of the arms, and can't be tucked away. They look interesting, but get in the way. The side mirrors become similar smaller spines at the shoulder level behind the head. 4.25" (11cm) tall at the head, but the car doors form wings over the head to raise the total height to 5.75" (14.5cm). Still mostly dark metalflake orange, with a few more medium gray bits, plus a fairly large number of light gray pieces in the joints. Black plastic is mostly added in places where it's not immediately visible, like the inside of the pelvis and some joints holding on the backpack, but the back half of the head is also black and so is the missile launcher on the left arm. It doesn't look like the head was designed for lightpiping, though. The front of the head is medium gray, and so are the outer housings of the shoulders and the left forearm armor pieces that slide apart during Mech Alive. Light gray is used for several connector struts, the inside of the shoulders, the ball part of the hip joints, the upper arms, elbows, knees, shin-attached kneecaps, ankles and launcher trigger. A lot of the joints involve a gray piece between two other pieces, so the gray was probably picked in part because it's slippery. In addition to all the shell pieces, the orange plastic is used on the collar, both foreamrms and hands, the pelvis front, some internal torso bits, the thighs, the shins (other than the kneepad section) and the feet. There's not a lot of new paint here. There's some dark metallic orange on the face, and gunmetal details on each forearm, The front of the pelvis is gloss black with a silver Autobot symbol. Sigh, I've already lost the missile. Oh, I know roughly where it went, but being dark plastic means that unless I want to spend half an hour dismantling everything in that area, it's pure luck whether I find it. Articulation is pretty good, if a bit hampered by both kibble and the instability of the torso. The head is on a limited ball joint, but the torso transformation prevents having a waist joint. The shoulders are smooth universal joints, there's upper arm swivels and double hinge elbows. The right wrist swivels, while the left wrist bends in the palm direction. The left hand's thumb has a hinge joint. The hips are ball joints, there's a swivel above each knee, and the knees are double hinges. The ankles have a side to side hinge at the top of the light gray piece and a ball joint where it meets the foot. The chest has a certain amount of articulation to let you play around with its face-like nature, such as the lower fender folding down to let the "mouth" open and the fender bits can wiggle around a bit. There's actually two Mech Alive gimmicks here. If you bend the left fist at the wrist, it makes the missile launcher pop out, and that's the one the package talked about. When the launcher pops up, the medium gray armor pieces on the forearm separate. But he also has the same "punch in the chest" gimmick as Autobot Skids, making his headlights fold in and his head push forward. You know, if you remove the melty-gremlin head and paint the headlights a bit, this becomes a passable Gunmen (Gurren Lagann), with a weird carp-like mustache (barbels). Of course, then the Mech Alive gimmick becomes a punch in the face, something that Mudflap probably deserves. Overall: Enjoy the vehicle mode while you can before transforming it, because you'll probably never, ever see it again. As a Transformer, with the idea being to go back and forth between two or more modes, this toy totally fails. Which is a pity, because the robot mode has some interesting elements to it. Before I tried transforming this back to vehicle mode, I actually kinda liked the toy...but by the time I'd wasted nearly an hour in failed attempts to get it back into vehicle mode, I was about ready to take a hammer to the damn thing. Do not under any circumstances buy this toy for a child, unless you hate that child. Dave Van Domelen, sees another whole pile of new toys hitting stores and hasn't even gotten all of his "available on street date" stuff reviewed.