Dave's RotF Rant: Deluxe Wave 4 Stalker Scorponok (black redeco) Swerve (red redeco of Sideswipe) Arcee (motorcycle) Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/RotF/Deluxe4 While the black deco on Scorponok looks pretty good, the actual mold isn't that impressive, and I don't want a second copy. I waffled on Swerve, but decided to give the mold a second chance, especially since it has a new head. Of course, if I'd waffled longer, I could have gotten it for $10 since it's now choking the shelves at Walmarts around here, rather than paying full price. Arcee, of course, is new, so naturally I got one. Bad move, that turned out to be. Later note: A friend had a Stalker Scorponok he didn't want, so he gave it to me in trade for some art. http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Movie/Deluxe1 for the original Scorponok review. CAPSULES Stalker Scorponok: Original mold was recommended for just the beast mode, with the robot mode being a write-off. The new colors are better in some ways, but not as good in others, and overall I'd call the two roughly equal. Pass on this if you have the original. Swerve: Original mold was mildly recommended due in part to things that may have been bad luck of the quality control draw. This one was either re-engineered slightly or I got a good luck of the draw, and I like the colors better overall. Recommended. $11.88 at Walmart. Arcee: The motorcycle mode is nice, but the transformation seems to give up before reaching a proper robot mode, and the robot is a total write-off. Total piece of slag. Even if the combiner is eventually completed, this figure's not worth getting. Avoid. $11.88 at Walmart. RANTS Packaging: Same as previous waves. Swerve has Arcee as a cosell, Arcee has Stalker Scorponok, and I guess SS has Swerve. In addition to the instructions there's a poster-style catalog, which doesn't give functions like the other catalog out there. One side focuses on "Power Up Optimus Prime" (aka Jetpower Optimus Prime) and Supreme Devastator, the other has a mix of Deluxes, Voyagers (including a picture of original Ratchet incorrectly called Desert Tracker Ratchet) and the first two Human Alliance toys. The bottom margins have various non-transforming merchandise like the RPMs and the roleplay items. DECEPTICON: STALKER SCORPONOK Altmode: Scorpion Licensor: None Previous Name Use: None ("Scorponok" alone G1, BW, Energon, Movie1) Previous Mold Use: Movie1 Gimmick: Stinger lance, spinning claws Function: Hunter-Killer Motto: "HUGZ!" Back on CYBERTRON, even before the war, SCORPONOK lurked in the dark, unpopulated places of his world, waiting for unsuspecting travelers to pass by. He would burrow silently through the shifting powdered iron of the planet's southern deserts, stalking his prey. The robots he hunted never even suspected his presence until he burst from the ground in a shower of glittering, steel sand. STR 5 INT 2 SPD 6 END 8 RNK 3 COUR 6 FRB 5 SKL 3 Avg 4.75 Interestingly, "Scorponok" is a registered trademark, while "Stalker Scorponok" is not. That's probably why his bio note drops the stalker so that they can get that important R-in-circle on the package somewhere. Tech spec stats are the same as regular Scorponok. Packaging: It was already opened and I was just sent the toy and the backing card, but presumably it had the same two twist-ties that the original needed. Color Swaps: Metallic gray and light gray become black, pale gold becomes ghost gray, black becomes ghost gray, bronze becomes dark gray. The rubbery spear blade plastic is now ghost gray. Paint Apps: Deep red paint on the eyes, the fake eyes of the stinger, all three tips of the stinger, the intakes of the claw-turbines and the circles on the shoulders that are painted gold on the original. Several details on the claw "forearms" are silver, as are the mouthparts. "916-96" is printed in bright gold on each forearm, while pale gold is used for Cybertronian glyph tattoos on the cheeks and flanks. A pale gold Decepticon symbol is printed behind the rear wheels. [Later note: Thanks to Susp for the heads up, 916-96 is a reference to September 16, 1996, the debut date of Scorponok on Beast Wars. And as Defunct points out, the "glyphs" on the right flank are actually a partial Predacon symbol.] In "robot" mode, a few more red details are painted on the torso. Mold Changes: None that I noticed. However, the roller in front in beast mode doesn't work properly, either it was damaged at some point (certainly possible) or the tiny nubs that keep it in place have suffered some from mold rot. Doesn't really affect the rolling/spinning gimmick, though. Other Notes: They also released a redeco of Blackout (as Grindor), so Stalker Scorponok can be plugged into Grindor to use the linkage gimmick. However, as noted above, the paint apps de-emphasize the "part of a helicopter" look, leaving just a few bits on the forearms. Overall: It looks a bit more dynamic than the original, but I wouldn't say it's necessarily better. If the pale gold pieces had been made into a darker gray or gunmetal, it'd be much better. If you never got the original, it's worty grabbing this for $8-10 if you find it on sale, but if you have the original give this a pass unless you have a thing for scorpions (in which case you probably bought this before I got around to reviewing it). AUTOBOT: SWERVE Altmode: Corvette Stingray Concept Licensor: GM Previous Name Use: G1, Alt, Armada, Cybertron, Universe Previous Mold Use: RotF (head swapped, though) Mech Alive: Shifting battle armor Function: Metallurgist Motto: "I found the mineral deposit! Um, with my bumper." SWERVE is highly intelligent, though you wouldn't know it to watch him drive. His duties as a metallurgist and fabricator for the AUTOBOTS expose him to a lot of toxic chemicals, which his circuits have been constantly exposed to for years. He has trouble holding a straight line as a result. The other AUTOBOTS prefer to keep him far away from battle, since he aims about as well as he drives. STR 6 INT 9 SPD 7 END 6 RNK 5 COUR 6 FRB 3 SKL 9 Avg 6.375 Sideswipe may be all sorts of colors (red in G1 and G1 homage lines, black in G2, blue in Armada), but Swerve is always red (and almost always a redeco with or without head remold...the Universe version being the lone exception). The fact that Sideswipe's silver in the RotF line means Swerve can be a redeco of Sideswipe AND give the "Sideswipe is red" crowd an easy out. Buy Swerve, call it Sideswipe, Prime's your uncle. Interestingly, while G1 Swerve was a bad-driver metallurgist, he was simply inattentive rather than suffering from the equivalent of nerve damage. Makes movie Swerve less of a comic figure and more of a tragic one. Not that this stopped me from giving him a lighter motto. Packaging: Two twist-ties around the car, no rubber bands. Color Swaps: Most of the dark gray turned to a slightly dark red, but a few bits became light gray instead: shins, some of the hinges on the hood pieces, hinge behind the head, internal spine and arm strut pieces. Black stays black. Clear blue is still clear blue, albeit a little darker (which might be batch variation). Most of the light gray becomes black, but the toes, roof connector and the exhaust housing become slightly dark red. The rubbery plastic (suspension, side mirrors) is black. The ball parts of the hip ball and socket joints are colorless clear plastic. Paint Apps: Decent match red where necessary on the clear parts, plus some details on the thighs, forearms and face. The face is silver, and so are the sliding armor panels in the thighs. Gold paint is used on both molded Corvette logos and on the hip spines. The taillights are painted metallic amber (not a transparent paint), the headlights are unpainted. The front grille is solid black and there's black on the pelvis. The wheelcovers are dark silver. The license plate is white with a black Autobot symbol. Mold Changes: The head, basically. The new face is vaguely reminiscent of Ratchet's. The head is made of black plastic with medium blue lightpiping. The red details form a sort of shallow X pattern over his face. Other Notes: Thanks to the way the hood kibble folds away somewhat arbitrarily, you can find a different configuration that's just as good but further distinguishes Swerve from Sideswipe. Also, I'm leaving the blades slightly open as scissors on Swerve. The joints are slightly stiffer on my Swerve than on my Sideswipe, which helps considerably but may just be normal batch variation rather than a consistent difference. I also had fewer issues with transformation, but again that may just be random. Overall: A much more dynamic look than the original version of the mold, and it might actually work better in these plastics, but don't count on it. I prefer this to the original. AUTOBOT: ARCEE Altmode: Motorcycle with sidecar Licensor: None Previous Name Use: Energon, Movie1 (twice, different characters), Robot Heroes G1 (TF:A toy hopefully forthcoming) Previous Mold Use: None Mech Alive: Moving gears in arm Function: Trademark Maintenance Motto: "Hi, I'm Chromia! Wait, I'm Flareup. Or am I Elita-1? Let me check my notes...." ARCEE jumped at the chance to join up with Ironhide and the other DECEPTICON hunters on Earth. She proved such an effective warrior that she was quickly given command of her own strike team, made up of robots similar to her in attitude and design. Together with the AUTOBOTS she leads, she stalks the DECEPTICONS in silence, creeping close enough to look them in the optics before she strikes. STR 8 INT 6 SPD 8 END 5 RNK 5 COUR 7 FRB 7 SKL 9 Avg 6.75 Seriously, they have NO IDEA what they're doing with the Arcee character here. Is she a combiner, is she not, is Arcee the combined mode or one of the cycles, and what about the two different Arcees from the previous movie line? This is an aggressive case of lawyercons shoving a name into use without any particular interest in story or consistency. I suppose one could say that the Deluxe Arcee from the first movie got revamped after getting command of her strike team (although her Rank didn't go up any), since they did give this Arcee the same techspec line as the 2007 new-mold version. Of course, they then colored her blue and called her Chromia for Robot Heroes. Flareup and/or Elita-1 is the putative third member of the combiner team, and she may be a new mold or maybe a redeco of Chromia or Arcee, and even if she's a redeco there may have been changes made to the mold that will prevent combination...and frankly, the mergemode isn't worth the hassle. However, this does mean I'm going to go ahead and judge this toy as a standalone, and not cut it slack for combination elements that may never become relevant. Packaging: Two twist-ties on the motorcycle, one on the sidecar. The sidecar is pegged on the cycle in package, but the peg is really loose. The kickstand is down, and it needs to be up for the sidecar to stay on properly. Vehicle Mode: A hot magenta (think a dark dayglo pink) and black street motorcycle with a puny sidecar. 5.25" (13cm) long, she's a little shorter than Chromia but has a more compact design so it probably also 1:12 scale (or maybe 1:14 scale, or 5" action figure scale...6" action figures look too big on it). It looks pretty good from the left side, but on the right it's clearly missing a few pieces (a strut from the rear wheel to the body, support for the seat). And unlike Chromia, no valve stems. The aerodynamic cowling, gas tank and the sides of the tail section are made of hot magneta plastic. The grips and side mirrors are rubbery black plastic, the windscreen and headlights are clear lightblue plastic. Oddly, the windscreen was then painted entirely gloss black. The rest of the toy is black plastic. In addition to the windscreen, gloss black is used on the bottoms of the cowling. Matte black is used on the exhaust pipes and to put glyph tattoos on the sides of the cowling. There's silver stripes on the cowling, a silver Autobot symbol on the seat, silver detailing at the back of the gastank (really meant for the robot chest) and silver lightly airbrushed onto the front of the gas tank to give a metallic pink effect. The wheel hubs are painted hot magenta, a little darker than the plastic. The wheels spin freely. The handlebars do not move, but the kickstand does fold down and supports the cycle properly in the absence of The sidecar is a single fused piece of black plastic with a few hot magenta paint accents, 3.5" (cm) long. It lacks any wheels, even tiny hidden ones, so it's more of a skid than a sidecar. While it has molded weapon barrels, it doesn't have an official "clip onto the seat" configuration like Chromia has for her big black chunk of plastic, it's solely a skidcar stuck to the left side of the motorcycle. While the motorcycle is close to 1:12 scale, the sidecar is more appropriate for Human Alliance figures (1:30 scale), it's a pretty puny excuse for a sidecar. Stability is okay, but not great. It relies a bit too much on stiff hinges and not enough on pegs, and the sidecar could stand to be a little more secure as well. Undocumented Feature: There's a 5mm peghole on the bottom of the sidecar and a mysterious unused 5mm peg on the right side of the aerodynamic cowling. Now, both COULD be intended for the combiner mode (so that the sidecar acts as a blaster for whichever arm ends up being made partly out of Arcee's left arm), but it also lets you plug the sidecar onto the right side as a weapon pod, which has the happy side effect of covering up most of the gaps on that side. Transformation: wHY My sHOuLDeRs hURt? Okay, getting the legs worked out is pretty easy, and the right arm is fairly clever. The left arm is mostly an excuse to shove a bunch of shell into one area, and the entire cowling of the motorcycle front end just sits there (it has loads of joints to separate out for combiner mode, but all it does here is separate by about a millimeter). But where this really bites the concrete enchilada is in the spine, which has to be the worst case of robo-scoliosis ever. The official transformation just gives up and has her torso facing to the right, utterly unable to face straight ahead (it cheats horribly with the choice of camera angle on the final steps, making it look like she might be facing forward when she's not). The joints involved are so frelled up by whatever insane combination scheme they came up with that it took me ten minutes of messing around to get the torso to face mostly forward...and it's tilted a little to the side. There's so many angles and so few actual joints in among the molded faux joints that you really can't do much with it. Going back to motorcycle mode isn't too hard unless you've departed from the official spine configuration, in which case there's a fair amount of messing about needed to get all the pieces back into the right places (and the instructions are only marginally helpful). It's one of those fiddly transformations where nothing seems to want to seat properly until you get everything pretty close, at which point it just sort of falls into place. Robot Mode: This makes Chromia look like the paragon of well-thought-out robot modes. About all it's good for is to donate the head to some other project, and then either put it back in vehicle mode or try to combine it with Chromia. The arms are skeletal and covered in kibble, the legs are a brick, the torso might as well be a brick for all the useful articulation it has. There's a so-so "pop out energy blade" gimmick on the right arm, but the left hand can't even reach past the big motorcycle cowling panels slapped around the forearm. This is pretty clearly the mold that the upper half of Robot Heroes Chromia is based on, although the bottom half doesn't match and you can't get the motorcycle grips into that funky "swords strapped to back" configuration. Somewhere between 5" (12cm) and 7" (18cm) tall depending on how you stretch out the spinal kinks. Pretty much every piece that wasn't visible in motorcycle mode is unpainted black plastic, with the exception of the head (which is made of hot magenta plastic with light blue lightpiping and a silver face). The blade on the right arm is also light blue plastic. Overall: The motorcycle mode is nice, especially if you use the undocumented sidecar attachment. But everything else makes Chromia look like the world's best motorcycle Transformer by comparison. And from the pictures I've seen of the planned combiner mode, it doesn't make acquisition of Arcee even a little more worthwhile. Pass on this turkey. Dave Van Domelen, really hopes that the TF:Animated Arcee comes out, getting kinda tired of a steady diet of motorcycles under that name.