Dave's Revenge of the Fallen Rant: Deluxe Wave 5 Blazemaster (News Helicopter, 92357) Jolt (Chevy Volt, 92552) Autobot Skids and Mudflap (Ice Cream Truck, 92558) Dead End (Sports Car, Sideways head mod, 92559) Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/RotF/Deluxe5 Dead End is a head-swap redeco of Sideways, original review at http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/RotF/Deluxe1. All the other molds in this assortment are entirely new. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digitigrade explains a term I use a lot in reviews of movie-style Transformers. :) It's sometimes called "chicken legged" or "backwards knees" because the ankles are high enough up to look like backwards knees, and what looks like an ankle is actually the joint between the tarsals (bones in the arch of a human foot) and the toes. CAPSULES Blazemaster: Fairly ambitious, but it feels like they rushed it to production without enough "does this actually work" checking. Mildly recommended. $10.00 at Walmart. Jolt: Solid vehicle mode, interesting transformation without being annoying, decent robot mode with only minor flaws. Best of the wave. Recommended. $10.00 at Walmart. Autobot Skids and Mudflap: An interesting and seldom-used combination concept, decent transformation, good vehicle mode and okay robot modes, but could stand some more paint. Recommended. $12.99 at K-Mart (yeah, someone beat me to the one at Walmart) Dead End: Original mold was recommended. The original's problems persist, but it looks like some thought was put into helping make the robot modes look distinct beyond just the headswap. Recommended. $10.00 at Walmart. (And for those who quibble about such things, Dead End and Skids/Mudflap are just above Mildly Recommended, and Jolt is just barely below Strongly Recommended. If you don't have Sideways, Dead End beats out the Twins, but if you do have Sideways, then the Twins win out for the #2 spot.) RANTS Packaging: Same as previous waves. These come with catalogs (the Devastator/Human Alliance one), and on the Twins' blister is a sticker saying "2 robots combine!". All are in vehicle mode, although the Twins are separated a little to demonstrate the combiner nature. The "Mech Alive" logo is absent from the new toys, although they still mostly have call-outs for gimmicks that might have otherwise been called Mech Alive. And Jolt definitely has that Mech Alive fire in his belly. AUTOBOT: BLAZEMASTER Altmode: News Helicopter (Dauphin-style) Licensor: None Previous Name Use: None (G1 Micromaster was Blaze Master) Previous Mold Use: None Gimmick: Spinning rotor Function: Chemical Warfare Motto: "Look out below!" There are a lot of AUTOBOTS who think BLAZEMASTER is a little haywire. he likes to hover over DECEPTICON squads, letting them notice him, and relying on his defensive systems to protect him from their fire. It isn't until his targets notice him that he drops his payload of corrosive gel right on their heads. Watching a bunch of DECEPTICONS break into a panicked sprint while their armor smokes and melts is what he lives for. STR 5 INT 8 SPD 8 END 5 RNK 6 COUR 10 FRB 5 SKL 9 Avg 7 Packaging: Two twist-ties hold the helicopter mode in, with a plastic shield over the root of the rotors. The rear landing wheels are folded up, but the nosewheel is deployed. The photo has a white plastic push trigger for the rotor gimmick, but the actual toy uses clear blue. Also, the photo has the wrong colors for the lower legs and the head, and transforms the backpack differently from the instructions. The photo's version of the backpack is a bit more stable than the instructions version, though. Vehicle Mode: This is more or less a Dauphin-style helicopter (made by Eurocopter), like Cybertron Evac, with a fenestron tail and what looks like an abbreviated winch unit on the right side of the motor housing. It's done up as a news helicopter, although according to Wikipedia the only Dauphins in civilian service in the U.S. are air ambulances. The model is mostly used for that sort of thing, air rescue and maritime patrol...NHK does maintain a small fleet of them as news helicopters, though. So we have a Prowl situation, where the vehicle mode is appropriate to the job in Japan, even if you're unlikely to see it doing the job in America. :) 7" (18cm) long with a 6" (15cm) rotor circle, it's in proper proportions for an AS365 model, about 1:76 scale. Done in dark gold and very dark blue with white rotors and logo. The actual blue plastic is slightly swirly metalflake. It's a pretty tightly packed vehicle, and it's very hard to get together all the way...after one transformation there's a visible seam on the bottom I can't get completely closed. The windows and rotor spin gimmick trigger are clear aqua plastic. The engine chunk on top is gold plastic with no significant swirl, but some side panels are gold with slight swirl. The rotor, winch, the landing struts and some visible hinges are white plastic. Otherwise it's swirly metalflake dark blue plastic. The tiny wheels are black. Oh, and it's not immediately obvious in this mode, but the underside of the tail is partly made of gold plastic, just painted over. Most of the paint is either gold or metallic blue to blend the overall colors together better. The result is mostly gold with a dark metallic blue belly that rises up to cover the nose and the tail. The tail rotor is painted white inside its fenestron. There's two pairs of ID lights around the engine chunk (so visual tracking can tell which side is facing you at night), red in the front left and rear right, white on the other two corners. Printed on either side of the body in white is a Channel 7 Action News swoopy logo, and 7 News is on each side of the tail. On the left side behind the door and above the CH in the logo is a black Autobot symbol. The main gimmick here is the spinning rotor, press the clear blue rod in and it spins. You can get it up to a pretty good speed, but it's liable to fly off if you do so...the rectangular peg doesn't hold all that well, and it wobbles out of true almost immediately no matter how carefully you position it. Otherwise, the only articulation is the landing gear, which can fold up and down. The tail rotor is merely molded, it doesn't spin. Transformation: Boy, howdy, there's a lot of folding struts and panels in this one, and as mentioned above, they don't seem to be sure quite what to do with the tail section. There's a place where it looks like the folded up strut holding the tail should snap into place inside the torso somewhere to stabilize the robot's body, but I'm not sure how to get it to work. There's a lot of tabs and slots that seem to be mutually contradictory in that area...either one set or another works, but not both. That sort of thing. In general, a lot of this transformation feels like it's not quite done, pieces held loosely in place. Stability isn't awful, it just feels like they took a Voyager design and shrank it down, removing a number of tabs and locking parts that would have been too fragile at the smaller size. The rotor is supposed to split in two, each half mounting on a different forearm. But since the rotor post won't lock in place, the nifty visuals shown on the package are only possible if you add glue or poster tack to keep the rotor from spinning. You can also just leave the rotor intact on the left arm's spinning post, but you can't mount the whole thing on the right arm. Getting back into vehicle mode is difficult, due to the tight clearances and the fact you need to do things in just the right order with the arms and legs, but it's not unreasonable. About the only part I had trouble with popping off is the feet, since they've got the tightest fit of all. Robot Mode: Spindly-legged and somewhat hunchbacked, it's certainly unlike most other helicopter-mode robots. But like the 2007 Jazz mold, the forearms are just folded over panels with a claw sticking out. Plus, the upper arms are so short and so prone to popping apart if you bend them the wrong way, that he might as well have no elbows at all. It doesn't help that his shoulder joints are behind his back rather than on either side of the torso. On the one hand, it's a pretty successful execution of the "Bayformer" aesthetic at the Deluxe size. On the other hand, the Bayformer aesthetic stinks. About 5" (13cm) tall at the head, the total height depends on how you position the backpack kibble. The color balance shifts towards white, with a lot of the internal struts (now more or less visible) in the torso being made of white plastic, along with the thumb claws and the lower legs. The feet and some newly exposed chest details are dark blue plastic, and the robot head seems to be made of pale gold plastic...just painted over entirely. Clear aqua plastic is used for the lightpiped eyes. The head is painted dark blue with a gold painted faceplate (it's definitely a gold paint on the face). Much of the new chest section is painted white with some thing red edging. This design is marked by having more joints than it needs or can use. I've already mentioned the arms, which combine two ball joints and two hinges each to get...not a lot. The arms can lift up to the sides on very restricted ball joints, and the other ball joint works okay as an elbow, but the two hinges/swivels are mainly for transformation and not too useful for articulation. The thumb claw is hinged, but it's also almost totally covered by a panel, so it's not really useful. The head is on a restricted ball joint, and while the waist can turn in theory there's too much kibble in the way to let this be useful. The hips are ball joints with "exposed gear" style swivels right below them, but there's also a mid-thigh swivel that doesn't seem to add much articulation. It has digitigrade hinge knees and high ankles, plus an additional transformation hinge in the middle of the tarsal section. The ankles are ball joints and the feet are pretty small even without considering the top-heavy proportions. If any of the joints in the legs ends up being loose, this toy can't stand, in part because of the tiny feet. Mine is okay, but you may need to try the nailpolish or superglue tricks to firm yours up. If you leave the rotor intact, you can use the spinning gimmick as a weapon on the left arm, although it's a bit awkward. [Update: there's a friction block built into the rotor section. If you look by where the forearm meets the elbow, you'll see a small white tab. There's supposed to be a spring inside that pushes that piece out, creating friction to stop the rotor from sagging. The tab is pushed in when you put the toy in vehicle mode, allowing for free spinning. The spring needs to be very small, 2mm wide and maybe 4mm long, but it's really hard to reassemble with a spring in place unless it's exactly the right length. I've tried twice, but my donor pen spring was too fat and when it was long enough to do anything it was too wide to get to fit right (when it was too short fitting didn't matter). There's several other TINY pieces that are easily lost, including a washer and another small spring on the main gear.] Overall: It has an interesting look and an inventive transformation, but the robot mode suffers for being too clever by half. It's very vulnerable to loose joints and suffers from what seems to be a lack of communication between the designers at the start and finish of the process. It's not really a bad toy, per se, just one that probably should have been sent through another round or two of revisions to make sure everything actually worked. AUTOBOT: JOLT Altmode: Chevy Volt Licensor: GM Previous Name Use: G2, Armada, Cybertron, Movie1, Universe2 Previous Mold Use: None Gimmick: Flip-out Electro-Whips Function: Shock Trooper Motto: "Now go away, or I will taunt you a second time!" JOLT loves to cause trouble. More than one group of DECEPTICONS has watched in confusion as JOLT, all alone, raced around them in circles, taunting them. They're not used to AUTOBOTS acting crazy. Little do they know that it really is just an act - part of a plan to lure his enemies in close where he can deliver a crippling blow with his electro-whips. STR 6 INT 5 SPD 4 END 7 RNK 4 COUR 9 FRB 6 SKL 9 Avg 6.125 Packaging: 2 twist-ties, plus a rubber band around the middle of the car to hold the panels together. Vehicle Mode: The only fully licensed altmode in the wave, more a concept car than a production model at the time the movie was being made, it's a Chevy Volt. I suppose it would have been a little too twee to call him Volt, although Sizzle or Electro would have been a slightly slyer G2 reference. :) [Later note: there were two concept cars for the Volt, the second one is nearly identical to the production model, and it was that second concept car that was used to model Jolt for the movie. So it's closer to the production model than 2007 Bumblebee's Camaro mode mockup was.] 5.5" (14cm) long, making it about 1:33 scale like most Deluxe cars, and in metalflake medium-dark blue with aqua windows. Most of the plastic of the body shell is metalflake blue, although some of the bits around the windows are painted over clear aqua. The wheels are black plastic. While visible through the windows, the robot parts aren't otherwise exposed. The main paint other than some minor blue matching is silver, used on the headlights, front grille, wheel hubs and the top/front of the bladelike rear view mirrors. There's some little yellow turn indicators painted on the headlights. (Something about molding processes must make blade mirrors easier to do, since they show up so often lately, even on more realistic molds like the Human Alliance cars.) The roof is either a metalflake charcoal or the blue paint interacted badly with something. The rear fender is matte black with a silver "VOLT" across it and red taillights. The Chevy logo on the front is painted gold, but the one molded on the back is left black. The license plate is molded, but not painted. There's no Autobot symbols visible in this mode. Ground clearance is less than a millimeter due to some joint supports between the front wheels, but it's otherwise stable and rolls well. None of the doors or other hatches open up. Transformation: Side panels including most of each door pop out, the front end unfolds and refolds in the back as a backpack, the roof becomes the arms and the rear section becomes the legs. Importantly, though, the bumper halves become the toes in a way I don't think we've seen before. There's a lot of "standard car transformation" elements, mixed in with new stuff. The overall design is very open, with very few places that fit tightly, making it really easy to transform both ways without worrying about getting things exactly right in the exactly right order. I've seen it described as an almost G1-style transformation, but it isn't. It's still following most of the general principles of a movie-line Deluxe, just with enough wide open spaces to make it an order of magnitude more forgiving. It's a little tricky going back to car mode, making sure all the panels are in place, but nothing compared to any of the other molds in this wave. The side panels officially just hang straight down in back, but there's a fair amount of range to them. You could make them more like G1-style door wings, or like a Batman cape (seriously, remove the horn from the front of his helmet and he could be Batmech), or fold them more tightly together (although this keeps the waist from turning). Robot Mode: Ignore the random name shuffles. This is Skids, the Autobot Theoretician. Okay, he's missing the red parts, but if you feed the toy's head through the Bayformer Process, there's a good chance you'd get something much like Jolt's head. Okay, that bit of fannishness aside, you can tell from the four fake wheels molded onto his thighs that the toy designers were pretty much ignoring the movie model's transformation scheme, and it's definitely for the best. There's really no way the wheels would end up there in any kind of sane (or engineerable as a Deluxe) transformation. Other Bayformer elements include his insectile face (and beetle-like horn on the helmet), clawed hands and slightly digitigrade legs. The raised ankles are largely hidden behind the shin panels, but from the side and back you can see that it's another design that walks on its tip-toes. 5.5" (14cm) tall at the head, although a bit of a "hunch" sticks up behind the head by a few millimeters. Add some silvery gray to the dark metallic blue, plus a lot of joints are made of AllSpark Blue plastic, there's a bit more black in the mix, and the majority of the torso is clear aqua plastic without paint on it. That last bit is kinda weird, but understated due to the gray plastic behind it. Between the AllSpark Blue plastic and the extensive clear aqua, they do a good job of giving an "energy" motif to the design. The upper arms, core of the backpack and inner calves are silvery gray plastic. A slightly darker gunmetal plastic is used on the tarsals and the outer halves of the calves (the fronts of the shins are car shell). The forearms are black plastic, the head is blue with aqua lightpiping. His pelvis front is metallic blue plastic. Clear aqua plastic is also used for the entire front of the torso, and the front window halves end up as aqua shoulderpads without any paint on them. The shoulders, the rear of the pelvis, electro whips, shoulder struts, inner foot struts and joints, knee joints and the hinges that hold the front end kibble panels are all AllSpark Blue plastic (of the slippery plastic variety, hence being on almost all of the joints). He has metalflake blue paint on the upper part of his chest, with a red Autobot symbol printed at the middle of that section. The fake wheels on his thighs are mostly painted black, although there's enough left unpainted that I may do a touchup of just that. His face is mostly silver, with silver pupils painted on his eyeballs (which is more than a little creepy, but possibly added once they realized the lightpiping wasn't working so well thanks to the hunch). The head is on a ball joint, but the "hunch" behind it restricts it from doing anything but wiggling a little. The waist turns smoothly. The shoulders are on ball joints at the end of struts that are hinged for transformation and which allow him to shrug or raise his arms more realistically over his head. There's upper arm swivels and hinge elbows. Ball joint hips are out on the ends of immobile struts. There's a swivel above each hinge knee, but details around the joint keep it from doing anything but wiggle (the freedom helps make transformation a little easier, though). The knees and true ankles are hinged, and the toes are on ball joints at the ends of hinged struts, giving the feet a LOT of articulation. Despite a generally bulky build, the only real problem Jolt has with posing involves his head. There's two gimmicks here. The obvious one is his electro whips, which can be moved out by turning a small wheel on each wrist. The whips are a somewhat disappointing 2" (5cm) long, almost half of that not even sticking out past the hands. This, however, is one of the places where things are actually kinda tight, so there's not enough room to really replace them with longer whips unless you want to partformer it. The other gimmick I didn't even notice until I shined a flashlight onto Jolt's chest. There's gray plastic gears inside his abdomen that turn when you rotate the waist. The gears turn about twice as fast as the waist does, it's not a simple "cog sticking up" trick, it's actual rotating gears. Gears that you can barely see, due to the darkness of the clear plastic. Oops. But this is definitely a Mech Alive feature, even if they're not promoting that anymore. Overall: Well, it still has some of the Bayformer aesthetic, but it avoids most of the actual engineering problems of movie TFs. Pretty much all of its problems are small...literally in the case of the whips. If you only get one toy from this wave, make it Jolt. AUTOBOT: AUTOBOT SKIDS AUTOBOT: MUDFLAP Altmode: Ice Cream Truck (combined) Licensor: None Previous Name Use: (Autobot Skids) Alternators (Mudflap) Cybertron Previous Mold Use: None Gimmick: Combination Function: Combination Technology Testbed Motto: "Suck my popsicle stick!" AUTOBOT SKIDS and MUDFLAP have always been close, but this is a little ridiculous. Equipped with experimental combination technology, they use their newfound ability to help the other AUTOBOTS hunt rogue DECEPTICONS wherever they hide. Unfortunately, they have so much difficulty hanging onto each other in vehicle mode that they spend more time struggling to stay on the road then they do fighting. Skids: STR 4 INT 6 SPD 7 END 4 RNK 2 COUR 8 FRB 5 SKL 3 Avg 4.875 Mudflap: STR 4 INT 5 SPD 7 END 5 RNK 2 COUR 9 FRB 4 SKL 3 Avg 4.875 Same techspecs as the solo-pack versions. Packaging: Two twist-ties on each half. Mudflap has a rubberband keeping the panels facing outward from disconnecting, and there's one around Skids's front end in a vain attempt to keep his hood down. The package photo (also used in the instructions header) for Skids disagrees with the instructions. The backpack kibble on is made to spin around 180 degrees to compact a bit more. The instructions are pretty clear on it, at least. The package photo also has a small Autobot symbol printed in the hood ornament, but the actual toy is missing that. Vehicle Mode: It's a 40s-style ice cream truck, with Skids forming the front third and Mudflap the back two thirds. After some asking around and websearching, I think it was customized from a Morris Eight van, British delivery truck from the 1940s. [Later note: in the movie "Wallace & Gromit: A Matter of Loaf and Death" the bakery truck W&G drive appears to be a Morris Eight, or something close to it.] The pink panels are a little fiddly to get together when combining the truck, but it didn't take a lot of time or effort for me to get it all together. Unfortunately, even all together it's got a lot of panel gaps. I did need to use a knife to pry up the hood ornament that's meant to keep the hood down, though. While various metaphors have been established for combinations in the past, I think this one is more of a "bunk bed for kids" situation. And they've grown up enough to need separate rooms. Which is not to say they've grown up MUCH. 4.75" (12cm) long, given that it's almost definitely a custom rebuild it's hard to call a scale, but working from the door sizes I'd go with something around 1:36, maybe 1:40. It's white on top and a sort of "frosted animal crackers" pink on the bottom half, with gray tires and pale blue windows. It's festooned with decals and the like, but in the brief appearance this made in the movies, there were far more details than on this toy (reprolabels.com has a kit of extra stickers to bring it closer to movie accuracy). Speaking of extra detail, though, there's rust-bubbles molded on various places in the pink plastic, nearly invisible unless you're going over every detail with a strong light as I've been doing. :) The windows and headlight fronts are made of pale clear blue plastic, otherwise the top half is white plastic and the bottom half out of "makes my teeth hurt" pink plastic. The whippy ice cream cone on the roof is actually a different white plastic (it has a strong UV glow, while the rest of the shell doesn't) on a base of gray plastic that was painted white. The speaker on the roof of the cab, the tires and the front grille are also medium gray plastic. There's white paint on the borders of the front cab pieces that are made of clear plastic, and on the gray collar of the ice cream on the roof. The sliding windows on the rear sides and the smaller windows on the very back are painted medium blue. It's a little sloppy, though, in that the trim isn't separately painted and the strut between the window panes is the same blue as the rest of the window. The front grille is silver, and the hubcaps are silver with a pink stripe around the halfway point. The rear turn signals are (sloppily) painted light pink, but the taillights aren't painted. In white on both front fenders is printed "MADE FRESH FOR YOU!" in a comicbook lettering font that TFWiki says is Gill Sans. Just a little shout-out to all the font geeks in my readership, I know you're out there sneering at all the Comic Sans I use. Above each rear side window is a red cursive "Creamy" followed by medium blue block letters "ICE CREAM". A brown and white ice cream cone is printed on each side below the side windows. There's an upside-down Autobot symbol on the rear top, but it's for robot mode. The bumpers are unpainted, but should be rusted chrome. Mudflap's toes don't fold up properly out of the way, reducing ground clearance to less than a millimeter. However, if you get all the panels aligned properly the wheels do all rest on the table at the same time, so it will roll okay. Combination Transformation: To separate, just pull apart, although some of the tabs don't like to let go. Getting the halves back together is, as mentioned earlier, a little tricky. But at least in my toy, it's merely time-consuming rather than frustrating. Once a panel is in place, it generally stays there. If you're willing to accept some internal asymmetry and do a little more futzing about, you can get the vehicle combined with Skids's legs stuffed in above Mudflap's feet, so that they're not visible through the cab windows. Of course, then you can see Mudflap's face, looking like he's lurking in the back of the truck.... Skids Transformation: Pull down the legs from inside and swing down the front bumper, then rotate around. Um, and then you explode all the panels, rip both arms off and put them back in (okay, it's theoretically possible to transform them without popping them off, but my success rate with that is still miniscule after practice) and refold a bunch of stuff. The head automatically pops up when you lift back the hood, and it pushes the collarbone pieces up in the process. 3.25" (8cm) tall, he's shorter than a Scout but bigger than most Legends, and certainly more bulky than a Legend. His upper body is made from the front end and front fenders of the truck, for that football pads look. He has the requisite hand asymmetry, but his right hand is only a little bigger than his left. There's pink plastic for the core of his torso, the shoulderpads, forearms, head, pelvis front, some armor chunks on the outsides of his lower legs, and a socket inside each ankle. Gray plastic is used for his collar area, the center of his chest (vehicle grille), right hand and feet. The glowy white plastic is used on his waist, upper arms, all leg parts not already mentioned and a pair of "antennae" flanking his head, plus the relevant vehicle parts. The non-glowy white parts and the clear blue parts end up in his backpack. The only paint specific to robot mode is on his face, with silver detailing and bright blue optics. His left hand, which is just molded into the inside of a door piece, could have stood some paint to pick it out. He also has no faction symbol, the planned one for his hood ornament having been removed. His head is on a ball joint, plus the collar area can "turtle" down on a spring. The waist turns, but is mostly blocked by the front bumper sticking out the back. The shoulders and elbows are hinges, but the upper arm joint is a ball joint (for transformation), leading to some weird articulation. The right wrist can bend inward. Overall range of motion on the arms is fairly limited due to the massive shoulderpads, though. The hips are ball joints, the knees are hinges and there's a limited swivel below each knee. The ankles are an odd balljoint-and-strut arrangement that lets you tuck the feet together in vehicle mode, not that you need to. It also makes it easier to keep the fairly small feet flat on the table, compensating for the small foot size. Skids Robot Mode: The pinker of the two, and definitely the smaller in terms of both actual volume and appearance. He's built like a caricature of a football player, with huge shoulderpads and little legs, your basic point-down triangle deal. Despite being just as tall as Mudflap, he just looks smaller, in large part because of the small feet. Mudflap Transformation: Pull the side window panels back, then pop apart the rear seam and explode all the panels out (and pick some up off the floor if necessary, since they tend to pop off), swing the pelvis forward, stand him up and adjust all the panels. One clever bit wraps part of the panelwork around front to form the chest armor, which is where that Autobot symbol from vehicle mode goes. There's a spring keeping the head and collar chunk up, which also holds the shoulders back. You can make wings from the side panels instead of just folding them up. Mudflap Robot Mode: With his big stomper feet and less compact backpack, he looks a lot bigger than Skids. His color balance is lighter overall, with more white and no gray except on his ankle wheels. He has more of the classic "big extremities, tiny torso and head" giant robot look, especially if you turn his side panels into wings. His feet are molded to force him to stand with legs apart, another thing that increases the illusion of size. At 3.5" (9cm) tall at the head, he is indeed a teeny bit taller than Skids, but he's a lot wider and bulkier. Especially given that the "Creamy ICE CREAM" sections of the roof spread out into really wide (5"/12.5cm) shoulderpads. The torso core, forearm armor, hands and boots are pink plastic. The ankle wheels are gray plastic, the toes and head are non-glowy white plastic like the panel bits. The rest, including the collar piece and pretty much all the struts, is glowy white plastic. He has no clear plastic, and no gray plastic other than on the wheels. As with Skids, the only paint specific to robot mode is on the face, silver details and bright blue optics. The head is on a ball joint, but the waist does not turn due to being hinged for transformation. The shoulders are ball joints, and the shoulderpads move out of the way enough to allow reasonable range of motion. There's upper arm swivels and hinge elbows. The left wrist bends inward, the right hand is molded as part of the armor panel and does not move. Ball joint hips, hinge knees, swivels below the knees. The toes are hinged, but this is of only marginal utility. If you're careful, you can get him to stand on his toes in a digitigrade fashion, though. His transformation spring gives him a sort of "fan gimmick". If you lean him forward and push down on his head, his arms fall together a little. Okay, it's lame, but I figured I'd mention it. Overall: While sorely lacking in paint applications, the sad fact is that these are the best toys I've seen so far for these guys. Yes, that falls into the category of damning with faint praise. Not being saddled with a Mech Alive does help somewhat, and there's certainly a novelty factor in the transformation (kinda like an oversized Micromaster Combiner). Worth picking up if you can find it on the shelf...toy scalpers seem to be after this one in a big way. My nieces like cars and they like pink, but I won't be trying to get them into Transformers with this toy, searingly pink though it may be. While nowhere near as frustrating as their smart car counterparts, this really isn't a Little Kid toy. I'll wait for TF:A Arcee (and get one of her for each niece). DECEPTICON: DEAD END Altmode: Sports Car (Audi R8-ish) Licensor: None Previous Name Use: G1, Alternators, Armada, Energon, RotF Previous Mold Use: RotF (but the head is new) Mech Alive: Internal Gears Function: Psychological Warfare Motto: "It could be worse. And probably will be." Creepy, dark and depressed, DEAD END has few friends, even among the DECEPTICONS. He usually hangs out in the darkest corner of the room, where his eyes can glow to their greatest effect. He never speaks, unless it's to say something gloomy. The other DECEPTICONS avoid him, which suits him just fine. The only time they're useful to him is when they're recharging, and he can sneak up on them to drain energy. STR 5 INT 3 SPD 8 END 8 RNK 4 COUR 8 FRB 7 SKL 3 Avg 5.75 Based on the bio note, this is apparently supposed to be the same as the Scout class Dead End character, including the energy-leeching. Plus the identical techspec numbers. Packaging: Two twist-ties hold the vehicle in place, no rubber bands. Additional call-outs mention the spinning sawblade gimmick and how you press the front grille to begin transformation. The package photo shows the headlights unseparated and the doors folded against the upper arms, but the instructions are the same as on Sideways with the doors back as wings and the chest separated. Doing it the packaging photo way helps further differentiate the two, though. The package also has the knees bending "normally" but that means he has to balance on his toes rather than using his wheels as heels. The package photo has a bit more paint on it than the final toy, but no glaring color swaps like on Blazemaster. Color Swaps: Silver becomes black, red becomes dark red, gunmetal becomes pale gold (the original's gunmetal, not the gunmetal body shell seen on the running change Sideways), and most of the black on the limbs becomes dark red as well. A few parts, mostly detail accents (such as the ones that turn on the elbows for Mech Alive), stay black, and the tires stay black. I expect that the tires share a sprue with some of the limb parts, so those are the ones that stayed black. The clear plastic is now a deep purple, but the colorless clear on the headlights and taillights is still colorless clear. Paint Apps: Most of the paint in vehicle mode is either black plastic-matching on clear pieces, or bright red. Red is used for modified racing stripes along the roof and hood that taper to twin points on the hood, stripes on the bottom edges of the doors, and red "whitewalls" on the tires. There's also red behind part of the taillights. A gunmetal Decepticon symbol is printed on the driver's side door. Plenty of silver in robot mode, including the hands, sawblade weapon and various bits of trim. A small piece on the left forearm is painted gold. The collar piece is coated with dark red paint (it's black plastic to start with) and then looks to have gloss black paint details on top of that. Mold Changes: Like many of the redecos in RotF, he has a new head, but there's no changes in vehicle mode. The head is made of two pieces of black plastic bolted around a large clear plastic chunk. The rear black piece is very small and fragile, be careful if you want to unscrew it for modding! The front of the clear block is painted red-orange and the back is painted clear pinkish red. It requires fairly strong light to trigger the glowing eyes effect, since the front paint is NOT clear, just thin. Most of the head is painted dark red, with two off-center black stripes on the top. The chin and face are gunmetal, and there's gold bolts on the "ears". Other Notes: I suppose that one of the advantages of the arbitrary panel kibble on RotF toys is that there's a lot of room to rearrange it to help make redecos into distinct characters. The clips that look intended to hold the roof onto the back in robot mode still don't really work. Overall: The vehicle mode fits G1 Dead End a lot better than the Scout version this year does, and it's possible to mess around with panels and joints to make the robot mode significantly different from Sideways, even if the instructions don't specify it. Larger feet would have been nice, but it's worth noting that even if he stands on just his toes (for a non- digitigrade look), those toes are about the same size as Blazemaster's feet, so as long as all the joints are tight you're good to go. Dave Van Domelen, might have to start putting RotF toys into storage to make room for displaying new ones before we even get to the NEST-packaging waves.