Dave's Star Wars Transformers Rant: Wave 2 Darth Vader to TIE Advanced (holdover from wave 1) Anakin Skywalker to Jedi Starfighter (recolor/remold of Obi Wan) Darth Maul to Sith Infiltrator Boba Fett to Slave I No review here of Darth Vader, for obvious reasons. And I didn't buy Anakin, it's pretty much just Obi-Wan with red changed to yellow, a new head, and possibly some other minor remolds. So this review will just cover Darth Maul and Boba Fett. CAPSULES Darth Vader: Suffers from stability issues in vehicle mode and proportion problems in robot mode, but a decent toy, if a bit overpriced. Mildly recommended. $14.99 at Target. Anakin Skywalker: A good mold, Obi-Wan came Recommended. Drops to neutral if you already have Obi-Wan, though. $14.99 at Target. Darth Maul: Good in both modes, but falls apart in transformation unless you're really careful. Recommended. $14.99 at Target. Boba Fett: Looks nice as Slave I, looks potbellied as Boba, and floppy as heck in both modes. Legs might as well not have joints for all that they work. Only buy this if you're a completist or a Boba Fett fanboy. $14.99 at Target. RANTS Packaging: Same as wave 1. Darth Vader is on the co-sells for the other three, which is why I presume he's the fourth figure for the wave. DARTH MAUL * Convert from Sith Infiltrator mode to powerful Sith Lord! * 2 launching projectile missiles! Snarling, scornful and powerful, Darth Maul is trained to locate and eliminate the Jedi one by one. Using the powers of the dark side of the Force, Maul morphs into Sith Infiltrator mode and flies to Tatooine. There he will track down and attempt to destroy the two Jedi who have played their part in keeping the Sith a memory of past generations. The re-emergence of the Sith is soon to come! STR 9 INT 9 SPD 10 END 10 RNK 8 COUR 10 FRP 9 FOR 10 Avg 9.375 What a lame bio note. There's 1 H-connector thing holding a rubber band that secures the toy in the package, plus two more bands that use the shape of the bubble. Two more hold the toy together, and one I ended up having to cut out, since it was so entwined with the guts of the toy. Each missile is held in by a rubber band. A bit of sprue flash was left on the landing gear. At first I thought it was a part that had started to break in shipping. :) Pilot Figure: 35mm tall and made out of black plastic. The base is essentially just a connection between the feet, but it's good enough to let the figure stand stably. The robe parts on the arms and legs are painted dark gray, but the robe on the torso is left unpainted. The head is painted with red tattoos and white horns. The arms move together (joined together inside the upper torso) and the legs move as a unit. Vehicle Mode: A Sith Infiltrator, and you can really see how the design evolved into the Jedi Starfighter on its way to becoming the TIE Fighter. Okay, I'm not a huge Star Wars geek, or I probably would have noticed that long before now. :) 6.75" (17cm) long and 4.5" (11.5cm) wide, it's not really to scale with its own figure. It'd have to be about three or four times larger for that, IIRC. It's done in light (CCCCCC) and medium (666666) gray for the most part. There's a few light brown (996666) bits on the rear of the front end, and darkish red (CC0000) bits on the top of the cockpit. The thruster apertures are yellow green (66CC33). The control section is roughly a sphere, and the top half opens up on a hinge to reveal a seat for the figure. Getting it to close properly requires pressing down on the sides where the wing struts connect, or it just won't close all the way. The panels out on the wings do open up to attack position. The landing gear, however, doesn't retract. Nor does it really stay where it should, and my Infiltrator ends up tilting a little unless I fuss with it a lot. Stability of the vehicle mode is otherwise good, and there's little robot stuff visible from above or the sides. The legs are pretty obvious from below. Tiny buttons on the outside surfaces of the wings launch the light saber missiles. The missiles don't really conceal when loaded, though, and stick out both in front and in back of the wing. The missiles can be loaded easily, with no preferred rotation along the long axis. Transformation: Many have said they should have just used Vector Prime's transformation for this toy, but it really wouldn't have worked. The Infiltrator is just proportioned differently enough that you can't pile the entire robot mode into the cockpit area. The front end splits into legs and spins around as a whole to let the middle third fold up behind the back. The wings become backpacks, and the arms are hidden alongside the cockpit much like in the Jedi Starfighters. Unfortunately, a lot of parts that are supposed to detach hold very firm, and ones that are supposed to hold firm detach. It took several tries before I could transform this toy without having panels or even entire limbs flying off. The landing gear and the hip armor pieces are particularly annoying in this regard. Robot Mode: 6.5" (16.5cm) tall and generally well-proportioned, although the arms are a little short and spindly. It doesn't really look like Maul so much as it looks like Maul wearing gray clamshell body armor and a huge backpack. They do an okay job of evoking his robes, but the head doesn't quite look right. His hands are better designed than thsoe of the wave 1 toys, and they aren't the same: the right hand is designed to hold the two missiles as a double saber, the left hand to hold a single saber. Neither hand will work well (or at all) in the opposing role. The arms and legs are black, the head is black plastic with bright red (FF0000) tattooing and silver horns, and there's some dark gold details on the always-pops-off front skirt armor. The eyes are yellow. The light sabers are clear red plastic (moderately reactive to UV) painted silver on the handles. None of the other plastic or paint colors react strongly to UV. The head and waist turn. The shoulders are univeral joints, there's an upper arm swivel on each arm, the elbows are double hinges (a peg keeps the arms from bending all the way, they stop about 40 degrees away from that), and there's a transformation hinge on the wrist (a ball joint would have been better, I think). The hips are seriously limited universal joints, with the hip armor getting in the way. There's a swivel above the knee, and the knee itself is hinged but blocked significantly by the ship kibble on the calf. The ankles are hinged for transformation, and also Marvel Legends-style side to side hinges which help in keeping his feet flat. Overall: Looks good in both modes, if only it weren't so fussy about getting between the modes! I suppose the other major flaw of this toy is that it reminds us that Episode 1 exists. BOBA FETT * Convert from Slave I mode to notorious bounty hunter! * Launching projectile missile and 2 pistols! A bounty hunter never stops for rest, especially while hunting his prize catch. Boba Fett, the galaxy's most notorious bounty hunter, has been tracking Han Solo for months. Using modified armor and new shape-shifting technology, Fett morphs into Slave I mode and flies to Coruscant, where Solo was last spotted. STR 9 INT 10 SPD 8 END 10 RNK 10 COUR 10 FRP 10 FOR - Avg 9.57 First one to have neither light sabers nor a Force Knowledge ranking. And he wears a giant mecha suit, rather than simply using the Force to morph. So that's likely how all the other non-Jedi will be explained. 7 H-shaped band holders. Missile held in with one band. 2 more bands hold the vehicle together, but it kinda needs more. Pilot Figure: 34mm tall at the head, 37mm at the antenna, made of a very light gray plastic. It is extensively painted with green, yellow, red, black and silver. The arms are joined together inside, the legs move as a unit, and the head comes off. I mean, the head turns. :) But I ended up having to insert some poster putty to keep it from falling off. Vehicle Mode: Well, it's Slave I, and if you don't know what that looks like, why are you even reading this review? It's 6" (15cm) long, with a "wing" span of 5" (15cm). It's mostly made of a bluish light gray plastic (somewhere between CCFFFF and 99CCCC) with the wing paddles and "skirt" being a very light gray (lighter than CCCCCC). The guns are a lightly metallic silver, and the canopy is clear colorless plastic that glows blue under UV. No other colors react to UV strongly. There are dark gray (666666), white, mustard yellow (no close web color), olive green (a little redder than 669933) and dull clay red (CC6666) paint applications as appropriate. On the underside, there's some copper painted bits includign the thrusters, and a bit of slightly darker light gray plastic (a little lighter than 999999). The whole thing is unstable as all get-out. The front/top skirt piece doesn't lock into place, the entire tail section is loose, and it's very hard to position the wing paddles without making the entire shoulder area shift. The missile launcher is not built to fire in this mode. Transformation: Geez, the shoulders just fall off if you look at them funny. There's two "designed to pop off under excessive force or really any force" pegs on weird slots for each shoulder, and you practically have to treat 'em like a child-proof cap (press in while turning) to get the shoulders to transform without popping one or both pegs out. The rest isn't too hard, although the skirt pieces are easy to pop off and some of the interior chest bits don't want to stay in place. If you leave the legs untransformed, you get a credible BMac hovering mode. :) Robot Mode: 6.5" (16.5cm) tall at the helmet top, add a little more for the antenna or the backpack missile. The cockpit is the chest, and the figure just sort of flops around loosely inside it. This is a pot-bellied Boba Fett, though, after too many years of soft living. And like many SW TFs, his head is a little too high above where his shoulders meet his torso. The tail guns detach and are held in the slightly better than wave 1 hands, but the tolerances need work, and only the right hand of my figure will hold a gun firmly. It just flops out of the left. And with the missile being pointed straight up, it's not really useful in either mode. The arm joints are all kind of weird and semi-functional with springs and stuff. A universal shoulder, springy hinge/swivel elbow, and oddball transformation joints in the forearm that can give you a little more pose. The head and waist turn. The hips are only joints by the most technical of definitions...ball joints, they can barely move at all due to all the armor kibble at the top of the legs. The knees bend about 45 degrees, but since the hips don't move, there's not a lot of point, it just makes the top-heavy figure more likely to fall over. The ankles have a transformation joint, but see "knees, pointlessness of". Overall: One of the coolest visual designs of the Star Wars movies, which is about the only selling point for this toy. It's a floppy mess in both modes, tends to fall apart, and you might as well leave the legs untransformed for all the good they do. In fact, if you use the guns as supports, it's about as stable in Jetstorm-emulation mode as with the legs transformed. Dave Van Domelen, wishes they'd combined "character I like" with "toy design that worked" instead of splitting the two.