Dave's Star Wars Crossovers Rant: Standard Wave 2 Clone Pilot (ARC-170 tiger stripe - Not Reviewed) Anakin Skywalker (Delta-7 Starfighter - Not Reviewed) Luke Skywalker (Snowspeeder - Not Reviewed Here) General Grievous (Starship) TIE Pilot (TIE Bomber) Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/SW/StandardC2 The first wave in the new Crossovers packaging was all old molds, see http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/SW/Standard7 for brief comments on the first set of Crossovers. http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/SW/Standard3 - ARC-170 mold review http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/SW/Standard4 - Guest comments on the ARC-170 redeco http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/SW/Standard5 - Delta-7 mold review (I havne't reviewed the Anakin version). http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/SW/Standard6 - Snowspeeder review. CAPSULES Clone Pilot - A recommended mold in a tiger-stripe deco that was last seen in wave 4. I'm happy enough with my original version, and won't be buying this. $15.64 at Wal-Mart. Anakin Skywalker - The Delta-7 is a pretty good mold, but two copies are more than enough for me, even with remolding. $15.64 at Wal-Mart. Luke Skywalker - So-so mold, and it doesn't even have a pilot figure this time. Pass unless you're a big snowspeeder fan and missed the first release. $15.64 at Wal-Mart. General Grievous - It had promise, I guess, despite its shellformer transformation. But the engineering quality wasn't there to make the two modes good enough to compensate for the cheaty transform. Mildly recommended (better than the battle wheel version by a wide margin, though). $15.64 at Wal-Mart. TIE Bomber - Vehicle mode looks pretty good but is unstable. Transformation makes a noble effort, but too many things are left flopping around in robot mode. A little better than Grievous, but still only mildly recommended. $15.64 at Wal-Mart. RANTS Packaging: Brand new packaging in Clone Wars trade dress for the rebranded Star Wars Transformers Crossovers line. The packaging is generally simplified, using thinner cardstock than previous SWTFs and ditching the spinning disk part of the package. Additionally, the pilot figures have been dropped from the line, I'd guess that it's a price-saving move to try to keep these toys at the $15 price point (or not too far above it, as you can see above). The cards are rectangular with rounded corners, 12" (30c) tall and 9" (23cm) wide, the usual plastic-reinforced hanger slot at the top. The blister is the full width of the card and 8.5" (21.5cm) tall. The side front edges are rounded, the top front edge is truncated about 1cm in from top and front. There's a slightly raised "nameplate" area at the bottom, and a trapezoidal notch taken out of the left side. The relevant faction symbol is printed on the cardback inside that notch. The blister is held on by taped tabs on the sides and glued tabs on top and bottom in the now-usual-for- Hasbro manner. The top of the card front has the Star Wars logo in blue on a white background at the left and a blue stripe across the right top. The very top has "Ages 5+" at the top left and the choking hazard (under 3) on the upper right. Most of the card front is a blue and white energy burst pattern. Inside the blister across the bottom is a nameplate with the Transformers Crossovers logo (same font as on the Marvel TF Crossovers) under the toy's name (i.e. "TIE PILOT to TIE BOMBER"). Along the left side is artwork of the mech mode, partially covering up the figure's name. The bottom of the blister insert has the UPC symbol and legalese. The cardback is also mainly blue and white. The Star Wars logo is at the upper left. At the upper right are "They're MORE THAN MEETS THE EYE!" and the following copy: "The Star Wars TRANSFORMERS CROSSOVERS toys feature classic Star Wars vehicles and your favorite heroes and villains, in an awesome collection of mode-changing figures that are full of surprises!" The rest of the top half has the bio note, photos of the two modes, a yellow burst with "2 AWESOME BATTLE MODES" on it in blue and black, and a couple of callouts. Below that are co-sells for the other four toys in the wave, shown in vehicle mode. To the right of the co-sells is a piece of the pencil art for the package artwork. Below all of that is the TF Crossovers logo and more legalese. Inside the bottom side of the blister are folded instructions (which are black and white with blue and gray accents) and a little Star Wars catalog. The only STWF content to the catalog are Clone Pilot and Obi-Wan from wave C1. The H-connectors with rubberbands are still the means of holding the vehicle mode into the blister. [Later notes: The Anakin Delta-7 has been remolded beyond just a headswap. They tried to make it closer to the way the ship looks in the Clone Wars cartoon, moving the astromech to the centerline and tweaking the cockpit, but that just makes it a sort of hybrid, since they couldn't change the overall proportions. Also, reader JediTricks asked Hasbro about the pilot figures, and the reply was that it was indeed a cost-saving measure. Plus, the pilots had only been introduced because there was concern about brand confusion between SWTFs and regular TFs, but Hasbro's now confident that there's no such confusion.] GENERAL GRIEVOUS + Converts from Starfighter mode to Mech mode! + 2 launching projectiles! General Grievous has fought many enemies in the Clone Wars, but none has been so difficult to defeat as Obi-Wan Kenobi. Every duel has ended with Grievous on the run and the Jedi still alive. Piloting his starfighter, Grievous launches an all-out attack against Obi-Wan then morphs into mech mode to defeat the Jedi once and for all! Packaging: 2 H-connectors and three rubberbands hold the ship into the blister (two are looped around stuff and connected by one H), a fourth rubber band with its own H-connector is wrapped around the tail to keep it from popping apart. A single rubberband holds the two lightsabers and the missile launcher into the blister. Vehicle Mode: According to starwars.com/databank, this is a Belbullab-22 starfighter. Silly name aside, it's like a cross between the Naboo Fighter of episode 1 and a 1930s gangster car with big fenders. You almost expect Edward G. Robinson kitted out in Sith robes to step out of it, not General "hacking cough" Grievous. Kibble cover is good, there's only a few robot bits visible from below, and none from the top or sides. Of course, SWTFs do tend towards vehicle mode at the expense of robot mode. Unfortunately, some of the panel boundaries mesh badly, ruining the otherwise sleek lines. 7.75" (19.5cm) long and 4.5" (11.5cm) wide, with almost all of the visible parts being made from a dark cool gray plastic that has the feel of a kids' meal toy in places. The cockpit is clear colorless plastic (it does open and have space for a pilot figure, since this was designed for the older version of the line before the dropping of the pilots). The missile is bronze plastic and molded like a blaster barrel. I'm getting some weird UV response on the plastic behind the cockpit (robot shoulderpads), it seems to still be dark cool gray plastic, but there's odd splotches that glow brightly under UV. There's a good gray paint match on the cockpit borders, and a mix of dark bronze, light gold and silver paint picks out various details. Some of the paint is inconsistent, though, filling in patterns on some pieces but not continuing the design onto other sections. The missile fires fairly far, although it aims a little low. There's landing skids on the "fenders" that pull down (although they don't go all the way up), forming a three-point support with the rudder-like tail. The lightsabers (clear soft plastic, painted bronze on the handles and tinted blue on one blade and green on the other) store inside the fenders. Transformation: Most of the actual robot mode is hidden in the centerline of the vehicle, mostly under panels, with the majority of the vehicle folded up into a "cloak". The missile launcher is so firmly in place on the underside that you practically need a tool to get it out. The shoulderpads need to be swiveled around before being folded down, which can be a little tricky. Otherwise, it's just a matter of spinning limbs around into the correct orientations and making sure things peg into place. Mech Mode: Grievous in two-arm mode with a big cloak on and a rudder sticking out of the back of hishead. In a proper Grievous-y crouch, he stands 6.25" (16cm) tall at the head, 7" (18cm) at the rudder. Standing him up straight gets a little more height, but he can't really stay up with straight legs, his center of mass shifts too far back. The head, toes and heel spurs are made of soft gunmetal gray plastic. The hands (which are the doubled "four fingers and two thumbs" style that makes me think Power Lords) seem to be a rigid bone-white plastic, but could be dark gray with a really thick and durable paint layer. The thighs are a dark warm gray plastic, the clear cockpit piece ends up as the chest. Otherwise, it all seems to be dark cool gray plastic. Bone white paint is used on most of the head, plus significant skeleton- like details on the arms, pelvis and shins. Gunmetal paint is used on the thighs, silver on the mouth and ear-roots, red on his eye sockets (yes, they make it look organic under the faceplate) and dark cool gray "eyebrows". There's bright white on his thigh bands (holster straps?). The head turns smoothly. The waist has a smooth joint for transformation, but locking the cloak in place blocks the waist from moving. The shoulders are universal joints (smooth lifting to sides, 6-point soft ratcheting rotation, although kibble bits interfere with motion), the elbows are somewhat spindly hinges. There's swivels just below the shoulders and elbows. The wrists bend inwards for transformation. Hips are 8-point soft ratcheting universal joints (ratchet both ways), knees are smooth hinges, there's smooth swivels below the knees. The ankles have multiple hinges, most of which are for transformation, but you can get a fair amount of meaningful articulation out of them. The cloak significantly interferes with leg posing, though. His gun can be held in either hand, and even upside down. Heck, he has thumbs on both sides of the hand, why not? :) The lightsabers really have to be forced to get into the hands, and at least on mine that stripped most of the paint from the handle of the one I tried. So the other one stays in its storage spot over his shoulder. Overall: Well, it's a decene vehicle design with some problems, a kinda cheaty shellformer transformation, and a spindly robot mode weighed down with a massive backpack that can only use his signature weapons at the cost of destroying the paint job. Nice effort, I suppose, but I guess they didn't use the half a year it was pushed back to actually fix any engineering problems that might have cropped up. TIE PILOT + Converts from TIE Bomber mode to Mech mode! + 1 launching projectile! The Imperial TIE pilot flies his ship toward the planet's surface to unleash proton bombs on the Rebel Alliance base below. But before he can complete his mission, a heroic Rebel fighter arrives to stop him. The TIE pilot quickly converts into a menacing TIE bomber mode and takes aim with his laser cannon to blast the Rebel fighter out of the sky! I think they meant "converts into a menacing mech mode". Packaging: A single rubberband with H-connector holds the vehicle mode in, and one more band holds in the missile launcher and missile. On the photo on the back, the shoulders are incompletely transformed. Vehicle Mode: A TIE Bomber, and starwars.com/databank doesn't have any alternative name for it, thankfully. :) It'd be something like Kargnarlian Q-beta bomber or something equally dumb. In case you don't know the TIE Bomber, it has two cylindrical pods between a pair of angled-in solar panels like the one on Darth Vader's TIE Advanced from the original Star Wars movie. The starboard pod has the pilot and I suppose some bombs, the port pod has the main bomb load and an underslung blaster, making it more of a fighter- bomber. The chunk connecting the two pods has the ion drives (TIE stands for Twin Ion Engine). The cockpit opens and has a seat for a pilot figure that is not included, like Grievous an artifact of being designed before pilots were eliminated. I suppose they might continue doing cockpits even on totally new designs, assuming we ever get any designed post-Crossover, just for consistency with the parade of redecos and remolds (a black Palpatine shuttle and a new-head AT-AT in Endor colors have been shown off, for instance). [Later correction: those more knowledgeable than I in terms of Star wars vehicles tell me that the pairs of little nubs at the back of each pod are the twin ion engines (so this is really a QIE, or Quad Ion Engine), and they're supposed to be painted red. But they aren't.] 5.25" (13.5cm) wide and 4.75" (12cm) long, with the starboard pod being only 3.5" (9cm) long and the port pod slightly shorter. Predominantly a cool light slate gray and charcoal gray solar panels and a clear cockpit. Stability is poor, especially right out of the box. If you carefully transform it back to vehicle mode and press hard on all the tabs and pegs as you do so, it becomes moderately stable. Mostly made of that light slate colored plastic. There's a few bits on the underside and connections made of black plastic, and the missile (shaped like a blaster barrel) is also black plastic. The cockpit hemisphere is clear colorless plastic, but the pilot's seat is a separate piece of slate plastic. The solar panels are painted charcoal gray, and most of the cockpit hemisphere is painted light slate gray (a bit lighter than the plastic, though). There's a few light warm gray bits of paint on the front of the port pod, but that's it. The paint visible on the back of the engine chunk is meant for mech mode. Transformation: The arms are part of the solar panel struts, the legs unfold from the rear 2/3 of each pod, the head comes out of the engine chunk which itself is the torso. There's a noble effort in making the pod pieces actually compress down into boots rather than just staying big cylinders, but the endcaps don't peg anywhere, which really hurts the appearance. Mech Mode: 6.25" (16cm) tall at the head, although if you flip the solar panels around to be as out of the way as possible they can rise up higher than that. A lot more black comes into the mix here, to go along with the all-black armor of TIE pilots, but there's of necessity still a lot of light slate gray. The head, shoulders, pelvis, thighs, knees, hands, missile, shin cores and some connectors are black plastic. The toes are charcoal gray plastic, apparently the only pieces on the toy made of that color, although I suppose there could be something else made from it and utterly covered in black or slate paint. Everything else is light slate. Black paint decorates the details on the chest armor, with various buttons and switches picked out in white, teal and red paint. The eyes are also red. The belt buckle, "frown vent" and the Imperial faction symbols on the sides of the helmet are silver. There's some light slate paint on parts of the upper arm that become sections of the pods in vehicle mode. All in all, not a lot of paint...the solar panels eat up the vast majority of the painted area. They mostly work with the plastic colors to make the design work. The head turns smoothly, but the waist is fixed, being of the "swing the pelvis halves together and lock" transformation style. The shoulders are universal joints with 16 point ratchets in both directions. The upper arm swivels are 8 point ratchets, the elbows are double hinges with very soft 8 point ratchets. The solar panels are attached by ball joints on the forearms just below the elbow, rather than being connected to the upper arms, so they get in the way a LOT. The wrists rotate on 8 point soft ratchets, but are stiff enough that it's not immediately obvious they're able to turn at all. Hips are ratcheting universal joints (16 points each way, but the ratchets seem to slip a bit on mine), the upper thigh swivels are 8 point soft- ratcheting. The knees are double hinges with 16 point ratcheting on the top and 8 point (two clicks only) soft-ratcheting on the lower joint. The knees are easy to bend backwards on transformation jointing, though. The toes can fold down. Given all the ratcheting joints, you'd think it'd hold together better in vehicle mode. And speaking of vehicle mode, the bits of it hanging off the heels and on the backpack are just unreasonably loose. Also, it'd have been nice to make it possible to just unpeg the solar panels and reattach them somewhere else, or even peg them together as a surfboard or something. Overall: This would be a solid "recommended" from me if not for some of the significant engineering issues. The solar panels I could overlook if the backpack and heel kibble locked down, or if the vehicle mode was a bit better pegged. As it stands, it's mildly disappointing and therefore only mildly recommended. At least it has a nice beefy aesthetic, rather than spindly Lucasdroid-ness. Dave Van Domelen, wonders if we could get a Death Star Gunner that turns into a Standard-sized Death Star? ;)