Dave's Star Wars Crossovers Rant: Standard Wave 7 Ahsoka Tano (head remold, redeco of the Clone Wars Delta-7, not reviewed) MagnaGuard (Magnaguard Starfighter) Various reships in new packaging Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/SW/StandardC7 http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/SW/Standard5 - original Delta-7 mold (yeah, pretty much every wave these days comes with a redeco of this baby, much like the Eta-2 got redone so often in the earlier series). CAPSULES MagnaGuard: Slightly wobbly vehicle mode, interesting (if something partformery) transformation, good robot mode. Recommended. $16.97 at Walmart. RANTS Packaging: This wave introduces a new trade dress, primarily a dark red and white like the Republic vehicles, rather than the original Clone Wars blue and white. The blister is slightly smaller and more angular, with a sliced off upper right corner and some dents and bumps on the sides. 7.5" (19cm) wide, 7" (18cm) tall, 2.5" (6.5cm) deep...at least on the Magnaguard. I haven't really checked, some of the reships might have to use larger blisters. The card insert at the bottom of the blister just has "Transformers Crossovers" and the toy name, the art shifts to the card. The card is about the same size as the blue series, with some slight cuts to make it look like there's a pennant shape superimposed on the top. The pennant has the Star Wars logo in red at the left, and artwork of the robot mode at the right. A reddish starfield with an energy burst in the middle is behind the toy. On the back of the card, the pennant area has heavily photoshopped photos of the robot mode on the left and the vehicle mode on the right, with the mode names in white on red rectangles (with white borders around them), and the declaration "2 AWESOME battle modes!" in a round callout. The now-standard lines listed below after + signs are in a slanted band under the pennant, and a wedge shape below that has the bio note and a CG image of the robot mode's face. At the bottom are cosells for the wave, with the exhortation "COLLECT THEM ALL!" and the slogan "They're more than meets the eye!" Magnaguard has co-sells of Anakin Skywalker (Delta-7), Ahsoka Tano (Delta-7), Luke Skywalker (X-Wing) and Darth Vader (TIE Advance, a mold they must have retooled from scratch a half dozen times by now to prevent mold rot). There's a newer catalog in here, with the red and white trade dress. It's a tiny line-wide thing, the Transformers are represented by the MagnaGuard and Captain Rex. BATTLE DROID + Converts from starfighter mode to mech mode! + 2 launching projectiles! A MagnaGuard droid flies with General Grievous to meet with a planet that wants to join the Separtists. When the general and his bodyguard arrive, they discover it's a trap set by Republic forces. The MagnaGuard quickly morphs his ship into mech mode and blasts the enemy with cannon fire! Packaging: 4 H-connector rubber bands hold the vehicle mode into the blister. The missiles are in the launchers but not pushed all the way in, so no need to give them separate slots in the blister. The tail stubs are held together with small rubber bands, and another holds the cockpit together. Vehicle Mode: According to Wookieepedia, this is a Rogue-class Porax-38 starfighter, modified to fit an IG-100 MagnaGuard in the cockpit. And yes, the resemblance to the P-38 Lightning of WWII is intentional. Chop off the wings and most of the tail of a P-38, and you have the shape of the Porax-38. This is basically a flying wing design, not something seen a whole lot in Transformers. This is notable for lacking a place to put a minifig. The cockpit opens, but it's full of the mech head. I think this may be the first mold released to completely give up on pilot figures. Even the AAT retained a usable cockpit. It's almost entirely a slightly purplish light metallic gray plastic. the launching missiles, launcher trigger buttons, the landing gear and some visible hinges on the tails are metallic gunmetal gray. The non-launching blaster bits are a slightly lighter gunmetal gray. The cockpit windows are painted gloss black. A dark gray is used for some tattoo-like patterns on the wings and engines, as well as to pick out cables on the engines and some bits on the tails. The rear tips of the launchers are painted silver. There's no faction symbols. [Later note: I am told that the smaller tattoos on his engine pods are Grievous's crest, so those are the faction symbols.] There's two short landing struts that fold down at the rear of the engines, and a transformation stability peg under the cockpit forms the third leg. The launchers fire okay, but a nice feature is that the missiles will stay in firmly without being "cocked". This high friction element does reduce the overall range, but that's not a big issue for me. Stability is so-so. The launchers pop off fairly easily, being held by clips rather than pegs. The main body flexes a bit, but doesn't actually fall apart until you exert significant force. The transformation seams don't follow the molded panel lines, but they look okay anyway. There isn't a truly bad angle on this, all the robot bits are fully hidden away. The only ugliness of the underside is due to the visible screws. Transformation: A bit partformery. The launchers come off as guns, which is fine. But it cheats a bit by having the front ends of the engines pop off and reattach as shoulderpads. However, the rest does a pretty good job of unfolding into limbs, even going so far as to have a little sliding panel move into position as a kneecap on each leg. What's really clever, though, is that you pull all the non-launching weapons out of the shoulderpads and connect them up into the MagnaGuard's energy staff. One bit that needs some kitbashing is the peg that's suppose to lock the bottom of the cockpit onto the back, on mine it's really loose. A little nailpolish inside the peg hole should fix it, though. Undocumented feature: The instructions show the feet simply folded slightly down from flat, which is very unstable. However, there's a second hinge in the heel spur part, which lets you do two different things. One: fold the heel so that it's flat but has its inner joint vertical, then fold the toe down. This gives you a slightly less flat foot without sacrificing stability. Two: fold the heel up against the back of the leg, so he has "normal" feet rather than dual spatulas. This is still quite stable (it's not like he has a huge backpack), and reduces the literal footprint of the toy in case you have space issues. Mech Mode: The IG-series droids are all spindly to begin with, so the design lends itself well to the slimmer pieces resulting when you break up a wing into limbs. Of course, without the cloak, it doesn't really look like a MagnaGuard like I'm used to, but it does look good. And it has proper hands, not spindly claws, a definite plus! 6.5" (17cm) tall at the head, the shoulderpads either add a tiny bit or nearly an inch (2.5cm) if you leave the staff sections in them. The color is still mainly that pale metallic purple, with a bit more of the gunmetal plastic visible and a head made of the same plastic as the staff pieces. Most of the joints are gunmetal plastic, as is the pelvis. New paint for this mode is restricted, as one would expect from a non-shellformer figure. The eyes are red, the ventilator grate on the mouth area is metallic lavender, a "reverse mohawk" indentation on the top of the head is metallic dark blue. There's some fat gunmetal stripes on the kneecap pieces (visible in vehicle mode, but not part of the starfighter's color scheme). The "dickie" area around his collar is painted silver. The head turns smoothly, the waist does not turn. The shoulders are a combination of a ball joint at the root of a strut and a ratcheting hinge where the strut meets the shoulder. The shoulderpad pieces get in the way of what's otherwise very good range of motion. Too bad there's no way to store them other than on the shoulders. The elbows are a combination of hinge and peg-swivel, a bit restricted by the blocky shapes of the arm parts, but pretty clever. The wrists are hinges at the base and a swivel where they meet the hands. The hands are big for a SWTF, although the left hand on mine is a little too loose to properly grip his gun. The hips are somewhat restricted ball joints, the knees are ratchet hinges with swivels below them. There's hinges in the ankles for transformation, but they don't ratchet strongly enough to be meaningful. The main flaw in this mode is a lack of storage for the guns. If you want him to hold his staff, one or more guns have to be set aside. Peg holes to let them snap onto the backpack's pegs would have been nice. Overall: On a gut level, I really like this toy. But whenever I try to analyze it carefully, I find so many problems...I guess it's just that on the scale of Star Wars Transformers, it's near the top. Not that it's a scale with a very high end. Dave Van Domelen, not sure about trying to make pegholes on the guns, the pegs are odd-shaped.