Dave's Transformers Animated Rant: Activators Wave 2 Lockdown Autobot Ratchet Optimus Prime Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/TFA/Basic2 Looks like Wave 2 actually ships with a lot of Wave 1 stuff, leaving the new toys as shortpacked scalperbait. I ordered Optimus Prime off HasbroToyShop.com since I found some other stuff I wanted to order and had a coupon code. :) Of course, I found it at Target before my HTS shipment arrived, but decided to just wait. CAPSULES Lockdown: Iffy robot and vehicle modes, transformation is middling for an Activator. Neutral. $7.96 at Wal-Mart. Autobot Ratchet: Fairly good robot, nice vehicle mode, but a transformation that prevents the colors from matching the cartoon. Still, decent for the class. Recommended. $7.96 at Wal-Mart. Optimus Prime: Pretty good robot mode, transformation is involved for an Activator, but the vehicle mode is a write-off. Mildly recommended ignoring price, and the price is a bit much for what you get. $7.99 from Hasbro Toy Shop. RANTS Packaging: Same as Wave 1. They come with the first TF:A/Classics catalog. Function and motto not provided, I'll just copy in the ones I like from other toys of the same characters. DECEPTICON: LOCKDOWN Altmode: "Prowler" (as opposed to "Cruiser" on the Deluxe packaging) Function: DECEPTICON Bounty Hunter Previous Name Use: Animated Previous Mold Use: None Callouts: "Button activates quick conversion!" "Press here!" "Spring-Loaded vehicle to robot change!" Motto: "Run all you want. It'll make the chase more fun." LOCKDOWN is a DECEPTICON bounty hunter, feared across the galaxy for his ruthless nature. He always gets his robot, bringing it in functioning or not. In exchange, he collects loot from every robot he captures. He uses their technology to upgrade his own weapons and powers, and leaves those he hunts weaponless. I still think his schtick is pretty creepy, a robotic equivalent of ritual cannibalism intended to take the strength of the enemy. Packaging: Five twist-ties. No rubber bands, but that's to be expected given that these are packaged in robot mode. Robot Mode: 4" (10.5cm) tall and kinda stumpy by comparison to the Deluxe version. He still has the long and thick neck, but the legs are shorter, and the feet look weird because they're made from the "cowcatcher" parts on the vehicle front...turned upward. You can't flip the toes over to improve the looks, and even popping them off and reattaching them upside-down doesn't work. The front windows of the car are shoulderpads that flop around loosely, and the chest is the rear bumper section of the car, jutting way out and giving him wheels no the sides of his chest. The upper arms, thighs and the back side of the torso are made of neon green plastic with a weak UV response. The rest of the toy is black plastic. There's olive green paint on the chest, with a gold Decepticon symbol at the center. Neon green paint decorates the inner part of the chest (behind the bumper piece) and the front of the pelvis. The eyes and the left kneecap are painted red (he has non-symmetric kneecaps, the left one is unpainted). The toes, exhaust pipes on the legs, face and neck spikes are painted silver. His facial tattoos are left unpainted black. The head turns at mid-neck, and the neck chunk itself can tilt forward and back a bit on a transformation joint. No waist articulation. The shoulders, elbows, hips and knees are ball joints with varying degrees of restriction, and the toes are on highly restricted ball joints. The arms are attached to somewhat loose panels which increase the range of motion a bit but look bad. The engine block is permanently affixed to his butt. The hands are posed in a sort of partially open claw way, and could probably hold a gun if you can find one with the right peg size. Transformation: To go to vehicle mode, first raise the arms up and align the shoulderpads along the direction of the arms. Point the toes down. Now lift the chest up and push the arms together so that the little clips on them meet. Press down on the roof to make the latch catch, and then all that's left is fiddling with the legs to get them in the right position. To go back to robot mode, the "Activator" button is on the engine block, but needs to be pushed BACK, not down. Pushing down won't do anything useful. Vehicle Mode: 4.25" (11cm) long, a somewhat less sleek version of the Deluxe's car mode. The driver's compartment is taller and looks kinda out of place, plus there's a lot of gear kibble on the sides. Almost all of the visible plastic is black, just a few green joints are exposed. The front windshield and headlights are painted bright red. The "cowcatcher", side exhaust pipes and engine block are painted silver. A slightly less bright red is used for the activator button on the front of the engine air intake. Neon green paint is used for stripes on the right and left sides of the hood. The darker green chest paint is visible at the back, but it's not really meant to be a part of the car design. There's no paint on the other windows, or on the roof spikes. Now, not a lot to be done about the side windows, they're mostly covered by joint kibble. But the rear windows and spikes could have been painted. Ah well. Despite the looseness required by the automorph, the car mode holds together reasonably well once you have all the bits in the right places. It rolls well and the wheels do all stay on the table at once. Overall: Lacks most of the cool menacing look of the Deluxe version, and generally doesn't look very good period. Even some extra paint wouldn't do much. It generally looks like they didn't bother to send the design back for any attempt at improvement, and rushed the first half-assed version into production. AUTOBOT: AUTOBOT RATCHET Altmode: Rescue Vehicle Previous Name Use: Universe, Movie ("Ratchet" on its own G1) Previous Mold Use: None Callouts: Same as on Lockdown. Motto: "Hold still. This won't hurt a bit." AUTOBOT RATCHET has been around long enough to know that a wise robot always plans for the worst, and hopes for the best. No situation is so bad he can't make it seem a little more gloomy. It's evidence of his extreme bravery that even when he sees nothing but doom ahead, he keeps on working and fighting for victory. Packaging: Also five twist-ties and no rubber band. Amusingly, they overdid the photoshopping on the package photo, making the seam down the center of the chest stand out a LOT more than it does on the actual toy. Oooops. Robot Mode: 4" (10cm) tall at the head, 4.25" (11cm) tall at the backpack piece sticking up behind the head. A bit darker than the Deluxe toy, with a higher proportion of the color scheme being dark red rather than light gray. Other than the big plate sticking up behind the head, though, it looks pretty close to what Ratchet should be, although I wouldn't go so far as to agree with those who think that Ratchet was meant to be at this size. There's a few too many compromises, such as his lightbar being on his shoulderplates. The fists have L-shaped holes in them, so he's not going to be holding any round pegs, although he could probably handle a toothpick or something. The feet are molded to be flat on a surface when the legs are slightly spread apart. He has the obligatory broken crest, but lacks a forearm gap. Light gray plastic is used on the head, front and sides of the torso, upper arms. Darkish red plastic is on the forearms, shoulder plates, back of the torso, and legs/feet. Black plastic is visible on the pelvis and wheels, plus used on the internal torso struts and most of the joints. The ball parts of the ball-and-socket joints, the hinge pieces of the knees and the Activator gears inside the shoulders are also black plastic. The main paint color is a darkish matte red used on his gut (the hood and some edging trim of vehicle mode) and various head/helmet details on the front facing of his head. The sides and back of the crest are not painted, and the back half of the head is totally unpainted. The windows on his chest are painted bright blue, as are his eyes. His face is a pale blue not used elsewhere. The headlights on his gut are yellow with black borders, and there's a silver Autobot symbol at the middle of his gut hood. There's no paint on his shoulder plates, although it's a no-win situation there...paint them to look better in robot mode, and it looks wrong on the vehicle, but paint the lightbars for vehicle mode and it looks odd in robot mode. The fingers could stand to get painted light gray if you want to do some touchup, though. Head turns, waist doesn't. The shoulders, elbows and hips are ball joints. The knees are hinges with a disc-in-slot style swivel right above the knee. The toes and heel spurs fold in for transformation but don't have useful articulation. The flaps that hold the arms don't lock onto the sides of the torso, they're only held in place by the springs from the Activator gimmick. But it's not as loose as Lockdown's similar construction. Transformation: Really simple going from vehicle to robot, but getting all the bits lined up for the reverse is a bit trickier. The shoulderpads need to be rotated around to the front so that tabs on them fit into slots on the side panels, and the forearms need to peg loosely onto projections on the side panels. Vehicle Mode: 3.5" (8.5cm) long ambulance, not a whole lot bigger than a Legends toy would be. There's still significant gearing kibble on the sides, but Ratchet carries it better than Lockdown does. The dark red plastic is on the roof, rear underside and back. The wheels are black plastic, the front and sides are light gray. The front end paint is as seen in robot mode on the chest. His dark red emergency vehicle symbol is painted on the sides near the rear, and a bright red paint is used on the rear of the roof to indicate where to press down. The only "missing" paint apps are on the winch spool and on the rear panel, and those are fairly minor. There's also no paint on the lightbar, but I can deal with that, since it'd look a bit weird in robot mode. It looks pretty good, overall, in a paint sense. The rear section is a bit loose, and tends to lift up a little as if he were on hydraulic shocks. I get a persistent 3mm high gap in the back end of the vehicle as a result. Otherwise stable and rolls well. Overall: A bit more in the way of exposed gears than I'd like, and the transformation design ensures that the colors have to be wrong in at least one mode, but otherwise pretty good for an Activator. Not as good as Starscream, though. AUTOBOT: OPTIMUS PRIME Altmode: Truck Function: AUTOBOT Leader Previous Name Use: Yes Previous Mold Use: None Callouts: Same as Lockdown Motto: "While I function, Earth is under my protection!" Young and inexperienced, but also utterly fearless, OPTIMUS PRIME commands his squad of loyal AUTOBOTS with strength and wisdom. For its own reasons, the AllSpark chose him to protect it, and he has sworn to do so with all his might. He is a natural leader and a powerful fighter for peace. Where he goes, his AUTOBOTS willingly follow. Packaging: 4 twist-ties. Slightly mis-transformed in-package, the fists haven't been folded out. Robot Mode: 4.25" (11cm) tall, and generally matches the animation model, with only a few exceptions (mostly in the backpack zone). It's Earth mode, with battlemask up. The feet have big tabs between them for vehicle mode, so if you want him to stand with feet together the tabs need to be locked. There's bumper pieces on the backs of the fists, and the backpack area is full of struts and panels. The fists lack holes and cannot hold anything, although kitbashing a clip-on axe wouldn't be too hard. The torso front, shoulders, and bits of the backpack area are a darkish red plastic (#CC0000 in RGB). The head, forearms, fists, pelvis front, boots and toes are medium blue plastic. The ankle wheels and the plates connecting them are black plastic. The upper arms, thighs and the rest of the joints and connecting bits are silvery light gray plastic. Black paint is found on the chest windows, the headlight recesses and lines around the eyes. Silver on the faceplate, the front and sides of the neck (but not the back), the headlight borders, abdominal grille and the bumper bits on the forearms. He has yellow headlights, helmet stripes, pelvis details and toe-tops. The eyes are light blue, and a red and white Autobot symbol is printed on the front of the left shoulder. The lightbar lights are painted bright red and light blue. The head is on a ball joint, with a somewhat ugly gap under the bottom of the neck and the main body. The waist does not turn. Shoulders, hips and knees are ball joints. There's "disc in slot" upper arm swivels and hinge elbows. The wrists bend inward on transformation hinges. The ankles have transformation joints, but they're blocked by the wrap-around wheel connectors. However, the size of the feet and the range of motion on hips and knees allows for some fairly dynamic poses. In general, this mode definitely dominated the design considerations. I do appreciate that they got his wheels on his heels without any cheating (i.e. he only has four wheels, not six wheels with two hidden in each mode). Transformation: To go to vehicle mode, a lot of work needs to be done before doing the Activator fold-in. The wheels need to be unpegged from the ankles and connected along the sides of the legs, the feet pegged together, and the arms positioned just right. Ideally, the legs should be bent at the hips about 45 degrees back from straight-down. While it looks like the lightbar piece is meant to be what locks it in vehicle mode, it's actually a catch at the root of the joint that holds the lightbar. You can get a sort of trucktaur mode by just transforming the legs, by the way, but that's pretty standard for cab Primes. The pegs for the front wheels are needlessly loose. It's not like those parts need to spring apart automatically. To go from vehicle to robot, you theoretically press a gray (not red) tab at the back of the awkward cab kibble (cabble?). (The instructions show pressing a little round bit at the actual latch, but that's kinda tricky and begs the question of what the big gray tab is FOR, then.) But in practice, this just makes the hip joints move, mooshing the cab backwards like it's doing the Limbo until you reach the point where it can't go further. Tapping the tab sharply works a little better. This results in Prime's upper body leaning forward on the truck wheels (it won't even fall over if you do it right). Then do all the necessary folding of wheels and unfolding arms. Vehicle Mode: A mess, really. The lightbar piece is designed to snap in place on top of the cab, but mine won't stay in place. They seem to be assuming better manufacturing tolerances than they're getting. As a result, the whole cab just looks like it's on the verge of falling apart, even when it's pretty secure (well, secure for an Activator). The front wheels are STILL too far forward compared to the animation model, you'd think that eventually a version of Prime's toy would get that right. And there's a big pile of struts on the back of the cab (the term "cabble" is growing on me) that is hard to ignore no matter what the viewing angle. A write-off, really. Anyway, it's 3.5" (9cm) long. The black plastic connecting the wheels dominates the sides, although there's no painted black stripe above the bumper. From the front, the cab looks more or less right, if gappy. Overall: If this were a $5 toy like Scouts used to be, I'd recommend grabbing it for a decent small robot mode, and ignore the vehicle mode. But at $8 it's overpriced. The quality control just couldn't cash the checks the designers wrote, and the ugly cabble would be a big minus even if all the engineering worked. Dave Van Domelen, really glad he didn't get impatient and buy Prime in the store when he saw one after his HTS order shipped. Definitely not one he needs a spare of.