Dave's Final War Planets Rant (probably, anyway): Bone Tank Bioshredder Ice Tank Kryospider Welp, they never DID come out in my area, but thanks to Carol Nam I got one of each sent to me from Canada. CAPSULES: Bioshredder: Nice tank mode, so-so insect mode. No storage to speak of, no separate vehicles, new figures only slightly different from previous ones. Very mildly recommended (i.e. don't bother going to Canada for it unless you're a rabid completist). Kryospider: Has stability problems in tank mode, but really neat gimmicks, cool spider mode, nifty new figures and vehicles, can store everything (albeit not very tightly) and is capable of destroying everything on your desk in seconds. Recommended. RANTS: BIOSHREDDER Tank Mode: Basically looks like a pillbug on wheels with a cannon on its back. 6" (15cm) long, 3" (8cm) high not counting the cannon and about 4" (10cm) wide, very compact and pretty stable. Smallest of the tanks, it has only one external weapon, and it doesn't fire a missile. Although you can pop out the head and fire its disk downward. No external "hardpoints" for figures to stand on, you have to fold down a panel to put a figure on it. Colors are mainly black and green, with some dark purple bits. Pull it back and it'll zip merrily along on its four wheels...two on one axle with the motor, and single wheels in front of and behind this axle. Transformation: Pull down the six side panels, push the head forward and move the claws into position. A little tricky with the claws at first, but pretty straightforward. Insect Mode: Well, not really an insect, since it has 8 limbs total, but hey. 7" (18cm) from head to stern, with a legspan of about 10" (25cm). More black than the tank mode, plus it has a pair of purple bendy tentacles. The center unit with the tentacles also has a pair of missile launchers, and the whole thing can rotate to travers most of the area around the toy. The head can be placed flat for better firing of the disc launcher in it. There's a standing peg on each of the six legs, which is half of what you'd need for the dozen figures. The central area has no pegs because of the rotating part. While each leg has a positionable foot, the joints aren't stiff enough for the insect mode to stand on its legs, it sags down to rest on its wheels. Vehicles: None. No separable parts of the main tank. Weapons: There's the non-firing cannon on top, the two tentacles, plus a disc shooter in the head and two regular missiles on the "spine" mount. The discs fire pretty well, as do the missiles (although the top one on mine has a tendency to jam a bit). Figures: An even dozen. Four drones, which are recolors of the original Bone Drones done in floppy plastic with pegholes in the leading knees. Four Heroes, which are also recolors of the original Bone Heroes, but with greater poseability and made from rigid dark purple plastic. The arms move, the neck turns, the tail turns independently of the neck, and the legs move together...pretty good poseability for a little figure like this. There's also four Commanders, which are the same as the Heroes but with bulkier heads. The Heroes and Commanders have screws in the back holding them together. Storage: Ha. Almost nil. You can either store the spare disc in the tank mode or a couple of the figures, but that's it aside from keeping all the weapons loaded. Overall: A bit on the boring side, definitely the weakest of the tanks. I think if they'd made the spine detachable and left room to store the figures it might have been a little better, but it's a somewhat limited concept. KRYOSPIDER Tank Mode: At 5.5" (14cm) tall and a 4" (10cm) equatorial diameter, this tank is only slightly larger than the battle fortresses. The outer panels are made from translucent blue plastic with white ice details and black tech stuff, while the top and bottom are made from opaque blue plastic with white and black detailing. It has hardpoint pegs for 8 figures, so you can put all the ice fleas on it in a nice symmetrical pattern. Additionally, there's 16 peg holes around the equator for placement of the 8 non-firing weapons included with the toy. All decked out it looks quite impressive...beautiful and deadly. The base has a pull-back motor which drives not only wheels as with the other two tanks, but also drives a spinning motor for the body of the tank. The center of the base has four wheels on two axles, with the rear axle being connected to the motor. However, because of the instability the spinning causes, they added four "outrigger" wheels as well. Pull it back, and it moves along, a spinning engine of destruction which almost destroyed half my desktop the first time I tried it. }-> It is a little hard to pull back, since it rotates as you pull it. One big problem with this mode, however, is that the top and bottom parts don't snap firmly together, the main body just rests on the wheeled base. This makes it awkward to store or transport, and also means that while you can theoretically store the missiles inside the body, they tend to fall out. Not to mention, the panels in the middle come out of alignment if you grab the toy too roughly. Transformation: Remove the bottom. This becomes a command vehicle. Twist off the top. This becomes a missile launcher. Unfold the eight panels into legs and you have a rather nifty spider. It's tricky to massage back into tank mode because of the interlocking side panels. Spider Mode: Well, if you want to spread the legs out to maximum extension, you get a span of 14" (35cm). In a stable standing position (yep, it can stand on its legs!) the span is closer to 7" (17cm), with a height of 4" (10cm). The legs have sideways joints where they meet the body so you can collect them together on either side rather than having them spaced evenly around the body. The spider's body and upper legs are made from opaque blue plastic with no paint on them. Two missile vehicles attach to the sides of the body (and you'd better move the legs to the side if you want to fire the missiles from there!). The head folds down and can hold a figure as pilot, plus the spider's eyes are a pair of "hybrid" fleas, which is a really nifty trick. If you put the legs out at full extention, wind up the base and then place the spider on it, it'll move along spinning in a huge circle of icy death. Woo. Vehicles: There's three. The base forms a sort of command vehicle, with two driver compartments for the Commanders. It also has a little pop up panel with a cannon barrel that comes out of it. However, either mine was put together wrong, or the command vehicle is meant to move sideways while firing. My only real complaint about this vehicle, however, is that once the driver compartments are closed, you practically need a knife to get them open again, or nails longer and stronger than mine. In addition to this, there's two things that look like horseshoe crabs, each about an inch long. These are missile launchers, and four missiles are included for the two launchers. The fire by pushing the missile's end sideways, so it's kinda hard to fire them while the launchers are attached to the spider's body. The detailing is nice...they even have little mouths on their undersides. Weapons: Loads. First, the ones that fire stuff. As mentioned before, there's two mobile missile launchers. While a bit hard to fire while attached, they have decent range. Additionally, the top cap of the tank launches a big (size of a big acorn) "glacier missile" a couple of feet, although it's a bit hard to work the trigger. Then there's all the non-firing weapons. There's the command car cannon. There's the scything blade-feet of the spider in spinning mode. And then there's eight rubbery plastic weapons that can be attached in various places on the surface. Four are guns, four are melee weapons. Two of the guns are black plastic with silver brushing, the rest are blue with silver. Arranged symmetrically around the body, they make for an impressive site, even more spinning death. Figures: 13 figures. 8 standard issue Ice Drone fleas, which have nice places to sit on the outside of the tank. 3 completely new Commanders, with very rubbery legs (making their peg-holes useless), rigid torsos and rubbery tentacle arms. The waist twists and the arms move independently. A screw holds the torso together. Finally, there's two "hybrid hero" fleas, smaller fleas without cannons that form the eyes of the spider but which can be removed and do have peg holes. Clever. Oh, and the Commanders look more like humanoid fleas than like the original Heroes or the animated Ice denizens. Storage: Pretty good. The commanders all have places to ride, the hybrid heroes are the eyes, the drones all ride on the outside with the weapons, the missile carriers attach to the sides of the spider. The only items without a good storage area are the missiles. You can stick them inside the tank mode, but they tend to fall out, since the top of the tank is not really attached to the base. Maybe if they'd ditched the cannon on the command car in favor of missile storage that might have worked. Still, not too bad. Overall: The main problem with this toy is that things keep falling off or falling out or coming apart. But this isn't a huge problem, and the toy's loaded with plenty of nifty goodies to compensate for it. Oh, and mine was missing a rod for one of the claw joints, but I just happened to have a plastic rod of the right diameter to replace it. Um, and it's too big and spiky to fit into a quart-sized ziplock storage bag. Dave Van Domelen, notes that that wraps it up for the "real" War Planets line, and he's not gonna bother with the Shadow Raiders action figures.