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Dave's Generations Rant: PotP Deluxe Wave 2
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Dave Van Domelen
06/04/2018، 7:28:47 م6/4/2018
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Dave's Transformers Power of the Primes Rant: Deluxe Wave 2
Dinobot Snarl (Stegosaur)
Dinobot Sludge (Brontosaur)
Blackwing (Jet)
Terrorcon Rippersnapper (Sharklike Monster)
Autobot Moonracer (Cybertronian Car)
Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Gen/DeluxeP2
This was a weird five-figure wave, but at least it gets the Volcanicus
set out. As with Dreadwind, Blackwing is a significant retool of Combiner
Wars Air Raid, but I'm going to just review it as a new figure.
Technically, Sludge is a co-tool with Slug, sharing a lot of the parts
below the waist.
CAPSULES
$15-20 price point.
Dinobot Snarl: Very good robot mode, decent dino mode, weird leg mode,
okay arm mode. Recommended.
Dinobot Sludge: Purely as a non-combiner it's pretty good, but the
combiner elements are all bad. Recommended, but a step behind Snarl.
Blackwing: A better Aerialbot re-engineering than Dreadwind was, but
still kinda wobbly in places. Mildly recommended.
Terrorcon Rippersnapper: Nothing spectacular, but also no significant
flaws. Granted, it has a somewhat cheaty alt-mode to work with (arms become
arms), but it works well. Recommended.
Autobot Moonracer: Somewhat weird vehicle mode, robot carries way too
much vehicle stuff in the backpack (although if you leave part of it down as
a buttcape it's not as bad), solid limb modes. Recommended.
In case you're curious, I'd put Rippersnapper at the top of the pile of
"Recommended" toys.
RANTS
Packaging: Same as wave 2, although Blackwing's side panel art isn't of
King Starscream, it's of the jet combiner Dreadwing. The co-sells on back
are of the two wave 2 Prime Masters (Alchemist Prime and Alpha Trion), plus
one other. Dinobots got Vector Prime, the other three got Liege Maximo.
AUTOBOT: DINOBOT SNARL
Assortment: E1126
Altmode: Stegosaur
Transformation Difficulty: 13 steps
Previous Name Use: None (it was just "Snarl" a lot, but even AoE didn't go
with the "Dinobot Snarl" bit)
Previous Mold Use: None
Prime Master I Got: Quintus Prime
Prime Master Ability: Creates countless races of warriors.
Weapon: Energo-Sword
Function: Desert Warrior
Motto: "Sand. It gets everywhere. I hate it."
How will the surly, combat-hungry DINOBOT wield the POWER OF THE PRIMES?
Packaging: 7 ties on the robot, plus a rubber band on the chest to keep
the head from flapping back. One each on the sword and Prime Armor.
Card art is of dino mode, as seems to be the standard for Dinobots.
Robot Mode: One of the defining characteristics, to me, of the G1
Dinobots was that their robot modes all had wings or wing-like structures, a
point that the animation models tended to emphasize by shifting parts around
when necessary. The new renamed Slag is significantly hurt by their lack,
and while Sludge below does have G1 toy-accurate wings, they feel wrong
thanks to cheating the animation did. But Snarl? Perfect. His tail is
split into a sort of wide collar that gives him the proper silhouette. His
shoulders end up looking a little weird because of their extra range of
motion, but I'd say this is my favorite-looking robot mode of all the revised
G1 crew. There's nothing missing, the proportions are very close to the
animation model (rather than the weird warping seen in the G1 toys), good
color balance. The only quibble I have is that the sword is colorless clear,
rather than red, but I can probably dye it red later. Okay, one other
quibble is that the beast head halves aren't stowed inside the feet, they
just sort of hang off the back, but that's a minor aesthetic issue and I
suspect trying to make them tuck away would be a minor disaster at Hasbro's
current parts budget for Deluxes.
5.25" (13cm) tall at the head, 6" (15cm) tall at the shoulderpads, which
have a "wingspan" of 4.25" (11cm). In the Dinobot standard colors of red,
black, gold, and silver with a few accent colors. Colorless clear plastic is
used for the shoulders, sword, beast head halves, dino forelimbs on the
boots, and a small panel in the center of the chest (which does not seem to
be designed to open up). The "U" of the torso is bright red plastic. The
combiner peg, head, pelvis, thighs, biceps, and fists are black plastic. Two
dull gold plastics are used. The more rigid variety is used on the collar,
the shoulder roots, knee joints, boot back panels, two back plates, and the
fronts of the shoulderpad wings. A more rubbery dull gold plastic is used
for the frill plates on the shins and on the upper back (basically, the ones
that don't need to peg into anything). Silvery light gray plastic is used
for the forearms (they're totally painted over, though, I only know because I
had to carve out a bit of mold flash inside one of the wrist joints), all but
the back facing of the boots, backs of the shoulderpads, and a small bit of
the back itself. The circle on the end of the combiner peg is also silvery
gray plastic. The Prime Armor piece is almost identical to those that come
with the rest of the Deluxe Dinobots, but the connector peg is dull gold
plastic rather than black.
The paint continues the Dinobot motif of painting the backs/insides of
the clear pieces. The shoulders have gold trefoils painted on the inner
surfaces, then the entire inner surface is coated with silver. The dino
forelegs on the boots have the insides and back spraypainted gold. There's
also some gold paint on the toes and lower shins. The forearms are mostly
dipped in gold paint, with some silver on the elbows. The face and helmet
crest are painted silver, with red eyes. A red Autobot symbol is printed on
the clear chest panel, and there's blue and black sticker-inspired bits
printed on either side of the chest. There's red and blue details printed on
the shins. Tech greebly molded bits on the sides of the boots are painted
black, but these are mostly covered by the dino legs.
The head is on a restricted ball joint, the waist is a swivel above the
belt. The shoulders are ball joints, but since they connect at the top of
the disk-shaped shoulders rather than the middle, moving the arms too much
results in a somewhat weird appearance. There's mid-bicep swivels and hinge
elbows. The wrists bend inward for transformation storage. Ball joint hips,
upper thigh swivels, hinge knees. No ankle articulation. The fists can hold
5mm pegs, and there's a 5mm peg hole at the top of the sternum for the Prime
Armor. Each shoulder has a 5mm peg hole at its center. There's a 3mm peg
hole in the back of the pelvis. With no forearm holes, the "use the combiner
fist as a super fist in robot mode" trick doesn't work very well.
The sword is 2.5" (6cm) long, a single piece of colorless clear
plastic. It has a standard 5mm peg grip, as well as a 5mm by 2mm tab on one
side of the crosspiece (5mm side aligned with the long direction of the
sword). This is intended for storing the sword in dino mode, but you can
also just hang the sword on one shoulder in robot mode, or have Snarl hold
the sword by this tab as if it were a sword-shaped gun.
Amusing (to me) bit: due to the coloration of the combiner peg, if you
lift it up 90 degrees in robot mode it looks like a chest cannon. If that
clear panel could pop up (I tried, it doesn't seem to be able to) it would
make for a gunnery sight.
Transformation: Pull back the shoulderpad piece so the head can be
stowed. Then fold the tail halves together and snap the piece back down. At
this point it looks like a tail-faced robot or something. Tuck the fists
away and bend at the elbows to make the rear legs, and fold the flattened
spine plates back up. Open up the back panels of the boots so they can fold
over the thighs. Here's a slightly tricky bit, you don't bend at the robot
knees, there's a secondary hinge inside the shin that you use. Then close
the panels, snap everything together, fold the beast head down and reposition
the forelimbs.
Dinosaur Mode: They stayed pretty faithful to the weirdly messed up
proportions of the G1 toy here, although it's a little less scrunched up and
the head is slightly smaller and slightly more anatomically correct.
Compared to the BW Neo Saberback mold, it's still pretty much "draw a
stegosaur from memory when you've seen a picture of one once, years ago," but
it's not too bad. The main error is the dragging tail, as modern
reconstructions put it fairly horizontal.
5.5" (14.5cm) long from snout to tail tip, putting it in the vicinity of
1:48 to 1:60 scale, depending on how big of a stegosaur it's supposed to be
(there's significant range within the genus). If you lift the tail up
(leaving a big gap) to get some idea of the length with tail held
horizontally, it's closer to 6.25" (16cm). The color balance is about the
same, although with less black. The red of the torso ends up dominating the
rear flanks. The dino head has inside painting of gold on the clear plastic,
red eyes painted on the outside surface, and a red on silver Autobot symbol
printed on top of the head. The front four pairs of plates are more rigid
gold plastic, the rear four pairs are softer.
Not much articulation. The forelimbs have swivel shoulders and that's
it. The hind legs retain the joints of the robot arms, but have the fists
folded away. Because of the immovable molded toes on the hind legs, though,
there's not much you can do with the joints in the hind legs without the
result being wobbly...dino mode is functionally a brick except for goofy
comic relief poses.
The only 5mm peg holes in this mode are on the rear hips. There's two
2mm pegs atop the back above the hips, on the red part of the flank. And if
you fold down the peak pair of back plates, each also has one 2mm peg on it.
Not the most comfortable ride, but doable. There's really no way to attach
the Prime Armor or the sword on the back, they have to go on the hip peg
holes (well, you can stick the sword between the rows of plates on the tail
and it'll stay okay, but it's not a particularly good look for Snarl).
There's several tabs on the sides, but they're just to stabilize the dino
limbs when the figure is in a mode that doesn't use 'em. There's also a
rectangular hole on the underside of the head, but it's just a little too
short to hold a 5mm peg or the sword's 5mm tab, it's just there to secure the
head to the backs of the boots. The chest peg hole is partially blocked by
the tail, and kinda looks like a cloaca.
Limb Modes: To get the leg mode from dino mode, just fold the head down,
lift the tail up, rotate the combiner peg out, and swing the limbs around to
peg them into places (the hind legs need to rotate at the thigh swivel to do
so, leaving the fist sides facing outwards). The tail ends up sticking out
as a huge knee spike.
For arm mode, starting from leg mode you just open the boot panels and
swing them out. Before snapping back together, make sure that the little 5mm
peg socket piece is in the right place between the soles of the robot feet,
as it's normally tucked out of the way. I'd say this works better as an arm
than as a leg...unfortunately, I'm not really happy with how ANY of the new
Dinobots work as legs...Slug and Snarl are least bad in that role, I guess.
Overall: Definitely my favorite updated Dinobot of the set, although I
still like Slash better.
AUTOBOT: DINOBOT SLUDGE
Assortment: E1127
Altmode: Brontosaur
Transformation Difficulty: 20 steps
Previous Name Use: None ("Sludge" alone only G1, RiD01; was Slog in AoE)
Previous Mold Use: None
Prime Master I Got: Alchemist Prime
Prime Master Ability: Instantly knows the pressure required to flatten
Decepticons
Weapon: Seismic Stomps
Function: Jungle Warrior
Motto: "I am the rumble in the jungle."
How will the DECEPTICON stomping DINOBOT wield the POWER OF THE PRIMES?
Packaging: 5 ties on the robot, one each on the rifle and Prime Armor.
The card art conforms to the pattern of showing dino mode.
Robot Mode: As mentioned earlier, there's a difference between "G1 toy
accurate" and "G1 show accurate," and this one goes more for the toy, thanks
to the lower wings. Otherwise it looks good, though. In an interesting
twist, it does not have its combiner peg in front, hidden by a chestplate or
whatnot. Instead, the peg is in back. Rather than stowing the head when the
peg comes out, it gets stuck inside the dino neck, which hangs down in front
of the chest when in limb modes.
As noted at the top, Sludge shares a fair amount of molding with Slug.
Everything below the waist swivel except the dino legs and the tail halves
are the same mold. Additionally, the shoulders, elbows, fists, and combiner
post are the same.
5.5" (14cm) tall, in the standard Dinobot colors. The torso and collar
pieces are red plastic. The head, fists, gun, Prime Armor (other than the
clear door on it), pelvis front, and thighs are black plastic. The dino legs
on the boots, the tail halves inside the boots, a panel on the dino neck, and
the dino head are clear plastic. (Not sure about the dino lower jaw, which
is dipped in gold and could be another color.) The rest is silvery light
gray plastic.
There's matte black paint on the chest center, forearms, and belt. Dull
gold paint on the toes, details inside the dino rear leg hips, and much of
the interior of the dino neck. Silver on the majority of the dino rear leg
interiors, the robot face and crest. The eyes are yellow. A small red
Autobot symbol is printed at the top of the black part of the chest, and a
silver "dot in crosshairs using negative space" bit is printed on the
abdomen. There's some colorful tech greebles printed on the lower shins (the
similar molded details on the wings are merely painted black, no colors).
Head swivel, and the waist swivels below the belt level, just as with
Slug. Ball joint shoulders, upper arm swivels, soft-ratcheting hinge elbows.
The wrists bend down for transformation. Ball joint hips with swivels right
below them, hinge knees. Due to the heavier backpack kibble, the heel spurs
aren't really enough to support the figure, and you need to use the tail
halves as heels (on Slug, it's possible to lift those up off the table and
keep the figure standing without having to lean forwards).
The hands can hold 5mm pegs, but the dino claws atop the wrists severely
limit the sorts of things the hands can hold. There's also 5mm holes in the
sides of the forearms, and Mega Fists work pretty well. There's a 5mm hole
in the center of the chest for attaching Prime Armor, and holes in the rear
dino hips on the boots. There's two more 5mm peg holes on the back thanks to
the dino neck, and below that two on the back of the belt. There's 5mm peg
holes in the wings as well. A lot of these holes get in each others' ways,
but still a lot of places to put stuff. There's some smaller hexagonal holes
on the wings, but they're purely for limb modes. There's a 3mm peg hole in
the back of the pelvis, but it's blocked by the dino head. There's some tabs
on the dino hips, but I can't figure out if they're meant for anything at
all. They don't seem useful for the Prime Armor.
Transformation: For obvious reasons, the lower body transforms the same
way as Slug's transformation. Since the heel spurs aren't as useful in this
version, I'm just leaving them permanently folded in, to avoid the hassle of
remembering several steps too late that they're in the way.
The rest is pretty straightforward. Rotate the waist 180 degrees, lift
the arms so that the wings can fold around the torso to become the back, stow
the fists, lift up the dino neck to cover the robot head and then twist it
around at its middle swivel. Okay, one other thing, the forearms need to
swivel around to get the elbows turned into digitigrade ankle-knees.
I'm not sure if there's something that I neglected to put in just the
right position, or just a manufacturing-level assembly error, but the body
halves don't stay together very well. I can use a *Master to clamp them
together using the back pegs, but that's not a great solution.
Dinosaur Mode: A pretty credible robot Brontosaur (not Apatosaur) with
the usual "robot toes on top of the back" common to several Dinobots. The
gold under clear looks better than gold chrome, IMO.
7" (18cm) from snout to tail tip, although since the tail is stubby
rather than whip-like it's hard to figure out scale. Other than what I
described in robot mode, the only other paint is red dino eyes and a red on
silver Autobot symbol printed on the forehead.
As with Snarl, most of the limb articulation is kinda pointless, as it
mostly looks good in just one pose. All the arm articulation remains in the
forelegs, though, and the rear legs are on stiff swivels. The lower jaw is
hinged, and the transformation swivel at mid-neck can be turned slightly to
give Sludge a quizzical head tilt.
The peg holes on the neck are a bit weird, nothing seems to officially
use them. But the one on the upper neck points down, letting you put the gun
under the head. The one on the lower neck points up and is fairly blocked,
but you can sort of make the Prime Armor into a robot wig. The wing peg
holes are now on the sides, and the rear hip ones are accessible. None of
the arm/fist ones are particularly useful. There's two 2mm pegs on the top
of the back, for a single rider.
Limb Modes: From dino mode, get to leg mode about the same way as Snarl,
although the combiner peg is under the dino neck rather than tail. The
hexagonal pegs on the forelimb elbows go into hexagonal holes on the sides
(albeit not very stably), and just swing the rear legs up. The instructions
have the mid-neck swivel used so that the dino head is staring forward from
the kneecap area, making for a much worse knee spike thing than on Snarl.
From leg mode, transform the robot legs and then snap them together to
get arm mode. The dino head and neck don't looks as bad on the shoulders as
they do on the knees. Unfortunately, the problems with the back end not
staying together in dino mode are even worse in arm mode, so as stupid as leg
mode looks, I'll probably have to use this figure as a leg.
Overall: Pretty good as a standalone figure, but the combiner aspects
aren't that good.
DECEPTICON: BLACKWING
Assortment: E1128
Altmode: Jet
Transformation Difficulty: 14 steps
Previous Name Use: None
Previous Mold Use: None
Prime Master I Got: Quintus Prime
Prime Master Ability: Seeds life on desolate planets to watch it suffer.
Weapon: Electro-Kinetic Blasters
Function: Aerial Assault
Motto: "Things are never as bad as they seem -- usually they're worse."
How will the dark-minded DECEPTICON mercenary wield the POWER OF THE
PRIMES?
Packaging: Five ties on the robot, one each on the pistols, one on the
Prime Armor.
The instructions do include how to form Duocon Dreadwing. Dreadwind
needs to have his wings slung back to look more like a delta-style fighter a
la the Gripen.
Robot Mode: It's close to the G1 robot mode. The colors are a bit
different (silver is more prominent, the biceps are gray rather than light
aqua), but the main difference is that the wings stick out to the sides
rather than towards the back. Well, also the whole "has articulation and
better proportions" thing, natch. He definitely has that color scheme that
later got labeled "G2" despite being around for most of G1, with purple and
light aqua and stuff.
5.25" (13cm) tall at the head, 6.25" (16cm) to the tops of the wings.
As noted there's bright purple and light aqua, plus a slightly desaturated
medium-light blue, medium gray, and silver. They didn't quite manage to get
the colors to line up with the modified sprue, though, as a lot of pieces get
totally covered in paint, or nearly so. Light aqua plastic is used on the
hips, thighs, and the struts inside the boots. Slightly grayish medium-light
blue (hereafter to just be called light blue) plastic is used on the torso,
the tip of the combiner peg (abdomen center), a flip-down plate on the center
chest, shoulders, forearms, and wings. The head, collar, combiner peg root,
pelvis, boots, and pistols are medium gray plastic.
The wings appear to have been totally covered in bright purple paint,
but then the paint was scraped off some tabs used to secure them in limb
mode. It's definitely scrape-marks, not a case of iffy masking. The
shoulders are covered in light aqua paint, which is also used on the toe
tips. The lower face is painted light aqua, the visor purple. There's
silver on the abdomen flanks, kneecaps, and a bit on the top of the chest
panel, and a printed purple Decepticon symbol on the silver chest place bit.
The fists are painted medium gray.
Ball joint neck, waist swivel between the belt and lower pelvis. Ball
joint shoulders with "slumping" struts rather than just shrugging, so he can
be dejected. Upper arm swivels, semi-ratcheting hinge elbows. Ball joint
hips, upper thigh swivels, hinge knees. No ankle articulation. The hands
can hold 5mm pegs, and there's 5mm peg holes on the outer facings of the
forearms. Folding down the panel in the middle of the chest reveals another
5mm peg hole for the Prime Armor. There's a 3mm peg hole for stands in the
back of the pelvis.
The guns are identical short pistols made of medium gray plastic, 1.5"
(37mm) long with 5mm peg grips. They appear to be loosely based on the G1
weapons, but significantly smaller. On either side of the gun above the
grips are 5mm peg holes, so more guns can be attached to these guns. It also
allows these guns to attach sideways to the Shapeways rifles I got, rather
than just using the pistol's peg. (The Shapeways rifles have second pegs on
top and slightly ahead of the main grip, so that they can be used to connect
Blackwing's hands to Dreadwing's arms.)
The Prime Armor is the same mold as Dreadwing's, but all in light blue
plastic, so it doesn't look as much like a stand-in for Throttle when mounted
on the jet.
Transformation: Fairly standard Combiner Wars Aerialbot deal, with the
"open up and fold the thighs into the boots" bit. The most significant
difference is that you need to open up the torso via a hinge in the small of
the back to be able to swing the wing roots around for Dreadwing combination
mode. (I kinda prefer the wings in that mode for robot mode too, the
official position is a look I didn't care for on Jetfire and don't care for
now. I guess the idea was to make the figure look less like Air Raid.)
The wings don't really lock down, however, so you need to be careful
with them. (They have tabs on them for locking in limb mode, but the robot
forearms were not retooled to let the wing tabs fit into them.) One thing to
be careful about, if you had the chest panel folded down in robot mode, the
boots will almost fit around it, but nooooot quite. Like, fraction of a
millimeter off, requiring opening the boots up enough to flip the panel.
Unlike the G1 toy, which has the head at the back end of the jet, this
has the head not quite hidden inside the cockpit section. You need to
disconnect the collar area and slide the head nose-ward to get it to slot
properly into place, otherwise it sticks out too much. Unfortunately, as far
as I can tell, this pushes part of the bit behind the cockpit up slightly,
and shoving it back down makes the head pop out. Maybe I just failed to get
everything aligned 100% correctly, but if that's the case it's still a design
flaw, IMO.
The guns are intended to be mounted on the forearm holes and the Prime
Armor on the top between the wings.
Vehicle Mode: More or less an F-14 or similar swing-wing jet with a lot
of robot chest and arm kibble underneath. Unlike the G1 toy, it has two
distinct vertical stabilizers that cannot snap together into one. The color
scheme for the jet parts matches the G1 toy very closely, although the
cockpit is painted on rather than being clear aqua plastic. Much the same as
Air Raid (and Guy Hawk), but the wing roots have been retooled to add ball
joints.
5.75" (just under 15cm) long, with a swung-back wingspan of 4.25" (11cm)
and a maximum wingspan of 7" (18cm). The main colors are medium gray,
vibrant purple, and light aqua, with silver and yellow accents and a bit of
robot mode light blue showing through in a few places. The nosecone and
vertical stabilizers are rubbery light aqua blue plastic, the wings are light
blue plastic, the rest of the dedicated jet parts are medium gray plastic.
The wings and horizontal tail parts are painted over in vibrant purple (in
the case of the wings, only the tabs on the undersides are unpainted), and
most of the nosecone is painted medium gray in a pretty good match to the
plastic. A little bit of the nosecone is left unpainted. There's silver
paint on the tops of the intakes with red at the front edge of the silver.
The tops of the wings have silver and yellow lightning bolt printing with
dark purple on silver Decepticon symbols. There's silver printing on the
outer facings of the vertical stabilizers. The cockpit windows are painted
light aqua.
This is a swing-wing plane, and the wings do swing, with a small catch
to keep them swung all the way back. No landing gear or openable cockpit.
As noted above, the guns are meant to peg onto the forearm 5mm holes, but the
fists are still accessible. There's also a 5mm peg hole in the center of the
top, and another at the back between the robot feet. On either side of the
top, just ahead of the peg hole, there are single 2mm pegs for Prime Masters
to wingwalk on.
Dreadwing: Basically, this is held together by just a flip-out peg that
replaces the head, going into the back end of the delta-wing-modified
Dreadwind jet mode. Pretty unstable. I got the previously-mentioned adapter
guns from Ariel Lemon on Shapeways that let you raise Blackwing's arms and
connect them to Dreadwind's arms by using opposed pegs, but it's still pretty
floppy around the wings (doesn't help that one of the wings on my Dreadwind
won't lock into place properly onto the boot...I shaved down a misaligned peg
and now it doesn't actually try to pop itself apart, but it's not solid
either). It's also required to pop open the back and rotate the wing roots
on Blackwing so that they can swing the other way and sort of link up with
Dreadwind's wings. The Blackwing head doesn't really hide in any meaningful
way if you tilt the Blackwing nosecone back more than about 40 degrees from
vertical.
Now, granted, the G1 super jet combiner isn't all that impressive
either, and it's nice that they went to the effort to reproduce it in
spirit. It's just too bad that the tolerances on both jets are iffy.
9" (23cm) long with an overall wingspan of 6.75" (17cm). Using the
adapter guns, I can still attach Blackwing's pistols onto the undersides of
Dreadwind's wingtips.
Limb Modes: Arm mode is easiest to go to from robot mode. Peg the boots
together, stow the head as best as you can in the cockpit backpack, rotate
the combiner peg out (might have to pop the back open to do this), then shrug
the shoulders all the way up and bend the arms down so that the tabs on the
wings can slot into bits on the forearms. No official suggestion where to
put the guns in this mode. (The Shapeways guns can peg together side to side
to make a double barrelled blaster that can be held by the combiner hand, but
when connected this way the regular pistols can't really attach to the
replacement guns.)
The leg mode is a little more complicated than usual, with the top of
the fuselage splitting into parts that lets the wings fold together as a sort
of bladed shin, and the nosecone as a knee spike. The guns can store neatly
on the fists. The leg mode is better than the arm mode, IMO.
Overall: Yes, I'm getting tired of the Combiner Wars molds, but they did
just enough with retooling and re-engineering this that I like it. The
vehicle mode is a bit wobbly, and the official Duocon is VERY wobbly, but
that's basically a bonus anyway.
DECEPTICON: TERRORCON RIPPERSNAPPER
Assortment: 1129
Altmode: Shark Monster
Transformation Difficulty: 14 steps
Previous Name Use: None ("Rippersnapper" was G1, "Predacon Rippersnapper" was
TFP)
Previous Mold Use: None
Prime Master I Got: Alchemist Prime
Prime Master Ability: Devises a formula to make his teeth indestructible.
Weapon: Cyclone Guns
Function: Ground Attack Specialist
Motto: "The only good thing about life is that it can be ended."
How will the ferocious TERRORCON ground attack specialist wield the
POWER OF THE PRIMES?
Note, Hun-Grrr is part of wave 2 of Voyagers, I'm pretty sure we'll get
the full team of Terrorcons. This also seems to be the pegwarmer of the
wave, I've seen more of him on the shelves than any other in this wave.
Maybe just get four Rippersnappers if impatient?
Packaging: Five ties on the robot, one on the Prime Armor. The guns are
attached to robot mode's back...on the wrong sides, at least with mine. How
do I know they're the wrong sides? The guns have 2mm pegs, which end up on
the underside in beast mode if I leave the guns where they were. :)
Robot Mode: This is surprisingly close to the animation model for the
character, although the chest detailing is different (probably because
they're going to use parts of this mold for Blot, and Blot's chest detailing
is on this toy) and they didn't quite get the colors to match (the G1 toy had
different pieces for the robot and beast arms, so they could be colored
differently in animation). For those unfamiliar with G1 Rippersnapper, this
is a fairly standard Combiner Wars sort of robot with a shark head and fin
stuck to the back, a pair of rifles stored on the backpack, big claws on the
hands, and some monster hind legs on the boots. The head is very
rectangular, a nod to the Scramble City style of heads as combiner pegs.
5.25" (13.5cm) tall at the head, 6" (15cm) to the tops of the guns or
the shark snout. The main colors are extremely light gray that's nearly
white, and medium blue. Very light gray plastic is used for the shark
backpack, the torso "U" part, a panel on the sternum, and theboots. The
rest, including a hinge holding the shark pack, is medium blue plastic.
The face is painted yellow with red eyes. The chest has black and
silver details on the pecs, red on the top of the sternum plate, and a purple
Decepticon symbol printed on the center of the sternum. The belt is silver
with a red U painted on it. The kneecaps are silver with yellow and red
details. Bright blue "AllSpark" paint is on the claws and details on the
abdomen. There's some silver bits on the outer edges of the lower shins, and
red paint on the sides of the shoulders.
Ball joint neck, swivel waist that's hinged between the belt and
pelvis. Ball joint shoulders on shrugging struts, ball joint elbows (so no
upper arm swivels), and wrist swivels. Ball joint hips, upper thigh swivels,
hinge knees. The hands have 5mm peg holes that do not go all the way
through, so only shorter pegs will work. If you fold down the sternum plate,
a 5mm peg hole for the Prime Armor is revealed. There's a 5mm peg hole on
either side of the backpack for storage of the guns. As usual, there's a 3mm
peg hole in the back of the pelvis. There's a pair of 2mm posts on the
backpack, but they're really meant for beast mode.
The rifles are each single pieces of medium blue plastic, 2" (5cm) long.
Each has a single 5mm peg grip, plus a single 2mm post that faces sideways
when the rifle is held in a hand. The Prime Armor is the same mold as the
one the Dinobots share, but all in medium blue plastic. It does a very good
Mega Fist thanks to the wrist joint, and as usual looks pretty dumb on the
chest (but not as bad as most).
Transformation: Very similar to an Aerialbot, but with a shark head
instead of a cockpit, beast legs and tail stored in and on the boots (which
collapse in the standard "open up and stuff the thighs inside" way), and it
basically just leaves the arms out to be beast arms. Oh, and the waist has
to turn 180 degrees, best to do that before transforming the legs.
The robot head has to stay up in this mode, the expanded chest area gets
in the way of snapping the shark head down if you pull up the combiner post
before transformation.
Beast Mode: This is a sort of shark-man hybrid possibly inspired by
various Polynesian myths such as Nanaue. Of course, because the robot head
is inside the shark head, it can peer out through the mouth a la a mascot
costume. Because of the way the boots make the lower body, the tail ends up
too thick in its middle range (and even thicker if you attach the Prime Armor
to the top of the tail). With the guns installed, it has a sort of Berserk
Fury Zoid look to it, albeit with a shark head rather than dinosaur head.
The top of the head is about 4" (10cm) off the surface, due to the
Godzilla-ish default pose. From snout to tail tip it's a little under 6"
(14-15cm). The color balance is about the same, the only new plastic visible
is the shark tail, which is made from two pieces of very light gray plastic
snapped together, plus medium blue struts (which, technically, stay hidden in
this mode too, just visible during transformation). The shark fin (which is
kinda small) is painted medium blue, the shark gills and teeth are painted
silver. The eyes are red, and there's a Decepticon symbol printed on the top
of the head that seems meant to evoke a rubsign. It has the shininess of a
foil sticker, but is not a sticker.
The jaw can open, although you need strong fingernails or a knife to get
it started. Same articulation on the arms as in robot mode. The new legs
have ball join hips and hinge knees, but fused ankles and toes, so only a
limited range of motion that looks good. The tail is on double-hinged
struts, but seems intended to stay snapped in place, acting as a third
support.
As noted earlier, there's a pair of 2mm posts behind the shark fin that
allow a Prime Master to ride around, and with the guns installed correctly
another Prime Master can stand on each gun. There's rectangular tabs on the
top of the mid-tail for attaching the Prime Armor. The 3mm peg hole is
covered up, but there's some roughly-3mm peg holes on the insteps of each
foot...a bit loose on a 3mm post, so maybe this is accidental.
Limb Modes: For leg mode, start with beast mode. Fold the tail back in
as far as you can get it, stow the hindlegs as they go in robot mode, pull
the shark head back to robot mode, rotate the combiner peg up, and then
rotate the arms around at the elbow so that tabs on the outer facings of the
forearms go into slots on the sides. The claws are kinda obviously sticking
out from the shin, but it's otherwise a decent leg. The tabs for the robot
forearms are a bit weak, as are the pegs that hold the beast hindlimbs in
place.
The arm mode is about the same, just return the robot legs to robot mode
and peg them together. The shins are the top facing of the combiner forearm,
and depending on how much clearance there is around the torso figure's
shoulder socket, the shark head can be snapped down into beast position.
Overall: Sure, the monster mode allows for a lower degree of difficulty
in a lot of respects, but they did succeed at that level. And hey, unlike
the bazillion color variants of the Beast Hunters Rippersnapper mold, the
head doesn't fly off at the slightest provocation.
AUTOBOT: AUTOBOT MOONRACER
Assortment: E1130
Altmode: Cybertronian Car
Transformation Difficulty: 14 steps
Previous Name Use: None
Previous Mold Use: None
Prime Master I Got: Alpha Trion
Prime Master Ability: Translates the Covenant of Primus for Cybertronian
Youth. [So, she's a sniper, but pulls schoolmarm duty? Yoko Littner!]
Weapon: Laser Carbine
Function: Sharpshooter
Motto: "Today we'll learn the five most vulnerable spots on a combiner,
children!"
How will the joyful AUTOBOT sharpshooter wield the POWER OF THE PRIMES?
Packaging: Five ties on the robot, one each on the gun and the Prime
Armor. The package render doesn't quite match the final colors, using white
on the front sorta-grille area where the toy is seafoam green.
The figure is packaged with the middle roof piece folded down as a sort
of buttcape, but the cardback photo and the instructions show it being locked
into place as part of the backpack via a couple of tabs that mess with
vehicle mode ground clearance. I much prefer it as a buttcape, as the
backpack is already too big, and have reviewed it as such.
The instructions have a diagram of Elita-1 in combined mode. The
combiner is unnamed, and it shows Moonracer and Jazz as arms, but Sludge and
Snarl as legs. This is odd, since they could at least have thrown in
Novastar...the similar diagram in Rippersnapper's instructions shows all of
the Terrorcons (with notes that most of the limbs will be coming later in the
year). Maybe Novastar was a last-minute decision? Or the graphics team just
missed a memo.
Robot Mode: Such a kibblemaster. The designers clearly wanted a Sexy
Robot look, even if it meant hanging all sorts of vehicle parts all over her,
edging towards an Under-3 sort of bas relief bot. Proportionally huge
backpack, large buttcape/bustle if you choose to leave it down, immobile
wheel and fender chunks fused to the boots, arbitrary vehicle panels on the
forearms. And, in addition to the general kibble issues, the soles of her
feet are heavily painted vehicle window pieces with low stability and high
chance of scraping. They really should have just done like they did with
Victorion and just say "this is a female who isn't a swimsuit model with
armor bits." I mean, okay, the non-kibble parts do look reasonably close to
the G1 animation model of Moonracer, but without the shoulderpads and with
the addition of extra bits of lavender. The design does force the combiner
peg into the backpack, since there's no way it'd fit into the Legend-sized
chest.
A very leggy (seriously, waist is at about the 2/3 point up from the
ground) 5.5" (14cm) tall, in mostly a sort of seafoam green edging towards
blue, and white. (Science aside: this is one of those borderline colors
where the lighting matters a lot...under some kinds of light it looks more
blue, under others it looks more green. The closest paint I have to this is
seafoam green, which is a little lighter than this toy, but I'll go with that
name.) A lot of the toy is actually clear blue plastic that's mostly painted
over, though, including the torso U, the buttcape, and the bottoms of the
feet. This does mean that the ball part of the shoulder ball and socket
joint is clear plastic, which always gives me cause to worry about long-term
strength. White plastic is used on the neck, the backpack frame, the circle
tip of the combiner peg, and the thighs. The wheels and rifle are black
plastic. There's actually two slightly different shades of seafoam green,
the greener one also being "unpaintable" plastic that's more flexible. The
flexible green is used on the upper arms, kneecaps, and pelvis. The more
rigid seafoam green plastic is used on the head, collar/ sternum area,
forearms, backpack wings (fenders), waist, shins, and feet.
There's seafoam green paint used extensively on the clear parts, leaving
only the abdomen clear in front, and covering most of the buttcape. There's
white paint on the armor panels on the forearms, the fender wings on the
backpack, and on the feet. There's also bits of white accent on the helmet
edges. The lips are lavender, as is part of the abdomen and the mid-shins.
There's yellow paint on the "forehead gem" and ear cups of the helmet (which
were not yellow in animation), and on the sides of the belt. The center of
the monobreast chest is painted white with a red Autobot symbol. Her eyes
are bright blue, while the face is a lighter shade of lavender than the lips
or other bits.
The head is on a ball joint at the end of a hinged (forwards and
backwards) neck, but you gotta be careful because it's easy to apply too much
leverage and pop her head right off while trying to transform the figure.
Like, launched across the room level popping. Her intended waist is a swivel
between the belt and pelvis, but if you leave the buttcape down there's
another swivel between belt and abdomen, allowing for a more natural gradual
twist of the waist. Ball and socket shoulders and elbows, wrists are hinged
to fold inward (not pinned, though, so they pop out easily). Ball joint hips
with swivels right below the hip sockets, double hinge knees (so that the
legs can bend double for combiner boot mode). The ankles are hinged struts
attached to the outer side of each lower leg, and a side to side hinge at the
bottom of the strut so that the feet have a little play to lay flat. Despite
all this, stable poses can be difficult, because the soles of the feet are
pretty narrow due to being part of the driver's compartment windows and
roof. The big fenders fused to the sides of the boots do get in the way some
too.
The hands can hold 5mm pegs, but they're on the tight side (I checked
with several other weapons to make sure it wasn't that the gun had a thick
peg, did some Dremel work to fix the hands on mine). On the plus side, white
plastic won't really show stress marks, yes? There's also 5mm peg holes on
the outer armored surfaces of the forearms, these are the right size.
Otherwise, there's just the combiner peg holes on the left heel and inside
the buttcape.
Her gun is more of a sniper pistol than sniper rifle, I'm tempted to
give her TR Blaster's rifle (I got a loose G1 Blaster rifle at a flea market
and TR Blaster is using that). 2" (5cm) long, a single piece of black
plastic with an extended barrel and a telescopic sight. It not only has a
5mm peg for a grip, the stock is also a 5mm peg. I'd hoped that would let it
mount in the front of the vehicle mode, but that peg hole is sloped
downwards.
The Prime Armor is the same mold as Jazz's, with a seafoam green plastic
main piece and peg, white thumbs, and clear blue lid. It's intended to use
the tabs on the thumbs to hook around her chest, which it does passably well.
However, it looks better as a backpack, hanging loosely between the fenders
on her back with the thumbs pointed together or apart to hook onto the fender
tops. (Or peg it onto the end of the buttcape.)
http://www.dvandom.com/images/moonracerpack.JPG
Transformation: The buttcape needs to be swung around to become an apron
(and, of course, swung down first if you left it part of the backpack). This
lets the torso front hinge forwards so that the head can be stowed. Then
rotate the lower waist to get the feet back to pointing forwards, since
turning just the belt is difficult and it's quicker to just rotate the entire
lower body at the above-belt swivel. The feet fold upwards and lock onto
tabs on the shin fenders, then snap together and snap into the apron.
Getting the arms into the right shape so that the backpack fenders can swing
around and lock into several tabs is a little tricky, but it's reasonably
secure. There's nothing to hide the hands, they just fold 90 degrees at the
wrist so they don't stick out so much...putting the Prime Armor into the peg
hole in back sort of covers them.
Vehicle Mode: I've seen this described as a Cybertronian limousine, due
to how there's windows all along the length of it. No real connection to her
animation model vehicle. It's a very narrow vehicle compared to the usual
cars, even Cybertronian cars, further suggesting that it's supposed to be as
wide as a car but a lot longer. Less Arcee, more RV.
5.5" (14cm) long without the Prime Armor stuck on as a booster, 6.25"
(16cm) with the booster. Only 1.75" (4.5cm) wide, though. Assuming it's as
wide as a wide pickup truck, that suggests a scale around 1:48 to 1:60. All
the colors are the same as in robot mode, but the white is almost entirely on
the rear third, and most of that is paint. The clear plastic of the soles of
the feet now forms the front windows, linking up with clear plastic from the
buttcape to make the entire front canopy and middle moonroof (hey, Moonracer
has a moonroof). The clear abdomen ends up as sort of a rear observer bubble
or something. There's extebsive seafoam blue-green paint on the buttcape and
sole pieces, some lavender at the top rear of the front window. A white
"wide home plate" sort of pentagon is painted in front of the windshield, and
it has a red Autobot symbol printed on it. The headlights are painted
yellow, there's some white on the mid-sides and seafoam paint at the fronts
of the rear fenders. This last bit is odd, since the plastic is seafoam, so
they painted over it in white, then over that in seafoam. The robot feet are
visible through the front windows, with peg holes that at first glance look
to be 3mm, but are actually just enough smaller that I'm not going to drill
holes in the windows to get at them. :)
Because of transformation tabs, there's almost zero ground clearance.
There's 5mm peg holes at the very rear of the sides, and a somewhat shallow
one in the piece that is where the head was in robot mode. (The pistol can
be inserted there to point backwards, but meh.) There's a wrist peg hole in
the front bumper, but it's angled downwards. There's a single 2mm peg on top
of the hinge that connects the buttcape to the waist, and another single 2mm
peg on the top of the not-head chunk in back.
There's no good rooftop solution for weapon storage, but I have a 2mm
drill bit for my Dremel, so now both her pistol and TR Blaster's rifle can
store on the 2mm pegs: http://www.dvandom.com/images/moonracerguns.JPG .
Limb Modes: Arm mode is obtained fairly simply from vehicle mode. Pop
the buttcape off to free up the leg section of the robot as the forearm, fold
up the combiner peg, and move the robot forearms to peg into a set of tabs
that aren't used in vehicle mode. Nice solid arm mode. (Side benefit of
giving Moonracer the TR Blaster rifle, it looks like a scaled up version of
her pistol when held in the combiner hand.)
For boot mode, the robot legs bend double and the rectangular pegs near
the front wheels on the underside go into slots on the backs of the thighs.
The lower body has to be turned around, which requires undoing one of the
rear fenders. A new 5mm peg hole on a strut folds out from inside the
buttcape. Reasonably solid, but aesthetically suffers from having super
obvious robot hands on the kneepads. If you don't like how the leg thickens
at the bottom, the Prime Armor can be stuck on at the calf muscle position
(the super-long feet created by putting the hands on the heels aren't really
needed most of the time). This also provides a spot to store the gun other
than on the kneecap, if you don't want the combiner to use it.
Overall: Going purely by the intended design stuff, it's somewhat
marginal. But it's easily modified (via fan mode stuff, rather than "get out
the Dremel") to be a better toy. It is, at least, a fairly unique design for
CW/PotP limbs.
Dave Van Domelen, put up a poll to ask which thing from his full "to be
reviewed" box should be next, so of course it's in a three-way tie....
Dinobot Snarl (Stegosaur)
Dinobot Sludge (Brontosaur)
Blackwing (Jet)
Terrorcon Rippersnapper (Sharklike Monster)
Autobot Moonracer (Cybertronian Car)
Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Gen/DeluxeP2
This was a weird five-figure wave, but at least it gets the Volcanicus
set out. As with Dreadwind, Blackwing is a significant retool of Combiner
Wars Air Raid, but I'm going to just review it as a new figure.
Technically, Sludge is a co-tool with Slug, sharing a lot of the parts
below the waist.
CAPSULES
$15-20 price point.
Dinobot Snarl: Very good robot mode, decent dino mode, weird leg mode,
okay arm mode. Recommended.
Dinobot Sludge: Purely as a non-combiner it's pretty good, but the
combiner elements are all bad. Recommended, but a step behind Snarl.
Blackwing: A better Aerialbot re-engineering than Dreadwind was, but
still kinda wobbly in places. Mildly recommended.
Terrorcon Rippersnapper: Nothing spectacular, but also no significant
flaws. Granted, it has a somewhat cheaty alt-mode to work with (arms become
arms), but it works well. Recommended.
Autobot Moonracer: Somewhat weird vehicle mode, robot carries way too
much vehicle stuff in the backpack (although if you leave part of it down as
a buttcape it's not as bad), solid limb modes. Recommended.
In case you're curious, I'd put Rippersnapper at the top of the pile of
"Recommended" toys.
RANTS
Packaging: Same as wave 2, although Blackwing's side panel art isn't of
King Starscream, it's of the jet combiner Dreadwing. The co-sells on back
are of the two wave 2 Prime Masters (Alchemist Prime and Alpha Trion), plus
one other. Dinobots got Vector Prime, the other three got Liege Maximo.
AUTOBOT: DINOBOT SNARL
Assortment: E1126
Altmode: Stegosaur
Transformation Difficulty: 13 steps
Previous Name Use: None (it was just "Snarl" a lot, but even AoE didn't go
with the "Dinobot Snarl" bit)
Previous Mold Use: None
Prime Master I Got: Quintus Prime
Prime Master Ability: Creates countless races of warriors.
Weapon: Energo-Sword
Function: Desert Warrior
Motto: "Sand. It gets everywhere. I hate it."
How will the surly, combat-hungry DINOBOT wield the POWER OF THE PRIMES?
Packaging: 7 ties on the robot, plus a rubber band on the chest to keep
the head from flapping back. One each on the sword and Prime Armor.
Card art is of dino mode, as seems to be the standard for Dinobots.
Robot Mode: One of the defining characteristics, to me, of the G1
Dinobots was that their robot modes all had wings or wing-like structures, a
point that the animation models tended to emphasize by shifting parts around
when necessary. The new renamed Slag is significantly hurt by their lack,
and while Sludge below does have G1 toy-accurate wings, they feel wrong
thanks to cheating the animation did. But Snarl? Perfect. His tail is
split into a sort of wide collar that gives him the proper silhouette. His
shoulders end up looking a little weird because of their extra range of
motion, but I'd say this is my favorite-looking robot mode of all the revised
G1 crew. There's nothing missing, the proportions are very close to the
animation model (rather than the weird warping seen in the G1 toys), good
color balance. The only quibble I have is that the sword is colorless clear,
rather than red, but I can probably dye it red later. Okay, one other
quibble is that the beast head halves aren't stowed inside the feet, they
just sort of hang off the back, but that's a minor aesthetic issue and I
suspect trying to make them tuck away would be a minor disaster at Hasbro's
current parts budget for Deluxes.
5.25" (13cm) tall at the head, 6" (15cm) tall at the shoulderpads, which
have a "wingspan" of 4.25" (11cm). In the Dinobot standard colors of red,
black, gold, and silver with a few accent colors. Colorless clear plastic is
used for the shoulders, sword, beast head halves, dino forelimbs on the
boots, and a small panel in the center of the chest (which does not seem to
be designed to open up). The "U" of the torso is bright red plastic. The
combiner peg, head, pelvis, thighs, biceps, and fists are black plastic. Two
dull gold plastics are used. The more rigid variety is used on the collar,
the shoulder roots, knee joints, boot back panels, two back plates, and the
fronts of the shoulderpad wings. A more rubbery dull gold plastic is used
for the frill plates on the shins and on the upper back (basically, the ones
that don't need to peg into anything). Silvery light gray plastic is used
for the forearms (they're totally painted over, though, I only know because I
had to carve out a bit of mold flash inside one of the wrist joints), all but
the back facing of the boots, backs of the shoulderpads, and a small bit of
the back itself. The circle on the end of the combiner peg is also silvery
gray plastic. The Prime Armor piece is almost identical to those that come
with the rest of the Deluxe Dinobots, but the connector peg is dull gold
plastic rather than black.
The paint continues the Dinobot motif of painting the backs/insides of
the clear pieces. The shoulders have gold trefoils painted on the inner
surfaces, then the entire inner surface is coated with silver. The dino
forelegs on the boots have the insides and back spraypainted gold. There's
also some gold paint on the toes and lower shins. The forearms are mostly
dipped in gold paint, with some silver on the elbows. The face and helmet
crest are painted silver, with red eyes. A red Autobot symbol is printed on
the clear chest panel, and there's blue and black sticker-inspired bits
printed on either side of the chest. There's red and blue details printed on
the shins. Tech greebly molded bits on the sides of the boots are painted
black, but these are mostly covered by the dino legs.
The head is on a restricted ball joint, the waist is a swivel above the
belt. The shoulders are ball joints, but since they connect at the top of
the disk-shaped shoulders rather than the middle, moving the arms too much
results in a somewhat weird appearance. There's mid-bicep swivels and hinge
elbows. The wrists bend inward for transformation storage. Ball joint hips,
upper thigh swivels, hinge knees. No ankle articulation. The fists can hold
5mm pegs, and there's a 5mm peg hole at the top of the sternum for the Prime
Armor. Each shoulder has a 5mm peg hole at its center. There's a 3mm peg
hole in the back of the pelvis. With no forearm holes, the "use the combiner
fist as a super fist in robot mode" trick doesn't work very well.
The sword is 2.5" (6cm) long, a single piece of colorless clear
plastic. It has a standard 5mm peg grip, as well as a 5mm by 2mm tab on one
side of the crosspiece (5mm side aligned with the long direction of the
sword). This is intended for storing the sword in dino mode, but you can
also just hang the sword on one shoulder in robot mode, or have Snarl hold
the sword by this tab as if it were a sword-shaped gun.
Amusing (to me) bit: due to the coloration of the combiner peg, if you
lift it up 90 degrees in robot mode it looks like a chest cannon. If that
clear panel could pop up (I tried, it doesn't seem to be able to) it would
make for a gunnery sight.
Transformation: Pull back the shoulderpad piece so the head can be
stowed. Then fold the tail halves together and snap the piece back down. At
this point it looks like a tail-faced robot or something. Tuck the fists
away and bend at the elbows to make the rear legs, and fold the flattened
spine plates back up. Open up the back panels of the boots so they can fold
over the thighs. Here's a slightly tricky bit, you don't bend at the robot
knees, there's a secondary hinge inside the shin that you use. Then close
the panels, snap everything together, fold the beast head down and reposition
the forelimbs.
Dinosaur Mode: They stayed pretty faithful to the weirdly messed up
proportions of the G1 toy here, although it's a little less scrunched up and
the head is slightly smaller and slightly more anatomically correct.
Compared to the BW Neo Saberback mold, it's still pretty much "draw a
stegosaur from memory when you've seen a picture of one once, years ago," but
it's not too bad. The main error is the dragging tail, as modern
reconstructions put it fairly horizontal.
5.5" (14.5cm) long from snout to tail tip, putting it in the vicinity of
1:48 to 1:60 scale, depending on how big of a stegosaur it's supposed to be
(there's significant range within the genus). If you lift the tail up
(leaving a big gap) to get some idea of the length with tail held
horizontally, it's closer to 6.25" (16cm). The color balance is about the
same, although with less black. The red of the torso ends up dominating the
rear flanks. The dino head has inside painting of gold on the clear plastic,
red eyes painted on the outside surface, and a red on silver Autobot symbol
printed on top of the head. The front four pairs of plates are more rigid
gold plastic, the rear four pairs are softer.
Not much articulation. The forelimbs have swivel shoulders and that's
it. The hind legs retain the joints of the robot arms, but have the fists
folded away. Because of the immovable molded toes on the hind legs, though,
there's not much you can do with the joints in the hind legs without the
result being wobbly...dino mode is functionally a brick except for goofy
comic relief poses.
The only 5mm peg holes in this mode are on the rear hips. There's two
2mm pegs atop the back above the hips, on the red part of the flank. And if
you fold down the peak pair of back plates, each also has one 2mm peg on it.
Not the most comfortable ride, but doable. There's really no way to attach
the Prime Armor or the sword on the back, they have to go on the hip peg
holes (well, you can stick the sword between the rows of plates on the tail
and it'll stay okay, but it's not a particularly good look for Snarl).
There's several tabs on the sides, but they're just to stabilize the dino
limbs when the figure is in a mode that doesn't use 'em. There's also a
rectangular hole on the underside of the head, but it's just a little too
short to hold a 5mm peg or the sword's 5mm tab, it's just there to secure the
head to the backs of the boots. The chest peg hole is partially blocked by
the tail, and kinda looks like a cloaca.
Limb Modes: To get the leg mode from dino mode, just fold the head down,
lift the tail up, rotate the combiner peg out, and swing the limbs around to
peg them into places (the hind legs need to rotate at the thigh swivel to do
so, leaving the fist sides facing outwards). The tail ends up sticking out
as a huge knee spike.
For arm mode, starting from leg mode you just open the boot panels and
swing them out. Before snapping back together, make sure that the little 5mm
peg socket piece is in the right place between the soles of the robot feet,
as it's normally tucked out of the way. I'd say this works better as an arm
than as a leg...unfortunately, I'm not really happy with how ANY of the new
Dinobots work as legs...Slug and Snarl are least bad in that role, I guess.
Overall: Definitely my favorite updated Dinobot of the set, although I
still like Slash better.
AUTOBOT: DINOBOT SLUDGE
Assortment: E1127
Altmode: Brontosaur
Transformation Difficulty: 20 steps
Previous Name Use: None ("Sludge" alone only G1, RiD01; was Slog in AoE)
Previous Mold Use: None
Prime Master I Got: Alchemist Prime
Prime Master Ability: Instantly knows the pressure required to flatten
Decepticons
Weapon: Seismic Stomps
Function: Jungle Warrior
Motto: "I am the rumble in the jungle."
How will the DECEPTICON stomping DINOBOT wield the POWER OF THE PRIMES?
Packaging: 5 ties on the robot, one each on the rifle and Prime Armor.
The card art conforms to the pattern of showing dino mode.
Robot Mode: As mentioned earlier, there's a difference between "G1 toy
accurate" and "G1 show accurate," and this one goes more for the toy, thanks
to the lower wings. Otherwise it looks good, though. In an interesting
twist, it does not have its combiner peg in front, hidden by a chestplate or
whatnot. Instead, the peg is in back. Rather than stowing the head when the
peg comes out, it gets stuck inside the dino neck, which hangs down in front
of the chest when in limb modes.
As noted at the top, Sludge shares a fair amount of molding with Slug.
Everything below the waist swivel except the dino legs and the tail halves
are the same mold. Additionally, the shoulders, elbows, fists, and combiner
post are the same.
5.5" (14cm) tall, in the standard Dinobot colors. The torso and collar
pieces are red plastic. The head, fists, gun, Prime Armor (other than the
clear door on it), pelvis front, and thighs are black plastic. The dino legs
on the boots, the tail halves inside the boots, a panel on the dino neck, and
the dino head are clear plastic. (Not sure about the dino lower jaw, which
is dipped in gold and could be another color.) The rest is silvery light
gray plastic.
There's matte black paint on the chest center, forearms, and belt. Dull
gold paint on the toes, details inside the dino rear leg hips, and much of
the interior of the dino neck. Silver on the majority of the dino rear leg
interiors, the robot face and crest. The eyes are yellow. A small red
Autobot symbol is printed at the top of the black part of the chest, and a
silver "dot in crosshairs using negative space" bit is printed on the
abdomen. There's some colorful tech greebles printed on the lower shins (the
similar molded details on the wings are merely painted black, no colors).
Head swivel, and the waist swivels below the belt level, just as with
Slug. Ball joint shoulders, upper arm swivels, soft-ratcheting hinge elbows.
The wrists bend down for transformation. Ball joint hips with swivels right
below them, hinge knees. Due to the heavier backpack kibble, the heel spurs
aren't really enough to support the figure, and you need to use the tail
halves as heels (on Slug, it's possible to lift those up off the table and
keep the figure standing without having to lean forwards).
The hands can hold 5mm pegs, but the dino claws atop the wrists severely
limit the sorts of things the hands can hold. There's also 5mm holes in the
sides of the forearms, and Mega Fists work pretty well. There's a 5mm hole
in the center of the chest for attaching Prime Armor, and holes in the rear
dino hips on the boots. There's two more 5mm peg holes on the back thanks to
the dino neck, and below that two on the back of the belt. There's 5mm peg
holes in the wings as well. A lot of these holes get in each others' ways,
but still a lot of places to put stuff. There's some smaller hexagonal holes
on the wings, but they're purely for limb modes. There's a 3mm peg hole in
the back of the pelvis, but it's blocked by the dino head. There's some tabs
on the dino hips, but I can't figure out if they're meant for anything at
all. They don't seem useful for the Prime Armor.
Transformation: For obvious reasons, the lower body transforms the same
way as Slug's transformation. Since the heel spurs aren't as useful in this
version, I'm just leaving them permanently folded in, to avoid the hassle of
remembering several steps too late that they're in the way.
The rest is pretty straightforward. Rotate the waist 180 degrees, lift
the arms so that the wings can fold around the torso to become the back, stow
the fists, lift up the dino neck to cover the robot head and then twist it
around at its middle swivel. Okay, one other thing, the forearms need to
swivel around to get the elbows turned into digitigrade ankle-knees.
I'm not sure if there's something that I neglected to put in just the
right position, or just a manufacturing-level assembly error, but the body
halves don't stay together very well. I can use a *Master to clamp them
together using the back pegs, but that's not a great solution.
Dinosaur Mode: A pretty credible robot Brontosaur (not Apatosaur) with
the usual "robot toes on top of the back" common to several Dinobots. The
gold under clear looks better than gold chrome, IMO.
7" (18cm) from snout to tail tip, although since the tail is stubby
rather than whip-like it's hard to figure out scale. Other than what I
described in robot mode, the only other paint is red dino eyes and a red on
silver Autobot symbol printed on the forehead.
As with Snarl, most of the limb articulation is kinda pointless, as it
mostly looks good in just one pose. All the arm articulation remains in the
forelegs, though, and the rear legs are on stiff swivels. The lower jaw is
hinged, and the transformation swivel at mid-neck can be turned slightly to
give Sludge a quizzical head tilt.
The peg holes on the neck are a bit weird, nothing seems to officially
use them. But the one on the upper neck points down, letting you put the gun
under the head. The one on the lower neck points up and is fairly blocked,
but you can sort of make the Prime Armor into a robot wig. The wing peg
holes are now on the sides, and the rear hip ones are accessible. None of
the arm/fist ones are particularly useful. There's two 2mm pegs on the top
of the back, for a single rider.
Limb Modes: From dino mode, get to leg mode about the same way as Snarl,
although the combiner peg is under the dino neck rather than tail. The
hexagonal pegs on the forelimb elbows go into hexagonal holes on the sides
(albeit not very stably), and just swing the rear legs up. The instructions
have the mid-neck swivel used so that the dino head is staring forward from
the kneecap area, making for a much worse knee spike thing than on Snarl.
From leg mode, transform the robot legs and then snap them together to
get arm mode. The dino head and neck don't looks as bad on the shoulders as
they do on the knees. Unfortunately, the problems with the back end not
staying together in dino mode are even worse in arm mode, so as stupid as leg
mode looks, I'll probably have to use this figure as a leg.
Overall: Pretty good as a standalone figure, but the combiner aspects
aren't that good.
DECEPTICON: BLACKWING
Assortment: E1128
Altmode: Jet
Transformation Difficulty: 14 steps
Previous Name Use: None
Previous Mold Use: None
Prime Master I Got: Quintus Prime
Prime Master Ability: Seeds life on desolate planets to watch it suffer.
Weapon: Electro-Kinetic Blasters
Function: Aerial Assault
Motto: "Things are never as bad as they seem -- usually they're worse."
How will the dark-minded DECEPTICON mercenary wield the POWER OF THE
PRIMES?
Packaging: Five ties on the robot, one each on the pistols, one on the
Prime Armor.
The instructions do include how to form Duocon Dreadwing. Dreadwind
needs to have his wings slung back to look more like a delta-style fighter a
la the Gripen.
Robot Mode: It's close to the G1 robot mode. The colors are a bit
different (silver is more prominent, the biceps are gray rather than light
aqua), but the main difference is that the wings stick out to the sides
rather than towards the back. Well, also the whole "has articulation and
better proportions" thing, natch. He definitely has that color scheme that
later got labeled "G2" despite being around for most of G1, with purple and
light aqua and stuff.
5.25" (13cm) tall at the head, 6.25" (16cm) to the tops of the wings.
As noted there's bright purple and light aqua, plus a slightly desaturated
medium-light blue, medium gray, and silver. They didn't quite manage to get
the colors to line up with the modified sprue, though, as a lot of pieces get
totally covered in paint, or nearly so. Light aqua plastic is used on the
hips, thighs, and the struts inside the boots. Slightly grayish medium-light
blue (hereafter to just be called light blue) plastic is used on the torso,
the tip of the combiner peg (abdomen center), a flip-down plate on the center
chest, shoulders, forearms, and wings. The head, collar, combiner peg root,
pelvis, boots, and pistols are medium gray plastic.
The wings appear to have been totally covered in bright purple paint,
but then the paint was scraped off some tabs used to secure them in limb
mode. It's definitely scrape-marks, not a case of iffy masking. The
shoulders are covered in light aqua paint, which is also used on the toe
tips. The lower face is painted light aqua, the visor purple. There's
silver on the abdomen flanks, kneecaps, and a bit on the top of the chest
panel, and a printed purple Decepticon symbol on the silver chest place bit.
The fists are painted medium gray.
Ball joint neck, waist swivel between the belt and lower pelvis. Ball
joint shoulders with "slumping" struts rather than just shrugging, so he can
be dejected. Upper arm swivels, semi-ratcheting hinge elbows. Ball joint
hips, upper thigh swivels, hinge knees. No ankle articulation. The hands
can hold 5mm pegs, and there's 5mm peg holes on the outer facings of the
forearms. Folding down the panel in the middle of the chest reveals another
5mm peg hole for the Prime Armor. There's a 3mm peg hole for stands in the
back of the pelvis.
The guns are identical short pistols made of medium gray plastic, 1.5"
(37mm) long with 5mm peg grips. They appear to be loosely based on the G1
weapons, but significantly smaller. On either side of the gun above the
grips are 5mm peg holes, so more guns can be attached to these guns. It also
allows these guns to attach sideways to the Shapeways rifles I got, rather
than just using the pistol's peg. (The Shapeways rifles have second pegs on
top and slightly ahead of the main grip, so that they can be used to connect
Blackwing's hands to Dreadwing's arms.)
The Prime Armor is the same mold as Dreadwing's, but all in light blue
plastic, so it doesn't look as much like a stand-in for Throttle when mounted
on the jet.
Transformation: Fairly standard Combiner Wars Aerialbot deal, with the
"open up and fold the thighs into the boots" bit. The most significant
difference is that you need to open up the torso via a hinge in the small of
the back to be able to swing the wing roots around for Dreadwing combination
mode. (I kinda prefer the wings in that mode for robot mode too, the
official position is a look I didn't care for on Jetfire and don't care for
now. I guess the idea was to make the figure look less like Air Raid.)
The wings don't really lock down, however, so you need to be careful
with them. (They have tabs on them for locking in limb mode, but the robot
forearms were not retooled to let the wing tabs fit into them.) One thing to
be careful about, if you had the chest panel folded down in robot mode, the
boots will almost fit around it, but nooooot quite. Like, fraction of a
millimeter off, requiring opening the boots up enough to flip the panel.
Unlike the G1 toy, which has the head at the back end of the jet, this
has the head not quite hidden inside the cockpit section. You need to
disconnect the collar area and slide the head nose-ward to get it to slot
properly into place, otherwise it sticks out too much. Unfortunately, as far
as I can tell, this pushes part of the bit behind the cockpit up slightly,
and shoving it back down makes the head pop out. Maybe I just failed to get
everything aligned 100% correctly, but if that's the case it's still a design
flaw, IMO.
The guns are intended to be mounted on the forearm holes and the Prime
Armor on the top between the wings.
Vehicle Mode: More or less an F-14 or similar swing-wing jet with a lot
of robot chest and arm kibble underneath. Unlike the G1 toy, it has two
distinct vertical stabilizers that cannot snap together into one. The color
scheme for the jet parts matches the G1 toy very closely, although the
cockpit is painted on rather than being clear aqua plastic. Much the same as
Air Raid (and Guy Hawk), but the wing roots have been retooled to add ball
joints.
5.75" (just under 15cm) long, with a swung-back wingspan of 4.25" (11cm)
and a maximum wingspan of 7" (18cm). The main colors are medium gray,
vibrant purple, and light aqua, with silver and yellow accents and a bit of
robot mode light blue showing through in a few places. The nosecone and
vertical stabilizers are rubbery light aqua blue plastic, the wings are light
blue plastic, the rest of the dedicated jet parts are medium gray plastic.
The wings and horizontal tail parts are painted over in vibrant purple (in
the case of the wings, only the tabs on the undersides are unpainted), and
most of the nosecone is painted medium gray in a pretty good match to the
plastic. A little bit of the nosecone is left unpainted. There's silver
paint on the tops of the intakes with red at the front edge of the silver.
The tops of the wings have silver and yellow lightning bolt printing with
dark purple on silver Decepticon symbols. There's silver printing on the
outer facings of the vertical stabilizers. The cockpit windows are painted
light aqua.
This is a swing-wing plane, and the wings do swing, with a small catch
to keep them swung all the way back. No landing gear or openable cockpit.
As noted above, the guns are meant to peg onto the forearm 5mm holes, but the
fists are still accessible. There's also a 5mm peg hole in the center of the
top, and another at the back between the robot feet. On either side of the
top, just ahead of the peg hole, there are single 2mm pegs for Prime Masters
to wingwalk on.
Dreadwing: Basically, this is held together by just a flip-out peg that
replaces the head, going into the back end of the delta-wing-modified
Dreadwind jet mode. Pretty unstable. I got the previously-mentioned adapter
guns from Ariel Lemon on Shapeways that let you raise Blackwing's arms and
connect them to Dreadwind's arms by using opposed pegs, but it's still pretty
floppy around the wings (doesn't help that one of the wings on my Dreadwind
won't lock into place properly onto the boot...I shaved down a misaligned peg
and now it doesn't actually try to pop itself apart, but it's not solid
either). It's also required to pop open the back and rotate the wing roots
on Blackwing so that they can swing the other way and sort of link up with
Dreadwind's wings. The Blackwing head doesn't really hide in any meaningful
way if you tilt the Blackwing nosecone back more than about 40 degrees from
vertical.
Now, granted, the G1 super jet combiner isn't all that impressive
either, and it's nice that they went to the effort to reproduce it in
spirit. It's just too bad that the tolerances on both jets are iffy.
9" (23cm) long with an overall wingspan of 6.75" (17cm). Using the
adapter guns, I can still attach Blackwing's pistols onto the undersides of
Dreadwind's wingtips.
Limb Modes: Arm mode is easiest to go to from robot mode. Peg the boots
together, stow the head as best as you can in the cockpit backpack, rotate
the combiner peg out (might have to pop the back open to do this), then shrug
the shoulders all the way up and bend the arms down so that the tabs on the
wings can slot into bits on the forearms. No official suggestion where to
put the guns in this mode. (The Shapeways guns can peg together side to side
to make a double barrelled blaster that can be held by the combiner hand, but
when connected this way the regular pistols can't really attach to the
replacement guns.)
The leg mode is a little more complicated than usual, with the top of
the fuselage splitting into parts that lets the wings fold together as a sort
of bladed shin, and the nosecone as a knee spike. The guns can store neatly
on the fists. The leg mode is better than the arm mode, IMO.
Overall: Yes, I'm getting tired of the Combiner Wars molds, but they did
just enough with retooling and re-engineering this that I like it. The
vehicle mode is a bit wobbly, and the official Duocon is VERY wobbly, but
that's basically a bonus anyway.
DECEPTICON: TERRORCON RIPPERSNAPPER
Assortment: 1129
Altmode: Shark Monster
Transformation Difficulty: 14 steps
Previous Name Use: None ("Rippersnapper" was G1, "Predacon Rippersnapper" was
TFP)
Previous Mold Use: None
Prime Master I Got: Alchemist Prime
Prime Master Ability: Devises a formula to make his teeth indestructible.
Weapon: Cyclone Guns
Function: Ground Attack Specialist
Motto: "The only good thing about life is that it can be ended."
How will the ferocious TERRORCON ground attack specialist wield the
POWER OF THE PRIMES?
Note, Hun-Grrr is part of wave 2 of Voyagers, I'm pretty sure we'll get
the full team of Terrorcons. This also seems to be the pegwarmer of the
wave, I've seen more of him on the shelves than any other in this wave.
Maybe just get four Rippersnappers if impatient?
Packaging: Five ties on the robot, one on the Prime Armor. The guns are
attached to robot mode's back...on the wrong sides, at least with mine. How
do I know they're the wrong sides? The guns have 2mm pegs, which end up on
the underside in beast mode if I leave the guns where they were. :)
Robot Mode: This is surprisingly close to the animation model for the
character, although the chest detailing is different (probably because
they're going to use parts of this mold for Blot, and Blot's chest detailing
is on this toy) and they didn't quite get the colors to match (the G1 toy had
different pieces for the robot and beast arms, so they could be colored
differently in animation). For those unfamiliar with G1 Rippersnapper, this
is a fairly standard Combiner Wars sort of robot with a shark head and fin
stuck to the back, a pair of rifles stored on the backpack, big claws on the
hands, and some monster hind legs on the boots. The head is very
rectangular, a nod to the Scramble City style of heads as combiner pegs.
5.25" (13.5cm) tall at the head, 6" (15cm) to the tops of the guns or
the shark snout. The main colors are extremely light gray that's nearly
white, and medium blue. Very light gray plastic is used for the shark
backpack, the torso "U" part, a panel on the sternum, and theboots. The
rest, including a hinge holding the shark pack, is medium blue plastic.
The face is painted yellow with red eyes. The chest has black and
silver details on the pecs, red on the top of the sternum plate, and a purple
Decepticon symbol printed on the center of the sternum. The belt is silver
with a red U painted on it. The kneecaps are silver with yellow and red
details. Bright blue "AllSpark" paint is on the claws and details on the
abdomen. There's some silver bits on the outer edges of the lower shins, and
red paint on the sides of the shoulders.
Ball joint neck, swivel waist that's hinged between the belt and
pelvis. Ball joint shoulders on shrugging struts, ball joint elbows (so no
upper arm swivels), and wrist swivels. Ball joint hips, upper thigh swivels,
hinge knees. The hands have 5mm peg holes that do not go all the way
through, so only shorter pegs will work. If you fold down the sternum plate,
a 5mm peg hole for the Prime Armor is revealed. There's a 5mm peg hole on
either side of the backpack for storage of the guns. As usual, there's a 3mm
peg hole in the back of the pelvis. There's a pair of 2mm posts on the
backpack, but they're really meant for beast mode.
The rifles are each single pieces of medium blue plastic, 2" (5cm) long.
Each has a single 5mm peg grip, plus a single 2mm post that faces sideways
when the rifle is held in a hand. The Prime Armor is the same mold as the
one the Dinobots share, but all in medium blue plastic. It does a very good
Mega Fist thanks to the wrist joint, and as usual looks pretty dumb on the
chest (but not as bad as most).
Transformation: Very similar to an Aerialbot, but with a shark head
instead of a cockpit, beast legs and tail stored in and on the boots (which
collapse in the standard "open up and stuff the thighs inside" way), and it
basically just leaves the arms out to be beast arms. Oh, and the waist has
to turn 180 degrees, best to do that before transforming the legs.
The robot head has to stay up in this mode, the expanded chest area gets
in the way of snapping the shark head down if you pull up the combiner post
before transformation.
Beast Mode: This is a sort of shark-man hybrid possibly inspired by
various Polynesian myths such as Nanaue. Of course, because the robot head
is inside the shark head, it can peer out through the mouth a la a mascot
costume. Because of the way the boots make the lower body, the tail ends up
too thick in its middle range (and even thicker if you attach the Prime Armor
to the top of the tail). With the guns installed, it has a sort of Berserk
Fury Zoid look to it, albeit with a shark head rather than dinosaur head.
The top of the head is about 4" (10cm) off the surface, due to the
Godzilla-ish default pose. From snout to tail tip it's a little under 6"
(14-15cm). The color balance is about the same, the only new plastic visible
is the shark tail, which is made from two pieces of very light gray plastic
snapped together, plus medium blue struts (which, technically, stay hidden in
this mode too, just visible during transformation). The shark fin (which is
kinda small) is painted medium blue, the shark gills and teeth are painted
silver. The eyes are red, and there's a Decepticon symbol printed on the top
of the head that seems meant to evoke a rubsign. It has the shininess of a
foil sticker, but is not a sticker.
The jaw can open, although you need strong fingernails or a knife to get
it started. Same articulation on the arms as in robot mode. The new legs
have ball join hips and hinge knees, but fused ankles and toes, so only a
limited range of motion that looks good. The tail is on double-hinged
struts, but seems intended to stay snapped in place, acting as a third
support.
As noted earlier, there's a pair of 2mm posts behind the shark fin that
allow a Prime Master to ride around, and with the guns installed correctly
another Prime Master can stand on each gun. There's rectangular tabs on the
top of the mid-tail for attaching the Prime Armor. The 3mm peg hole is
covered up, but there's some roughly-3mm peg holes on the insteps of each
foot...a bit loose on a 3mm post, so maybe this is accidental.
Limb Modes: For leg mode, start with beast mode. Fold the tail back in
as far as you can get it, stow the hindlegs as they go in robot mode, pull
the shark head back to robot mode, rotate the combiner peg up, and then
rotate the arms around at the elbow so that tabs on the outer facings of the
forearms go into slots on the sides. The claws are kinda obviously sticking
out from the shin, but it's otherwise a decent leg. The tabs for the robot
forearms are a bit weak, as are the pegs that hold the beast hindlimbs in
place.
The arm mode is about the same, just return the robot legs to robot mode
and peg them together. The shins are the top facing of the combiner forearm,
and depending on how much clearance there is around the torso figure's
shoulder socket, the shark head can be snapped down into beast position.
Overall: Sure, the monster mode allows for a lower degree of difficulty
in a lot of respects, but they did succeed at that level. And hey, unlike
the bazillion color variants of the Beast Hunters Rippersnapper mold, the
head doesn't fly off at the slightest provocation.
AUTOBOT: AUTOBOT MOONRACER
Assortment: E1130
Altmode: Cybertronian Car
Transformation Difficulty: 14 steps
Previous Name Use: None
Previous Mold Use: None
Prime Master I Got: Alpha Trion
Prime Master Ability: Translates the Covenant of Primus for Cybertronian
Youth. [So, she's a sniper, but pulls schoolmarm duty? Yoko Littner!]
Weapon: Laser Carbine
Function: Sharpshooter
Motto: "Today we'll learn the five most vulnerable spots on a combiner,
children!"
How will the joyful AUTOBOT sharpshooter wield the POWER OF THE PRIMES?
Packaging: Five ties on the robot, one each on the gun and the Prime
Armor. The package render doesn't quite match the final colors, using white
on the front sorta-grille area where the toy is seafoam green.
The figure is packaged with the middle roof piece folded down as a sort
of buttcape, but the cardback photo and the instructions show it being locked
into place as part of the backpack via a couple of tabs that mess with
vehicle mode ground clearance. I much prefer it as a buttcape, as the
backpack is already too big, and have reviewed it as such.
The instructions have a diagram of Elita-1 in combined mode. The
combiner is unnamed, and it shows Moonracer and Jazz as arms, but Sludge and
Snarl as legs. This is odd, since they could at least have thrown in
Novastar...the similar diagram in Rippersnapper's instructions shows all of
the Terrorcons (with notes that most of the limbs will be coming later in the
year). Maybe Novastar was a last-minute decision? Or the graphics team just
missed a memo.
Robot Mode: Such a kibblemaster. The designers clearly wanted a Sexy
Robot look, even if it meant hanging all sorts of vehicle parts all over her,
edging towards an Under-3 sort of bas relief bot. Proportionally huge
backpack, large buttcape/bustle if you choose to leave it down, immobile
wheel and fender chunks fused to the boots, arbitrary vehicle panels on the
forearms. And, in addition to the general kibble issues, the soles of her
feet are heavily painted vehicle window pieces with low stability and high
chance of scraping. They really should have just done like they did with
Victorion and just say "this is a female who isn't a swimsuit model with
armor bits." I mean, okay, the non-kibble parts do look reasonably close to
the G1 animation model of Moonracer, but without the shoulderpads and with
the addition of extra bits of lavender. The design does force the combiner
peg into the backpack, since there's no way it'd fit into the Legend-sized
chest.
A very leggy (seriously, waist is at about the 2/3 point up from the
ground) 5.5" (14cm) tall, in mostly a sort of seafoam green edging towards
blue, and white. (Science aside: this is one of those borderline colors
where the lighting matters a lot...under some kinds of light it looks more
blue, under others it looks more green. The closest paint I have to this is
seafoam green, which is a little lighter than this toy, but I'll go with that
name.) A lot of the toy is actually clear blue plastic that's mostly painted
over, though, including the torso U, the buttcape, and the bottoms of the
feet. This does mean that the ball part of the shoulder ball and socket
joint is clear plastic, which always gives me cause to worry about long-term
strength. White plastic is used on the neck, the backpack frame, the circle
tip of the combiner peg, and the thighs. The wheels and rifle are black
plastic. There's actually two slightly different shades of seafoam green,
the greener one also being "unpaintable" plastic that's more flexible. The
flexible green is used on the upper arms, kneecaps, and pelvis. The more
rigid seafoam green plastic is used on the head, collar/ sternum area,
forearms, backpack wings (fenders), waist, shins, and feet.
There's seafoam green paint used extensively on the clear parts, leaving
only the abdomen clear in front, and covering most of the buttcape. There's
white paint on the armor panels on the forearms, the fender wings on the
backpack, and on the feet. There's also bits of white accent on the helmet
edges. The lips are lavender, as is part of the abdomen and the mid-shins.
There's yellow paint on the "forehead gem" and ear cups of the helmet (which
were not yellow in animation), and on the sides of the belt. The center of
the monobreast chest is painted white with a red Autobot symbol. Her eyes
are bright blue, while the face is a lighter shade of lavender than the lips
or other bits.
The head is on a ball joint at the end of a hinged (forwards and
backwards) neck, but you gotta be careful because it's easy to apply too much
leverage and pop her head right off while trying to transform the figure.
Like, launched across the room level popping. Her intended waist is a swivel
between the belt and pelvis, but if you leave the buttcape down there's
another swivel between belt and abdomen, allowing for a more natural gradual
twist of the waist. Ball and socket shoulders and elbows, wrists are hinged
to fold inward (not pinned, though, so they pop out easily). Ball joint hips
with swivels right below the hip sockets, double hinge knees (so that the
legs can bend double for combiner boot mode). The ankles are hinged struts
attached to the outer side of each lower leg, and a side to side hinge at the
bottom of the strut so that the feet have a little play to lay flat. Despite
all this, stable poses can be difficult, because the soles of the feet are
pretty narrow due to being part of the driver's compartment windows and
roof. The big fenders fused to the sides of the boots do get in the way some
too.
The hands can hold 5mm pegs, but they're on the tight side (I checked
with several other weapons to make sure it wasn't that the gun had a thick
peg, did some Dremel work to fix the hands on mine). On the plus side, white
plastic won't really show stress marks, yes? There's also 5mm peg holes on
the outer armored surfaces of the forearms, these are the right size.
Otherwise, there's just the combiner peg holes on the left heel and inside
the buttcape.
Her gun is more of a sniper pistol than sniper rifle, I'm tempted to
give her TR Blaster's rifle (I got a loose G1 Blaster rifle at a flea market
and TR Blaster is using that). 2" (5cm) long, a single piece of black
plastic with an extended barrel and a telescopic sight. It not only has a
5mm peg for a grip, the stock is also a 5mm peg. I'd hoped that would let it
mount in the front of the vehicle mode, but that peg hole is sloped
downwards.
The Prime Armor is the same mold as Jazz's, with a seafoam green plastic
main piece and peg, white thumbs, and clear blue lid. It's intended to use
the tabs on the thumbs to hook around her chest, which it does passably well.
However, it looks better as a backpack, hanging loosely between the fenders
on her back with the thumbs pointed together or apart to hook onto the fender
tops. (Or peg it onto the end of the buttcape.)
http://www.dvandom.com/images/moonracerpack.JPG
Transformation: The buttcape needs to be swung around to become an apron
(and, of course, swung down first if you left it part of the backpack). This
lets the torso front hinge forwards so that the head can be stowed. Then
rotate the lower waist to get the feet back to pointing forwards, since
turning just the belt is difficult and it's quicker to just rotate the entire
lower body at the above-belt swivel. The feet fold upwards and lock onto
tabs on the shin fenders, then snap together and snap into the apron.
Getting the arms into the right shape so that the backpack fenders can swing
around and lock into several tabs is a little tricky, but it's reasonably
secure. There's nothing to hide the hands, they just fold 90 degrees at the
wrist so they don't stick out so much...putting the Prime Armor into the peg
hole in back sort of covers them.
Vehicle Mode: I've seen this described as a Cybertronian limousine, due
to how there's windows all along the length of it. No real connection to her
animation model vehicle. It's a very narrow vehicle compared to the usual
cars, even Cybertronian cars, further suggesting that it's supposed to be as
wide as a car but a lot longer. Less Arcee, more RV.
5.5" (14cm) long without the Prime Armor stuck on as a booster, 6.25"
(16cm) with the booster. Only 1.75" (4.5cm) wide, though. Assuming it's as
wide as a wide pickup truck, that suggests a scale around 1:48 to 1:60. All
the colors are the same as in robot mode, but the white is almost entirely on
the rear third, and most of that is paint. The clear plastic of the soles of
the feet now forms the front windows, linking up with clear plastic from the
buttcape to make the entire front canopy and middle moonroof (hey, Moonracer
has a moonroof). The clear abdomen ends up as sort of a rear observer bubble
or something. There's extebsive seafoam blue-green paint on the buttcape and
sole pieces, some lavender at the top rear of the front window. A white
"wide home plate" sort of pentagon is painted in front of the windshield, and
it has a red Autobot symbol printed on it. The headlights are painted
yellow, there's some white on the mid-sides and seafoam paint at the fronts
of the rear fenders. This last bit is odd, since the plastic is seafoam, so
they painted over it in white, then over that in seafoam. The robot feet are
visible through the front windows, with peg holes that at first glance look
to be 3mm, but are actually just enough smaller that I'm not going to drill
holes in the windows to get at them. :)
Because of transformation tabs, there's almost zero ground clearance.
There's 5mm peg holes at the very rear of the sides, and a somewhat shallow
one in the piece that is where the head was in robot mode. (The pistol can
be inserted there to point backwards, but meh.) There's a wrist peg hole in
the front bumper, but it's angled downwards. There's a single 2mm peg on top
of the hinge that connects the buttcape to the waist, and another single 2mm
peg on the top of the not-head chunk in back.
There's no good rooftop solution for weapon storage, but I have a 2mm
drill bit for my Dremel, so now both her pistol and TR Blaster's rifle can
store on the 2mm pegs: http://www.dvandom.com/images/moonracerguns.JPG .
Limb Modes: Arm mode is obtained fairly simply from vehicle mode. Pop
the buttcape off to free up the leg section of the robot as the forearm, fold
up the combiner peg, and move the robot forearms to peg into a set of tabs
that aren't used in vehicle mode. Nice solid arm mode. (Side benefit of
giving Moonracer the TR Blaster rifle, it looks like a scaled up version of
her pistol when held in the combiner hand.)
For boot mode, the robot legs bend double and the rectangular pegs near
the front wheels on the underside go into slots on the backs of the thighs.
The lower body has to be turned around, which requires undoing one of the
rear fenders. A new 5mm peg hole on a strut folds out from inside the
buttcape. Reasonably solid, but aesthetically suffers from having super
obvious robot hands on the kneepads. If you don't like how the leg thickens
at the bottom, the Prime Armor can be stuck on at the calf muscle position
(the super-long feet created by putting the hands on the heels aren't really
needed most of the time). This also provides a spot to store the gun other
than on the kneecap, if you don't want the combiner to use it.
Overall: Going purely by the intended design stuff, it's somewhat
marginal. But it's easily modified (via fan mode stuff, rather than "get out
the Dremel") to be a better toy. It is, at least, a fairly unique design for
CW/PotP limbs.
Dave Van Domelen, put up a poll to ask which thing from his full "to be
reviewed" box should be next, so of course it's in a three-way tie....
Travoltron
06/04/2018، 9:18:54 م6/4/2018
إلى
I've only been able to find Rippersnapper in this second wave.
I'm very irritated that Hasbro went crazy with paint apps on his chest.
He isn't supposed to have any at all, save for the insignia:
http://tfwiki.net/wiki/File:Rippersnappertoon.jpg
I don't know why they waste money when they shouldn't and cheap out when
they should spend. They painted this fake rub symbol on his head. I
don't know what the point of that was. Either put a real one there, or
just do a regular insignia.
I'm not really sure how I can remove these paint apps safely. I've used
paint thinner in the past. Sometimes it works, but with some toys they
crumble into dust. I guess it depends on the kind of plastic they're
made from.
I'm very irritated that Hasbro went crazy with paint apps on his chest.
He isn't supposed to have any at all, save for the insignia:
http://tfwiki.net/wiki/File:Rippersnappertoon.jpg
I don't know why they waste money when they shouldn't and cheap out when
they should spend. They painted this fake rub symbol on his head. I
don't know what the point of that was. Either put a real one there, or
just do a regular insignia.
I'm not really sure how I can remove these paint apps safely. I've used
paint thinner in the past. Sometimes it works, but with some toys they
crumble into dust. I guess it depends on the kind of plastic they're
made from.
Irrellius Spamticon of the Potato People.
06/04/2018، 10:06:23 م6/4/2018
إلى
On Friday, April 6, 2018 at 6:28:47 PM UTC-5, Dave Van Domelen wrote:
>
> AUTOBOT: DINOBOT SNARL
>
> AUTOBOT: DINOBOT SNARL
> Function: Desert Warrior
> Motto: "Sand. It gets everywhere. I hate it."
>
Oh no they've created Transformers Anakin Skywalker.....again....unless the crossovers don't count...
> Motto: "Sand. It gets everywhere. I hate it."
>
Irrellius Spamticon of the Potato People.
06/04/2018، 10:09:32 م6/4/2018
إلى
On Friday, April 6, 2018 at 8:18:54 PM UTC-5, Travoltron wrote:
> I've only been able to find Rippersnapper in this second wave.
> I'm very irritated that Hasbro went crazy with paint apps on his chest.
> He isn't supposed to have any at all, save for the insignia:
>
> http://tfwiki.net/wiki/File:Rippersnappertoon.jpg
>
> I don't know why they waste money when they shouldn't and cheap out when
> they should spend. They painted this fake rub symbol on his head. I
> don't know what the point of that was. Either put a real one there, or
> just do a regular insignia.
>
G1 Rippersnapper didn't have a rub-sign. All the Terrorcons had an indent to put in a rubsign but Hasbro stopped doing rubsigns on anything that wasn't a Minispy.
> I've only been able to find Rippersnapper in this second wave.
> I'm very irritated that Hasbro went crazy with paint apps on his chest.
> He isn't supposed to have any at all, save for the insignia:
>
> http://tfwiki.net/wiki/File:Rippersnappertoon.jpg
>
> I don't know why they waste money when they shouldn't and cheap out when
> they should spend. They painted this fake rub symbol on his head. I
> don't know what the point of that was. Either put a real one there, or
> just do a regular insignia.
>
> I'm not really sure how I can remove these paint apps safely. I've used
> paint thinner in the past. Sometimes it works, but with some toys they
> crumble into dust. I guess it depends on the kind of plastic they're
> made from.
Travoltron
06/04/2018، 10:52:32 م6/4/2018
إلى
On 4/6/2018 7:09 PM, Irrellius Spamticon of the Potato People. wrote:
> G1 Rippersnapper didn't have a rub-sign.
> All the Terrorcons had an indent
I think you're thinking of the Seacons the following year.
> G1 Rippersnapper didn't have a rub-sign.
> All the Terrorcons had an indent
Zobovor
06/04/2018، 11:31:42 م6/4/2018
إلى
On Friday, April 6, 2018 at 8:06:23 PM UTC-6, Irrellius Spamticon of the Potato People. wrote:
>> Motto: "Sand. It gets everywhere. I hate it."
>
> Oh no they've created Transformers Anakin Skywalker.....again....unless the
> crossovers don't count...
It's not really clear from Dave Van Domelen's reviews, but he invents these mottos for the characters. They're not official.
>> Motto: "Sand. It gets everywhere. I hate it."
>
> Oh no they've created Transformers Anakin Skywalker.....again....unless the
> crossovers don't count...
Zob
Zobovor
06/04/2018، 11:34:51 م6/4/2018
إلى
On Friday, April 6, 2018 at 8:09:32 PM UTC-6, Irrellius Spamticon of the Potato People. wrote:
> G1 Rippersnapper didn't have a rub-sign. All the Terrorcons had an indent to
> put in a rubsign but Hasbro stopped doing rubsigns on anything that wasn't a
> Minispy.
That's not quite accurate. All the toys from the 1987 product line (including the Terrorcons) had rub symbols. It was 1988 when the rub symbols were phased out. Any of the 1987 toys that were still being sold in 1988 got a minor remold to remove the rubsign indent, so toys like the Technobots, Terrorcons, Throttlebots, etc. exist in both a rubsign and non-rubsign version.
> G1 Rippersnapper didn't have a rub-sign. All the Terrorcons had an indent to
> put in a rubsign but Hasbro stopped doing rubsigns on anything that wasn't a
> Minispy.
What's interesting is that a lot of 1988 toys did have obvious rubsign indents despite never being sold with rubsigns.
Zob (Transformers pundit-at-large)
Zobovor
06/04/2018، 11:43:32 م6/4/2018
إلى
On Friday, April 6, 2018 at 7:18:54 PM UTC-6, Travoltron wrote:
> I've only been able to find Rippersnapper in this second wave.
> I'm very irritated that Hasbro went crazy with paint apps on his chest.
Hasbro never really stays faithful to the cartoon look. The original toys always seem to be the starting point for the new toys. I don't dislike the paint applications on Rippersnapper at all. He's possibly my favorite Power of the Primes toy so far.
> I've only been able to find Rippersnapper in this second wave.
> I'm very irritated that Hasbro went crazy with paint apps on his chest.
Really, Hun-Gurrr is the far more egregious sin of the currently-released Terrorcons. There's no excuse.
> I don't know why they waste money when they shouldn't and cheap out when
> they should spend. They painted this fake rub symbol on his head. I
> don't know what the point of that was. Either put a real one there, or
> just do a regular insignia.
> I'm not really sure how I can remove these paint apps safely. I've used
> paint thinner in the past. Sometimes it works, but with some toys they
> crumble into dust. I guess it depends on the kind of plastic they're
> made from.
Zob (whatever you do, don't use acetone)
Travoltron
09/04/2018، 10:37:21 م9/4/2018
إلى
On 4/6/2018 8:43 PM, Zobovor wrote:
> Hasbro never really stays faithful to the cartoon look.
It's just a waste of money. They actually sprung for the cartoon face
> Hasbro never really stays faithful to the cartoon look.
and painted in the monster eyes like the cartoon. I guess this must be
their "compromise" with Takara.
> The rub symbols were a huge part of the G1 toy experience
and shoulders and put a REAL rub symbol on him with their budget.
> I've had really good luck with Windex.
I used Testor's paint thinner before. I don't know if it has acetone in
it. The writing on the bottle is too small for me to read.
I was trying to do this General Lee custom on this minicon and it ended
up crumbling to dust using thinner:
https://air-hammer.deviantart.com/art/Dukes-of-Hazzard-Digibash-561819390
Same with this terrible Cliffjumper toy. I tried removing the purple
crap to try to make it slightly less of an eyesore and it just fell apart.
But strangely, it HAS worked on other toys without incident. Still, I
would never recommend risking it.
Zobovor
09/04/2018، 11:37:06 م9/4/2018
إلى
On Monday, April 9, 2018 at 8:37:21 PM UTC-6, Travoltron wrote:
> It's just a waste of money. They actually sprung for the cartoon face
> and painted in the monster eyes like the cartoon. I guess this must be
> their "compromise" with Takara.
Now that Hasbro and Takara are unifying the brand, I really thought we'd start seeing toys closer to the cartoon look. The blue Swoop felt like the kick-off a very Takaracentric toy line, but maybe that's not going to be the case after all.
> It's just a waste of money. They actually sprung for the cartoon face
> and painted in the monster eyes like the cartoon. I guess this must be
> their "compromise" with Takara.
I know the fandom was really vocal about the lack of paint applications on Combiner Wars Wheeljack. He was very plain-looking. Now Hasbro appears to be making an effort to decorate the toys a bit more, and we're all sitting here complaining that Rippersnapper has too much painted detail, and doesn't look like he does in the cartoon. It's got to be very frustrating for them sometimes. They really do seem to be trying to give us what we want.
I feel like there's a huge difference between the main characters and the obscure ones, though. For a lot of characters who didn't get significant media appearances, the Hasbro toy is the only way we even remember them. The less of a media impression the characters left on us, the less important capturing that look becomes. For example, a lot of people cried foul when Masterpiece Ultra Magnus had a red bumper in truck mode. We all had the G1 Ultra Magnus toy growing up, and it had a chrome bumper just like Optimus Prime. But, it really is red in animation. Most fans just didn't realize that.
When they get around to doing the Seacons, are fans going to get pissed off if Tenta-Kil doesn't have a blue robot head? That's how he appeared in Sunbow animation for the 1988 Piranacon toy commercial. Most fans probably don't remember that, though. They remember the G1 toy, which had a pink head. Nobody remembers that he was in three seconds of animated footage.
We're already hitting problems like this with Hun-Gurrr and Abominus. The new Hun-Gurrr toy is an odd mix of toy-inspired and animation-inspired. But, he's a fringe character who only appeared in three or four episodes, so his media appearance isn't really cemented in the collective minds of the fandom. I would say most of us are probably more familiar with the G1 toy. Quick, what color is Hun-Gurrr's helmet supposed to be? What about Abominus? And are you summoning mental images of the toy or his appearance on the show to answer these questions?
Eventually, Hasbro's going to start churning out homages of G1 characters who were never in the cartoon, or Marvel Comics, in any way, shape, or form. Maybe that will be more palatable for us because the G1 toys are literally the only source from which they can draw inspiration?
Zob (excited to see what they do with the Micromasters)
Travoltron
10/04/2018، 11:31:31 ص10/4/2018
إلى
On 4/9/2018 8:37 PM, Zobovor wrote:
> Quick, what color is Hun-Gurrr's helmet supposed to be? What about Abominus?
Oh joy. That color is going to be a real pain in the ass for me to try
> Quick, what color is Hun-Gurrr's helmet supposed to be? What about Abominus?
and replicate.
I never even dared to try and paint my G1 Abominus.
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