Dave's TF5 Rant: Deluxe Drift and Sqweeks

[Dave Van Domelen]

Dave's Transformers the Last Knight Rant: Deluxe Wave 2

Autobot Drift (sportscar, extensive retool of AoE Drift)
Autobot Sqweeks (scooter with trailer)
Dinobot Slug (redeco, not reviewed)
Steelbane (dragon, not reviewed)

Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/TFLK/DeluxeP2

The whole TF5 line has gotten pretty bad distribution and support, with
little faith shown by retailers or, it seems, Hasbro. By the end of
September 2017, I'd only seen it hit one store, someone beat me to the
Sqweeks, and otherwise this wave seemed doomed to scalper-only distribution.
A third wave, with Cogman, started to hit scalpers before I saw even a second
case of wave 2 anywhere. I sat on Drift for weeks, wanting to get Sqweeks
before reviewing the wave...and figuring that if no one could buy Drift in
stores either, there was little point in writing a review.
[Update with how I got Sqweeks, or my decision to not bother.]

https://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/AoE/Deluxe2 - Drift original, but
enough has changed I'll review it as a new mold.
https://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/AoE/Deluxe1 - Slug original (the new
one is in the more boring movie-accurate colors)
https://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/TFLK/DeluxeTRU1 - Skullitron, a
head-swap retool of Steelbane. Steelbane is reportedly no better in terms of
quality.


CAPSULES

$16-20 price point, good luck ever seeing them on the shelf for MSRP
though.

Autobot Drift: Significantly changed from the original, sacrifices some
of the complexity of the original but deals with the blandness problems.
Mildly recommended.

Autobot Sqweeks: Surprisingly good given what the movie handed the
designers to work with. I dislike one of the design choices, but otherwise
this is pretty good. Recommended.


RANTS

Packaging: Same as wave 1 Premier, with "Premier" just meaning "has more
than five steps to transformation and is bigger than a Legion" basically.


AUTOBOT: AUTOBOT DRIFT
Assortment: C2400
Altmode: Mercedes-AMG GT R
Transformation Difficulty: 10 steps
Previous Name Use: Gen, AoE, PRiD
Previous Mold Use: AoE sort of
Epithet: Master Swordsman

Packaging: 7 ties on the robot, with the roof panels folded down against
the legs to make the figure less thick. One tie each on the two swords and
two tantos/daggers. The front fenders on the boots are not rotated back
either, but the instructions do point out that they're supposed to be.
The cosell on the back is Steelbane and Sqweeks.

Robot Mode: Strictly speaking, this is a heavy retool of the AoE Deluxe,
with all of the vehicle parts replaced and the torso replaced with a far
simpler design that has a fake vehicle grille (the original used the actual
vehicle front). The head is nearly the same, but seems to be very slightly
retooled. The new vehicle shell pieces have no place to store blades, but
the tantos get new peg holes on the torso back proper. The fender pieces on
the boots have been simplified and do not fold anything behind to fill in
gaps. They still manage to put the upper arm wheels behind Samurai armor
panels molded onto the insides of the doors, despite turning the entire car
mode upside down with respect to the robot. The helmet keeps the lightpiping
molding, but casts the piece in black. The weapons are the same as in AoE,
but cast in soft gunmetal plastic. Most of the top of the vehicle is folded
up as a backpack, but with different joints than the AoE version.
5.25" (13cm) tall in mostly red and black, with some silver and gold.
Bright red plastic is used for the helmet front, neck joint, torso front,
upper arms, forearms, hands, thighsk shins, and feet. Black plastic is used
for the head lightpiping, the shoulder and elbow joints, the torso back, the
hip joints, and most of the vehicle kibble (see below for more details on the
vehicle shell bits). All of the weapons are gunmetal plastic.
The armor panels on the upper arms are painted red, but being painted
over black renders it darker than the plastic. The mask and crest of the
helmet are painted gold, no paint on the sunken black eyes. Lots of gloss
black paint, including the collar area, the fake below-grille vent on the
chest, the pelvis front, all of each thigh except for the armor panels, much
of the shins, and almost the entirety of each foot (the heels are black
plastic vehicle shell bits). The fake grille is painted silver with black
paint in the negative spaces of the Merecedes logo.
Ball joint neck, but no waist articulation. The shoulders are universal
joints, there's stiff swivels just above each soft-ratcheting elbow hinge,
the wrists have limited in-out hinges. Universal joint hips, upper thigh
swivels, hinge knees and ankles. Good range on the ankles, since they're
also transformation joints that bend the toes up rather than down. The
figure is stable in some fairly deep lunging poses.
The hands can hold 5mm pegs and there's 5mm peg holes on the back for
tanto storage. Near as I can tell there's no way to store the main blades
when they're not in the figure's hands unless you want to use them as skis
(the vehicle mode peg holes are on the undersides of the feet). There's some
holes inside the rear bumper piece, but they're significantly more than 5mm
in diameter. You can just shove them between the roof pieces in the
backpack, I guess.

Transformation: Similar to the original, but with nothing done to the
chest and head, and reversing the front and back. So the feet end up as the
front end of the car, and the head mostly hides under the back end, with part
of the helmet poking out the back. He's exhaust-head. Dead tired. Anyway,
it's basically "Robot limbs squeeze together and kibble unfolds into the
shape of a car around them," even more of a shellformer than the original
(which at least had a little bit of the robot chest become part of the car).
Getting all the panels massaged into place is a bit tricky.
The tantos turn around and point downwards at the start of
transformation, and store well inside. The swords store on the underside,
but there's nothing to keep the blades from bending downwards if they're a
little warped, meaning they drag on the ground.

Vehicle Mode: New licensing deals mean new altmodes. They held onto
Optimus and Bumblebee, but just about everyone else got a new form in TF5,
and Drift is no exception. Now he turns into a Mercedes-AMG GT R, black with
red hubs and stripes, a VERY different color balance from robot mode. Sort
of a midlife crisis thing, maybe? Other than the stripes having a gap on a
bit of what might be "unpaintable" plastic, it's a pretty slick altmode. The
snap-on wheels have a trio of gaps that aren't evenly spaced due to the
10-piece shape of the hubs (same issue as on the AoE toy, but a new mold).
5.25" (13cm) long, it's a bit longer than the AoE version's vehicle
mode, and it's very black. The roof/window pieces are smoky clear plastic
with matte black paint on the non-window parts, the wheels are bright red
plastic, the rest of the vehicle is black plastic. Two bits just ahead of
the rear wheels are a slightly lighter plastic with no paint on them,
otherwise it's all the same sort of rigid black plastic. The tires are
painted gloss black, but a matte black is used on the roof and window posts.
The headlights are very light blue, a darkish red is used for the stripes
along the lower edge of the body. The grille is silver, and it looks like
matte paint was added in the Mercedes logo rather than trying to leave the
negative space unpainted. A silver Autobot symbol is painted at the front of
the roof. No paint on license plates, taillights, turn signals, or side
mirrors.

Overall: Despite all the reused parts, it's functionally a new toy. It
could have stood to have more thought given to the weapon storage, but it's
definitely no longer bland.


AUTOBOT: AUTOBOT SQWEEKS
Assortment: C2403
Altmode: Scooter with trailer, trailer is repair bay or armor up
Transformation Difficulty: 19 steps
Previous Name Use: None
Previous Mold Use: None
Epithet: AUTOBOT Amigo

Packaging: In the package with Sqweeks himself in a slightly squooshed
robot mode (the wheels are splayed for some reason, it's not like he'd be too
deep in correct shape), the trailer in trailer mode, and the extra arm and
cannon separate. In the movie, Squeeks picks up a dismembered Decepticon arm
with a cannon and grafts onto it to get some firepower. There's deliberately
no attempt to integrate this into the vehicle mode, it's an Option Part to
use the Japanese toy jargon.
Six ties on Sqweeks, and his kickstand is up in addition to the wheels
beign splayed. Two ties on the trailer, one each on the extra arm and the
cannon.
The box proclaims the toy to have three modes, but this is not quite
correct. The trailer has three modes, the robot only has three modes if you
count "robot wearing trailer as backpack" as a third mode. The stock render
looks different from the toy in the package, because the robot is packaged
with the chestplate pressed down, rather than lifted up. It otherwise looks
about the same as the toy except for the rust smears, which seem to have been
hand-painted. The render shows the extra arm holding the cannon, but the
instructions have the arm and cannon as either/or on the right arm.
The cosell is just Drift...Slug gets no love? Well, more that the third
mode of the trailer takes up extra space on back, so less space for the
cosell chunk. The instructions have the Mercedes logo on them, but I'm
pretty sure that's just because Drift is shown on the cosells panel of the
instructions (although why they didn't have to put it on the box too, I
dunno...maybe that page was boilerplate for the entire wave).

Robot Mode: Unsurprisingly, they couldn't get the movie transformation
to actually work on a physical object, so there's two sets of handlebars.
While the eyes don't actually become the headlights, they decided to put the
headlights on the back side of a piece that's under the eyes, so you get
non-removable grips flanking the head. Meanwhile, removable rubbery grips
are on the ends of the arms, because the movie model put them there. These
grips can't stay on in scooter mode, so why didn't they just make sockets on
the head so you could move the grips from the arms to the handlebars? Sigh.
I guess they wanted to keep some of the movie model's profile, which puts the
kickstand halves flanking the head in an utterly-impossible-for-a-toy
fashion. Handlebars aside, there's also a huge backpack to compensate for
the fact that the movie just has half the vehicle mode vanish into
Trailerspace. (Sqweeks takes damage early on that supposedly prevents him
from transforming, not sure we ever got to see his vehicle mode in the first
place.)
A wheel-footed bot like RiD Fixit, Sqweeks stands a mere 3.25" (8cm)
tall, but has a big backpack with rocket boosters (maybe this got shot off
too in the movie). He's roughly to scale with 5-6" tall action figures. His
default hands are handlebar grips, but to reference his Big Hero Moment in
the movie he has an optional Decepticon arm and a comically large multi-
barrelled gun. The arm is kinda small, but this may have been a storage
choice (see the trailer entry) rather than cheaping out on plastic. He's
mostly light blue with daubed on rust and some inappropriately shiny silver
parts. When you get down to it, there's a lot more clear blue plastic in
this than I'd have expected (or think is a good idea). The eye lenses are
the only obvious bits, but the wheel rims are also clear blue plastic, coated
in silver paint. The trailer goes absolutely nuts with the stuff, see
below. The tires themselves are rubbery plastic painted black, I suspect the
real color of all the rubbery plastic is a sort of gunmetal, rather than the
remaining pieces being painted. The grip hands, borrowed arm, and big cannon
are all rubbery gunmetal plastic. The upper arms are medium gray plastic, as
are several struts and connectors (neck, back of head, underside, under the
chestplate. Everything else seems to be light blue plastic.
The wheel hubs and struts are painted silver, as are the rocket thruster
nozzles, "mouth" area, and the rims of the headlight eyes. The seat molded
on the back is painted light brown, and the handlebar grips flanking the head
are painted gloss medium gray. Daubs of light brown paint are used to
simulate rust. While hand-painting the rust smears theoretically makes them
look more genuine and random-rusty, in practice it looks exactly like someone
slopped them on with a cheap paintbrush. Airbrushing would have worked a LOT
better, and I could literally have made better-looking rust with a paintbrush
given about thirty seconds...which I guess the factory person didn't have. A
red Autobot symbol is printed on the left side of the backpack.
In theory the head has a joint on which it can turn, when everything's
properly pegged down all it can do is wiggle a little. The helmet can be
lifted up, and then the goggles and face can also be lifted up away from the
eye sockets...kinda creepy, but necessary for transformation. There's
universal joint shoulders, but they're buried behind the chestplate, leaving
the universal joint elbows to look like the actual shoulders. The hands or
other bits are pegged onto the wrist stumps and can rotate. The wheels roll,
and a kickstand folds down to let the figure stay upright. There's a sort of
waist that can wiggle if you spread the wheels apart.
The stubby hands can't really grip things, but as soft plastic can wrap
around some pegs, I guess. The borrowed arm is made to hold a 5mm peg. A
panel behind the kickstand has a socket for the ball joint on the trailer
hitch, and if you attach the trailer in this mode you can put up the
kickstand and the whole thing rolls decently, although the robot wheels tend
to splay apart. The backpack gets in the way, so the robot has to lean
forward somewhat while the trailer is attached. (Hm, with the trailer, the
effect is that of a wheel-centaur bot.)
While the instructions show putting the cannon on the right arm via a
peg on the back of the cannon, the shape suggests it's meant to go on the
left arm. So you replace both handlebars, putting the borrowed arm on the
right and the cannon on the left. The replacement arm can hold the cannon,
but not very well, as the grip peg is fairly short and the arm is rubbery.

Transformation: I was able to mostly figure this out without the
instructions, although I did check to see if the instructions said what to do
with the hands. The answer? Nothing. The transformation starts with a
handless robot, and the removable grips are never shown. I mean, they can be
tossed in the toolbox of the trailer, but the instructions don't deign to
mention that. As groused earlier, it would have been nice if they just
provided sockets on either side of the head so the grips could be moved.
The head has to turn sideways to fit inside the scooter seat, and the
hinge on the "glasses" is explained here...they need to flip up so that the
gap is centered to allow the rear wheel to fit inside the head pieces. The
front wheel fender does snap into place, but requires significant force to
get it there. Once everything is properly snapped and pegged together, the
scooter is pretty solid, surprisingly.
Going back to robot mode is easier, but you do need to remember to swing
the handlebars around backwards before lifting up the chestplate.

Vehicle Mode: This is not a licensed vehicle mode, but the base vehicle
used in the movie is a Vespa. As is usual practice in unlicensed toys, they
changed various details. For instance, the front end of the actual Vespa
that Sqweeks mimicks has smooth curved lines, while this toy has a more boxy
and angular front. Also, real Vespas tend not to have big jet engines under
the seat. A decent job is done of hiding the more obvious robot bits, at
least, with only part of the helmet sticking out next to the left side of the
rear wheel, and the arms trying to hide behind the front end panel. They
hide less well if you leave the grips on them, of course.
4.25" (11cm) long, mostly blue with rust splotches and a light brown
seat cushion. Assuming it's meant to be about the size of the classic 125,
it's about 1:14 scale, meaning a 5" action figure should in principal
be the right size to ride it. Of course, most action figures are either
3.75" or 6" these days, so it won't be easy finding a rider who doesn't
either look too big or too small.
The seat was all backpack in robot mode, it's made from light blue
plastic with light brown (same as the rust splotches, or at least very close)
paint on the seat. The jet thrusters are paitned silver, and there's a red
Autobot symbol printed on the left side. #C2403 is also printed in red on
that side, a bit obtrustively. The handlebar section is light blue plastic
with a medium gray "neck" piece, silver around the headlights and blue
plastic for the lenses. (TFWiki reports that the lenses tend to pop out, so
be careful. Mine haven't yet.) The rust paint is on the front, the front
fender, and the lower part of the seat area...but cuts off abruptly at the
seam between bottom and middle sections.
The handlebars turn, but are not connected to the front wheel. The
wheels spin and the helmet doesn't significantly impede the rear wheel. The
kickstand is on a pinned hinge with soft ratcheting, and the rear fender can
flip up to expose the socket for trailer connection. Excessive force is
required to get the trailer attached, a fact not helped by the reinforcing
ridge on the hitch that dug right into my thumb. When pulling the trailer,
the overall length is 7.25" (19cm). If everything is properly aligned, it
will roll pretty well with the trailer attached. It's possible to open the
trailer without unhitching it, and even drag a modified repair bay around.
There is no place to attach anything except the trailer in scooter mode,
so all leftover bits have to go on or in the trailer. There's so many
greebles on the gun, it would have been nice if they'd found places to stick
the grips, at least.

Trailer: To bring this up to a Deluxe in terms of plastic, they gave
Sqweeks a trailer that can become a crude repair bay or a weapons backpack.
It's the same blue as Sqweeks, with the same sloppy rust painting. It has a
small trailer hitch ball on the front that plugs into a socket at the back of
Sqweeks in either mode, and rolls on four small wheels with nary a visible
fake wheel. It has generally retro streamlining style.
2.75" (7cm) long, 2.5" (6cm) wide, and 1.75" (4.5cm) tall. Most of the
visible plastic in trailer mode appears to be light blue, with the hitch
being medium gray and the wheels being clear blue plastic. However, the back
and side panels are actually clear blue plastic as well, with a pretty good
paint match to the light blue plastic (there's bits of unpainted plastic
visible at hinges and around the side peg holes). There's some random rust
splats painted on the sides of mine, but the front, back, and top are clean.
There's two 5mm hexagonal peg holes on top, but they're fairly shallow, only
about 3.5mm deep according to my calipers. Still, this does let you carry
the cannon around in vehicle mode. There's two round 5mm peg holes on the
sides near the front on each side. These are a bit deeper, and the cannon
fits more snugly in them but looks a bit more awkward. If you want to be
weird, the gap at the back (used for backpack mode connection) can have a
Titan Master sit in it, but you have to lift up the lid to get the boots
inside. Looks like a zamboni.
http://www.dvandom.com/images/sqweekszamboni.JPG
Backpack mode is simple. The top of the trailer lifts up on hinges,
then separates into two independent missile launchers. A tab in between the
roots of the launcher struts slides into a slot on the top of Sqweeks's
existing backpack (the instructions show it sliding up to attach, but it
slides down). The launcher struts are dark gray plastic and each has three
hinges (shoulder, elbow, wrist, effectively). They can't swivel away in any
way, so in terms of multiple targeting there's just different elevations.
The launcher (or maybe blaster, it's hard to say) apertures are painted
silver. The 5mm peg holes are on top of them, so you can add extra weapons
on top and point them at targets to the sides.
To transform to repair bay mode, pull out two bits on the sides on
hinges, this unlocks the side panels, which fold out and let the front panel
fold down. The instructions and stock renders disagree slightly on how to
position the lid, but it generally makes more sense to have it vertical as a
back wall, as in the instructions. It's reminiscent of the G1 Ratchet repair
station, but more junkyard-y, with a big red toolbox one side, lots of rusted
diamondplate and what looks like it's supposed to be cinderblock. The side
opposite the toolbox has a big manipulator claw on a multiple-jointed arm,
and some panels that lock the thing together in the other two modes look like
they're supposed to be spotlights for looking at the underside for repairs.
Either robot or scooter mode can go in the middle of it for repair work.
The overall footprint is about 4.75" (12cm) from front to back, 4"
(10cm) wide, and the back wall is about 2.5" (6cm) tall. The manipulator arm
can reach as high as 4.5" (12cm).
The toolbox base is part of the clear blue wall piece, but the lid is
opaque light blue plastic. The manipulator arm has medium gray for the
"upper arm" piece, blue for the forearm, medium gray for the wrist, blue for
the "hand" piece, and gunmetal gray rubbery plastic for the claw on one end
of the hand piece and the blaster barrel or welding torch on the back end of
the hand piece. The toolbox is painted toolbox red, most of the rest of the
flat surfaces are painted light gray, with rust spatter on the middle and
right segments. The blue parts of the manipulator arm are also rust smeared.
The toolbox has three 5mm hexagonal pegs in the lid, which mostly just
gives options for where to put the cannon, since they're close enough
together that it's hard to get three things all in there (unless you get
three Shapeways tools from someone like Ariel Lemon or Prize Inside, I can
see stacking three copies of Nautica's wrench on top of the toolbox). The
toolbox is hinged to open up, and there's enough room inside for the spare
arm, so you have some place to keep it in vehicle mode. The handlebar hands
can also be stored in here, but they rattle around. The instructions do
not show this, but it seems fairly clear that this was the design intent.
The manipulator arm has a universal joint base. The hinge elbow only opens
up to about 150 degrees, so the arm can't fully straighten. The wrist is a
combo of hinge and swivel, and the "hand" chunk can be spun around to lie
snug against the forearm with the cannon pointing forward for a defense
configuration. The blaster barrel is hinged, so that it can fold down in
trailer mode, and the claw is rubbery plastic on a ball joint.

Overall: The handlebars bit bugs me, but otherwise this is a pretty good
toy considering what they had to work with. It's a pity this isn't actually
getting into stores in any significant numbers, given that they were trying
to position Sqweeks as the mascot character. This really should have been
part of the launch wave, rather than a redeco of a Dinobot who isn't even in
the movie.


Dave Van Domelen, seems to be getting all of the last gasp Titans Return
stuff at once, but has yet to see Cogman anywhere at anything approaching
MSRP.