Dave's TF Rant: PRiD Legion Wave 8

[Dave Van Domelen]

Dave's Transformers Prime Robots in Disguise Rant: Legion Wave 8

Springload (amphiboid/jeep)
Starscream (jet)

Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/PRiD/Legion8

Wave also includes original color scheme (or minor redeco) Optimus Prime
and Grimlock.


CAPSULES

$6 price point.

Springload: Surprisingly show-accurate mold, pretty good colors for this
toy line. Strongly recommended.

Starscream: Decent in both modes, if a little unstable. Recommended.


RANTS

Packaging: Blister cards, but smaller than previous waves. 5.75"
(14.5cm) tall, 3.75" (9.5cm) wide. The blisters are 4cm deep at the bottom
so that they can stand up on the shelf as well as hang from the pegs. As
with other Combiner Force toys, the background is golden hexagons, and the
Combiner Force logo sits below and to the left of the RiD logo in the upper
right. There's less space for the character art, made even smaller by a red
banner with white text at the top that has the character name and Age 6+ (in
3 languages) on it. The instructions are folded up inside the enlarged
blister base. The card back has tweaked photos of both modes, the number of
transformation steps, and all the legalese. No ties of anything, the figure
is held in just by the blister shape.
The app game gives Cryostase tickets (one per Legion) rather than
unlocking. So, it's worth scanning any unbought ones in the store.

DECEPTICON: SPRINGLOAD
Assortment: C0263
Altmode: Jeep/Amphiboid
Transformation Difficulty: 6 steps
Previous Name Use: PRiD
Previous Mold Use: None
Function: Quester
Motto: "Where is Doradus?"

Packaging: Packaged in beast mode, albeit a bit smooshed.

Beast Mode: A surprisingly good robot frog. Yes, it has vehicle bits
hanging off it, but it's supposed to. It's your basic poison dart frog,
brightly colored to deter predators and attract college students who heard
you could get a wicked high off one. The forelimbs are rather long and the
hind legs rather short compared to an actual frog, but hey, amphibiods are
only supposed to coincidentally look like Terran life, eh? In order to be
more on-model, there's fake wheels on the shoulders and on the rear feet.
All the actual wheels are fairly concealed or at least not obvious.
From snout to the backs of the rear feet it's about 2.75" (7cm) long,
which is about the size of real poison dart frogs, but a lot smaller than
he's portrayed in the show. (He's probably roughly to scale with "heroic
scale" wargaming miniatures, based on a quick check of stills from the
cartoon, meaning he grows a bit when transforming to vehicle mode.)
Predominantly chartreuse (aka "Constructicon Green") with some bright blue
and medium green, plus black. Most of the plastic is chartreuse, with the
real wheels and some mostly hidden vehicle bits being black plastic. The
forelegs have swaths of bright blue paint on them, including over the elbow
hinges. The fake tires are painted black, and his eyes are red with dark
metalflake blue "makeup". His back is basically the hood and cab of vehicle
mode, see below. His code circle is on his back, on the roof of the cab.
The teeth are painted white (real frogs are not known for their sharklike
maws, but Springload deviates from the Terran species in that respect).
Articulation is okay. The forelegs have swivel shoulders and hinge
elbows, the rear legs have swivel hips, and the mouth is hinged to open. The
shoulders also swing out on their transformation hinges, but this is not a
good look. The figure can assume two distinct poses while keeping all four
feet flat. A more crouching-in-anticipation one (close to how it was
packaged), and one with the forelimbs mostly straight in what I suppose is
his "ranting about Doradus" pose. There's some notches that line up between
the upper arms and torso in this second pose that help stabilize it, but
don't lock it in position.

Transformation: The forelimbs fold up at the elbows and then swing
around together to partly cover the face, forming the back end. The rear
hips swing around in a similar manner (but are snapped into place in robot
mode) and then the legs swing up under what is now the front end of the
vehicle.

Vehicle Mode: A cute little jeep with surprisingly little kibble...other
than the giant frog head in the pickup-style bed. It looks like he's
smuggling part of an Olmec-style head. :) Two of the fake wheels from the
frog feet end up flanking the head and looking like spare tires (reasonable
for off-road, if a bit small even by spare tire standards) while the other
two are tucked underneath. There's some big hinges on the doors that stand
out pretty badly (moreso because they're black plastic), but that sort of
thing is tolerable on the Legion scale.
Just a little over 2" (5cm) long, with the body shell mostly chartreuse
and the windows and wheels black, plus some medium green and bright blue
paint. Black plastic ends up being the wheels, those door-covering hinge
pieces, and the bottom half of the grille combined with the front fenders.
Everything else is chartreuse plastic. The hood is painted medium green, the
top half of the grille (the part on the green plastic) is painter silver, the
windows in front and on the sides are painted black (most of the rear window
is covered by the frog head anyway), the bit of the roof around the code
circle is painted bright blue, and the fake tires on the back are painted
black. There's also what seems to be unintended bright blue paint on the
rear wheel hubs, I'd guess that when they did the paint masking for the legs
in beast mode they didn't worry about excluding the mushroom peg that the
wheel would go on. And, of course, the paint of the frog eyes is still
visible.
I'd say it really only needs two bits of user-applied paint to look
good, three if you want to get really fancy. The lower half of the grille
should be painted silver to match, and the front hubs should be painted
bright blue to match. There's a ilttle bit of black plastic on either side
of the grille that could also be painted chartreuse, but I expect the paint
matching would be hard. The big hinge pieces on the doors aren't really
worth trying to paint, though...nothing is going to make them blend in. The
rear fenders and bumper could stand some black paint, but nothing says the
front and back fenders have to be the same color. (Animation model has all
the fenders and the front bumper in bright blue, but since they rarely get
more than two color runs for a Legion figure, black is better than green in
this case.)
It rolls pretty well on surfaces with a decent amount of friction (like
paper), but the knubbly off-road wheels mean it tends to just slide on
smoother surfaces. Nice and solid altmode.

Overall: Small, but quite good. The mold is surprisingly true to the
show model, and the colors are pretty good for a PRiD Legion figure.


DECEPTICON: STARSCREAM
Assortment: C0264
Altmode: Jet
Transformation Difficulty: 5 steps
Previous Name Use: Yes
Previous Mold Use: None
Function: He Who Would Be Emperor of Destruction
Motto: "This time, for sure!"

Packaging: In robot mode.

Robot Mode: Amusingly, he has the same arms as Windblade. Otherwise,
though, it's an entirely new mold. It's similar to the Warrior version, but
with non-folding wings (naturally) and much larger fins on the boots. The
cockpit on the chest is totally fake, though, as he has the nose end of the
jet mode as a backpack. Colors are generally good, although as often happens
a lot of the paint apps are only on the front, not on the sides.
2.75" (7cm) tall in a mix of light gray, bright blue, garnet red and
amber, plus the usual black helmet. The forearms, the struts connecting
shoulders to torso, the strut holding the nose section backpack, and the
thighs are bright blue plastic, the rest is light gray plastic. There's
bright blue paint on the shoulder fronts and the tops of the toes, garnet red
on the pelvis front, the borders of the chest intakes and shoulder scoops,
and the wings. The face is silver with red pupils, which is a little
weird...they clearly molded it to make the irises red and the pupil white
which is the usual animation model. The fake cockpit on the chest has amber
windows, the helmet is red, and the code circle is on the wing behind the
left arm (and is nearly right-side up...given that it's not aligned well for
vehicle mode either, I suspect mine was just mis-applied).
The shoulders can lift up to the sides on two hinges each, the elbow is
a ball joint. So, while he can't point imperiously, he can make a sort of
sweeping "pah!" gesture. Ball joint hips, hinge knees (which only bend about
45 degrees from straight, either direction). Hands can hold 3mm pegs.

Transformation: Boots peg together, cockpit swings up over the head,
wings fold down to connect against the boots, arms shrug down so that the
hands can grab pegs on the wings.

Vehicle Mode: Like other PRiD Starscreams, it's a hypercritical wing jet
fighter. It could stand some paint on the tail, at least, but isn't
horrible. For landing gear, it uses the kneecaps and a peg under the
cockpit. Stability is okay, but not great.
3.5" (9cm) long, 3.25" (8cm) wingspan. Assuming he's about as big as an
F-22, that's about 1:220 scale (Z-scale). Most of the blue plastic is hidden
on the underside, but the shoulder struts and the strut holding the cockpit
are more visible. The cockpit is covered in bright blue paint (good match)
with the cockpit being amber with unpainted borders. The tops of the wings
have garnet red paint detailing, but the tail conspicuously lacks paint.
Oddly, there's a 5mm peg hexagonal hole where the wings meet the tail,
but the knee joints make it very shallow and it's not exactly a strong fit
keeping the hole in proper shape.

Overall: A pretty good mold with decent coloring, you might want to
check the pegs and make sure you don't get one with an askew sticker,
though.


Dave Van Domelen, found Blastwave, which seems to be an alternate
shortpack with Stormshot...only one of the two in any given case.