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Dave's PRiD Rant: Warrior Sideswipe and Jazz
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Dave Van Domelen
Jun 13, 2015, 7:10:44 PM6/13/15
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Dave's TF Prime: Robots in Disguise Rant - Warrior Wave 3
Sideswipe (sportscar)
Autobot Jazz (sportscar)
Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/PRiD/Warrior3
Given how many toys I've been buying online lately, it feels weird to
have gotten these in a physical store (Walmart, specifically).
CAPSULES
$15-17 price point.
Sideswipe: Good design, pretty bad execution in both engineering and
painting. Very mildly recommended.
Jazz: Has some significant lack-of-paint problems, but it's a solid
design. Recommended.
RANTS
Packaging: Same as wave 1.
AUTOBOT: SIDESWIPE
Assortment: B1733
Altmode: Sportscar
Transformation Difficulty: 10 steps
Previous Name Use: Yes
Previous Mold Use: None
Weapon: Sword
Function: Turbo-revvin' Young Punk
Motto: "Bored now."
Packaging: Five ties on the robot, one on the sword. The head fell off
right away, and the torso wasn't pegged together very well, but nothing
seemed to be actually broken.
Up front caveat, so I don't need to keep repeating it. This is a
brilliant design that is utterly inappropriate for Hasbro's manufacturing
quality. It could probably be pulled off as a $50 third party toy, but
without Lego-level tolerances it just fails on many levels. I like the idea
of this design, but not the execution. The robot chest relies on small pegs
that are woefully insufficient to the task, so moving the arms tends to make
the chest fall apart.
Robot Mode: A pretty good representation of the character, albeit with
some vehicle kibble here and there, and a lack of forearm spines (they'd have
to be in place of the windows). Oh, and the feet are pretty huge. All it
really needs is blue paint on the wheels. Well, that and stability.
5.25" (13cm) tall, mostly black and dark red with some silver, bright
blue, and pink accents. Smoky clear plastic is used for the doors on the
forearms, and the hood/windshield piece on the back. There's also a clear
chunk in the back of the head, and the lightpiping sort of works in that it
puts glowing borders around the painted eyes. The wheels, upper arms,
forearms/hands, thighs, feet, and some internal torso struts are black
plastic. The rest is a sort of garnet darkish red plastic.
The door parts of the forearm panels and the hood part of the backpack
are painted metalflake red that is a much different shade from the red
plastic, which becomes a big problem in vehicle mode. The face is painted
silver with blue eyes. Bright blue is painted on the torso's fake
headlights. Black paint is used on the kneecaps and the front bumper of the
backpack. Japanese characters are printed in pale pink on the center chest
and the boots.
The Japanese characters translate to "Shunsoku" meaning "blinding
speed". It's a two-character ideogram, the first one (the more complicated-
looking one) means "blink" or "twinkle" on its own, and the second one (which
is the only one on his chest in robot mode) means "quick". Thanks to Kelvin
Chan for the translation, and the WWWJDIC site for breaking it down.
The head is on a ball joint, with the socket being in clear plastic. No
waist articulation. The shoulders are universal joints that don't stay in
place very well, the elbows are ball joints. Universal hips, mid-thigh
swivels, hinge knees and ankles. The hands can hold 5mm pegs (only about 3/4
of a circle, so some of the odder pegs won't stay in), and the sword can be
sheathed in a gap in the strut behind the head that holds the backpack.
The sword is a single piece of black plastic 4" (10cm) long and
katana-like. This is actually show-accurate...Sideswipe's sword in the show
doesn't have any glowy bits, it's just a black blade.
Transformation: This is very clever, with the front fenders rotating
around from inside the torso to the outside, and the feet swinging backwards
to form the rear windows. The boots are pretty complicated the first few
times. The chest panel needs to be folded down before you push the arms
against the sides, or the front wheels will lock the chest panel in place and
there's no way to get the car to roll (it's iffy even if you get it
transformed correctly).
Vehicle Mode: In outline, it looks pretty good, although it's missing
the door-bottom spines. But the color is where it fails, with the worst
paint match I've seen in a while. It looks vaguely like a Lamborghini, in
keeping with the original Sideswipe. The front wheels are snap-in, the rear
ones are pinned (but ironically, would be more show-accurate if snap-in,
since the hubs should be totally black). At least this mode is stable,
unlike robot mode.
5" (12.5cm) long in red and black with smoky windows. The real
headlights are painted the same bright blue as the fake ones on the robot
chest, and the Autobot symbol code circle is mounted on the front end of the
hood. No paint on the tailpipes. The front-facing side of the molded side
mirrors is painted red, leaving the mirror side unpainted clear. There's a
slot on the roof that seems intended for sword storage, pegging the hilt into
it and having the blade trail backwards.
I'm not sure I have a paint that would match the garnet plastic, and
there's some possible scraping issues.
Overall: In both mechanics and color, this really feels like it was
started with high hopes, then at some point everyone involved said, "Eh,
whatever," and hacked out a motley, floppy mess. As with the Legion class,
it's probably staying in vehicle mode, because at least that's stable.
AUTOBOT: AUTOBOT JAZZ
Assortment: B1734
Altmode: Sportscar
Transformation Difficulty: 9 steps
Previous Name Use: Yes
Previous Mold Use: None
Weapon: Electro-Lance
Function: Being Cooler Than You Could Hope To Ever Be
Motto: "Don't feel bad, not everyone has style. Or rhythm. Or poise."
Packaging: Four ties on the robot, one on the weapon. The back panel
(roof) is dropped down like a buttcape to help fit the toy into the blister.
The photo on the back shows Jazz holding his weapon about as poorly as
it's possible to manage while keeping it in a hand.
Robot Mode: I gotta say, this gave me a bad first impression. Looking
at the general lines of it made me think, "Oh, great, based on Prime
Bumblebee." However, the resemblance is only superficial, and I ended up
liking this toy rather more than I expected. It does suffer from the usual
problem of insufficient paint, not to mention a design that makes it
impossible for the colors to be completely show-accurate in both modes,
although in some cases it's clear they didn't try very hard to make it at
least come close.
5.25" (13cm) tall in black and white plastics with red and blue paint
accents. The wheels, torso back, lower thighs, and hands are black plastic.
The rest is white, including the head. Black gloss paint covers the entire
head, plus the pelvis front, the lower front shins, and the windows on the
door-wings. A slightly desaturated medium blue is painted in stripes on the
chest-hood and along the lower halves of the door-wings, and on the kneecaps
and the eyes. There's a red strip along the front of the chest and on each
door above the blue bits, and more red on the abdomen and on the lower part
of the shoulder fronts. The face is painted silver, as is the helmet crest
(the package art shows the crest should be all black, the chin should be
black, and the fronts of the "ears" should be dark blue). The Autobot symbol
code circle is on the abdomen. There's molded fake wheels inside the
shoulders that could stand to be painted black.
A swivel neck and an immobile waist. The shoulders are universal
joints, as are the elbows (hinge with a swivel in the upper arm part). The
wrists bend inwards for transformation. Ball joint hips, mid-thigh swivels,
hinge knees and ankles. The hands can hold 5mm pegs, but like Sideswipe only
cover about 3/4 of the circle. There's a 5mm peg hole in the small of the
back (vehicle roof), so the lance can be stored there pointing up.
The lance is a single piece of white plastic 4.25" (11cm) long, with a
handle section near the end (hence the figure needing the 3/4 circle hand)
and a rifle grip type of peg farther back for either roof mounting in vehicle
mode, or holding the lance like a rifle.
Transformation: It looks like it should be a repeat of Prime Bumblebee,
but it's actually about as different as it could get while still having the
various parts go into the same places. In fact, it's very reminiscent of
the G1 Jazz transformation scheme, especially how the forearms go under the
front of the hood (although they go side by side and form the airdam, rather
than fitting front to back behind the airdam).
Vehicle Mode: In terms of color, this feels like a Kabaya kit. So much
white, nowhere near enough paint, begging for a Reprolabels set. As far as
the car model goes, it's pretty similar to Bumblebee's Prime look of "kinda
sorta a Camaro maybe", but with a wasp-waist reminiscent of G1 Jazz's
altmode. Oddly, instead of a stripe down the middle of the hood (which is
implied by his robot mode, and which would be in keeping with the G1 style),
he has rally stripes more like Bumblebee's. The door markings are not
continued on either front or rear fenders, and while there's red on the
spoiler, there's no paint on the rear window. There's an Autobot symbol
shape molded into the rear, but no paint in it either (a small Reprolabels
symbol might fit well there).
5" (12.5cm) long with the same sort of low-ceilinged driver's
compartment seen on Bumblebee. Very white. The wheels are the only black
plastic visible in this mode, the rest is white with insufficient paint.
Rolls well on four snap-in wheels, decent clearance. The roof has a 5mm
peg hole for mounting the lance.
[Later note: the big Autobot symbol I had leftover from Roadbuster works
pretty well in helping this mode look less cheesy.]
Overall: Good, solid design, just suffers from lack of color.
Dave Van Domelen, has had rather a large backlog build up in the past
week, thanks to a combination of online orders and a nearby small town
Walmart getting a bunch of stuff in.
Sideswipe (sportscar)
Autobot Jazz (sportscar)
Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/PRiD/Warrior3
Given how many toys I've been buying online lately, it feels weird to
have gotten these in a physical store (Walmart, specifically).
CAPSULES
$15-17 price point.
Sideswipe: Good design, pretty bad execution in both engineering and
painting. Very mildly recommended.
Jazz: Has some significant lack-of-paint problems, but it's a solid
design. Recommended.
RANTS
Packaging: Same as wave 1.
AUTOBOT: SIDESWIPE
Assortment: B1733
Altmode: Sportscar
Transformation Difficulty: 10 steps
Previous Name Use: Yes
Previous Mold Use: None
Weapon: Sword
Function: Turbo-revvin' Young Punk
Motto: "Bored now."
Packaging: Five ties on the robot, one on the sword. The head fell off
right away, and the torso wasn't pegged together very well, but nothing
seemed to be actually broken.
Up front caveat, so I don't need to keep repeating it. This is a
brilliant design that is utterly inappropriate for Hasbro's manufacturing
quality. It could probably be pulled off as a $50 third party toy, but
without Lego-level tolerances it just fails on many levels. I like the idea
of this design, but not the execution. The robot chest relies on small pegs
that are woefully insufficient to the task, so moving the arms tends to make
the chest fall apart.
Robot Mode: A pretty good representation of the character, albeit with
some vehicle kibble here and there, and a lack of forearm spines (they'd have
to be in place of the windows). Oh, and the feet are pretty huge. All it
really needs is blue paint on the wheels. Well, that and stability.
5.25" (13cm) tall, mostly black and dark red with some silver, bright
blue, and pink accents. Smoky clear plastic is used for the doors on the
forearms, and the hood/windshield piece on the back. There's also a clear
chunk in the back of the head, and the lightpiping sort of works in that it
puts glowing borders around the painted eyes. The wheels, upper arms,
forearms/hands, thighs, feet, and some internal torso struts are black
plastic. The rest is a sort of garnet darkish red plastic.
The door parts of the forearm panels and the hood part of the backpack
are painted metalflake red that is a much different shade from the red
plastic, which becomes a big problem in vehicle mode. The face is painted
silver with blue eyes. Bright blue is painted on the torso's fake
headlights. Black paint is used on the kneecaps and the front bumper of the
backpack. Japanese characters are printed in pale pink on the center chest
and the boots.
The Japanese characters translate to "Shunsoku" meaning "blinding
speed". It's a two-character ideogram, the first one (the more complicated-
looking one) means "blink" or "twinkle" on its own, and the second one (which
is the only one on his chest in robot mode) means "quick". Thanks to Kelvin
Chan for the translation, and the WWWJDIC site for breaking it down.
The head is on a ball joint, with the socket being in clear plastic. No
waist articulation. The shoulders are universal joints that don't stay in
place very well, the elbows are ball joints. Universal hips, mid-thigh
swivels, hinge knees and ankles. The hands can hold 5mm pegs (only about 3/4
of a circle, so some of the odder pegs won't stay in), and the sword can be
sheathed in a gap in the strut behind the head that holds the backpack.
The sword is a single piece of black plastic 4" (10cm) long and
katana-like. This is actually show-accurate...Sideswipe's sword in the show
doesn't have any glowy bits, it's just a black blade.
Transformation: This is very clever, with the front fenders rotating
around from inside the torso to the outside, and the feet swinging backwards
to form the rear windows. The boots are pretty complicated the first few
times. The chest panel needs to be folded down before you push the arms
against the sides, or the front wheels will lock the chest panel in place and
there's no way to get the car to roll (it's iffy even if you get it
transformed correctly).
Vehicle Mode: In outline, it looks pretty good, although it's missing
the door-bottom spines. But the color is where it fails, with the worst
paint match I've seen in a while. It looks vaguely like a Lamborghini, in
keeping with the original Sideswipe. The front wheels are snap-in, the rear
ones are pinned (but ironically, would be more show-accurate if snap-in,
since the hubs should be totally black). At least this mode is stable,
unlike robot mode.
5" (12.5cm) long in red and black with smoky windows. The real
headlights are painted the same bright blue as the fake ones on the robot
chest, and the Autobot symbol code circle is mounted on the front end of the
hood. No paint on the tailpipes. The front-facing side of the molded side
mirrors is painted red, leaving the mirror side unpainted clear. There's a
slot on the roof that seems intended for sword storage, pegging the hilt into
it and having the blade trail backwards.
I'm not sure I have a paint that would match the garnet plastic, and
there's some possible scraping issues.
Overall: In both mechanics and color, this really feels like it was
started with high hopes, then at some point everyone involved said, "Eh,
whatever," and hacked out a motley, floppy mess. As with the Legion class,
it's probably staying in vehicle mode, because at least that's stable.
AUTOBOT: AUTOBOT JAZZ
Assortment: B1734
Altmode: Sportscar
Transformation Difficulty: 9 steps
Previous Name Use: Yes
Previous Mold Use: None
Weapon: Electro-Lance
Function: Being Cooler Than You Could Hope To Ever Be
Motto: "Don't feel bad, not everyone has style. Or rhythm. Or poise."
Packaging: Four ties on the robot, one on the weapon. The back panel
(roof) is dropped down like a buttcape to help fit the toy into the blister.
The photo on the back shows Jazz holding his weapon about as poorly as
it's possible to manage while keeping it in a hand.
Robot Mode: I gotta say, this gave me a bad first impression. Looking
at the general lines of it made me think, "Oh, great, based on Prime
Bumblebee." However, the resemblance is only superficial, and I ended up
liking this toy rather more than I expected. It does suffer from the usual
problem of insufficient paint, not to mention a design that makes it
impossible for the colors to be completely show-accurate in both modes,
although in some cases it's clear they didn't try very hard to make it at
least come close.
5.25" (13cm) tall in black and white plastics with red and blue paint
accents. The wheels, torso back, lower thighs, and hands are black plastic.
The rest is white, including the head. Black gloss paint covers the entire
head, plus the pelvis front, the lower front shins, and the windows on the
door-wings. A slightly desaturated medium blue is painted in stripes on the
chest-hood and along the lower halves of the door-wings, and on the kneecaps
and the eyes. There's a red strip along the front of the chest and on each
door above the blue bits, and more red on the abdomen and on the lower part
of the shoulder fronts. The face is painted silver, as is the helmet crest
(the package art shows the crest should be all black, the chin should be
black, and the fronts of the "ears" should be dark blue). The Autobot symbol
code circle is on the abdomen. There's molded fake wheels inside the
shoulders that could stand to be painted black.
A swivel neck and an immobile waist. The shoulders are universal
joints, as are the elbows (hinge with a swivel in the upper arm part). The
wrists bend inwards for transformation. Ball joint hips, mid-thigh swivels,
hinge knees and ankles. The hands can hold 5mm pegs, but like Sideswipe only
cover about 3/4 of the circle. There's a 5mm peg hole in the small of the
back (vehicle roof), so the lance can be stored there pointing up.
The lance is a single piece of white plastic 4.25" (11cm) long, with a
handle section near the end (hence the figure needing the 3/4 circle hand)
and a rifle grip type of peg farther back for either roof mounting in vehicle
mode, or holding the lance like a rifle.
Transformation: It looks like it should be a repeat of Prime Bumblebee,
but it's actually about as different as it could get while still having the
various parts go into the same places. In fact, it's very reminiscent of
the G1 Jazz transformation scheme, especially how the forearms go under the
front of the hood (although they go side by side and form the airdam, rather
than fitting front to back behind the airdam).
Vehicle Mode: In terms of color, this feels like a Kabaya kit. So much
white, nowhere near enough paint, begging for a Reprolabels set. As far as
the car model goes, it's pretty similar to Bumblebee's Prime look of "kinda
sorta a Camaro maybe", but with a wasp-waist reminiscent of G1 Jazz's
altmode. Oddly, instead of a stripe down the middle of the hood (which is
implied by his robot mode, and which would be in keeping with the G1 style),
he has rally stripes more like Bumblebee's. The door markings are not
continued on either front or rear fenders, and while there's red on the
spoiler, there's no paint on the rear window. There's an Autobot symbol
shape molded into the rear, but no paint in it either (a small Reprolabels
symbol might fit well there).
5" (12.5cm) long with the same sort of low-ceilinged driver's
compartment seen on Bumblebee. Very white. The wheels are the only black
plastic visible in this mode, the rest is white with insufficient paint.
Rolls well on four snap-in wheels, decent clearance. The roof has a 5mm
peg hole for mounting the lance.
[Later note: the big Autobot symbol I had leftover from Roadbuster works
pretty well in helping this mode look less cheesy.]
Overall: Good, solid design, just suffers from lack of color.
Dave Van Domelen, has had rather a large backlog build up in the past
week, thanks to a combination of online orders and a nearby small town
Walmart getting a bunch of stuff in.
Gustavo Wombat, of the Seattle Wombats
Jun 14, 2015, 4:11:38 AM6/14/15
to
On Saturday, June 13, 2015 at 4:10:44 PM UTC-7, Dave Van Domelen wrote:
> Sideswipe: Good design, pretty bad execution in both engineering and
> painting. Very mildly recommended.
How this can be anything other than avoid, I have no idea...
> Sideswipe: Good design, pretty bad execution in both engineering and
> painting. Very mildly recommended.
> Jazz: Has some significant lack-of-paint problems, but it's a solid
> design. Recommended.
> AUTOBOT: SIDESWIPE
> Up front caveat, so I don't need to keep repeating it. This is a
> brilliant design that is utterly inappropriate for Hasbro's manufacturing
> quality.
I'm not seeing the brilliance. He's just combining transformation ideas from other toys. Just not as well.
> brilliant design that is utterly inappropriate for Hasbro's manufacturing
> quality.
Shin Hibiki
Jun 22, 2015, 2:25:32 AM6/22/15
to
dva...@eyrie.org (Dave Van Domelen) wrote:
> Given how many toys I've been buying online lately, it feels weird to
>have gotten these in a physical store (Walmart, specifically).
Roger that. Would it be considered unusual for one's local
> Given how many toys I've been buying online lately, it feels weird to
>have gotten these in a physical store (Walmart, specifically).
Walmart not to have gotten a single Deluxe PRiD figure at this
point...?
- Shin Hibiki
----
The race ain't over yet, baby
It's only just begun
They thought they had it won, baby
But soon we'll have 'em on the run
Zobovor
Jun 22, 2015, 2:48:55 AM6/22/15
to
On Monday, June 22, 2015 at 12:25:32 AM UTC-6, Shin Hibiki wrote:
> Would it be considered unusual for one's local Walmart not to have gotten a
> single Deluxe PRiD figure at this point...?
Normally I would say, yes, that's unusual. But we're still feeling the lingering effects of the dock strike. There are some specific items that I, as department manager, keep trying to order over and over and over (some Hasbro products, some from other manufacturers) and they just never show up.
> Would it be considered unusual for one's local Walmart not to have gotten a
> single Deluxe PRiD figure at this point...?
The supply chain was badly broken for months and I don't think it's made a full recovery yet.
Zob
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