Dave's Transformers Kingdom Rant: Deluxe wave 2

[Dave Van Domelen]

Dave's Transformers Kingdom Rant: Deluxe Wave 2

Airazor (peregrine falcon)
Ractonite (Styracosaur skeleton)
Huffer (yard semitractor)

Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/DeluxeK2

Wave also included a repackaged Earthrise Arcee, which is apparently
identical to the original. If it were a GOOD mold, I might have been tempted
to get another just to take another crack at the trading card lottery, but
newp. Note, Airazor is getting a head swap as BWII Skywarp (aka BW
Silverbolt with slightly different paint) in a two-pack with a retooled
Earth-mode Sideswipe, Ractonite is getting a retool as Tricranius in a bonus
pack with a bunch of Fire Blasts, and Huffer is getting a blue redeco (maybe
retool) as Pipes. Dunno yet if Pipes will be a regular retail release, but
the other two retools are Hasbro Selects.


CAPSULES

$20 price point.

Airazor: Decent enough eagle altmode, too bad it's supposed to be a
falcon. Some issues with stability until you get the hang of all the tabs
and slots. The orange plastic is a bad choice, though. Recommended if you
can put up with the orange.

Ractonite: A bit awkward of a robot mode, if better than Paleotrex's.
Good transformation and nice beast mode. Weapons are okay. High end of
mildly recommended.

Huffer: Decent if small robot, front wheels liable to pop off during
transformation (which is otherwise decent), so-so vehicle mode. Mildly
recommended.


RANTS

Packaging: Same as previous wave of Kingdom Deluxes. Oddly, Airazor's
background has the crashed Nemesis (as does Ractonite, but that makes more
sense). Huffer has the crashed Ark.


MAXIMAL: AIRAZOR
Assortment: WFC-K14
Altmode: Peregrine Falcon
Transformation Difficulty: 22 steps
Previous Name Use: BW, Arm, Uni2, RiD15 (only the Armada one is the same
character as BW)
Previous Mold Use: None

Packaging: Five ties on the robot, with the wings and tail folded up
behind the cardboard. Two ties each on the weapons hidden in the base of the
card tray. The instructions and box back show the wings partially out, with
their boxed configuration being more concealed than intended for the robot
mode in normal mode.
The card I got was Megatron (Decepticon), with the Fate, "Returns to
Gladiator fighting pits."
The box renders have gold where the actual toy is orange.

Robot Mode: Well, in outline it does a pretty good job of looking like
the character does in the show, but the orange parts just look wrong. It
makes me wonder if they deliberately messed with that part so that they could
resell a more accurate color scheme the way they did with Netflix Cheetor.
Maybe the orange was an attempt to do a non-metallic copper? Or perhaps an
attempt to do both the original toy and the VHS pack-in variant in one toy?
In any case, it failed badly. The wings are nicely folded (a couple of
hinges are there just so that they can be slightly shorter/narrower in this
mode), and the beast head is tucked in quite well rather than jutting out as
in the original toy (or as in the case of Cheetor). The feet have bird toes
sticking out the back as heel spikes.
Just over 5" (13cm) tall, with a folded wingspan of 5" (12.5cm). Hm,
correction on that...I guessed wrong about how to properly fold the wings in
robot mode, there's tabs in the back that guide in slots on the wings to make
sure it holds in the right way and out of the way of the arms. Proper folded
wingspan is 4.5" (11.5cm)...not a huge difference, but it looks better if you
follow the instructions. I know, shocking. The colors are a mix of taupe
brown, light gray, gold, and orange. Gold plastic is used for some struts
inside the torso, the neck strut, the upper arms, the elbows, most of the
pelvis, and the the hip joints. Orange plastic is found on the torso sides,
the pelvis skirt, the thighs, and the feet. Everything else is a taupe brown
plastic (kinda desaturated grayish brown).
Light gray paint is used on the upper arms (covers them entirely), most
of the thighs, and the rear edges of the wings (airbrush effect). The
weapons are covered in gold paint except for the pegs, and there's also gold
paint on the helmet fake beak and a bit of the pelvis skirt. The top of the
helmet and the cheekpieces are painted copper, the face is silver, the eyes
are black with blue dots. The beast face on the underside of the chest has
light gray paint on the face, dark gray on the beak, and the eyes are black
with light gray rings around them and light gray highlights. A tiny red
Maximal symbol is printed on the top of the right forearm.
The neck is a ball joint on top of a rigid strut, the waist is a smooth
swivel. The shoulders are pinned universal joints with the shoulderpads
being separately hinged. Lower-bicep swivels, hinge elbows. There's a
transformation hinge at the middle of the forearm, which can make the arm
look broken but is otherwise not useful for robot mode articulation. Pinned
universal joint hips, swivels just above the hinge knees, and the ankles are
ball joints. There's another set of transformation joints, this time in the
lower shins, which can simulate a badly broken leg, I guess. The wings are
attached with multiple pinned hinges (which are locked in place if you fold
them properly), plus a swivel to let the wingtips flare out.
The hands can hold 5mm pegs, and there's 5mm sockets on the outer faces
of the forearms for the weapons. There's hexagonal 5mm holes on the thighs,
which almost go all the way through (the holes go all the way, but there's
little blocking bits on the inner thighs to make them smaller than 5mm on the
inner faces). There's no sockets on the soles of the feet and no room for
them, but there's 5mm sockets on the backs of the lower legs below the "leg
breaker" hinges, so you could kinda fold things so that she could stand on
Weaponizer/Modulator/Fossilizer boots. There's a 3mm socket in the rear of
the pelvis, but you have to untab the tailfeathers to get at it.
The weapons are not based on the triple claw weapon from the original
toy, but rather on the missile launchers she used on the show. They're made
of taupe plastic but painted gold except for the pegs, and are 1.25" (3cm)
long. They do not have 3mm studs on the tips.

Transformation: Straighten the wings out, pop open the back to store the
head. Then struggle with a bunch of struts and hinges to get everything in
juuuust the right spot to let the beast head stay in the right position and
everything else lock down. Fold down the shoulderpads, remove the weapons,
bend the forearms and tuck the fists into gaps in the sides, with tabs on the
forearms going into slots inside the abdomen piece. Rotate the waist 180
degrees and rotate the thigh swivels 180 degrees, then lift the legs up to
get the slots on the inner thighs onto pegs on the golden pelvis piece. Bend
the mid-shin joints and adjust the feet to have the bird toes forwards.
Place the weapons on the robot thigh sockets, position wings to taste.
If you got everything tabbed into the right places, it's pretty stable
and doesn't have too much robot kibble (although the orange thighs do kinda
stand out even with the weapons partly covering them).

Altmode: It's a falcon wearing a safety vest, basically. I mean, lots
of orange on the chest, plus shiny gold, in a way that looks sort of like a
vest. Still, as bird Transformers go, it's not too bad. The profusion of
hinges in the wings allows for a more organic shape to them than any TF bird
I can recall, too. From above it looks like a pretty good bird shape, but
from the sides or below the robot bits do tend to stand out. As I look up
the peregrine falcon to get an idea of scale, though, I see that the wings
are the wrong SHAPE for a peregrine. This is basically an eagle with a
falcon head. To get something resembling a falcon's wings, only swing the
wingtips out just far enough that the secondary feathers are flush with the
wingtip leading edge. (The instructions just show the wings at maximum
extension.) I kind of wonder if the original plan was to do both a headswap
and a wingtip swap between this and Skywarp, but they ended up having to use
more parts in common and went with the eagle wings. It's not like they
couldn't get the license to do a falcon.
3.25" (7cm) from beak to tailtip, with a wingspan of 8.5" (22cm) at full
extension or about 7" (18cm) in falcon emulation mode. While it has eagle
proportions, if we assume the body length is meant to be to scale, this is
about 1:6 to 1:8 scale. If we use the wings instead, more like 1:4 to 1:6
(falcons have proportionally shorter wingspans than eagles), although it's
closer to scale with body length if you use the wing cheat above. Of course,
in the show she's a gigantic bird rather than a real-size one, so all bets
are off on scale. The bird parts on top are all taupe with some gray and
dark brown bits, the underside is as with robot mode. There's some darker
brown paint on the back as well as done as a wash in the wingtips on top, but
no gray on top. The lower jaw of the beak is the same dark gray as the main
beak.
The head can rotate or angle down, and the beak is hinged to open, a
pleasant surprise. Each wing has four pinned hinges plus the swivel on the
wingtip parts. The ankles can only move a little without the figure
faceplanting, and the legs cannot be put into a proper flying pose. Moving
the robot knees can allow for a range of stable stances between almost
horizontal torso and more of an upright pose. The 3mm socket on the robot
pelvis is on the underside now, so a flight base can be used without
restrictions. The thigh sockets are taken up by the weapons, and the back of
shin sockets are still kinda weird and uselsss. No 3mm studs anywhere.

Overall: It's a pretty good bird, but it does feel like the made this
with Skywarp (eagle) in mind instead of trying to make a proper falcon. Some
stability issues as a result of the transformation method, but decent once
you get the hang of all the tabs and slots.


PREDACON: RACTONITE
Assortment: WFC-K15
Altmode: Styracosaur Fossil
Transformation Difficulty: 16 steps
Previous Name Use: None
Previous Mold Use: None

Best guess on the name origin is the "rac" in Styracosaur and then make
it sound vaguely like a mineral name.

Packaging: 6 ties hold the robot to the tray, and the rather small base
section hides the tail tip secured by a single tie. A rubber band keeps the
beast head frill on the right shoulder.
The card I got was Predacon Dinobot with the Fate, "Becomes a Maximal".
Huffer gets to model the weapon loadouts on the box back. The box back
shows the right shoulder assembled with frill down, while the toy is
packaged with frill up. The toy as packaged has elbows at the same height,
the reversed shoulder makes the right elbow drop a little lower.

Robot Mode: Okay, so this labors under a few significant limitations.
It's based on a quadrupedal dinosaur, with relatively small feet by
comparison to the bipedal raptor and Tyrannosaurid styles. That means that
to get decently sized feet or hands they'd need to warp the beast mode
significantly or do something weird like making the entire shin turn into a
foot. They do not do this, so Ractonite has pretty small feet (even with the
addition of heel spurs, and no actual hands. Instead, 5mm pegs are attached
to the wrists and can bend, letting him hold the tail as a sword but very few
other weapons. (Like, two spikes on the frill come off and could be held as
daggers if he had hands.) Combined with the generally stocky torso and a lot
of stuff tacked onto the shoulders, this makes for a tipsy figure. That
said, in "damning with faint praise" news, it does look a bit better in robot
mode than the default Paleotrex robot does. The right shoulderpad is the
beast skull one way or another, and the frill is not just detachable (making
it easier to do the Triceratops retool that's coming), but the top two horns
are removable as noted earlier. The nose horn is also removable, and while
it's not quite a 5mm peg, it will stay in a 5mm socket (this is used in one
of the weapon modes).
5.25" (13cm) tall at the head, 6" (15cm) at the frill top on the
shoulder, in mostly shades of gray from nearly white to medium gray.
Fossilized bones normally look more brownish, but I guess this one could have
been laid down in more chalky rock? The only spots of color are the red eyes
of both the robot head and the beast head. Rubbery white plastic is used for
the tail-sword, the nose horn, and the two removable horns on the frill.
Very light gray plastic is used on the beast head and most of the torso.
Light gray plastic is used for the sternum, head, most of each arm, the
pelvis, and the legs below the hips. Medium gray plastic is used for the
neck, lower biceps, and hips.
Dark gray paint is smeared over the helmet visor, beast skull, frill,
ribs, left shoulderpad, forearms pelvis, sternum, thighs, and the tops of the
feet in an attempt to give a sort of weathered/aged appearance. The
mouthplate is black, the eyes are red as mentioned above, and a small purple
Predacon symbol is printed on the left side. Weirdly, there's gloss white
paint splotches along the sides of the ribs, as some sort of highlight or
something.
The shoulders, bicep swivels, waist, and upper thigh swivels are all 5mm
peg connections. The neck is a ball joint with the socket in the torso
rather than in the head. The right shoulder has a lifting-up hinge, and the
left shoulder has two transformation hinges that allow lifting motion. Both
elbows are double hinges with some soft ratcheting. The pegs on the ends of
the arms are hinged with a 90 degree range of motion. Pinned universal joint
hips, hinge knees, and side to side hinge ankles (which are a bit loose and
make it hard to set the figure down without an ankle collapsing). The visor
can fold down to cover the upper face.
Rather weird connection points. The "hands" are 5mm pegs, and there's
5mm pegs on the belt area (for attaching legs in beast mode). There's also
pegs on the backs of the upper thighs, and one that can fold up on top of the
head. There's 5mm sockets on the (outer, usually) faces of the forearms, in
the soles of the feet, and one behind the head. If you remove the top spines
of the frill, that reveals two more 5mm sockets.

Transformation: As with all modular types, it's a partsformer. The
hardest part is NOT moving pieces, as some of the hinges are for weapon
modes. Remove the arms and legs, then pull the arms apart at the biceps.
The arms attach to those waist pegs, the beast head to where the pelvis had
been connected. The unfolded right shoulder forms the hips and attaches to
that socket behind the robot head, with the pelvis peg going into a socket on
the underside of the hipbone. Then attach the sword to the end of the tail.
The instructions do have a few steps that make sure the forelegs are
bent properly, rather than being straight down pillars.

Altmode: Other than the tail tip being too straight and stumpy, and the
inevitable pegs and joints, this is pretty close to the holotype skeleton for
Styracosaurs (the nose horn is shorter, but the holotype is a torosaur and
some styracs had shorter nose horns...plus I guess they wanted to limit how
many parts needed to be retooled for the trike). I particularly like the
care given to the skull, with teeth only in the rear for grinding, rather
than all the way along the mouth.
8" (20cm) from nose horn to tail tip, in the mix of grays seen in robot
mode. The mix is a little more awkward here, especially how the forelegs
keep changing darkness along their length. No plastic colors or paints that
weren't already visible in robot mode, the Predacon symbol ends up on the
molded right front thighbone near its bottom.
The articulation is a bit limited due to the fact that the forelimb
thighs are actually just molded details on the ribcage, and the lack of ankle
joints makes it hard to get much use out of the knee and digitigrade ankle
joints...they're really just there to get the forelimbs into a proper static
pose. The hind legs retain the full articulation of the robot legs. The
neck is a peg and socket joint at its base, and hinged where it meets the
skull. The jaw is hinged, and the 5mm peg inside is independently hinged so
you can get it out of the way or make it look like a mouth cannon. The root
hinge of the tail only wiggles a little, the midpoint hinge has a good range
of motion.
There's accessible 5mm sockets on the sides of the ribcage, the
undersides of the hind feet, and one technically sort of usable in the roof
of the mouth.

Weapon Modes: Three main ones. Big hammer, sword and shield, or spiked
club (repositioning the horn and frill spikes onto the torso) and sword-
shield thing. They really don't try to make armor or stilts or whatnot out
of the pieces, just big weapons and shields. The only one that uses all the
pieces makes a sword from the torso and tail with one forelimb as the hilt,
the butt bone as a shoulderpad, the skull (sans removable frill spikes) as a
shield, and the rest of the pieces turned into over the shoulder spike
cannons. There's occasional little notches and the like specifically
designed for these modes to help keep them stable, so a decent amount of
thought was put into them. Unfortunately, Huffer isn't the best model for
the sword and shield mode, as he masses less than Ractonite does....
Note, while the super hammer looks nifty, it can't support its own
weight. I came up with my own assembly for a big hammer and shield, but as
the AllSpark's server is down and dvandom.com uses the same server, I can't
put it up yet (I'll try to remember to do so later).

Overall: I like it slightly better than Paleotrex, but that's an
admittedly low hurdle to get over.


AUTOBOT: HUFFER
Assortment: WFC-K16
Altmode: Yard Semitractor
Transformation Difficulty: 14 steps
Previous Name Use: G1, PCC, TF:Prime, Gen:CW
Previous Mold Use: None
Division: Ground Command
Unit: Engineering
Rank: Private

Packaging: Five ties on the robot, one each on the gun and shield hidden
in the base. The package renders show significant differences with the
actual toy, including silver fists (actually black), light blue headlights
(actually silver), orange soles of feet (actually light gray), fully black
gun (some orange visible), black between the "fingers" of the shield (all
silver painted), silver paint on several of the otherwise exposed gray
plastic.
I got another copy of the gladatorial pits Megatron card with this one.

Robot Mode: As with other WFC versions of Minibots, he's a short Deluxe
but makes up for it (partly) with accessories. He also has a bit of a
problem thanks to his G1 animation model deciding to stick with the "entire
cab of altmode just hangs as a giant backpack" thing from the original toy.
I mean, yeah, getting rid of it entirely would make for an engineering
challenge, to be sure, but being stuck with "it slides back a bit and then
sits there" does the toy no favors. Also makes the head hard to turn and
gets in the way of the shoulders a bit. Within the limits of the animation
model, though, they did a decent job of it, and even gave him accessories
that he never had in the show but which sort of make sense (a shield that
becomes his fifth wheel, and a gun reportedly based on concept art from Halo
of all things). He has the open faced helmet that sits right over his
eyebrows as in the cartoon, and other than the black fists fits the
(admittedly inconsistent) animation colors pretty well. One notable
difference is that they apparently went with the Transformers Data Collection
art for the helmet, eliminating the sort of domino mask effect the cartoon
used, just diamond-shaped eyes running right up to the helmet edge.
4.5" (11.5cm) tall at the head, the top of the cab-pack adds about
another centimeter. Mostly in desaturated blue apricot orange-yellow,
silvery gray and outright silver. A desaturated blue plastic is used for the
head, upper torso, and pelvis. Apricot plastic is used for most of the cab
pack, the shield, the gun, and the boots. Silvery medium gray plastic is
used on the collar area, shoulder roots, elbow joints, abdomen, thighs,, and
the soles of the feet. Blck is used for the wheels, shoulders, forearms, and
fists. Clear medium blue plastic is used for the windows in the cab-pack.
The shoulders and forearms are painted mostly silver, as are the face,
the center of the pelvis, the center of the abdomen, and the "claws" part of
the shield. The U shape on the chest is light blue. The outer face of the
shield and most of the gun are painted slightly metallic black. The eyes are
metallic sapphire blue. An Autobot symbol in red on white is printed on the
center of the chest. I'll cover vehicle specific stuff in the relevant
section.
The neck and waist are swivels. The shoulders are swivels where they
meet the torso, plus lifting hinges. There's a swivel above each hinge
elbow. The wrists bend inwards for transformation. Universal joint hips,
upper thigh swivels, hinge knees, and the usual inner corner hinges on the
ankles so the feet can stay flat.
The fists hold 5mm pegs, plus there's 5mm sockets on the outer faces of
the forearms and the upper arms, the outer upper edges of the boots, the
soles of the feet, and one on the center of the cab-pack. There's a 3mm
socket on the back of the pelvis. There's no 3mm studs on the figure
itself. There's nonstandard home-plate-shaped sockets on the shins that hold
the folded up soles in vehicle mode.
The gun is a carbine sort of thing made of apricot plastic with metallic
black paint on all but the grip peg (5mm, at the very back) and the slots on
either side for attaching to the shield in vehicle mode. 2" (5cm) long with
a 3mm stud at the tip. It actually splits into two to form the sides of the
pickup bed they sort of bolted onto vehicle mode, but the halves can't be
wielded separately as they're not quite big enough to hold securely in the
fists.
The shield is 2" (5cm) by 1.5" (3.5cm) and molded to end in a five-
clawed sort of bulldozer blade inspired shape with a rectangular riot shield
eyeslit. It has three short 5mm pegs on the back, with one in the middle
that's mostly meant to go on the forearm or shoulder sockets, and two more
that go into the soles of the feet sockets in vehicle mode (or you can snap
the boots together and make a sort of boogie board from the shield). It has
two 3mm studs on it for catching squibs.

Undocumented feature: the shield fits nicely on the back if you don't
want it on his arm.

Transformation: WARNING! The front wheels are easy to pop out, and
they're on fairly stiff hinges. As a result, one of mine popped off and flew
across the room and even half an hour of searching didn't yield it. Still
missing weeks later when I finished the review of this wave.
Risk of lost wheels aside, it's fairly simple. Snap the boots together,
fold the soles up onto the shins, bend the knees 180 degrees. Fold the
shoulders down, pull the chest forwards and CAREFULLY fold out the front
wheels. Then close up the chest again, because the head doesn't actually
store inside of it. Rejigger the cab-pack so that it covers the head more
fully, and stick the arms against tabs on the back corners, with the fists
folded inwards to sort of hide them.
Note, the accessories are not required for a proper altmode, adding them
in forms a sort of hacked together pickup bed. Place the shield on the
molded fifth wheel section, split the rifles in half and place them orange
sides out against the sides.
(I will now make a third serious search for the missing wheel, but I'm
pretty sure I won't find it until next time I do a major furniture
rearrangement. Wait...FOUND IT. It rolled into a glue trap set out for
spiders, I thought I'd checked that one already, but I guess I hadn't checked
it well enough.)

Altmode: So, technically Huffer is a four-wheeled "yard dog" semi, meant
for moving trailers around a lot rather than hauling them on the road, they
decided to use his accessories to give him something more like a pickup truck
function. It looks okay from most angles, but directly from the side is
pretty bad, with a big gap all the way through above the front wheels and the
robot chest hanging down between the front wheels. Without the pickup bed,
the back end has a shallowly molded trailer hitch amid diamondplate, with the
bed is looks more like a converted van pickup truck or something. The
oversized smokestacks on either side imply a more powerful engine, as befits
a yard dog.
4" (10cm) long without the pickup bed, 4.5" (11cm) long with the bed,
it's mostly apricot with shiny black inside the pickup bed or silvery gray on
the trailer hitch area. A clear blue insert in the cab provides windows and
the roof lights, no other new or newish plastic. There's silver paint on the
front bumper, grille, headlights, side mirrors, roof lights, smokestacks
(mostly), and wheel hubs. The windshield wipers are painted gloss black, and
the interior of the pickup bed has the metallic black found on the gun and
shield. The taillights are painted red.
There's 5mm sockets on the roof, the smokestack sides, the rear fenders,
and four on the trailer hitch. Three of them are used for attaching the
shield, and the one in the center of the triangle formed by these three is
for attaching any trailer that's the right height and uses a 5mm peg. The
pickup bed is about the right size to hold one of the shorter Hot Wheels cars
or Micromaster cars. It's also just wide enough for those Lego blindbag
minifigure bases.
Now that I have all four wheels on it again, it rolls nicely, although
the waist doesn't lock in place so you need to make sure the two axles are
parallel.

I looked into taking some of the treads from a Cyberverse Battle Class
partner and making mine a halftrack during the time I was searching for the
missing wheel, but none of them are tall enough to do the job. If the
sockets for the wheels were a little smaller, I could have used those and
Ratchet's snowmobile treads, but they're slightly bigger than 5mm. (Cog's
treads are totally wrong for the job, BTW.)

Overall: I suppose the accessories being used to give two options for
the vehicle mode count as just enough value added to justify this being a
Deluxe. The vehicle modes aren't that great, though. If you do permanently
lose a wheel, they're all the same so you can make sure the missing one is in
front and is hidden in robot mode.


Dave Van Domelen, starting to get wave 3 and isn't done with wave 2 yet,
sigh....