The Transformers Thread (licensed) Next

[JB0]

2 hours ago, davidwhangchoi said:

do these missing link packages comes with the red decoder for the tech specs?

i miss those and without them it's hard to see Grimlock's intelligence rating.  

 

I believe my Optimus Prime did. I'd have to fish box contents out to be certain.

[mikeszekely]

Right now it's Friday night locally, so I hope you guys tune in over the weekend.  Because I'm wrapping up the week with Leader-class Studio Series 86 Soundwave.

Soundwave's giving off the same sort of vibes as Thundercracker... he's taller than the Netflix/Legacy toy, so he scales better with SS86 Megatron, and most of the greebles of the older figure are simply gone.  It's most evident in his shoulders, which are smooth blue slabs, but I'd be remiss if I didn't point out that he does still have some details, like extra squares on his knees, a little extra details on his shins, and those circular bumps on his forearms.  These are details that seem likely to have been pulled from MP-13, which in turn were likely inspired by the G1 toy.

There are other improvements, though.  His pelvis is shaped more like the cartoon.  His backpack is bigger, but in a way that's actually closer to the Sunbow model.  There's red paint around his forearms and shoulder cannon (the Legacy release had them, but I had to paint the Netflix version myself).  The molded missiles in his shoulder cannon are also painted.  His butt flap is a little smaller, and the backs of his forearms don't have the vestigial Siege landing struts.  The insides of his forearms have flaps so they're not just hollow voids.  Even his calves have traded the textured look for faux volume dial and power switch.

The red paint on his shoulder cannon can also be found on his other accessory, his concussion blaster.  Weirdly, this is a step back from the Siege/Netflix/Legacy version.  The tip, which retracts inside for storage, is turned 90 degrees from what it should be.  Now, there are definitely people on the internet madder about that than I am, but I do think it's a problem that someone should have caught before it went into production.  I am looking at potentially modding it, so the tip extends and then rotates into place, but I can also see why people dropping $60 on a Leader-class toy might be hesitant to mess with it like that.

Soundwave was a Leader in Legacy, too, where he came with an additional gun and a trio of tapes.  Once again, Soundwave gets that Leader price point by being packaged with a trio of tapes.  They're all brand new molds, but here's how they look with the older Micromaster versions.  Like other tapes in the Studio Series like, they also come with add-on bits that the Micromasters didn't.

While Netflix Soundwave came with Laserbeak and Ravage, and Legacy Soundwave came with Buzzsaw, Ravage, and Rumble, SS86 Soundwave comes with Laserbeak, Ravage, and Buzzsaw.  I guess all of us who already bought Netflix Soundwave and SS86 Rumble and then bought Legacy Soundwave just to get Buzzsaw are kicking ourselves.  Well, lets break down the new molds real quick.

Buzzsaw and Laserbeak are similar to their prior versions in that the heads and necks flip out, and the feet fold down.  Rather than have their boosters fold out of their butts we instead have booster packs that plug onto their backs.  The main difference is in the wings.  Instead of simply swinging them out from the sides, they unfold then swing back, sort of like the MP versions.  Some have suggested that the shape of the wings on the Micromasters are more accurate, and I'd say that's both correct and incorrect.  The wings on the Micromasters are shaped more like the G1 toys, but I think the SS86 versions have wings shaped closer to how they were drawn in the cartoon.  One more joint to bend half the wing back more would have really sold it, though.  The new boosters with the guns are also more cartoon accurate, but their chests aren't as open as the Micromasters, so they can't angle their necks as far forward, and since they're not Micromasters they lack the flip-out 5mm pegs that were useful for plugging them onto Siege/Earthrise/Netflix Soundwave and Megatron's forearms.  My biggest gripe, though, reserved specifically for Buzzsaw, is that they didn't paint his beak.  Laserbeak can kind of get away with that, but it's a glaring inaccuracy on Buzzsaw.

And then there's Ravage.  Ravage is an improvement over the previous mold in engineering, proportions, and cartoon accuracy, but that's like saying getting a D this quarter is better than getting an F the previous one.  Like, sure, he's got a tail, and he doesn't have an undersized head and twig-thin forelimbs and paws sprouting from massive biceps and thighs, and sure, his hip rockets aren't vestigial molded details, but he's hardly got a lithe, catlike body, especially with those massive hinges in his neck.  Poor Ravage got the mumps!  There's also the Brazilian butt lift to add a 5mm peg to his tail part, and the fact that his paws still aren't the right color.

I don't think we're here for the tapes, though, so back to Soundwave.  His head seems to be on a ball joint, with a little up/down tilt and swivel but no sideways tilt.  His shoulders can swivel and move laterally over 90 degrees.  Due to his transformation, his shoulders are designed to breakaway from his torso so they can fold back, giving him a backwards butterfly joint, but there's another hinge in there that gives him a forward butterfly joint that nothing to do with his transformation.  It seems to exist just so he can better reach the "buttons" on his pelvis.  Moving on, his biceps swivel, his elbows bend 90 degrees, his wrists swivel, and his fingers (which are all molded together as one part) are hinged so he can open his hands.  His waist swivels, and his hip skirts move so that his hips can go just a little short of 90 degrees forward and backward and just a little over 90 degrees laterally.  His thighs swivel, and his knees bend 90 degrees.  His feet can tilt up 90 degrees, but nothing really downward.  His ankles also can swivel and pivot 90 degrees.

Soundwave can hold his gun in either hand, and his missile launcher plugs into a port to the right of his head.  If you don't want Soundwave to hold his gun, you can collapse the tip and plug it into a 5mm port on either side of his backpack.

Of course, pressing the button to the left of Soundwave's head will open the door on his chest.  His new tapes fit inside, as do the older Micromaster ones.  I know some have lamented that he can't accommodate the G1 or MP tapes, but this approach makes more sense, I feel.  For one, there's the matter of proportions.  Soundwave's G1 toy has a much larger torso proportionally, and it's why MP-13 wound up using the same size tapes.  For two, we've already had so many tapes released in the mainlines, both as Siege/Earthrise/Legacy Micromasters as well as SS86 releases.  It's far more important for SS86 Soundwave to be compatible with those.

Speaking of compatibility, you might notice that there are tabs on the outsides of Soundwave's arms near his elbows.  These tabs aren't for alt mode.  As near as I can tell, it's for the condors.  Laserbeak and Buzzsaw both have little notches in their feet that seem designed to fit over the tabs on Soundwave's arms, allowing them to perch there.  I say "seems," though, because the fit is not particularly tight and only marginally better than just balancing them on his arm in the first place.

One more thing to note about the tapes... the booster packs for condors and the tail & rockets for Ravage both have 5mm pegs on them.  They can be swiveled (or the rockets can swivel around them, as it were), so Soundwave can technically use them as weapons on his own.

Soundwave's transformation is a lot like the Netflix/Legacy toy.  Remove his gun and shoulder cannon.  Open the flaps on the sides of his backpack, then pull the backpack (along with the head) back, then tuck the head in and close the backpack.  Plug his weapons into the ports along either side of his backpack, then fold the backpack flaps over so they tab onto the weapons.  Swivel his waist 180 degrees, open his forearms and fold the fists in, close his forearms, then fold his entire arms back alongside his weapons.  Open a pair of flaps on the backs of both legs, swivel his feet 180 degrees, then fold the feet up into his legs.  Fold out the flaps on his heels, then close the larger of the two flaps you opened on the backs of his legs.  Leave the other flap open.  Lift his butt flap, and swivel his thighs 90 degrees.  Move his hips outward 90 degrees, and bend his knees so the backs of his legs plug into the sides of his torso where his arms were.  Speaking of arms, they'll actually tab onto the legs at the shoulder and near the wrist.  Open the two flaps from the inside of the butt flap, then fold it down to fill in the rest of the front.  Finish it off by pushing his knee vents in so the sides of the alt mode are flat.

SS86 Soundwave improves on a lot of the issues I had with the Netflix/Legacy version without totally fixing them, so they're mostly still there.  Like, his arms and backpack don't fill out all the space on the back of Soundwave's alt mode, so there's still gaps, especially between his arms and under the backpack.  But, his backpack at least tries to hide the stored weapons better.  I think a big complaint is that his legs fold the same way as the Netflix/Legacy toy, which is to say backward, so the shins form the sides of the tape deck instead of the backs of his legs.  Thing is, I kind of get why they went this route.  The sides of the tape deck are silver, like (most of) his shins.  The backs of his legs are blue, for cartoon accuracy, which would make the sides of the tape deck blue, which isn't cartoon accurate.  There's also the matter of the waist swivel, and the fact that his pelvis buttons are not the tape deck buttons.  This turns his legs around, so the fronts of the tape deck would have to be the outsides of his legs instead of the insides.  Again, this doesn't work for cartoon accuracy, where the outsides of Soundwave's legs are blue and have bump outs while the insides are silver.  I don't think they absolutely had to do it this way; MP-13, after all, uses his actual pelvis on the front of the tape deck, but I can see how trying to do it on a Leader-class budget, a good portion of which went to the tapes, may have been difficult.  In any case, tucking the feet in and using flaps on the heels to seal the gaps, lining up the legs with the chest better, pushing the knee vents in, and tucking the butt flap in flush with the legs does at least make SS86 flatter, smoother, and tighter.  Again, improvements all around, even if only minor.

Except for one thing that is not improved.  That's the color on the bottom front of the tape deck.  On SS86 Soundwave it's just blue, straight across the bottom.  I thought this looked odd to me, because the Netflix/Legacy toy has silver, the G1 toy has silver, and MP-13 has silver.  To make sure it wasn't a toy thing I looked at his Sunbow control art, and it's silver across the bottom.  Thinking it might be a case of sometimes silver but sometimes not, like the stripe on Prime's cab, I even watched a bit of the '86 movie.  And when Soundwave transforms to play back Laserbeak's recording for Megatron, sure enough, silver on the bottom.  Well that's unfortunate.  Now I feel like I'll have to buy some future store-exclusive or premium Takara version if I want an accurate alt mode deco.  Or, as you guys were cynically suggesting with Thundercracker, wait a few years for Hasbro to run through their popular G1 characters and start over yet again on new molds that are even more slightly (but never perfectly) accurate.

Anyway... not a ton Soundwave can do as an immobile box.  His tape deck door still opens, and you can still insert and remove his tape minions.  There's a pair of 5mm ports on the back of the tape deck that I found I could use to plug in the condors' backpacks or Ravage's tail... except that's two ports for three tapes.  Make's the empty space under the backpack seem a bit wasted... one more 5mm port on the underside of the backpack could have really been useful.

In a lot of ways, Soundwave is a lot like Thundercracker.  Thundercracker has a lot of little improvements due to being a brand new mold instead of an enlarged and improved version of the Classics Seeker mold, but still isn't perfect, and was hardly as groundbreaking as SS86 Megatron or Optimus.  Soundwave has a lot of little improvements due to being a brand new mold instead of being retooled from his Siege toy, but still isn't perfect, and is hardly as groundbreaking as SS86 Megatron or Optimus.  He comes with Laserbeak, Buzzsaw, and Ravage who are all improved a little from their Micromaster versions, but still aren't perfect (especially Ravage).  But, just like Thundercracker, those little improvements are meaningful enough that I can overlook the imperfections and still feel it was worth upgrading.  He gets the recommend from me.  But I totally understand if you're good with what you already have.