Dave's Transformers Kingdom Rant: Core Class Wave 2

Starscream (jet)
Megatron (tank)

Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Gen/CoreK2

CAPSULES

$10 price point.

Starscream: Perhaps not the perfect Starscream at this scale, but very
close. Strongly recommended. Fingers crossed for redecos.

Megatron: Okay in both modes, seems to use an unusually dark color
scheme to hide problems with the tank, but at least it's not a rehash of
previous Tank Megatrons in this size. Recommended.

RANTS

Packaging: Same as first wave Core. While there's room on the cardback
for a Command/Division/Rank sigil, they don't bother. Both have the "crashed
Nemesis" backtrop for the card art, although Starscream's has him a bit
closer to the ship. Nice subtle point of Megatron leading from the front.

DECEPTICON: STARSCREAM
Assortment: WFC-K12
Altmode: Jet
Transformation Difficulty: 17 steps
Previous Name Use: Yes
Previous Mold Use: None

Packaging: Two ties hold the robot in the blister, and one tie on each
of the Null Ray cannons.

Robot Mode: It's a little Starscream, minimal issues with vehicle
kibble, good proportions, good color. There's tail section bits on the outer
faces of the boots and a jet nose end on the back, but that's not too bad for
a Starscream (as with a lot of designs, the cockpit window on the chest is
fake). Minor hollowness issues in the limbs, so someone's probably gonna
sell a gap-filler set even though it doesn't really need one. A lot of the
surface details are based on the Earthrise mold, if shrunken and simplied
(e.g. the 3mm nipple studs are now significantly smaller, but still there).
3.75" (9.5cm) tall, although some of that is the intake scoops flanking
the head, so it's not quite GIJoe scale or anything. All the plastic is very
light gray, the paint apps do a good job of making it look like some of the
pieces are other colors. There's red paint on the shoulder scoops and the
fronts of the right and left torso. The forearms/fists are coated in bright
blue paint, as are the feet and the tail fins on the boots. The helmet is
painted gloss black, with dark silver on the face and the turbine pecs. Red
eyes, yellow fake canopy windows on the torso front. The back sides of the
wings have red stripes and purple Decepticon symbols, but there's no paint on
the front-facing (underside) parts of the wings.
The neck is a swivel, the waist does not move. Ball joint shoulders,
elbows, hips, and knees. The hands can hold 3mm pegs, and there's 3mm
sockets on the outer faces of the shoulders plus one on the center of the
backpack (which takes the place of a pelvis 3mm socket in this mode).
Despite only having 9 joints, it can do a pretty good job of most of the
classic Starscream poses.
The Null Ray cannons are identical unpainted pieces of light gray
plastic 1.75" (4.5cm) long with 3mm peg grips and 3mm stud barrel tips.

Transformation: Technically you can leave the cannons on the shoulders
while transforming, but odds are very high they'll pop off, so might as well
remove them on purpose.
This is a pretty clever transformation, and unlike a lot of clever
transformations it also works well. The core conceit is that the chest
splits open (the center fake cockpit stays with the left side) and the entire
wing section with the torso shell and arms rotates around a swivel in the
small of the back, then snaps shut around the knees, neatly avoiding the
"what to do with the legs" problem that small jets often have. There's a
fair amount of fiddling needed to get things at just the right angles to snap
shut properly, and getting the nose end together requires a bit of force and
some practice, but the rest is intuitive and fits solidly. Be sure to turn
the head around before finishing up the nose end, or Starscream will be
looking down from under the cockpit and that's weird.

Altmode: To be honest, I was expecting something like Authentics
Starscream with creative photography hiding that from us, but aside from some
unavoidable undercarriage junk it's a properly proportioned F-15-style
fighter jet. I am impressed. It could stand a little more paint detail, but
that's always true, the only place where there's an unaesthetic bit of
missing paint is on the back of the cockpit, where the strut holding the nose
end cuts through.
4.5" (11.5cm) long with a wingspan of 3.25" (8cm), making it about 1:160
scale, give or take. A little too small for 1:144. Mostly ghost gray with
blue tail and thrusters, red wing stripes and intakes, yellow cockpit, and
purple Decepticon symbols on the wings.
There's no wing attachment points, the Null Ray cannons go on the
shoulder sockets. The socket from the small of the back in robot mode is now
under the nose end, and I suspect it was put there so he could carry
Megatron's pistol in this mode.

Overall: No particular flaws, a clever design that actually works, about
as good as one could expect for a Starscream in this size. I actually hope
they flood the market with Seeker redecos of this mold, it'd probably have to
be multi-packs for the exclusives market, though. (As of this writing, very
few of the store exclusives have been revealed, and the only Seeker is a G2
redeco of Earthrise Ramjet.)

DECEPTICON: MEGATRON
Assortment: WFC-K13
Altmode: Tank
Transformation Difficulty: 12 steps
Previous Name Use: Yes
Previous Mold Use: None

Packaging: Two ties hold the robot into the blister, one holds the
handgun.

Robot Mode: Like, it's G1 Megatron's head and chest stuck onto an
otherwise black and dark gray tank-former body. They didn't even try to get
close to the G1 color scheme (toy or animation), even though it would have
been relatively easy just by using lighter gray. And it's a kinda lazy
design as well, with the front third of the tank just hanging off the back as
a single chunk.
3.5" (9cm) tall at the head, the shoulders rise a little higher. As
mentioned, it's mostly black and dark grays, but with silver for the head and
torso front. Black plastic is used for the head (I'm pretty sure), the
collar, the tank tread backpack, the torso front, the pelvis, the left
forearm, the right fist and forearm armor, the arm cannon, the boots, and
the struts inside the boots. Dark gray plastic with a faint metallic sheen
is used for the shoulderpads, the upper arms, the left forearm, the thighs,
the pistol, and a panel in the center of the back.
Dark silver paint is used for the helmet, the front of the chest, the
top of the chest, and the fists. Bright silver is found on the face, the
abdomen, and the treads (on the backpack and on the boots). It's subtle, but
the little forehead triangles are painted in the darker silver. The eyes,
the sides of the abdomen, and a detail on the belly are painted gloss red.
Bright blue and yellow details are also on the belly. A borderless
Decepticon symbol is printed on the center of the chest. The cannon on the
forearm is on a swivel, mostly useful for tank mode.
The neck and waist are swivels. Ball joints on the shoulders, elbows,
hips, and knees. The right wrist is a swivel, used for transformation. The
hands have 3mm sockets, and there's a pair of 3mm sockets on the back, plus
the usual back of pelvis 3mm socket. No 3mm studs on the figure. The muzzle
of the cannon is a 5mm socket. There are other holes in the toy, but they're
not 3mm or 5mm in diameter, and are just for joint pegs. There's a wider
than 5mm peg on the inside of the left forearm, which goes into a same sized
socket on the cannon in tank mode.
The pistol is very loosely inspired by G1 Megatron's altmode, but with a
very short stock and enough details changed to not look like any real
pistol. It has a weird trigger guard bit that looks like a reversed trigger,
but is placed far enough forwards to only look like a proper trigger guard if
held by a much larger hand. It's 1.5" (3.5cm) long, with a 3mm tip to its
scope but the actual barrel tip is wider than that and has an iron sight (it
can be crammed into a 5mm socket). The stock is made to fit into a 5mm
socket. The grip is a short 5mm peg with an off-center 3mm peg on the end,
so it can be held by either kind of hand socket size. It can be stored on
the back, either pointing up as per the barrel of Megatron's gun in G1, or
sideways to keep it hidden.

Transformation: Much like the much-reused Siege Voyager mold, the arm
cannon only forms the root of the tank gun, and without the pistol the tank
looks somewhat lacking.
Lift the backpack up over the shoulders, the collar lifts up a bit
during this process but you don't actually hide the head inside the chest.
Fold the arms back and rotate the left wrist 180 degrees so that the right
arm peg can go into the cannon socket while both forearms have black armor on
top and slots on the bottom to go into pegs on the small of the back. Rotate
the waist 180 degrees, and the knees bend sideways on struts so that the
treads of the boots can connect to the backpack treads. Finally, attach the
pistol to the arm cannon muzzle to be the tank cannon. (Without this, it
looks more like some sort of mortar tank.)