On Wednesday, September 23, 2020 at 8:11:52 PM UTC-4, Zobovor wrote:
> Got a case of these shipped to Walmart on yesterday's truck (they were still unloading when my shift was ending). Surprisingly, they sat on the pegs all day today until I got off work and bought my set. What, are people not excited about non-transformable Transformers or something?
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> The packaging has new artwork of each character and is designed to look like the paint on each robot is flaking off and forming the colored swatches on the packaging itself. It's kind of cool.
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> OPTIMUS PRIME
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> So it's been a number of years since we got the Mega SCF figures from Japan, which was a similar product (even though they ended up abandoning G1 pretty quickly and ended up focusing almost entirely on Armada characters). The biggest problem with those figures was that the joints weren't really well-integrated into the toys themselves, so you had these great, gappy elbow struts on every figure, and legs that couldn't move much at all. I feel like Hasbro did a better job this time than Takara did the last time around.
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> Optimus stands at six inches in height, making him the same size as other collectibles on the market like Star Wars Black Series or Marvel Legends (the Mega SCF was closer to four inches). Obviously, he's not to scale with any of them, since he's supposed to be a giant robot. I think they scale pretty well with the various figures of humans that have been packaged with the Masterpiece toys, though.
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> Each of these toys is designed a little differently. Probably the main gimmick for Optimus is that his chest doors open to reveal a little Matrix accessory. The Matrix is pretty obvious when the doors are closed, so I almost wish they had made the chest windows opaque instead of translucent. Also, for some reason the pelvis and upper legs are white, but the gas tanks on his legs and his smokestacks are grey, and the grill on his abdomen is metallic silver. In a straight reading of the cartoon colors, all of these parts should be white.
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> His head is mounted on a double ball joint peg, his waist swivels, his hips are universal joints, he's got mid-thigh swivels, double knee joints (the back of his lower leg can touch the back of his upper leg), and his feet are mounted on universal ball joints. Pretty standard stuff, like what you'd expect from Star Wars Black or Marvel Legends.
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> The arms have joints inside the shoulders so he can swing his arms all the way out to the sides. The squareness of his shoulders was rounded off a little to accomplish this. He's got bicep swivels, single-bend elbow joints, and his wrists are designed to both bend and swivel.
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> He comes with three sets of fists total. He's got a pair of closed fists, a pair of casual gesturing hands, a right hand meant to hold his gun, and a left hand with the infamous Finger of Doom pointing. Every extra hand has a wrist joint built in.
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> Besides the Matrix, he comes with an energon axe that can replace one of his hands, and he carries his ion blaster (his gun-grasping hand can actually place a finger on the trigger, which is cool). The toy's torso and pelvis are hard ABS plastic but the rest is soft, rubbery PVC.
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> This is a very, very good representation of Prime from the G1 cartoon, but the sculpt isn't 100% perfect. The smokestacks are bent back at an angle, but I'm not sure if the toy was sculpted that way or if this is just the result of being stuffed into the package. He has no detail on the insides of his lower legs (he usually has the "wheel doors" which is where his rear tires ostensibly tuck into when he transforms to robot mode). His eyes are light blue, but it seems like the shade of paint they picked is too light.
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> Nitpickery aside, this is a great collectible at a very affordable price of only $20 (the Mega SCF toy, which is arguably inferior, tends to go for between $40-$50 on eBay).
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> MEGATRON
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> There's a little cardboard backer behind each of the figures in the package that showcases the design illustrations for the toys (I guess it could be artwork commissioned specifically for the package, but they *look* like design drawings so it seems weird not to just use those). Anyway, if this really was the blueprint for the figure, I'm glad they fixed Megatron's face. Because the face on that drawing is hideous.
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> Megatron's gimmick, which honestly caught me by surprise, is the ability to do an ab crunch. It's cleverly incorporated into the character's design in such a way that it's neatly hidden. I wouldn't hate if they did this with other characters in the series, but of course I guess it depends on whether the joint can be seamlessly worked into their design.
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> Megatron's arm-mounted fusion cannon seems to be permanently attached. He's got two closed fists, a casual gesturing left hand, a left hand with index finger pointing, a left hand seemingly designed to hold a gun (he does not come with a handheld gun though), and a left hand permanently clutching an energon cube. I wish he had two casual hands, but the only right hand he comes with is the closed fist. Anyway, the energon cube is neat, because the whole thing is a semi-translucent purple with only the hand part of the sculpt painted.
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> He also comes with his morning star weapon, which replaces his hand. We've seen this attachment a few times with various toys now. This one is a simple, single piece of semi-translucent PVC plastic.
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> Megatron gets most of the same articulation as Optimus, but he's got an elbow swivel instead of a bicep swivel, and the joints that allow him to swing his arms out to the sides are incorporated into his upper body instead of his shoulders. His hip plates also pivot out to the sides to allow more freedom for his leg movements.
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> His sculpt is very nearly perfect. The head sculpt, in particular, is exceptional (and so much better than the Mega SCF figure, whose face was mangled up into a weird snarl). I would have liked it if the barrel of his fusion cannon, and the cannon on his back, were hollow. But that's okay. His colors seem slightly off; his fusion cannon is black but his fists and pelvis are dark grey. I do believe only his lower legs are supposed to be grey. Also, his face is supposed to be a lighter shade of grey than his helmet. But, overall I think this is the most cartoon-accurate Megatron figure we've ever gotten.
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> SOUNDWAVE
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> There was no Mega SCF version of Soundwave, so in some ways we're venturing into all-new territory. The CG render on the back of the packaging shows the bottom of his tape deck door with a huge yellow stripe (the spot where it said "Cassette Man" on the Microchange toy) but thankfully they fixed that for the final release.
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> Soundwave's gimmick is the functional cassette door. Pressing the eject button on his shoulder triggers a tiny little plastic tab that pushes the door out just a little. So, it's not spring-loaded like the G1 toy but the eject button still works, which is kind of cool. (And, yes, Soundwave can push the button himself if he wants to.) He comes with a cassette which is obviously Laserbeak, but it does not transform. Laserbeak's colors in the cartoon are very wrong when compared to his G1 toy, but the R.E.D. version is a different flavor of wrongness. They colored the top of his head red, which isn't cartoon-wrong, but just plain wrong-wrong.
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> Soundwave's articulation is mostly the same as the others, but he's got a double-hinge elbow joint so he can bend his arm enough to hit his own eject button. You've got your hands on the button now! His backpack is supposed to hang a little farther down, but I understand why they raised it (so his waist could swivel freely).
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> He's got a removable shoulder cannon, a concussion blaster, and two sets of hands (closed fists, a right hand that can hold his gun, and a left hand with the pointer finger in a "Laserbeak, eject!" pose). His hands are the same color as Optimus, so you could swap things if you wanted Soundwave to have a Finger of Doom. I'm surprised neither toy came with a blue fist holding a tiny Megatron gun, since both characters have held Megatron in the show.
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> Soundwave's color mapping isn't quite right. His lower legs are entirely blue, but he's supposed to have a grey section near his feet that wraps around to the insides of the legs. The sculpt on the insides of the lower legs isn't accurate either, since it just reproduces the details from the outsides of the legs, instead of the blue stripe interrupting the grey panels. His shoulder cannon is also missing the red stripe, but I guess his concussion barrel has two red stripes to make up for it.
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> I can't believe I got this amazing Soundwave figure for twenty bucks. Usually you have to import cool stuff like this from Japan, and it always costs an arm and a leg. This is so great that Hasbro is doing this series.
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> Zob (will continue to buy these things as long as they keep churning them out)

Picked up R.E.D. Megatron on sale at Walmart.com for $11.97, and frankly, he feels worth about that much.

On his own, he's a nice representation of the simplified animation model, and nicely posable. However, I do prefer the harder plastics of the mainline toys, and it's a shame he doesn't quite scale with WfC (too short to scale with Earthrise Prime, sadly).