Dave's Transformers Studio Series Rant: Deluxe Wave 13

#74 Bumblebee (already reviewed as #74BB, slight redeco)
#75 Jolt (Chevy Volt)
#86-08 Gnaw (Sharkticon)

Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Studio/Deluxe13

The wave also had reships of 86-01 Jazz. Gnaw was both shortpacked and
aggressively hunted by troopbuilder collectors, so I ended up ordering it on
Amazon with an "in stock soon" promise. I also ended up finding it at Big
Lots, of all places.

https://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Studio/DeluxeBB74 (Regular #74 lacks
the Sam figure, and might be a slight redeco, I didn't care enough to get
one).

CAPSULES

$20-23 price point.

Jolt: While it has positives in both modes, they're overwhelmed by a
crippling case of shellformer syndrome, plus brittle tabs that break off.
Neutral.

Gnaw: Has some stability issues due to over-reliance on joint friction
and a lack of same, but a fairly clever transformation and good details in
both modes. I like the Titans Return version more, but this one still comes
Recommended.

RANTS

Packaging: Same as previous regular or '86 Deluxes, as relevant.

AUTOBOT: JOLT
Assortment: #75
Altmode: Chevy Volt
Transformation Difficulty: 23 steps
Previous Name Use: G2, Arm, Uni2, Cybertron, RotF, DotM
Previous Mold Use: None
Movie: Revenge of the Fallen
Scene: Pyramid Desert Battle

When JOLT uses his electro whips to link the AUTOBOT leader with jet
parts from JETFIRE, OPTIMUS PRIME takes to the skies as JETPOWER OPTIMUS.

Yeah, Jolt really only exists to cover Optimus in Jetfire corpse pieces
as a powerup. IIRC he gets one really brief fight scene bit as well. But no
lines, and no personality (to the extent any Bayformers get one).

Packaging: Five plastic ties on the robot, one each on the electro whip
weapons. The hip panels are deliberately mistransformed to fit in the box.
While the toy is supposed to be from the Desert Battle, the backdrop is
a dense urban core, either Chicago or Mission City.

Robot Mode: Kinda short, in part because so much of the mass is just
folded up in a massive backpack or stuck to the thighs as awkward armor
panels. The thigh panels fold in a vain attempt to make them less of a
problem, but they simply don't get out of the way enough to be meaningful, nd
the folding actually makes them more in-the-way since the joints they're on
lose most of their range when you do that. It doesn't help that the only
storage for the whips when not in use is on the thigh panels. Anyway, the
upshot is that Jolt looks like he fell onto an entirely different car and
he's still stuck in the wreckage. I'd be tempted to remove some of the
kibble, but the backpack is pinned in place and the hip panels feel like I
might break something if I tried to pop them off.
4.5" (11.5cm) tall at the head, with the backpack kibble rising
significantly above that. Two different shades of blue plastic, although
it's not really obvious in this mode, plus two shades of gray plastic and
some clear smoky plastic (notably on the fronts of the thighs, I guess
they're supposed to be fake rear windows or something?). The upper torso is
blue plastic with lots of fake engine detailing, pretty much everything else
blue is part of the vehicle shell (shoulders, backpack parts, forearms, hip
panels, feet). Smoky clear plastic is used for most of the backpack, plus
the fronts of the thighs and a bit in the front of the pelvis. (They put a
lot of thought into aesthetics of the non-shell parts, but then zero into
dealing with the shell!) Slightly metallic medium gray plastic is used for
the upper arms, hands, whips, non-clear parts of the pelvis. Darker gray
plastic is used for the head, abdomen, non-clear parts of the thighs, the
knees, and the wheels (which are cleverly folded under the soles of the feet
in one case, and not-cleverly stuck no the hip panels in the other).
Plenty of silver paint on the face, torso, forearms, thighs, and ankles.
Some fake vehicle shell bits around the upper "calves" (the legs are
digitigrade, so they're really more like the heels) are painted goss blue, as
are the eyes, some "hair," and some bits of the backpack. While mostly
hidden in this mode, the wheel hubs are painted silver.
Articulation is...ugh. I mean, it has the usual complement of joints,
but so much kibble getting in the way. Ball joint neck, technically a swivel
waist (it can barely wiggle), ball joint shoulders, bicep swivels, hinge
elbows, and I guess the thumbs can wiggle a bit in their sockets. Ball joint
hips, hinge knees, swivels above the hinge ankles. The figure is pretty
back-heavy, so you need to use that digitigrade pose (bend knees and ankles)
when you don't have the whips shooting out forwards as counterbalances.
The only 5mm sockets are where the thumbs or whips go. There's a 3mm
socket on the backpack (right behind there the roof part stops at a hinge),
and rectangular slots on the hip panels for storing the whips. The whips are
supposed to be his thumbs lancing out on cables, so you pull the thumbs off
and replace them with whips. The whips themselves are 4.75" (12cm) long with
5mm pegs perpendicular to the ends. They can kindasorta be held as spears in
the three-clawed hands, if you put their storage tabs between the two finger
claws and make sure the thumb is firmly in place.
When the whips are in place, the thumbs that they replace go into slots
on the hip panels, which are the slots used for storing the whips in vehicle
mode. However, the fit isn't great, and it's easy to lose the thumbs
entirely if you try to keep them in their intended locations. 5mm round
sockets would be more secure, but this toy has literally zero of those aside
from the hybrid sockets (round with slot tips) on the hands. If you flip up
the backplate there's some 5mm wide gaps insied the abdomen where you can jam
the thumbs...it's not that strong of a hold, but they're safely inside and
away from accidental brushing.
http://www.dvandom.com/images/JoltThumbStorage.JPG shows the thumbs
stuck into the abdomen.

Transformation: As a very shellmastery toy, transformation is mostly
pretty simple conceptually (the arms folding to make the rear bumper area is
probably the closest it gets to "clever"), but prepare for a LOT of panel
massaging to get all the tabs into the right slots. At least, unlike SOME
Studio Series toys, the panels do all go into the right slots and the result
is fairly solid with no major gaps. Usually. After a while. The down side
of this is that it can be hard to get some of the tabs apart again when
transforming to robot mode. When undoing the back end, one of the tabs was
clearly in the process of snapping off, it had gone past "white stress mark"
and into "starting to crack." It did break off entirely on the second
transformation, but that doesn't seem to have affected stability. Another
tab in the same connection had an edge scraped off partially.
One aesthetic down side of the transformation is that since I had to
focus on all the little tabs, I saw so many sprue marks and flash lines that
should've been polished down or been done cleaner or something. Makes the
toy feel like a knockoff when there's so many light patches where sprues
broke off.

Vehicle Mode: It looks pretty good, although the three different shades
of blue do tend to be more noticeable in this mode (two plastics, one
paint). As near as I can tell, this is a faithful reproduction of the 2011
production model, rather than being based on the 2007 concept (the main
difference is in the back end). But, you say, this is his appearance in the
2009 movie! Yeah, but they already knew what the production model would look
like, and had teased mock-ups as early as 2008. Anyway, one thing that makes
it stand out visually is that the windshield just keeps going back all the
way to the spoiler, for a futuristic dome appearance (there's still posts and
stuff inside, it's not a pure glass roof). While the window plastic is smoky
on the toy, under bright enough light you can see Jolt's head in the back
seat, as if he's riding along inside himself. There's patterning in the
roof, but while it looks kind of like an Autobot symbol at first glance, it
isn't one.
At 4.75" (12cm) long, it's about 1:37 or 1:38 scale. Predominantly blue
with smoky clear windows, dark gray tires, and a fair amount of silver trim.
The front bumper, sides, and rear bumper are a glossy medium blue plastic.
The hood, part of each front fender, and most of each rear fender are a more
matte medium blue plastic. The bubble roof and windows are smoky clear
plastic, and the wheels are dark gray plastic. There's medium gloss blue
paint (darker than the plastic) on the borders between roof and windows, and
almost black matte paint on the lower borders of the windows and the boundary
between the front and rear side windows. The headlights are painted metallic
very light blue. The grille, molded Chevy logos (front and back), side
mirrors, and wheel hubs are painted silver. Much of the top half of the back
is painted gloss black, and there's garnet paint on the taillights. The
license plate location on back is left blank.
The whips store via slots on the lower edges of the doors (same place
the thumbs are supposed to store in robot mode), but the tabs are a lot more
secure than the ones from the thumbs. It does make it look like Jolt is
kitted out as some sort of bumper racer RC car, though. No other useful
connection points accessible in this mode. The wheels roll okay.

On Tuesday, November 23, 2021 at 3:48:17 PM UTC-7, Dave Van Domelen wrote:

> Gnaw was aggressively hunted by troopbuilder collectors

No idea what you're talking about. Stop making stuff up.

Zob (owns 12 Studio Series Gnaws)