Dave's Transformers Kingdom Rant: Titan Class

Autobot Ark (the Ark, no separate robot name)

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

Hey, this one actually mostly showed up in the Netflix cartoon. Well,
the Mainframe figure didn't.

CAPSULE

$160-180 price range, was on shelves for about a day around here. Still
available on Hasbro Pulse for $170 at the time of writing.

Autobot Ark: The main flaws are missed opportunities (and a few panels
that pop off way to easily), but it's a decent design of a brand new Titan,
plus a very clever update of Actionmaster Mainframe. Recommended.

RANT

Packaging: Big Titan size box, in landscape mode on both main sides,
windowless as usual for Titans. 24" (61cm) wide, 14.5" (37cm) tall, 6"
(15cm) thick. The front follows the usual Kingdom pattern of having art of
both modes and the Ark in the background, since the Ark is the altmode. A
bit more lava running over the ship mode. The robot is in a dynamic pose,
holding Megatron (Siege version) in his hand while pterosaurs fly in the
background. There's some rock flying about behind Ark's lead foot that looks
almost like it's a Transformer coming apart. The main art wraps around the
left side, and the right side has the usual "movie poster" art. The art also
wraps around to the top, where Airazor is firing on the Decepticon ship as
Starscream flies around it and Blackarachnia falls out of a hole in the
bottom of the ship. I suppose the art technically wraps a little onto the
bottom, but the bottom is mostly black with a little legalese.
The back shows renders of the Ark in both modes, Mainframe in all three
modes (technically one is just "a chunk of the Ark"), an inset of the exit
ramp in the back of the ship more, and another inset with the other
accessories.
The instructions are the Maximal green used on Maximals and Autobots
alike in Kingdom. They're missing a few accessory points (the "bridge" mode
of Mainframe is really only a callout on the box back, and there's no mention
anywhere of the Fire Blasts), likely a combination of iffy editing and last
minute additions to the toy.

AUTOBOT: AUTOBOT ARK
Assortment: F1152
Altmode: The Ark (Spaceship)
Transformation Difficulty: 26 steps
Previous Name Use: None (Titanium had Autobot Starship Ark)
Previous Mold Use: None

Packaging: Packaged in ship mode, with cardboard spacers. In the small
spacer to the starboard are dark blue versions of the Jetfire Fire Blasts.
Well, in theory. They're loose in there, so the smaller pieces ended up
randomly placed in the box for me. (There's no indication of Fire Blasts on
the box, so probably a last minute addition.) The port side spacer has the
instructions, Fate card, and tiny Optimus. The ship is too wide to fit in
the standard Titan box, so the "wingtips" are held inside the front spacer by
two plastic ties each. Three bit rubber bands keep the ship together.
The golden disks and spy eye are stored inside the Mainframe chunk.
I got the Autobot Ark card (probably not randomized) with the "AUTOBOTS
AWAKEN IN 1984" fate.

Vehicle Mode: Despite the rubber bands, the vehicle comes out of the box
kinda falling apart. In addition to adding on the wingtips, you also need to
fold out the conning tower to complete the vehicle mode. The instructions do
cover these steps, though, as has become normal for "can't package it all the
way in either mode" Transformers.
Anyway, it looks like the Ark. If you don't know what that is, you're
definitely not in the target audience for this rather expensive toy. But if
you're reading this review out of curiosity anyway, it's roughly a triangular
spaceship with rounded bits in the front half and a squared off nose. It has
both a cockpit near the front with windows (and you can see the bridge
inside) and a conning tower near the back because apparently the designer
liked Space Battleship Yamato or something. Four huge thrusters dominate the
back end, and suggest that almost the entire rear half of the ship may be
engines. (The thrusters can kindasorta hold 5mm pegs, but the grip is so
poor that only the shortest of each trio of Fire Blast pieces will reliably
stay in place.) It's covered in small two-barrel turrets that are molded
onto the shell and don't actually turn, which is a shame. Ten on the top
side, six more on the underside...none of which can hold the Fire Blasts
included very well (the narrower ones can be crammed onto the too-thick
barrels).
Okay, time to get out the tape measure. It's 16.5" (42cm) long, 16"
(41cm) wide, and when resting on its landing legs the top of the conning
tower is about 7.75" (19.5cm) off the table. It is almost entirely golden
yellow, although there's two shades of that plastic, with some gray and
metallic black. The thrusters, the panel in the top center, the ramp and the
landing legs are dark gray plastic. The cockpit windows are clear amber
plastic. The nose, conning tower, and a bit of the underside on either side
of the nose are a lighter and slightly more flexible golden yellow plastic
(mostly obvious under UV), and everything else is rigid golden yellow
plastic.
The thrusters are metallic black (super dark gunmetal) with bright blue
airbrushed inside to suggest engine energy. All the turrets are also
metallic black. A faux-airbrushed effect of dark gunmetal is applied along
the leading edge to imply re-entry scorchmarks. A few bits on the front half
are painted metallic blue, and several details on top are canary yellow. Big
Autobot symbols (1.75"/3.5cm) are printed in red on the rear half. The side
edges even with the gray panel in the middle are painted dark gray in a
pretty good match to the plastic. Some tech greeble panels flanking the
front landing leg are painted gloss/metallic black.
Like so many Kingdom toys, it's not really designed for Fire Blasts,
although it does have a few 3mm studs. They're all in the middle band, two
each on the gray-painted parts and one each near the center. They're
well-placed for small explosion squibs, less so for any of the Fire Blast
pieces that come with the toy. As noted above, the thrusters sort of hold
5mm pegs, but poorly, and some of the turret barrels can take a 3mm socket
Fire Blast if you cram it on hard enough.
Pressing a button in back drops a ramp 2" (5cm) wide, and a Micromaster
sized vehicle can drive up it and be stored inside when the ramp is raised.
It's a little too small for most Core Class, though. The only other
"articulation" is the landing legs, which fold down in a tripod arrangement
and are quite stable.

Important note if you want to just open up the cockpit area to get
Mainframe out or put it back in, there's a couple of leading edge panels
(roughly even with the front cockpit window) that WILL snap off unless you
ease them out by a few millimeters, which is all the farther they will go.

Transformation: The instructions show removing Mainframe early in the
process, but you can leave it in without changing things. However, a panel
that folds up in the process blocks the bridge windows, so you can't look
inside the bridge in robot mode.
As noted above, you need to just tilt a couple of panels out to get
things started (an I needed a knife to open them up, as they're very firmly
in place), but expect them to pop off anyway at various points in
transformation...and when going back to vehicle mode you might as well remove
them before you start because they will NOT stay on through the serious
workout required to get all the joints in the right places.
For the most part, though, going back to vehicle mode is fairly
straightforwards, the hard part is just getting everything to line up
properly when so many of the joints are super strong and several others pop
off or fail to hold. The front half becomes torso and arms, the rear half
becomes the legs. You need to rotate the arms a little bit as you swing them
in or out to clear some obstructions, but for the most part going to robot
mode is just tiring. Going back to ship mode I had to spend a LOT of time
wrenching the shoulders into the right places, and then hugging the whole
thing at the end to shove the panels into the right spots. Yeah,
panel-massaging is not a fun thing when the toy is the size of a throw pillow
(but a lot heavier).

Robot Mode: This is the first time the Ark has had its own distinct
robot mode (the TF:Animated Ark was Omega Supreme), although it does owe a
bit to the Last Autobot in #80 of the Marvel comic, in that the head is based
on the Autobot symbol. In the Netflix cartoon, that the Ark has a robot mode
comes as a surprise to basically everyone...it was a bit of an emergent
property rather than the ship having always been a Titan. The thrusters are
on the shins, giving a sort of Blaster's Speakers effect. The head is
positioned between two big collar pieces, and interestingly they molded some
trapezius muscle details onto the neck.
19.5" (49.5cm) tall at the head, with a collar that makes it to 20"
(50.5cm). Not the biggest Titan, but respectable. More gray enters the mix,
as well as silver and black. There's two shades of gray plastic, but they're
pretty similar, mostly different under UV (the slightly lighter gray plastic
glows blue, the other gray doesn't glow at all). The darker gray is used for
the palms of the hands, the outer "sandwich" pieces of the hips, the
thrusters on the shins, the toes, and the ramp pieces which are on the
insteps. It's also used for the backs of the boots, which are made up of two
panels that cleverly fold up during transformation. The blue-glow plastic is
used on the shoulder roots, abdomen front, inner torso core, hip ratchets,
and inner thighs (the outer thighs are golden yellow armor bits). And then
there's the upper arms, which seem to be made of three new gray plastics in
no discernable pattern, so probably not supposed to be different but
different batches aren't quite the same and this was assembled out of
different runs? There's milky white plastic used on the underside of the
pelvis, a locking socket for tabs on the boots for helping hold ship mode
together. The cockpit windows are now on the chest, and that clear yellow
plastic is also used on the head's lightpiping. The lighter yellow plastic
mentioned in ship mode is on the kneecaps and backpack now, everything else
visible is regular golden yellow plastic. (The gray landing legs are on the
inner faces of the boots plus one hidden under the backpack.)
Ship chunks form big shoulderpads, but the "actual" shoulders under that
are painted black with big white Autobot symbols printed on them. Another
bit of newly exposed detail on the shoulders (girder-like) is painted silver,
as are circles on the inner faces of the forearms. The face is gunmetal with
dark gray paint on the forehead and eyebrows (which kinda mutes the whole
"his face is the Autobot symbol" effect), with the chin unpainted. The mouth
slit is metallic blue. There's also some more metallic blue on the tops of
the forearms. Some details on the trapezium bits are painted canary yellow.
No paint on the pelvis, although it also kinda looks like an Autobot symbol
with the middle bit removed. The hip fronts are painted silver, and there's
a little bit of black on the backs of the boots, a bit that's not really
visible in vehicle mode. Oh, and the back of the abdomen is golden yellow
plastic but with gray paint on most of it.
The neck is a smooth swivel, and then it's the march of the super heavy
ratchet joints. Ratcheting waist, ratcheting universal shoulders, ratcheting
biceps swivels, ratcheting elbows, ratcheting wrist swivels, smooth hinges
for thumb and mitten fingers (and yes, there's an add-on kit that has all the
finger and thumb joints), *insanely* stiff hip swivels and hinges (a
Trypticon style hip breakage seems like it might happen in any that aren't
assembled perfectly), ratcheting upper thigh swivel (restricted in range by
the thigh armor), ratcheting hinge knees. The only ankle articulation is a
somewhat loose "stay flat" hinge on the instep, and it can really only
compensate for one outward click of the hip. Titans are not meant to pose
dynamically, although you can get a few poses that aren't just variations on
"standing there" on a flat surface. I will note that the hands can hold
figures reasonably well, although the Megatron on the box art is not to
scale. Core Class Megatron is also about twice as big as the one shown on
the box, but is close enough for display.
The six 3mm studs all end up on the forearms. There's some rectangular
holes on the potbelly that will hold the Fire Blasts and make it look like
belly cannons firing or something. There's no 3mm socket on the pelvis but
it would be HILARIOUS if they'd included one. There's thrusters molded on
the undersides of the toes, but they do not hold 5mm pegs inside. There's
really no other standard connectors, even the screw holes are much bigger
than 5mm.