Dave's Transformers Legacy Rant: Core Class Wave 1

Skywarp (Kingdom Starscream redeco with new weapon)
Hot Rod (repackage of Kingdom version)
Iguanus (lizardy motorcycle)

Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Legacy/Core1

https://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Gen/CoreK2 - Starscream review
https://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Gen/CoreK4 - Hot Rod review

Rather than just append the new bio note thing to the Kingdom review,
I'll put the info into this review, along with packaging comments. Near as I
can tell (yes, I bought one), the Legacy version of the toy is the same as
the Kingdom version.

CAPSULES

$11.48 each at Walmart, although Target has been selling Studio Core
Class for $8.49 so it might be worth waiting for Target to get 'em.

Skywarp: Original mold was strongly recommended, but the excessively
thick paint on this one causes some issues. The new weapon isn't very good,
and even fails at its main job of being part of a combined weapon.
Recommended.

Hot Rod: Kingdom version was at the upper end of mildly recommended.
This one is the same toy in new (albeit more informative) packaging, so if
you didn't get Kingdom's version, it's mildly recommended.

Iguanus: Good robot mode that is a nice update to the character's
Pretender shell, interesting transformation, stupid scooter altmode. Still,
recommended.

RANT

There's a sort of unifying gimmick for this wave, in that all of their
weapons combine into a bigger sword, as seen in the card art for both
versions of Hot Rod. No Energon weapons, though, that seems to be reserved
for the larger Legacy toys.

Packaging: Studio Series Core was the first to go with the minimal
plastic packaging, and these follow suit, with the only plastic being the
"sock ties" that hold the figures to the backing cards and the reinforcement
of the peg-hanger hooks. The windows are relatively small jagged
sorta-rectangles about 2" (5cm) wide and slightly less than that tall.
There's no plastic over the windows, and I've seen reports of the weapons
being stolen out of the boxes by people with sufficiently slender fingers.
Fortunately, you can look in and see if the weapons are still there before
buying. Unfortunately, that doesn't help you if the weapons are gone from
the only ones in the store.
Like Studio Series Core, these are otherwise simple rectangular solid
boxes (4.25"/10.5cm tall) with taller back cards (7.5"/19cm tall) for
hang-tabs, they don't go with any of the weird shapes of larger Legacy
boxes. They're 3.75" (9.5cm) wide and 1.5" (3.5cm) deep.
The trade dress of purple, blue, and white ("silver") is retained. The
front side has vehicle mode art on the top tab part of the package, in the
same "vaguely kinda not-a-render" filter as Bulkhead had, the Legacy logo on
the top of the box part and the buttom of the front. A green tag with white
letters and faction symbol is below the logo on the box front. The top half
of the front is mostly the window, and the usual sideways Transformers logo
runs along the right edge of the front. The right side of the box (as it is
facing you) has a movie poster-ish group shot of the relevant faction. Hot
Rod has the same five as Bulkhead did, while Iguanus and Skywarp have their
own faces in the middle, Megatron's face looking left at the top, Drag Strip
below him, and Kickback's insect head at the bottom next to half of
Cybertron. The two side panels fit together into a single image of Optimus
and Megatron glaring at each other with a complete Cybertron at the bottom.
If you carefully cut off the flaps of two of the boxes you get a 4.25" tall
and 3.25" (8cm) wide card (the art extends onto the tabs by about a
centimeter, but for the Autobot side that's extra overlap) that will not
actually fit in any card holder, but I guess you can try putting it in a
cheap small picture frame. The left side of the box has art of robot mode,
somewhat restricted by the depth of the box. The top third of the back has
renders of both modes and the number of transformation steps, the rest is
legalese.
The inner trays are corrugated cardboard with top flaps folded forwards
and side flaps folded backwards to let them fit snugly in the box, and holes
cut through to allow for backpacks and heel spurs and the like as needed.
Because of space restrictions, there's no QR codes on the outside of the
package, so they moved the codes to the instruction sheets, which are in the
same colors as Bulkhead's. Oddly, Iguanus's instructions are folded over one
more time than the other two, as if the plan was to put them along the bottom
of a plastic blister. All three sets of instructions show how to assemble
the unnamed big sword, and show it held by the character whose instructions
it is.

DECEPTICON: SKYWARP
Assortment: F3011
Altmode: Jet
Transformation Difficulty: 17 steps (!!)
Previous Name Use: Yes
Previous Mold Use: Gen:K
Function: Warrior
Special Unit: Seeker
Origin Universe: G1
Signature Weapon: Energon Warp Fork - Infuses teleportation ability with
Energon to unleash unstable energy.

STR 8 INT 6 SPD 4 FRB 7

Skywarp may not be too bright, but his teleportation ability makes him a
dangerous enemy.

Dude, INT 6 isn't stupid. And SPD 4 is hard to reconcile with being
both a jet and teleporting. It's not like they're being slavishly G1 here
either, his SPD was 10 in G1, 9 if you assume the Seeker techspecs were
swapped around (in which case his INT was 4). However, given that Iguanus
has the exact same numbers and those match G1 Iguanus, it looks like Skywarp
is being extra Geewunny and having his numbers grabbed from elsewhere
*again*. So, to go with "corrected G1," Skywarp should be:

STR 7 INT 4 SPD 9 FRP 7

Packaging: Two plastic ties on the robot mode, one around the Warp
Spork, it's difficult but not impossible to remove without cutting the tie.

Color Swaps: All the plastic is black.

Paint Apps: In robot mode, silver on the face, the shoulder scoops, and
the torso sides. Warm violet paint is slathered on the forearms, fists,
feet, and the horizontal tail pieces that are on the sides of the boots. The
violet paint is so thick that it interferes with some of transformation, it's
hard to rotate the tail pieces, and the forearm pegs are too thick now to
easily go into their slots on the wings. The fake cockpit windows on the
chest are painted golden yellow (maybe a touch towards apricot), and the eyes
are red.
In jet mode, the real cockpit is painted the same way as the fake one,
and the tops of the wings are printed with a purple stripe set back from the
leading edge, and Decepticon symbols in the rondel positions.

Mold Changes: He loses the shoulder cannonws and gets the Warp Fork,
which is a single piece of black plastic with thick red gloss paint on the
two "tines". The short central shaft has 3mm rods emerging from 5mm pegs, so
it can in theory be held by both kinds of fist. A mere 27mm long, it's
really just there to be the basket hilt of the combined sword. It also has a
3mm peg sticking out the side so that it can be attached under the nose of
the jet mode.

Other Notes: Dunno if we'll get a Thundercracker out of this mold, it
seems kinda inevitable. They really needed to ease back on the paint
thickness, it definitely hurt what was otherwise a really good mold.

AUTOBOT: AUTOBOT HOT ROD (just "HOT ROD" online)
Assortment: F3012
Altmode: Racecar
Transformation Difficulty: 8 steps
Previous Name Use: Gen:TR, Gen:K (G1 if you leave off the "Autobot")
Previous Mold Use: Gen:K
Function: Cavalier
Special Unit: None
Origin Universe: G1
Signature Weapon: Energon Sword - Infused with Energon to penetrate any
substance

STR 10 INT 10 SPD 9 FRB 10

Headstrong and impulsive, Hot Rod tends to live life in the fast lanes.

The gave him Rodimus Prime's numbers. Hot Rod pre-Priming should be STR
6, INT 5, SPD 6, FRB 7.

Packaging: Two ties hold the robot to the card, and some twisting and
turning is required to get the backpack out through the hole. The knees are
snapped together. Two more ties hold the sword in the lower right, but the
sword can be worked out without cutting them. The packaging is kinda
reusable if you slide the sword in and out of its ties and take advantage of
the backpack lock effect.
The art on the left side of the box is the art from the Kingdom card
front, but fed through the same filter as other Legacy art. The front of the
tab shows car mode with the combined sword weapon on top of the spoiler,
firing an energy blast from the tip.

Near as I can tell, the toy is identical except for batch stamping. The
Kingdom version has #F5679 on the bottom of the right boot, while the Legacy
version has #F3012 in that location. The new one is also floppy.

DECEPTICON: IGUANUS
Assortment: F3014 (so, we're missing F3013?)
Altmode: Motor Bike
Transformation Difficulty: 15 steps
Previous Name Use: G1, BW
Previous Mold Use: None
Function: Terror Trooper
Special Unit: Pretender
Origin Universe: G1
Signature Weapon: Hurricane Air Blaster - Launches blasts of pressurized
air that cause disorientation

Dave Van Domelen <dvandom@eyrie.org> wrote:

> The result is VERY stable. Like, shockingly stable for a Hasbro
> product. Especially next to its wavemates. Too bad it's also, well...
> stupid.
>
>
> Overall: Decent robot mode, interesting transformation, vehicle mode is
> stupid but somewhat amusingly so.

I don’t disagree, I just like him a lot more than you do. (And you like him
way more than Zob does)

He’s stable and he rolls nice. And he’s a lizard-cycle.

On Wednesday, April 27, 2022 at 8:46:51 PM UTC-6, Dave Van Domelen wrote:

> Other than the tail being
> the wrong color (it was painted gray in G1, it's left unpainted purple here)

Minor pitpick: it wasn't painted grey; it was rubbery grey plastic, made of the same stuff as his belt (and probably gang-molded with Bugly's antennas and Finback's head).

Zob (G1 Iguanus is hard to find on eBay unless you deliberately misspell his name)

In article <a2fdaca6-ce42-41ce-ba51-4c2c45bd8302n@googlegroups.com>,
Zobovor <zmfts@aol.com> wrote:
>On Wednesday, April 27, 2022 at 8:46:51 PM UTC-6, Dave Van Domelen wrote:
>
>> Other than the tail being
>> the wrong color (it was painted gray in G1, it's left unpainted purple here)
>
>Minor pitpick: it wasn't painted grey; it was rubbery grey plastic, made
>of the same stuff as his belt (and probably gang-molded with Bugly's
>antennas and Finback's head).

Ah, never had one, I was going off pictures. I'll amend the review.

Dave Van Domelen, working on Deluxe wave 1 now.