For those who are actually collecting these, there's a new batch of three action figures that have just been unveiled:

https://preorder.super7store.com/collections/transformers-ultimates-wave-4-figures

Soundwave is the only new mold in the wave. He is a very nice-looking sculpt, and comes with a tape player version of himself, a Laserbeak tape, a 1984 toy inspired head and... get this... a José Delbo inspired Marvel Comics head. With the Batman ears and the mouth. The whole shebang. It's arguably one of the silliest things about Soundwave, so OF COURSE Super7 jumped all over that idea. It's not the first time ever that this has been celebrated (I did a PVC figure of Marvel Comics Soundwave some years ago) but it's definitely the first officially licensed version of him.

The images show his lower legs as being entirely blue, though. What, did they crib from the R.E.D. figure as a reference? Why do they keep getting this wrong?

Also in the wave is Starscream, non-ghost edition, rendered in opaque plastic but otherwise appearing to be the same toy. He comes with some different goodies (a gun-mode Megatron, a claw hand as seen in "Cosmic Rust," his sniper rifle he was going to use on the commando raiding party in "The Core") but is otherwise unchanged. Still has the oversized head.

Finally we have a dead version of Optimus Prime, rendered entirely in shades of grey. This version does look like the chest opens, which means they were already thinking about this with the wave one version, but deliberately chose not to include it. Like the similar Hasbro toy we got, the robot head exhibits damage, but unlike the Hasbro version, he's got his battle damage from the movie, especially to the left abdomen. This still isn't to scale with anything else that exists, sadly, because it would otherwise make a cool piece of a diorama.

I get that this is basically the cost-cutting wave, which is fine, but I'm still a little disappointed that we didn't get more new sculpts this time around.

Something that I was thinking that they should have done is include, with every Ultimates toy, a tiny figure of a human character from the G1 cartoon or comics. Prime came with Spike, yes, but imagine the appeal if they had included mini-figures with every release. Masterpiece has come out with a smattering of characters at various scales, and the tiny 1.75" figures of Spike, Daniel, Marissa, etc. scale pretty well with a G1 toy collection. But imagine if we could be collecting these and also be getting tiny versions of Dr. Arkeville, Astoria Carlton-Ritz, Shawn Berger, Dirk Manus, etc.

Zob (they ship in summer 2023... supposedly)

I originally had zero interest in these because of the price, but as mainline prices have crept up, Super7's prices are looking less and less unreasonable, especially since I don't think we'll get an accurate G2 Megatron anytime soon, or a Bludgeon (though I'd be happy to eat my words).

On Saturday, June 11, 2022 at 8:56:41 AM UTC-6, Codigo Postal wrote:

> I originally had zero interest in these because of the price, but as mainline prices have crept up, Super7's prices are looking less and less unreasonable, especially since I don't think we'll get an accurate G2 Megatron anytime soon, or a Bludgeon (though I'd be happy to eat my words).

Somebody on Reddit said something the other day like, "At fifty bucks a pop, who is collecting these?" but that's the price we're paying for Leader-class toys, and even more for third party. Yes, Super7's prices are absurd, but so are everybody else's.

Zob (is accustomed to thinking in fifty-dollar increments thanks to the NECA Ninja Turtles 2-packs)