Dave's Transformers Studio Series Rant: Voyager Wave 15

#83 Soundwave (Cybertronian craft "space crab")

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

This is the only new figure for the wave, it shipped with more of
86-series Hot Rod. This is the Soundwave seen briefly in the Cybertronian
scene of the Bumblebee movie, who didn't transform on-screen. The altmode
may have been inspired by Tom Scioli's design from the trippy GIJoe
vs. Transformers series.

CAPSULE

$27-32 price point.

Soundwave: Other than a couple of questionable aesthetic choices and
some panels that pop off too easily, it's a decent and solid-feeling toy.
Yeah, the altmode is weird and arbitrary, but that's Cybertronian altmodes
for ya. Recommended provisionally...it's kinda tied to how good Core Class
Ravage ends up being.

RANT

Packaging: Same as previous Studio Voyagers, with the Bumblebee movie
logo used.

DECEPTICON: SOUNDWAVE
Assortment: #83
Altmode: "Space Crab"
Transformation Difficulty: 29 steps
Previous Name Use: Yes
Previous Mold Use: None
Movie: Bumblebee
Scene: Cybertron Falls

The fate of CYBERTRON is sealed as SOUNDWAVE orders the DECEPTICONS to
launch a final attack, causing the AUTOBOTS to fall back.

Packaging: Six ties hold the robot to the card back, as plastic blisters
have been phased out. There's a small rubber band around each shoulder to
keep the front and back flaps down. The cardback has the same image as the
reusable backdrop piece. The weapons are held in by cardstock corner bits
(two slits cut and the part in between pushed out to form a loop). There is
still plastic in the box window, but the window is fairly small. (The new
Leader packaging has no window at all, rather than risk people reaching in
and removing accessories.)
The backdrop is the same "under the overpass" Cybertronian nightscape
used in other Cybertronian-form Bumblebee movie figures.

Robot Mode: This is reasonably faithful to the brief look we got at
Soundwave in the Bumblebee movie, but for some reason they decided to go with
Sunbow-style G1 animation white instead of silver or light gray on the
forearms and thighs. (The white parts have too many scraping points for a
full repaint to be feasible, but an ink wash might help.) Also, while the
head is recognizably Soundwave's, it looks like someone started with an
Optimus Prime Bayformer head and modified it until it looks sufficiently
Soundwavey. Other questionable design choices include (but are not limited
to) painting his rifle dark gloss brown, and building lightpiping into the
head but then painting the optics with such a thick layer of crimson paint
that the light can't really get through.
Leaving aside those matters, it incorporates the standard tape door, and
there's hints of the buttons on the pelvis, if mostly reduced to a couple of
red triangles in the printed deco. The shoulder launcher is a bit skinny,
especially since the rest of the figure looks a bit bloated, as if Soundwave
were wearing a padded suit. Maybe it's for Ravage's attack training?
6.75" (17cm) tall and mostly dark blue and bright white, with bits of
red, gold, and silver. The chest door and the rendered-useless lightpiping
are smoky clear plastic. The forearms, thighs, and kneecaps are bright white
plastic. A medium-dark warm gray is used for the door button, neck, inner
shoulders (under foldable flaps), elbows, hands, hips, knees, ankles, and the
shoulder weapon strut. Everything else is dark blue plastic.
Crimson paint is used for the optics visor, a stripe around the shoulder
weapon, stripes on the top 2/3 of each wrist, not-quite-tapedeck-button
triangles on the lower pelvis, and some details on the backs of the calves.
The molded lines on the inside of the chest door are also painted crimson.
The outer boundary of the chest door is pale gold, as are the equals shapes
on either side of it, and some tall hexagon shapes on the shins (those suffer
from a bit of paint slop). Gunmetal paint is in the greebly details of the
pelvis front, the elbow end of each forearm, and some details on the sides of
the helmet. The faceplate itself is mostly silver, with an oblong slot in
the middle that appears to be painted a gloss dark blue that doesn't quite
match the plastic. The outer ring of the muzzle front of the shoulder weapon
is also painted silver. The red triangles on the lower pelvis are part of
printed bits that are otherwise white swooshes. There's a very pale violet
Decepticon symbol in the center of the chest window.
The neck is a ball joint with a reasonable amount of up and down range,
the waist is a swivel where the pelvis connects to the belt (the armor skirt
in front of the pelvis is hinged to rise up out of the way, since it doesn't
turn with the lower body). The shoulders are a bit involved, since not only
is there a core universal joint on each, but the actual shoulderpads are
independently swiveled. If you lift an arm forwards by gripping the forearm,
the front of the shoulderpad will open up. You need to turn it by the
shoulder itself to keep the shoulderpad lined up. There's swivels above the
biceps, and the elbows are double hinges but the bulky forearms keep them
from bending too much more than 90 degrees. No wrist joints, although the
hands can wiggle up and down a bit on the transformation hinges. Universal
joint hips, upper thigh swivels, double hinge knees that like the elbows
don't actually bend that far due to bulk of the boots. The ankles are dual
hinges (side to side and forwards-backwards) with a LOT of range due to how
the feet have to move for the transformation.
The hands can hold 5mm pegs, but they're the partly open type so
non-cylindrical pegs might not hold well. There's 5mm sockets on the
undersides of each forearm, and two on the back (one for the shoulder weapon,
one for storing the rifle). There's no sockets on the soles of the feet,
other than a non-standard rectangular one for transformation. There's a 3mm
socket in the back of the pelvis.
The biggest "socket" is the chest compartment for the upcoming (and
technically already on shelves in some places as I type this) Core Class
Ravage. My first reaction on opening up the chest compartment was, "Man,
Studio Core Class is gonna be tiny!" since there's not a lot of space there
for even a folded up "transport block" Ravage to go. Pushing the button on
top of the torso makes the front pop open, but you can also lift up the back
panel to put something in from behind if you wish. The interior is 32mm
wide, 25mm tall, and 24mm deep, although the door bulges out a bit so a
figure thicker than 24mm could fit inside.
As for the accessories, the lack of symmetry bugs me. Yeah, the rifle
mold is screen-accurate, but he really needed two of the same sort of weapon,
one for shoulder mounting and one as a rifle (it really hurts the altmode to
break the symmetry there). I am not, however, dropping thirty bucks on
another copy of the toy just to get a second cannon. For extra insult,
whatever paint they were going for on the rifle, they missed and hit "very
dark brown," making it look like he dropped his rifle in a mud pit and
didn't bother to clean it after. They were probably shooting for the dark
gray used on the hands and joints, but they missed badly. Oddly, the rifle
and the dark gray plastic look about the same under UV light...both look
brown, so not an improvement. The brown paint is also pretty thick,
smoothing out details of the mold...I might soak it in Simple Green for a bit
and repaint it.
The movie-accurate-shape rifle is a shade over 3" (7.5cm) long, painted
as noted. The grip near the back end is a standard 5mm peg, and the muzzle
opening is a little bit narrower than 3mm (the thick paint is a problem
here). Obviously, no Fire Blasts will work in it, although the blast effect
from the Masters of the Universe Revelations Andra figure might work. The
outer diameter of the barrel is enough over 5mm that it can't be blamed on
paint, so no clubbed rifle for Soundwave.
The shoulder cannon is one of those "inspired by" deals, being longer
and skinnier (as well as pinched in the middle like a bone) than the classic
cylinder. It has a clever folding strut with two different 5mm pegs, so it
can either connect to the socket in the figure's back as a shoulder cannon or
be held as a rifle with the strut folded in to reveal a different peg. The
main barrel is a little under 3" (7.5cm) long and made of dark blue plastic,
while the folding strut is medium-dark gray plastic. Annoyingly, it has a
central muzzle aperture that's 4mm in diameter, so no plug-in Fire Blasts
there either. Also, as the instructions indicate that the piece needed to
make it look like Soundwave's G1 rifle comes with Core Class Ravage, that
means that the tip piece uses a 4mm peg and will be incompatible with most
other Transformers.

Transformation: On the one hand, I didn't need the instructions despite
the somewhat arbitrary-looking vehicle mode. The various tabs and slots made
it reasonably clear where things needed to go, although it took me a bit to
figure out how the shoulders unfolded to cover the face (and the panels kept
popping off, they're easy to accidentally hyperextend). About half the total
time was spent making small adjustments in an attempt to get all the tabs
into slots at the same time, though, as it's another case of Hasbro's
designers assuming that they were working to Lego tolerances. Still, on my
second try I had a solid enough idea where things needed to be that I got the
joints massaged into place and the result was solid. It's one of those cases
where you can't get things mostly together and then adjust, you need to do
some of the "some force may be required" adjustments done along the way.
If you have trouble opening up the forearms to stow the hands, the
forearm 5mm sockets are on the panels that open, just put the gun into it as
a lever.

On Wednesday, February 9, 2022 at 3:40:41 PM UTC-5, Dave Van Domelen wrote:
> Dave's Transformers Studio Series Rant: Voyager Wave 15
>
> #83 Soundwave (Cybertronian craft "space crab")
>
> Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Studio/VSoundwave
>
> This is the only new figure for the wave, it shipped with more of
> 86-series Hot Rod. This is the Soundwave seen briefly in the Cybertronian
> scene of the Bumblebee movie, who didn't transform on-screen. The altmode
> may have been inspired by Tom Scioli's design from the trippy GIJoe
> vs. Transformers series.
>
>
> CAPSULE
>
> $27-32 price point.
>
> Soundwave: Other than a couple of questionable aesthetic choices and
> some panels that pop off too easily, it's a decent and solid-feeling toy.
> Yeah, the altmode is weird and arbitrary, but that's Cybertronian altmodes
> for ya. Recommended provisionally...it's kinda tied to how good Core Class
> Ravage ends up being.
>
>
> RANT
>
> Packaging: Same as previous Studio Voyagers, with the Bumblebee movie
> logo used.
>
>
> DECEPTICON: SOUNDWAVE
> Assortment: #83
> Altmode: "Space Crab"
> Transformation Difficulty: 29 steps
> Previous Name Use: Yes
> Previous Mold Use: None
> Movie: Bumblebee
> Scene: Cybertron Falls
>
> The fate of CYBERTRON is sealed as SOUNDWAVE orders the DECEPTICONS to
> launch a final attack, causing the AUTOBOTS to fall back.
>
> Packaging: Six ties hold the robot to the card back, as plastic blisters
> have been phased out. There's a small rubber band around each shoulder to
> keep the front and back flaps down. The cardback has the same image as the
> reusable backdrop piece. The weapons are held in by cardstock corner bits
> (two slits cut and the part in between pushed out to form a loop). There is
> still plastic in the box window, but the window is fairly small. (The new
> Leader packaging has no window at all, rather than risk people reaching in
> and removing accessories.)
> The backdrop is the same "under the overpass" Cybertronian nightscape
> used in other Cybertronian-form Bumblebee movie figures.
>
> Robot Mode: This is reasonably faithful to the brief look we got at
> Soundwave in the Bumblebee movie, but for some reason they decided to go with
> Sunbow-style G1 animation white instead of silver or light gray on the
> forearms and thighs. (The white parts have too many scraping points for a
> full repaint to be feasible, but an ink wash might help.) Also, while the
> head is recognizably Soundwave's, it looks like someone started with an
> Optimus Prime Bayformer head and modified it until it looks sufficiently
> Soundwavey. Other questionable design choices include (but are not limited
> to) painting his rifle dark gloss brown, and building lightpiping into the
> head but then painting the optics with such a thick layer of crimson paint
> that the light can't really get through.
> Leaving aside those matters, it incorporates the standard tape door, and
> there's hints of the buttons on the pelvis, if mostly reduced to a couple of
> red triangles in the printed deco. The shoulder launcher is a bit skinny,
> especially since the rest of the figure looks a bit bloated, as if Soundwave
> were wearing a padded suit. Maybe it's for Ravage's attack training?
> 6.75" (17cm) tall and mostly dark blue and bright white, with bits of
> red, gold, and silver. The chest door and the rendered-useless lightpiping
> are smoky clear plastic. The forearms, thighs, and kneecaps are bright white
> plastic. A medium-dark warm gray is used for the door button, neck, inner
> shoulders (under foldable flaps), elbows, hands, hips, knees, ankles, and the
> shoulder weapon strut. Everything else is dark blue plastic.
> Crimson paint is used for the optics visor, a stripe around the shoulder
> weapon, stripes on the top 2/3 of each wrist, not-quite-tapedeck-button
> triangles on the lower pelvis, and some details on the backs of the calves.
> The molded lines on the inside of the chest door are also painted crimson..
> The outer boundary of the chest door is pale gold, as are the equals shapes
> on either side of it, and some tall hexagon shapes on the shins (those suffer
> from a bit of paint slop). Gunmetal paint is in the greebly details of the
> pelvis front, the elbow end of each forearm, and some details on the sides of
> the helmet. The faceplate itself is mostly silver, with an oblong slot in
> the middle that appears to be painted a gloss dark blue that doesn't quite
> match the plastic. The outer ring of the muzzle front of the shoulder weapon
> is also painted silver. The red triangles on the lower pelvis are part of
> printed bits that are otherwise white swooshes. There's a very pale violet
> Decepticon symbol in the center of the chest window.
> The neck is a ball joint with a reasonable amount of up and down range,
> the waist is a swivel where the pelvis connects to the belt (the armor skirt
> in front of the pelvis is hinged to rise up out of the way, since it doesn't
> turn with the lower body). The shoulders are a bit involved, since not only
> is there a core universal joint on each, but the actual shoulderpads are
> independently swiveled. If you lift an arm forwards by gripping the forearm,
> the front of the shoulderpad will open up. You need to turn it by the
> shoulder itself to keep the shoulderpad lined up. There's swivels above the
> biceps, and the elbows are double hinges but the bulky forearms keep them
> from bending too much more than 90 degrees. No wrist joints, although the
> hands can wiggle up and down a bit on the transformation hinges. Universal
> joint hips, upper thigh swivels, double hinge knees that like the elbows
> don't actually bend that far due to bulk of the boots. The ankles are dual
> hinges (side to side and forwards-backwards) with a LOT of range due to how
> the feet have to move for the transformation.
> The hands can hold 5mm pegs, but they're the partly open type so
> non-cylindrical pegs might not hold well. There's 5mm sockets on the
> undersides of each forearm, and two on the back (one for the shoulder weapon,
> one for storing the rifle). There's no sockets on the soles of the feet,
> other than a non-standard rectangular one for transformation. There's a 3mm
> socket in the back of the pelvis.
> The biggest "socket" is the chest compartment for the upcoming (and
> technically already on shelves in some places as I type this) Core Class
> Ravage. My first reaction on opening up the chest compartment was, "Man,
> Studio Core Class is gonna be tiny!" since there's not a lot of space there
> for even a folded up "transport block" Ravage to go. Pushing the button on
> top of the torso makes the front pop open, but you can also lift up the back
> panel to put something in from behind if you wish. The interior is 32mm
> wide, 25mm tall, and 24mm deep, although the door bulges out a bit so a
> figure thicker than 24mm could fit inside.
> As for the accessories, the lack of symmetry bugs me. Yeah, the rifle
> mold is screen-accurate, but he really needed two of the same sort of weapon,
> one for shoulder mounting and one as a rifle (it really hurts the altmode to
> break the symmetry there). I am not, however, dropping thirty bucks on
> another copy of the toy just to get a second cannon. For extra insult,
> whatever paint they were going for on the rifle, they missed and hit "very
> dark brown," making it look like he dropped his rifle in a mud pit and
> didn't bother to clean it after. They were probably shooting for the dark
> gray used on the hands and joints, but they missed badly. Oddly, the rifle
> and the dark gray plastic look about the same under UV light...both look
> brown, so not an improvement. The brown paint is also pretty thick,
> smoothing out details of the mold...I might soak it in Simple Green for a bit
> and repaint it.
> The movie-accurate-shape rifle is a shade over 3" (7.5cm) long, painted
> as noted. The grip near the back end is a standard 5mm peg, and the muzzle
> opening is a little bit narrower than 3mm (the thick paint is a problem
> here). Obviously, no Fire Blasts will work in it, although the blast effect
> from the Masters of the Universe Revelations Andra figure might work. The
> outer diameter of the barrel is enough over 5mm that it can't be blamed on
> paint, so no clubbed rifle for Soundwave.
> The shoulder cannon is one of those "inspired by" deals, being longer
> and skinnier (as well as pinched in the middle like a bone) than the classic
> cylinder. It has a clever folding strut with two different 5mm pegs, so it
> can either connect to the socket in the figure's back as a shoulder cannon or
> be held as a rifle with the strut folded in to reveal a different peg. The
> main barrel is a little under 3" (7.5cm) long and made of dark blue plastic,
> while the folding strut is medium-dark gray plastic. Annoyingly, it has a
> central muzzle aperture that's 4mm in diameter, so no plug-in Fire Blasts
> there either. Also, as the instructions indicate that the piece needed to
> make it look like Soundwave's G1 rifle comes with Core Class Ravage, that
> means that the tip piece uses a 4mm peg and will be incompatible with most
> other Transformers.
>
> Transformation: On the one hand, I didn't need the instructions despite
> the somewhat arbitrary-looking vehicle mode. The various tabs and slots made
> it reasonably clear where things needed to go, although it took me a bit to
> figure out how the shoulders unfolded to cover the face (and the panels kept
> popping off, they're easy to accidentally hyperextend). About half the total
> time was spent making small adjustments in an attempt to get all the tabs
> into slots at the same time, though, as it's another case of Hasbro's
> designers assuming that they were working to Lego tolerances. Still, on my
> second try I had a solid enough idea where things needed to be that I got the
> joints massaged into place and the result was solid. It's one of those cases
> where you can't get things mostly together and then adjust, you need to do
> some of the "some force may be required" adjustments done along the way.
> If you have trouble opening up the forearms to stow the hands, the
> forearm 5mm sockets are on the panels that open, just put the gun into it as
> a lever.
>
> Vehicle Mode: Most of the "Sunbow white" is hidden in this mode, at
> least. It's odd that, given how arbitrary the altmode appears to be, they
> still had to use a fake chest for the cockpit area. The overall effect is a
> sort of oversized hovercar deal with the robot kneepads evoking small crab
> claws in front. It also looks kind of like something Lego's Big Daddy
> ("Space Pimp") would drive when his limo's in the shop. It was *probably*
> inspired by the Cybertronian altmode Soundwave had in Tom Scioli's
> Transformers vs. GIJoe, and it's more of a flying slab than the Siege
> spaceship mode. Not quite flat, the front end is angled downward on either
> side so that the underside in front is level with the robot chest supporting
> it in back. The fake chest also raises up the chest window a bit so that it
> looks more like a cockpit front than just a skylight. The molded details
> inside the cockpit are just random tech greebles, although a couple of bits
> look like turntable tonearms (albeit with no turntables).
> 5" (12.5cm) long and 4.25" (11cm) without counting the weapons mounted
> on the sides, 5.5" (13.5cm) wide if you do count the weapons. It's mostly
> dark blue, with the kneecap claws being the most obvious white, and the
> forearms tucked under the feet. The fake chest is two pieces sealed
> together, I think the top part is all smoky clear plastic with a very good
> paint match on the non-window parts of it. The bottom as well as the butt-
> cover slab are dark blue plastic, and the hinges are the slightly lighter
> dark blue plastic. The only other newly visible plastic is from pieces
> hidden inside the boots that have snapped together to form a sort of false
> pelvis between the robot thighs. Just as the shoulders unwrapped to cover
> the head, the boots unwrapped to cover the pasty white thighs.
> There's more of the bits that look like gloss dark blue paint over dark
> blue plastic. Some greebles on the thigh-covering panels look painted, and
> the center of a keyhole design on the butt-cover might also have been painted
> blue before the gold edges were added. The cockpit has the same design as
> the real chest, but now all the lines are gold instead of a mix of red and
> gold (the shape is also slightly different, and there's no Decepticon symbol
> there...I guess he's in disguise in this mode). The red bits from the calves
> are visible on top of the thigh-cover "hood" of the vehicle.
> The forearm sockets are meant for holding the rifle and missile
> launcher, but there's no other connection points, not even a place for a
> flight stand on the bottom. The screw holes on the boots are 5mm in diameter
> and facing upwards, two on each side are deep enough to hold weapons. The
> chest opening button is still accessible, and can be operated to drop Ravage
> onto hapless Autobots below.
>
> Overall: The white parts are an aesthetic problem, and the tendency for
> the snap-on hinges to snap off is a practical problem. As "arbitrary chunk"
> Cybertronian altmodes go, it's okay, and certainly no worse than Siege
> Soundwave's. Too bad it's a toy that's sold separately, in that it's not
> really complete until you get another toy. On the other hand, it's probably
> the best actual toy of Soundwave from the Studio Series line, in terms of
> (mostly) holding together and feeling solid and actually looking *something*
> like Soundwave instead of being a trademark placeholder character.
>
>
> Dave Van Domelen, needs to make more room in the Soundwave District on
> the main display table....

Codigo Postal <codigopostal959@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wednesday, February 9, 2022 at 3:40:41 PM UTC-5, Dave Van Domelen wrote:
>> Dave's Transformers Studio Series Rant: Voyager Wave 15
>>
>> #83 Soundwave (Cybertronian craft "space crab")
>>
>> Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Studio/VSoundwave
>>
>> This is the only new figure for the wave, it shipped with more of
>> 86-series Hot Rod. This is the Soundwave seen briefly in the Cybertronian
>> scene of the Bumblebee movie, who didn't transform on-screen. The altmode
>> may have been inspired by Tom Scioli's design from the trippy GIJoe
>> vs. Transformers series.
>>
>>
>> CAPSULE
>>
>> $27-32 price point.
>>
>> Soundwave: Other than a couple of questionable aesthetic choices and
>> some panels that pop off too easily, it's a decent and solid-feeling toy.
>> Yeah, the altmode is weird and arbitrary, but that's Cybertronian altmodes
>> for ya. Recommended provisionally...it's kinda tied to how good Core Class
>> Ravage ends up being.
>>
>>
>> RANT
>>
>> Packaging: Same as previous Studio Voyagers, with the Bumblebee movie
>> logo used.
>>
>>
>> DECEPTICON: SOUNDWAVE
>> Assortment: #83
>> Altmode: "Space Crab"
>> Transformation Difficulty: 29 steps
>> Previous Name Use: Yes
>> Previous Mold Use: None
>> Movie: Bumblebee
>> Scene: Cybertron Falls
>>
>> The fate of CYBERTRON is sealed as SOUNDWAVE orders the DECEPTICONS to
>> launch a final attack, causing the AUTOBOTS to fall back.
>>
>> Packaging: Six ties hold the robot to the card back, as plastic blisters
>> have been phased out. There's a small rubber band around each shoulder to
>> keep the front and back flaps down. The cardback has the same image as the
>> reusable backdrop piece. The weapons are held in by cardstock corner bits
>> (two slits cut and the part in between pushed out to form a loop). There is
>> still plastic in the box window, but the window is fairly small. (The new
>> Leader packaging has no window at all, rather than risk people reaching in
>> and removing accessories.)
>> The backdrop is the same "under the overpass" Cybertronian nightscape
>> used in other Cybertronian-form Bumblebee movie figures.
>>
>> Robot Mode: This is reasonably faithful to the brief look we got at
>> Soundwave in the Bumblebee movie, but for some reason they decided to go with
>> Sunbow-style G1 animation white instead of silver or light gray on the
>> forearms and thighs. (The white parts have too many scraping points for a
>> full repaint to be feasible, but an ink wash might help.) Also, while the
>> head is recognizably Soundwave's, it looks like someone started with an
>> Optimus Prime Bayformer head and modified it until it looks sufficiently
>> Soundwavey. Other questionable design choices include (but are not limited
>> to) painting his rifle dark gloss brown, and building lightpiping into the
>> head but then painting the optics with such a thick layer of crimson paint
>> that the light can't really get through.
>> Leaving aside those matters, it incorporates the standard tape door, and
>> there's hints of the buttons on the pelvis, if mostly reduced to a couple of
>> red triangles in the printed deco. The shoulder launcher is a bit skinny,
>> especially since the rest of the figure looks a bit bloated, as if Soundwave
>> were wearing a padded suit. Maybe it's for Ravage's attack training?
>> 6.75" (17cm) tall and mostly dark blue and bright white, with bits of
>> red, gold, and silver. The chest door and the rendered-useless lightpiping
>> are smoky clear plastic. The forearms, thighs, and kneecaps are bright white
>> plastic. A medium-dark warm gray is used for the door button, neck, inner
>> shoulders (under foldable flaps), elbows, hands, hips, knees, ankles, and the
>> shoulder weapon strut. Everything else is dark blue plastic.
>> Crimson paint is used for the optics visor, a stripe around the shoulder
>> weapon, stripes on the top 2/3 of each wrist, not-quite-tapedeck-button
>> triangles on the lower pelvis, and some details on the backs of the calves.
>> The molded lines on the inside of the chest door are also painted crimson.
>> The outer boundary of the chest door is pale gold, as are the equals shapes
>> on either side of it, and some tall hexagon shapes on the shins (those suffer
>> from a bit of paint slop). Gunmetal paint is in the greebly details of the
>> pelvis front, the elbow end of each forearm, and some details on the sides of
>> the helmet. The faceplate itself is mostly silver, with an oblong slot in
>> the middle that appears to be painted a gloss dark blue that doesn't quite
>> match the plastic. The outer ring of the muzzle front of the shoulder weapon
>> is also painted silver. The red triangles on the lower pelvis are part of
>> printed bits that are otherwise white swooshes. There's a very pale violet
>> Decepticon symbol in the center of the chest window.
>> The neck is a ball joint with a reasonable amount of up and down range,
>> the waist is a swivel where the pelvis connects to the belt (the armor skirt
>> in front of the pelvis is hinged to rise up out of the way, since it doesn't
>> turn with the lower body). The shoulders are a bit involved, since not only
>> is there a core universal joint on each, but the actual shoulderpads are
>> independently swiveled. If you lift an arm forwards by gripping the forearm,
>> the front of the shoulderpad will open up. You need to turn it by the
>> shoulder itself to keep the shoulderpad lined up. There's swivels above the
>> biceps, and the elbows are double hinges but the bulky forearms keep them
>> from bending too much more than 90 degrees. No wrist joints, although the
>> hands can wiggle up and down a bit on the transformation hinges. Universal
>> joint hips, upper thigh swivels, double hinge knees that like the elbows
>> don't actually bend that far due to bulk of the boots. The ankles are dual
>> hinges (side to side and forwards-backwards) with a LOT of range due to how
>> the feet have to move for the transformation.
>> The hands can hold 5mm pegs, but they're the partly open type so
>> non-cylindrical pegs might not hold well. There's 5mm sockets on the
>> undersides of each forearm, and two on the back (one for the shoulder weapon,
>> one for storing the rifle). There's no sockets on the soles of the feet,
>> other than a non-standard rectangular one for transformation. There's a 3mm
>> socket in the back of the pelvis.
>> The biggest "socket" is the chest compartment for the upcoming (and
>> technically already on shelves in some places as I type this) Core Class
>> Ravage. My first reaction on opening up the chest compartment was, "Man,
>> Studio Core Class is gonna be tiny!" since there's not a lot of space there
>> for even a folded up "transport block" Ravage to go. Pushing the button on
>> top of the torso makes the front pop open, but you can also lift up the back
>> panel to put something in from behind if you wish. The interior is 32mm
>> wide, 25mm tall, and 24mm deep, although the door bulges out a bit so a
>> figure thicker than 24mm could fit inside.
>> As for the accessories, the lack of symmetry bugs me. Yeah, the rifle
>> mold is screen-accurate, but he really needed two of the same sort of weapon,
>> one for shoulder mounting and one as a rifle (it really hurts the altmode to
>> break the symmetry there). I am not, however, dropping thirty bucks on
>> another copy of the toy just to get a second cannon. For extra insult,
>> whatever paint they were going for on the rifle, they missed and hit "very
>> dark brown," making it look like he dropped his rifle in a mud pit and
>> didn't bother to clean it after. They were probably shooting for the dark
>> gray used on the hands and joints, but they missed badly. Oddly, the rifle
>> and the dark gray plastic look about the same under UV light...both look
>> brown, so not an improvement. The brown paint is also pretty thick,
>> smoothing out details of the mold...I might soak it in Simple Green for a bit
>> and repaint it.
>> The movie-accurate-shape rifle is a shade over 3" (7.5cm) long, painted
>> as noted. The grip near the back end is a standard 5mm peg, and the muzzle
>> opening is a little bit narrower than 3mm (the thick paint is a problem
>> here). Obviously, no Fire Blasts will work in it, although the blast effect
>> from the Masters of the Universe Revelations Andra figure might work. The
>> outer diameter of the barrel is enough over 5mm that it can't be blamed on
>> paint, so no clubbed rifle for Soundwave.
>> The shoulder cannon is one of those "inspired by" deals, being longer
>> and skinnier (as well as pinched in the middle like a bone) than the classic
>> cylinder. It has a clever folding strut with two different 5mm pegs, so it
>> can either connect to the socket in the figure's back as a shoulder cannon or
>> be held as a rifle with the strut folded in to reveal a different peg. The
>> main barrel is a little under 3" (7.5cm) long and made of dark blue plastic,
>> while the folding strut is medium-dark gray plastic. Annoyingly, it has a
>> central muzzle aperture that's 4mm in diameter, so no plug-in Fire Blasts
>> there either. Also, as the instructions indicate that the piece needed to
>> make it look like Soundwave's G1 rifle comes with Core Class Ravage, that
>> means that the tip piece uses a 4mm peg and will be incompatible with most
>> other Transformers.
>>
>> Transformation: On the one hand, I didn't need the instructions despite
>> the somewhat arbitrary-looking vehicle mode. The various tabs and slots made
>> it reasonably clear where things needed to go, although it took me a bit to
>> figure out how the shoulders unfolded to cover the face (and the panels kept
>> popping off, they're easy to accidentally hyperextend). About half the total
>> time was spent making small adjustments in an attempt to get all the tabs
>> into slots at the same time, though, as it's another case of Hasbro's
>> designers assuming that they were working to Lego tolerances. Still, on my
>> second try I had a solid enough idea where things needed to be that I got the
>> joints massaged into place and the result was solid. It's one of those cases
>> where you can't get things mostly together and then adjust, you need to do
>> some of the "some force may be required" adjustments done along the way.
>> If you have trouble opening up the forearms to stow the hands, the
>> forearm 5mm sockets are on the panels that open, just put the gun into it as
>> a lever.
>>
>> Vehicle Mode: Most of the "Sunbow white" is hidden in this mode, at
>> least. It's odd that, given how arbitrary the altmode appears to be, they
>> still had to use a fake chest for the cockpit area. The overall effect is a
>> sort of oversized hovercar deal with the robot kneepads evoking small crab
>> claws in front. It also looks kind of like something Lego's Big Daddy
>> ("Space Pimp") would drive when his limo's in the shop. It was *probably*
>> inspired by the Cybertronian altmode Soundwave had in Tom Scioli's
>> Transformers vs. GIJoe, and it's more of a flying slab than the Siege
>> spaceship mode. Not quite flat, the front end is angled downward on either
>> side so that the underside in front is level with the robot chest supporting
>> it in back. The fake chest also raises up the chest window a bit so that it
>> looks more like a cockpit front than just a skylight. The molded details
>> inside the cockpit are just random tech greebles, although a couple of bits
>> look like turntable tonearms (albeit with no turntables).
>> 5" (12.5cm) long and 4.25" (11cm) without counting the weapons mounted
>> on the sides, 5.5" (13.5cm) wide if you do count the weapons. It's mostly
>> dark blue, with the kneecap claws being the most obvious white, and the
>> forearms tucked under the feet. The fake chest is two pieces sealed
>> together, I think the top part is all smoky clear plastic with a very good
>> paint match on the non-window parts of it. The bottom as well as the butt-
>> cover slab are dark blue plastic, and the hinges are the slightly lighter
>> dark blue plastic. The only other newly visible plastic is from pieces
>> hidden inside the boots that have snapped together to form a sort of false
>> pelvis between the robot thighs. Just as the shoulders unwrapped to cover
>> the head, the boots unwrapped to cover the pasty white thighs.
>> There's more of the bits that look like gloss dark blue paint over dark
>> blue plastic. Some greebles on the thigh-covering panels look painted, and
>> the center of a keyhole design on the butt-cover might also have been painted
>> blue before the gold edges were added. The cockpit has the same design as
>> the real chest, but now all the lines are gold instead of a mix of red and
>> gold (the shape is also slightly different, and there's no Decepticon symbol
>> there...I guess he's in disguise in this mode). The red bits from the calves
>> are visible on top of the thigh-cover "hood" of the vehicle.
>> The forearm sockets are meant for holding the rifle and missile
>> launcher, but there's no other connection points, not even a place for a
>> flight stand on the bottom. The screw holes on the boots are 5mm in diameter
>> and facing upwards, two on each side are deep enough to hold weapons. The
>> chest opening button is still accessible, and can be operated to drop Ravage
>> onto hapless Autobots below.
>>
>> Overall: The white parts are an aesthetic problem, and the tendency for
>> the snap-on hinges to snap off is a practical problem. As "arbitrary chunk"
>> Cybertronian altmodes go, it's okay, and certainly no worse than Siege
>> Soundwave's. Too bad it's a toy that's sold separately, in that it's not
>> really complete until you get another toy. On the other hand, it's probably
>> the best actual toy of Soundwave from the Studio Series line, in terms of
>> (mostly) holding together and feeling solid and actually looking *something*
>> like Soundwave instead of being a trademark placeholder character.
>>
>>
>> Dave Van Domelen, needs to make more room in the Soundwave District on
>> the main display table....
>
> I may be alone, but I love this figure, and I've got no attachment to the
> Bumblebee movie, which was a highly overrated and hugely derivative 80s
> cosplay masquerading as a fresh take on the franchise.