On Saturday, September 3, 2022 at 12:31:31 PM UTC-5, Zobovor wrote:
> I heard that Big Bad Toy Store had these guys in stock—not just as a pre-sale, but to actually ship!—so I ordered them a few days ago. Still haven't seen them in stores anywhere yet.
>
> Now that Studio Series has been expanded into Core class toys, it's giving Hasbro an opportunity to give us both tiny characters (I see the potential for a lot of cassettes in the future!) as well as miniaturized versions of characters that will scale with the existing pint-sized Core-class toys we've been getting with Kingdom and Legacy.
>

There have already been preview pics for the Studio Rumble back in mid August, and I already have him on preorder. Don't have my Core Ratchet yet though.
We're gong to have a Soundwave and Rumble in the same size class that might be out of scale.

> AUTOBOT RATCHET
>
> It seems odd that we've got a tiny Ratchet and yet Hasbro recently announced a Voyager-class Ironhide. But, it seems incredibly likely that they will eventually swap roles, and that we'll eventually get a remolded Core-class Ironhide and the Voyager-class toy will get a remold as Ratchet.
>
> So, Tiny Ratchet is about 3.25" in height as a robot. He's made entirely of white plastic, as far as I can tell, with select parts being painted red (fists, pelvis) or light blue (windshield) or silver (robot face) or grey (crest on helmet; vehicle tires). And, for being such a small toy, he's shockingly good. Like, I wouldn't completely hate it if they just blew up this design to a Deluxe-sized toy. It's not perfect, but no version of Ironhide/Ratchet really ever has been, up to and including the Masterpiece releases.. He's got his correct windshield chest, he's got a good head sculpt... it's a really solid effort.
>
> His shoulders have a red-colored Star of Life, with the Autobot insignia inside each one instead of the more commonly-seen rod of Asclepius (the snake-on-a-stick). The American Red Cross gets awfully cross these days when their trademarked emblem is used without permission.
>
> His articulation is also surprisingly good. His tiny little head can swivel, he's got rotating shoulders and a ball-and-socket bicep and bending elbows, he's got a mid-body swivel (a little higher than the pelvis, and required for transformation), and ball-and-socket hips and knees (the knees are somewhat limited by the kibble on his lower legs). The only thing I would describe as objectively bad is that his toes are very short, and he's got obvious wheels that are only partially hidden behind the panels on his lower legs. But, honestly he doesn't look bad at all.
>
> He comes with two pistols, mainly to reenact the scene from The Transformers: the Movie when he starts firing away at the Decepticons boarding his ill-fated shuttle. (Some fans have also suggested that the "real" reason we got a Core-class Ratchet was to be able to reenact the cel-layering error from "Masquerade" when a Ratchet in the background was placed in the foreground, making him look half the size of Ironhide.)
>
> The transformation is a bit more involved than I would have initially suspected. The front windshield opens up so you can tuck away the robot head, and lower body spins around to reveal the vehicle front bumper. The arms swing back and end up tucked inside the back of the van, which is formed by the lower legs. This is basically exactly how cartoon Ratchet transformed, after they ditched the idea of the separate M.A.R.B. unit and invented an integrated robot-to-van transformation that had nothing to do with his G1 toy.. The legs have a swing-open panel, like the Siege and Earthrise versions, but the panel also includes the front wheels to complete the van mode.
>
> In ambulance mode, he's about 2.75" in length, even smaller than G1 First Aid, and roughly the same size as Tonka GoBots Rest-Q. He's very white, with a blue-painted front window and driver/passenger side windows, but none of the other five windows. No emergency symbols. He's got red-painted roof lights, but that's it. His guns are designed to plug into square-shaped holes on either side of the ambulance mode. His wheels are painted dark grey, so I would worry about paint wear if I gave this toy to a child.
>
> He's honestly such a cute little toy. He would be compatible with any of the G1 city-bots like Metroplex, Fortress Maximus, etc. and would scale well with any of the modern Titan-class toys as well. He could use a touch more color, especially in vehicle mode, but we'll let that slide.
>
> AUTOBOT WHEELIE
>
> The much-maligned non-transformable Wheelie figure that came with Studio Series Slag was kind of awful. I mean, yeah, it was screen-accurate, but his legs were stuck in a Dreamwave-style perma-squat, so you couldn't stand him up properly. There were a number of third-party kits to replace his legs with fully articulated ones—or even to replace the figure entirely with one that could actually transform into something.
>

Was the one with SS Slag different from Grimlock? I got the Wheelie with Grimlock.

> This version succeeds in some ways and fails badly in other ways. You can tell that an effort was made, but there's a lot that could have been improved upon.
>
> For starters, the robot mode is pretty amazing. The G1 toy was highly oversimplified, was a single shade of orange, and had the robot head stuck in the center of the chest, with a silly little canopy-flap revealing the face.. This version is two-tone, with both light and dark orange colors, plus the grey boots and silver fists, and a proper robot head with a cute little helmet design that kind of resembles a child's baseball cap. They even found a way to give him the square-shaped wheel wells on his arms in robot mode, which quite impossibly (in the cartoon) turn into the rounded wheels in vehicle mode.
>
> Articulation is good—ball joints everywhere, for the head and shoulders and elbows and hips and knees. The elbows don't look great when they're bent fully, because there's a big and obvious gap. This version removes the additional problems on the non-transforming figure, which had arms permanently positioned into an "Imma firin' mah slingshot" pose. The obvious hollow nature of the legs on the on-transforming figure has also been corrected here.
>
> He comes with his little energy slingshot, the weapon he actually carried in Transformers: the Movie, and it's a separate accessory, rather than being molded to the inside of his arm, as has been done with some previous versions of Wheelie. It's like a little tiny PKE meter that I'm probably going to lose as soon as I'm done writing this.
>

The previous nontransforming Wheelie has almost lost his slingshot to the cats multiple times.

> The transformation does leave a bit to be desired. Amusingly, the robot face does still end up hiding behind the vehicle cockpit (which on this toy is on the robot's back; it flips open to hide the robot head and then closes again). The front wheels are tucked behind the robot lower legs, so the lower legs clip together to form the front, with the toes becoming the hood. The rear wheels are on the insides of the robot forearms, so they rotate and become the back of the car. The slingshot can store in the undercarriage..
>
> And then you're left with this... almost-car mode. Like, when I first saw pictures of it, I couldn't tell which was the back end and which was the front. It just looks incomplete. The obvious robot fists poking out of the back aren't great. I mean, there was probably nothing they could do. The wheels are mounted to the forearms, so there's no room to make the fists tuck away, unless they gave him fake wheels that didn't roll. But maybe a hinge on the inside of the wrists so the hands could at least tuck towards each other? Something else would have been good.
>
> Also, the front of the car mode just doesn't great. There are a lot of parts that come together (the robot pelvis, the robot lower legs, the robot toes) but nothing really meshes together or forms a cohesive shape. The robot toes should have been made much larger so that they could form a solid-looking vehicle hood. As it stands, he just looks like he's missing a big piece. He's 2.75" from end to end.
>
> I know that Wheelie's cartoon transformation is basically impossible, and it's super hard to employ some of the usual cheats (like faux parts) at such a tiny scale. But, if the problem was a non-transforming Wheelie figure, and the solution was Hasbro going "okay, sorry, we'll do one that can turn into a car this time" then this doesn't seem like they really found the answer. There should have been more focus on getting the vehicle mode right this time. But, I mean, I guess there's still G1 Wheelie for that.
>
> I mean, he looks good from some angles. The top-down view is fine. The front-view is fine. The side view, though, is just awful.
>
> I will say that this one is substantially better than the Titans Return Wheelie, which was just a mess of parts that didn't lock together right. That toy would never stay in vehicle mode for more than a few seconds, and it fell apart as soon as you started casually handling it. So, there's that.
>

From what I've seen, I'm sticking with the TR Wheelie over the Studio. I know it's not perfect but at least it does have both modes rather than a robot and an almost car.

> I think a partial third-party replacement with bigger feet might solve the problems with this toy. Larger feet that form a bigger, more solid front bumper would do the trick. Maybe replacement forearms while we're at it, so the fists can tuck away somehow (even just folding them towards each other, under the rear bumper, would be better than nothing).
>
> I want to cut Hasbro a lot of slack here, because I know there were probably a lot of limitations due to scale and budget. But, ugh. The car mode is just so ugly. It's really aesthetically terrible.
>
>
> Zob (whoever gave final approval on this toy needs to take a long, hard look in the mirror and ask themselves about their life choices)