Dave's Transformers Earthspark Rant - Deluxe wave 2

Optimus Prime (semitractor)
Shockwave (Cyberverse Deluxe redeco)

Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/ES/Deluxe2

Of course, Mandroid's torso comes in wave 3, so just more stuff to toss
in the ziplock for now. And note, Shockwave comes with a spare arm (the left
arm that gets replaced on-screen in season 1), so if you want to skip the
redeco you can still make Mandroid.

https://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Cyberverse/Deluxe1 - Shockwave

CAPSULES

$20 price point.

Optimus Prime: Decent design with insufficient testing of fit for
vehicle mode. An interesting if undocumented means of storing the weapons in
robot mode, and documented in vehicle mode. Recommended with caveats that
quality control may be rough.

Shockwave: Original mold was recommended. Of course, it's not even a
little show-accurate for Earthspark, which is disappointing here...but not as
bad as reusing the Warrior Starscream mold from Cyberverse. It's a good
redeco, at least, although it loses the Fire Blast in favor of the Mandroid
limb. Low end of recommended.

RANTS

Packaging: Same as wave 1 Deluxes.

AUTOBOT: OPTIMUS PRIME
Assortment: F6735
Altmode: Semitractor
Transformation Difficulty: 19 steps
Previous Name Use: Yes
Previous Mold Use: None
GHOST Affiliated: Yes
Mandroid Part: Left Leg

Packaging: Three twisted-end strings hold the robot to the inner tray.
Wrapped up in the little "footlocker" under the robot feet behind the inner
tray are the rifle and axe, plus Mandroid's leg, wrapped and taped in
Autobot-print tissue.

Robot Mode: Okay, for good or ill it's pretty on-model, other than the
kibble (forearm panels, large backpack) and having the chest windows in matte
black rather than blue. The battle mask is up, so the face isn't quite as
disturbingly WRONG as it could be. One weird thing they did was use
extensive silver paint but *also* do the cel animation "light gray for
silver" thing in some place
5.25" (13cm) tall and in the usual Optimus Prime colors other than those
black chest windows. Silvery light gray plastic is used for the biceps,
fists, pelvis back half, thighs, and ankle struts. Black plastic is used for
the rifle, the front of the pelvis, and the wheels. The head, axe, shins,
and feet are blue plastic. Everything else is red plastic.
There's silver on the faceplate, cheek vents, forehead vent, shoulder
smokestacks, abdomen front (some of that should've been left red), and the
pelvis front piece is completely coated in silver. The axe blades and eyes
are bright blue. The shin vents are not silver, oddly, they're light gloss
gray. The GHOST Autobot symbols are printed on the shoulder fronts. The
fake headlight details on the belt are yellow, as are the tiny roof lights on
the top of the torso.
The neck is a ball joint and I think it might have some mold flash
inside, it's really stiff and jumpy but less so than when I started messing
with it. The waist joint is basically locked down by vehicle mode kibble.
The shoulders are ball joints on the ends of struts, there's swivels between
shoulderpad and upper arm, hinge elbows, and ball joint wrists that can bend
in for storage. Ball joint hips, upper thigh swivels, hinge knees, and
ankles that are struts hinged forwards-backwards at the top and able to
wiggle side to side at the bottom.
The fists can hold 5mm pegs, and there's a 3mm socket in the back of the
pelvis. There's also 5mm sockets inside the boots, which don't seem to serve
much purpose unless you want to stick the rifle behind one leg and lock down
the knee joint. There are also non-standard U-shaped connectors discussed
below in Undocumented Features.
The rifle is 2" (5cm) long, a single piece of black plastic in a vague
semblance of the G1 rifle. The stock has vent details on either side that
are painted bright blue. The main grip is a 5mm peg, and there's a tab under
the stock that's used for vehicle mode storage. The muzzle is 5mm in
diameter, so it can accept some Fire Blasts. The arms do not have enough
range to fake a two-handed grip.
The axe is a double-bitted labrys style axe, not completely symmetric as
the handle has some detailing that indicates a front blade and back blade.
The blades themselves are painted bright blue to indicate that they're energy
blades.

Undocumented features: the axe can store on the small of the back, with
the U-shaped bit on the axe center slotting into a complementary sideways U
on the back. There's a tab on the side of the rifle that can also go into
that U, and then put the axe's U onto a bit on the other side of the rifle.
http://www.dvandom.com/images/ESPrimeWeapons.JPG
Also undocumented but kinda stupid is that you can put the axe handle
into the gun barrel for an axe-shooting gun, I guess?

Transformation: Mostly intuitive, although I had to be careful rotating
the front end around because the swivel is very stiff and the strut is not
pinned so I ended up removing the piece entirely the first time I tried to
move it. One bit I did have to look up in the instructions was how to store
the rifle, because it stores vertically and the little L-tabs on the inner
faces of the knees don't actually go into any of the recesses of the rifle,
they just brace it.
The stiff neck joint made it hard to get the head into the right
position for storage inside the chest (it has to turn all the way around, but
didn't want to stay pointed that way due to flash inside the joint or
something, until I cranked it around a bit). And if the head isn't aligned
just right, getting it back out for the return to robot mode is very
difficult. Speaking of which, the tab on the collar area is supposed to go
into a slot on the roof, but I can't get it to reliably go in, so the roof
stays popped up a little. I suspect a misalignment issue, with something
being mis-molded by a tenth of a millimeter so that the tab that's supposed
to seat firmly in the socket instead makes it pop out. After a bunch of
Dremeling, I at least got it to where it won't POP out, but it doesn't sit
firmly either. In other words, probably another one of those "it worked in
the computer, don't bother testing it in realspace" design elements.
Going back to robot mode, the only hard part was getting the pelvis
snapped back together without removing a leg by mistake instead.

Vehicle Mode: Sorta stable. Without the gun, the back end is very
floppy, while the gun at least limits the range of knee bending. The sides
of the cab are a bit weird, because they had to make a lot of compromises for
transformation and there's triangular gaps between the shoulders and the rest
of the cab, plus only most of each side window is painted because a little of
it is on other pieces. Also, the whole mix of silver and animation style
light gray as silver thing really falls apart on the front bumper. If they
couldn't paint the light gray plastic of the center of the bumper, they
shouldn't have painted the sides silver, they should've gone with the gray.
4.75" (12cm) long, mostly red in the front and blue in back with bits of
gray, black, and silver. The grille and the middle of the bumper are a piece
of silvery light gray plastic and the snap-in wheels are black plastic, but
the rest of the cab is red plastic. The back end is mostly the shins,
therefore blue. The front windows and most of each side window is painted
matte black. There's silver on the corners of the bumper and some pipes
above each front fender, but the "I guess it's the fuel tanks" details on
either side are painted light gray. The headlights are bright blue Everything else is clear from robot
mode, and the shoulder fronts now face outwards to the sides while the
smokestacks poke up in back.
Rolls so-so and it can be hard to keep all six wheels on the same
plane. The only connector in this mode is the barrel of the rifle accessible
on the underside, close enough to the center of mass to work okay as a flight
stand.

Overall: Other than the usual minor color issues and the "becoming more
usual than I'd like" issues of apparently skipping real world testing of the
fit of things, it's a decent Optimus Prime.

DECEPTICON: SHOCKWAVE
Assortment: F6736
Altmode: Crab Walker
Transformation Difficulty: 20 steps
Previous Name Use: Yes
Previous Mold Use: Cyberverse
GHOST Affiliated: No
Mandroid Part: Robot left arm

Packaging: Three twisted-end rattan strings hold the robot (with cannon
on left arm and power cable connected) into the tray, with the altmode fang
bits folded up rather than down against the back. Rolled up in Autobot-
symbol tissue paper in the footlocker area of the inner tray are the rifle
and the Mandroid arm. There is no Fire Blast for this version.

Color Swaps: Except for the altmode fore-feet on the forearms, all the
purple is changed to a cooler and slightly grayer "G1 Soundwave" purple
plastic. All the light gray becomes a slightly bluer shade of light gray,
and this is also used for the fore-feet. The power cable is now clear
blue-gray.

Paint Apps: Oddly, the neon paint details on the shoulders and forearms
are still present, but as dark gray paint. Dark gray is also used for the
pelvis front and some stripes on the arm cannon, although not the same
stripes that were painted on the original (in between those). The face is
matte black with a yellow eye, and the chest as well as the side vents under
the chest are bright yellow. The center grille under the chest is matte
black. Some of the abdomen front is painted silver, and the barrel (mostly
the underside but also the tip) of the arm cannon is silver. All of the
vent-like details on the sides of the forearms and boots are also painted
silver. Details on the sides of the rifle are in a cooler magenta than the
neon used on the original. A small purple and white Decepticon symbol is
printed on the raised bit in the center of the chest.

Mold Changes: None that I could find.

Other Notes: Other than the yellow chest, this is basically a G1 cartoon
color scheme at first glance. The neon lines are still painted, just in a
subdued way.

Overall: While the design aesthetic of EarthSpark does borrow somewhat
from Cyberverse, I'm a bit disappointed that they're sprinkling Cyberverse
redecos into this line rather than making toys based on the cartoon
appearance. Especially for the Deluxes, which are kinda supposed to be the
higher end toys in the line. That said, it's a decent execution of the
Cyberverse design, and in less eye-searing colors.