From Newsgroup: alt.toys.transformers

Dave's Transformers Studio Series Rant: Voyager Wave 31

Shockwave (TFtM "spaceship", Bruticus shoulder cannon)

Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Studio/VShockwave2

According to TFWiki this actually has a few pieces from the Siege mold, but it's different enough that I'm going to just review it as a new mold.
(As opposed to the new Cyclonus in wave 32, which is significantly different enough for me to buy, but still has a lot of the original's parts.) It's
done in somewhat darker purple than the usual animation model, although
lighter and brighter than the original Siege version. It's basically in Decepticon Purple.
Shipped with the Skywarp redeco of Thundercracker (wave 30), but as I stated in that toy's review I don't like the mold enough to buy minor head retools for $43 each (similarly I didn't bother to order the Target-
exclusive Starscream). Oh, as long as I'm mentioning Voyagers I didn't get,
I utterly failed to get Target exclusive Hot Rod during the few minutes it
was up for pre-order, but if I ever actually see it on shelves I might get it for the new accessory. And while I did get Cyclonus, I did not pre-order the Age of Extinction rusty Optimus Prime despite it being a brand new mold
because I am tired of movieverse Primes. That's another "maybe if I see it
on the shelf and I'm in a buying mood" toy.
But, enough about toys I didn't get, on to reviewing one that I did
get.


CAPSULE

$42.99 at Hasbro Pulse.

Shockwave: The original mold was Recommended but I said it'd be an
amazing Voyager if you left off the brute mode chunk...back when Voyagers
were $30. Yeah, real monkey's paw here, $7 less and no glider/booster unit. Still, the engineering is still solid, is the QC still up to cashing the
check written by the design? Fortunately, the answer to that seems to be
yes, and the changes were more than just cosmetic. If you already dropped
the money on finishing Age of the Primes Bruticus, this Shockwave can become
a shoulder cannon for it. Recommended.


RANT

Packaging: Standard Studio Series blue-band window box, with the background scenery on the left side being Cybertron's surface with one of the doomed moons visible over the horizon. The 40th Anniversary of the movie
logo is below the horizon above the Transformers logo. The cel on the back
has Shockwave standing next to Soundwave...I mean, he was technically in
TFtM, just not very much. The grayscale background on the box back is the
same as the right side scenery, but zoomed and cropped a bit.


DECEPTICON: SHOCKWAVE
Assortment: G2191 (Thundercracker was G2192)
Altmode: Spaceship
Transformation Difficulty: 26 steps
Previous Name Use: Yes
Previous Mold Use: None
Movie: TFtM
Scene: Status Report, I think.

SHOCKWAVE is a powerful, logic-driven DECEPTICON warrior.

Just a warrior, no mention of his rank. Dissed.

Packaging: Six plastic ties hold the robot onto the inner tray, with the power cord hose unplugged in back (it's still connected to the robot back,
just not to the backpack). The "mini-me" blaster he used in one G1 episode
is held near his right hand by one tie.
The renders on the box back have had their brightness tweaked to better match the light purple of animation (although the cel scene has him even lighter than usual). Interestingly, one of the insets shows the spaceship
mode upside down with the conning tower moved differently to make it a space cannon or even (gasp) a gun. The 26 steps listed on the box are for taking
the extra five steps to get to gun mode, which they show attaching to Bruticus's shoulder (never mind that he's AoP not Studio Series, the dividing line has never been particularly clear).

Reused pieces: Basically, if it has a lot more greebly detail than the rest of the toy, it's probably part of the original Siege mold. The backpack and feet are the most obvious, but old mold bits also include the hose,
hands, thighs, biceps, bridge wings, and the somewhat inobvious and non- greebled shoulder transformation joints. While the hand cannon has a similar shape to the Siege version, it's an entirely new mold, not just tweaked a little.

Robot Mode: The retooled pieces are much smoother, so this does look
quite a bit more like the animation model aside from the big backpack made of the gun barrel (in the cartoon, the barrel just went into trailerspace, but this shares with the Siege original the fact that the barrel can't be removed unless you remove some hinge pins). As mentioned, it's more of a vibrant "Decepticon Purple" than the paler violet seen in most of the animation appearances, but they did keep the yellow optic (which is lightpiped).
A lanky 6.25" (16cm) tall in mostly vibrant purple and light gray, with some clear light purple plastic and very light pinkish violet hand and gun-hand. There's actually two slightly different shades of purple plastic, due to the more flexible plastic used around joints taking color a little differently than the glossy plastic. One of the purples is used for most of the toy, except as noted here: the lightpiping in the head is clear colorless plastic (with yellow clear paint at the eye end), the aperture on top of the backpack and the chest window are clear very light purple plastic, the hand
and gun-hand are very light pinkish purple (which is also used for a strut inside each boot), and light gray plastic is used for the rest of the
backpack shell, the thighs and part of the hips, the knees, the fins on the outer faces of the boots, and the feet. The hose is noticeably darker
flexible plastic, but it's still a shade of purple. Oh, and the strut for
the landing skid on the backpack is also purple.
The "ears" are pained light gray and most of the not-a-face is painted matte dark blue-gray (it MIGHT be blue-gray plastic, but I doubt they'd have
a sprue for just that). The light gray paint is also used on vents on the shins. There's silver paint (I think) on the molded greebles behind the
chest window, and fairly large violet and silver Decepticon symbols on the
tops of both forearms. If you pick your sprues right, this is not a design that needs much paint, although the hand cannon really could've used at least some light gray on the barrel to look more like a mini-Shockwave. (It fits pretty tightly in storage in vehicle mode, so user-applied paint might scrape off.)
The neck is a ball joint with the socket in the collar, the waist is a smooth swivel that has freedom to rotate all the way around. The shoulders
are pinned hinge and swivel joints, plus the transformation hinges for
raising the arms all the way over the head allow a little more useful range
of motion. Bicep swivels, hinge elbows that can bend to 90 degrees, swivel wrists (even on the gun, where it really just lets you rotate the hollow side out of view. Pinned hinge and swivel hips, mid-thigh swivels,
soft-ratcheting hinge knees (15 degrees per click, likely a relic of the original design which had to support all the extra bulk of brute mode). The ankles wiggle a little side to side. Unlike some Shockwave designs, the
"ears" are solidly part of the head, and are not articulated.
The right fist can hold 5mm pegs, while the left gun-hand ends in a 3mm stud. There's 5mm sockets on the undersides of the forearms, but no others
on the arms. The backpack has a 5mm socket on either side and one on the
back that is part of the landing skid. There's technically a 5mm socket on
the back of the waist, but it's surrounded by stuff and hard to use for anything but vehicle mode gun storage. There's a 5mm socket on the outer
face of each boot near mid-height, and on the inner face of each boot closer
to the bottom cuffs. The sole of each foot has a 5mm socket in addition to purely decorative thruster nozzle shapes that are neither 5mm nor 3mm.
There's non-standard round studs and sockets on the outer lower rear corners which are used to lock things in position for the shoulder cannon mode (see below). The power cable hose ends in a 5mm post piece that normally occupies the left forearm 5mm socket in robot mode. I'm pretty sure the other end of the cable is not meant to be removed from the left side of the figure's back, and attempting to do so might break something. The instructions never show
it detached, for what it's worth. There is a 3mm socket on the back of the pelvis below that 5mm socket, and it is similarly blocked by the bits on the butt that act as part of the landing struts in spaceship mode. There is a nonstandard tab on the underside of the chest that gets used to help attach shoulder cannon mode to Bruticus.
Note, the lack of some of the 5mm sockets in this new tooling mean that
if you dig out the old Brute Mode pieces they won't attach properly, but he
can still ride the Goblin Glider mode for those pieces.
While the hand cannon has the same general "mini-me" shape as the Siege version, it's been smoothed out and the grip is a round 5mm peg rather than a 5mm by 2mm tab. 2" (5cm) long and made from a single piece of unpainted
purple plastic that's hollow on the underside, it has the 5mm peg grip near
the back. The barrel ends in a flat octagon rather than a 3mm stud. The "magazine" bit corresponding to the robot chest is flat on the bottom rather than trying to look sloped like the chest, but it helps in storing the gun in altmode. The not-chest is slightly longer than the grip peg, so the gun
can't really be stored well on any of the backpack sockets. Putting it on a side socket pointed up as if it's a backpack antenna works okay, if not attached very firmly. Or, I suppose you could fold up the landing skid in back, firmly seat the gun's grip, then fold it down as far as it'll go.

Transformation: Basically the same as the core robot of the Siege
version, including the little diagonal tabs on the elbows that need to slot into the hollows of the backpack strut to stabilize the front end of the spaceship. https://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Gen/LShockwave for reference.
The power cable can really only fit into the right side of the command tower, other sockets require dangerously flexing and stretching the cable.
The new hand cannon stores using the pelvis 5mm socket and a rectangular socket in the small of the back, which helps lock the waist in position (the conning tower tab can work free a bit too easily if it's the only lock).
Going back to robot mode, getting the legs unshortened is a bit of a hassle. Also, you need to remember to remove the stored hand cannon, as it blends in pretty well but blocks the backpack strut from folding down.

Vehicle Mode: It's a flying gunship, with a command tower that looks suspiciously like an upside down pistol grip that someone added fins and a bridge window to (the window is unpainted, I may add some to it later). The robot face is just visible through a gap between the shoulders, peeking out from inside the hull of the ship. As in robot mode, the unchanged parts
still have lots of extra Siege-style surface detailing, while the new parts
are smooth with a few panel lines. An external cable on a spaceship looks a bit weird, but there really isn't anywhere to hide it. It's very solidly connected, especially if you have the hand cannon stabilizing the waist
joint.
About 8.5" (21cm) long in most of the same colors, although all the
light purple-pink is hidden save for a little bit visible through the clear plastic front end, and the head is hiding. The Decepticon symbols are also hiding, so I guess he's in disguise. (There's enough flat space near the
front of the barrel to put a small Decepticon symbol sticker if you want, although it'd be visible in robot mode and upside-down. Maybe put them on either side of the command tower where the folded down fins would cover them
in robot mode.)
There's 5mm sockets on either side of the command tower, with the right side one reserved for the power cable. The sockets from the outer faces of
the boots are on the sides in back, while the ones on the sides of the
backpack are now on the sides of the barrel. The soles of the feet are now thruster nozzles if you have appropriate Fire Blasts for that, and the 3mm socket on the pelvis back is now on the underside and just as (in)accessible
as in robot mode. The one on the landing skid is now on the top of it and there's no room to put anything in it, and the 5mm socket on the robot back
is used to store the hand cannon. The hand and arm sockets are covered up by the barrel end now.
Yes, it can be held as a gun, although only your index finger and maybe your middle finger will be able to fit around the command bridge after you
fold the fins down.

Cannon Mode: So, the five steps to transform it from ship mode are "fold the tower wings down, separate the boots, fold the conning tower back, snap
the boots shut around some pegs on the tower, stow the landing skid." The
tab that holds the tower in place at its front bottom goes into a slot on Bruticus's right shoulder in back, and the tab on the underside of the robot chest snaps into another slot on the front of the shoulder. Revenge of Bruticus (G1 episode) had Bruticus use Shockwave as a handgun, something Combiner Wars recreated using Core Class Shockwave, but this guy is a bit too big for that so they went with a shoulder mount.
Anyway, same length and colors. The power cable is a bit stretched in this mode, and Bruticus has a relative lack of 5mm sockets on his shoulder,
but you can just sort of stick the plug into one of the gaps on the top of Bruticus's torso and it'll look sufficiently plugged in for display. The fit is snug, and ONLY works on the right shoulder as the left shoulder lacks the relevant sockets.

Overall: The altmodes have a bit of a "don't look too closely at the
part made by the arms" problem, but it's otherwise a good Voyager-sized Shockwave and a lot of work went into de-Sieging is. Siegebreaking?
Whatever. The surprise (to me, anyway) bonus shoulder cannon mode lets Bruticus compete with Liokaiser in the big stick category too. $43 is a bit much, but this is almost worth it.

Dave Van Domelen, got another whackload of Blokees in the mail (well, FedEx) today.

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