From Newsgroup: alt.toys.transformers

Dave's Transformers Cyberworld Rant: Cyber Changers wave 1

Dinobot Snarl (stegosaur, Jungle Zone)
Megatron (bull, Jungle Zone)
Optimus Prime (semitractor, City Zone)
Sky-Byte (shark with wheels, Water Zone)

Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/CW/Changer1

Originally, I was only going to get Sky-Byte, but since I wasn't sure
I'd see it on shelves I ordered it on Amazon, and tossed in Optimus and Galvatron (Armored Cyber Changer) along with something else I needed to get free shipping. Then I saw the cartoon and kinda liked Snarl's aesthetic, so
I grabbed it when I did see it on the shelf (but no Megatron yet). And when
I saw Megatron I figured I might as well finish the wave. Still not getting Armored Cyber Changer Bumblebee, though.

CAPSULES

$10 price point (which would be about $5 in 1996 money, making these theoretically comparable to Beast Wars Basics).

Dinobot Snarl: Interesting visual take on the character, did a pretty
good job within the hideously tight restrictions of a $10 toy in today's economy. Pretty much a benchmark for the line...if a toy is at least as good as Snarl, it's worth the ten bucks. Mildly recommended.

Megatron: Hey, they did something different with the character, and the minotaur motif works reasonably well despite the screwy axe-sword weapon.
Not quite as good as Snarl, but in the same general vicinity. Mildly recommended.

Optimus Prime: Yeah, this is not as good as Snarl. Not even close. It does some moderately interesting things in transformation, but the altmode is just bad. Neutral.

Sky-Byte: Best of breed, and not just because it's a RiD01 deep cut reference. Solid altmode that doesn't have weird proportioning or serious robot kibble, and a robot mode that's decent. A pity that the cartoon character doesn't do poetry this time. Low end of recommended.


RANTS

Premise: In what I'm guessing was a period of relative peace (since Bumblebee was willing to team up with Megatron at first), a bunch of Cybertronians got dumped onto a battleworld and made to play various games against each other, forming alliances not necessarily based on the old
Autobot and Decepticon divide. Arrivals are staggered, and Optimus and Bumblebee are newcomers (at one point, Elita-1 notes that she'd given up and assumed Optimus was gone for good, so she's been there a while). The world
is broken up into Mario-style zones, with everyone having an affinity for one of them (for instance, the Dinobots are Jungle "natives"). So far we have Jungle (where Optimus and Bumblebee land), Desert (where Scorponok blocks access to a possible way off the world), Water (which so far has just been rivers and lakes, not a full on Water Level), and City (where Megatron has
his seat of power, aka Cybertropolis IIRC). At the time of episode 5,
Megatron seems to have amassed the most powerful faction, although not enough to beat Scorponok, and Sky-Byte appears to be his main enforcer. Elita-1 had
a crew, but it's implied Sky-Byte killed them (they're getting toys, so
either he let them live or there's gonna be flashbacks).
The whole thing makes me think of Lord of the Flies, except that when
the adult (Optimus Prime) arrives, the kids keep attacking him.

Common Elements: They seem to be going with a bit of an Action Master
vibe by having the larger figures be at least partly playset-ish and making everyone else about the same size (a little over 4", or 10-11cm). No one
gets elbows, but there's some spring-and-gear automorphing involved in transformation. Regardless of whether they come with a weapon that can go there, they all have at least one 5mm socket on top in their altmode for mounting upgrades. (While there's been no indication of this happening yet, many have suggested that upgrade packs would be a fitting addition to the
line, possibly as a blindpack thing. Failing that, you can always just take 5mm peg weapons from other Transformers to use as upgrades.) There's pretty aggressive hollowness, such as an arm being cast as a single piece so you
have things like hollows on the backs of the fists in addition to the inner faces of the forearms and upper arms. If you made a complete set of gap- fillers for any of these, you'd probably double the weight of the toy if not more.
I'd still tend to call Beast Wars Basics a better value for the money,
but compared to the last batch of Core Class it's trading more size for less complexity.

Packaging: Open cards like the One-Step Changers use (folded card with a sort of short topless box around the bottom, figure strapped to the card),
with plenty of potential for missing parts thanks to ball joints and the
like. I guess they did the calculations and figured that the cost of
accepting damaged returns would be less than the cost of sealed packaging.
The trade dress isn't a lot different from Authentics at first glance, mostly white with red, the upper left cartouche bit with the transformation steps
(and "QUICK CHANGE" instead of "2 in 1"), and the Cyberworld logo along the bottom of the shelf-box bit in shades of blue atop a red stripe flanked by light gray stripes. The lower right has art of the altmode, while the right third of the cardback has a vertical slice of art of robot mode. The figure name is in the upper right, with "CYBER CHANGERS" right below it, one of the more prominent displays of class I've seen. The left end of the nametag has
a hexagon with the character's preferred zone icon.
The zone icons so far are:
Jungle - Some dark blue silhouette palm trees against a light green mountain with a lighter green sky.
City - Dark blue city skyline with a medium blue road leading into it, a second layer of skyline behind it in medium blue, and very light blue sky.
Water - Dark blue and medium blue wave breaking as it goes to the left, white foam at the crest, light blue sky.
Desert - Dark blue mountains in the background with a light yellow Sun setting between them, a dark blue and light brown rock formation to the left
of a winding light yellow path that leads into the sunset, some dark blue
rocks here and there, light brown sky.

The card backs have renders of the toy in both modes fairly small across the top quarter or so, with a background of their preferred environment
(jungle clearing, elevated roadway, beach, desert with sandstorm blowing). Below it is a limited cosell, showing two other characters (three on the Armored Cyber Changers) in their zones...not always correctly (Sky-Byte's swapps Megatron and Optimus Prime). The bottom half is legalese. The right side of the box bit has the logo and nameplate with Cyber Changers indicated but without zone icon, the right side has the Autobot or Decepticon symbol
and Cyber Changers...they really want to make sure everyone knows that these are not Core Class, eh? The underside has even more legalese.
The instructions are between the folded front and back of the card, cutting the tape on one side is enough to get them out. They use blue and
red ink like a cheap manga, regardless of the character faction.


AUTOBOT: DINOBOT SNARL
Zone: Jungle
Altmode: Ankylosaur
Transformation Difficulty: 4 steps
Previous Name Use: Legacy as "Dinobot Snarl"
Previous Mold Use: None
Package Cosells: Galvatron, Sky-Byte

Grimlock and Snarl are kind of their own faction in the cartoon, with Snarl being the brains of the outfit.

Packaging: Five ties hold the robot to the tray, the tail/weapon is held in the lower right (inside the box-tray thing) by one tie.

Robot Mode: What if a Dinobot was also a Junkion? Random pipes and
plates and rivets and spikes, a very G1 Junkion color scheme...I set him down among my various Legacy and Studio Series Junkions and he fit in perfectly, a little brother to the others. Because each arm is a single cast piece with
no joints, there's little dino toes sticking out the top of the fist, growing out the the index finger roots, which is a little weird. The left shoulder
has a sort of vent on it and a bunch of spikes, the right shoulder has a trio of exhaust pipes. There's also exhaust pipes on the left thigh (but not the right), and conduits of some sort on both boots. Lots of spikes all over,
and the back plates are spread apart. There's also some back plates on the sternum, and a bunch on the tail weapon, which ends in a small thagomizer.
The beast head sits in the lower chest, pointed down a bit.
4.25" (10.5cm) tall in Junkion colors: red-orange, brown, light gray, silver, and yellow. Brown plastic is used for the robot head, the beast
head, the boots, and the tail. The torso and pelvis are red-orange plastic. Light gray plastic makes up the arms, thighs, and backplates.
The tail weapon is painted silver except for the grip peg at the end,
and silver is also used for the face and forehead vent. The visor is painted gloss red, while the forearms are painted red-orange. They did a pretty good job of getting paint inside all the hollows. The left shoulder is painted bright yellow, but the right shoulder is unpainted except for a small red Autobot symbol. The dino eyes are bright blue.
Shoulders and hips are ball joints, knees are hinges but are snapped in place as straight legs. The fists can hold 5mm pegs, there's 5mm sockets on the outer faces of the forearms, one in the center of the upper back, another at the center of the back of the waist. There's a 3mm socket in the back of the lower pelvis.
The weapon is basically a melee thagomizer, 2" (5cm) long including the 5mm peg grip. There's no storage for the weapon unless you want the robot to just have a tail, which doesn't look too bad actually.

Transformation: Probably the easiest way is to grab the legs in one hand and a shoulder in the other, then pull the shoulder forwards and down to go
to beast mode, upwards and back to go to robot mode. No springs in this one, but definitely internal gearing, so beware of forcing things and stripping
gear teeth. Peg the arms to the sides, and bend the legs double, snapping in place around the tail which is stuck in the socket at the back of the belt. Finally, fold the back plates up.
You can do a sort of gerwalk (Macross reference) by leaving the legs untransformed and putting the tail in its socket to counterbalance things.

Altmode: Okay...it does have dino toes at the end of all four legs (the ones on the rear legs were hidden inside the boots in robot mode). Much like the Wild King limb figures, there's a "pretend the back half isn't really there" appearance to the rear limbs, and the forelimbs are too big and too obviously robot arms. Here's where being a Junkion also helps, because it
does look kinda like someone tried to build a stegosaur from scrap from
memory. So, acceptable to me.
Just shy of 4" (10cm) from snout to thagomizer tip, and a little over
2.5" (6cm) tall. Colors basically the same, other than the robot face being hidden inside the torso now.
No articulation other than the gray backplates being able to spread
apart. Why would you want to do that? Well, it would let him mount an
upgrade weapon on his back in this mode, so that's almost definitely why they used their parts budget to allow for this instead of rotating wrists or something.
Fists technically still accessible, forearm sockets a little better in terms of usability, and as noted the one from the back is now on top of the beast and quite usable if you flatten the plates. The 3mm socket is visible, but not particularly accessible from its position between the robot feet.

Touchup suggestion: paint all the backplates to match, whichever color
you prefer (gold if you want it to look more geewun). While being unmatched
is certainly Junkion-ish, they're too uniformly unmatched if you catch my drift. The front two are red, next four gray, last six silver, which is a little too orderly if you're not gonna have them all the same, eh?

Overall: I'd say this kinda sets the benchmark for Cyberworld 4"
figures. Awkward altmode, decent cheapo robot mode, a slight automorph
gimmick and some interesting visual elements. Clearly meant to be upgraded through either accessory kits or stealing stuff from other figures, one of those "play value increases faster than linearly with number of toys"
things. If you want to see how a Decent Cyber Changer is, this is a good choice. It's not the best of the assortment (that's Sky-Byte), but I think
it sets a standard that it's fair to hold the rest of the line to. If it's
as good as Snarl, or close to being as good, it's worth picking up if you're getting any of this line.


DECEPTICON: MEGATRON
Zone: Jungle
Altmode: Bull
Transformation Difficulty: 4 steps
Previous Name Use: Yes
Previous Mold Use: None
Package Cosells: Bumblebee (Armored), Dinobot Snarl

Packaging: Five ties hold the robot to the card, a single tie holds the axe-knife weapon in the lower right.

Robot Mode: This was the first mold revealed for Cyberworld, and it did
a good job of letting people know that this series would be different. Not only was Megatron not a tank or a spaceship, he wasn't anything they'd used
for him before. With a bull's head on his chest and bull horns on his
helmet, they were going for a Minotaur motif this time. For the most part, they do seem to be running "beasts are badguys, vehicles are good guys, dinosaurs are a problem for everyone" as the theme, a kind of reverse BWII.
I do wonder if there was some crosstalk with the Wild King designers, or if it's just coincidence that both lines put horns on Megatron. The mouth area
is a bit recessed, making it look at first glance that Megs has a mustache,
but he doesn't. (Galvatron does, however.)
4.25" (10.5cm) tall at the head, the shoulder horns/spikes rise a little above that depending on the pose. Mainly in dark blue, darkish gray, and
gold. Dark blue plastic is used for the head, beast head, arms, thighs, and boots. Darkish gray plastic is used for the rest of the torso as well as the melee weapon.
Lots of gold paint, on the shoulder spikes, robot head horns, beast
horns, beast nose, and the toes/shins of the boots. The face and fists are painted gunmetal gray, while both the robot and beast eyes are red. There's
a hard-to-see no-outline purple Decepticon symbol on the front of the right shoulder.
Ball joint shoulders and hips, hinge knees. The knees also snap into place, but not as firmly as on Snarl, and the molded hooves are on the boots rather the thighs. (There are little nubs on the index fingers that are the front hooves.) The fists can hold 5mm pegs, there's 5mm sockets on the outer faces of the forearms and one on the center of the back. There is a
hexagonal 3mm socket on the back of the pelvis, with slightly narrower
sockets above and below it that seem to just be there for hollowing-out purposes.
And now to talk about the weapon. Okay, I get that they wanted to go
with a "minotaur's axe" thing while still having the weapon form the tail of beast mode, but this is a weird compromise that doesn't really work for me.
It has a VERY short 5mm peg grip with the blade sticking out the top of the
axe and at a right angle to the plane of the axe blades, so to hold it like a sword requires the rather wide axe blade to look like a crossguard. Whether holding it like an axe or like a sword, it looks kinda doofy. The whole
thing is a single piece (hollow on one side) 1.75" (4.5cm) long with the double-bitted axe blade a little over an inch (29mm) wide. The end of the
5mm peg has a 2.5mm peg extending out by 4mm, which seems to exist only to
make sure you can't plug the weapon into any 5mm socket except a fist.
There's also a pair of long tabs on the hollow side of the axe blades that go into grooves on the soles of the feet in beast mode. There is unfortunately
no way to store it on the back other than using poster putty or something
like that.

Transformation: Almost identical to Snarl's, including the torso automorph, but the boots tab together before folding at the knees, and the knees don't bend all the way double. The weapon goes on top of the soles of the feet so that the knife part becomes his tail. No spines folding
together, so that's another difference. :)
As with Snarl, there's a sort of gerwalk mode possible, but the tail is made to attach to the soles of the feet, so you need to bend the knees a
little to keep this sort of bull Gunmen (Gurren Lagann reference) from
falling over.

Altmode: Well, it looks more like a minotaur went down on all fours than an actual bull, thanks to the fists just being there. A little paint on the rear hooves might've helped some? Anyway it's a mecha-bull with spiked shoulders and chunky hind legs. The head is only sort of hidden, you can clearly see the horns through the gap behind the beast head (Snarl's has a smaller gap and an unpainted head, so it's not as blatant).
3.75" (9.5cm) from snout to tail tip, with the top of the back just
under 2" (5cm) above the soles of the hooves. Other than the robot face, all the paints are still visible.
No articulation at all. Has the same fist and forearm sockets
technically available in this mode, and a nice one centered on top of the
back for using borrowed upgrades. The pelvis-back 3mm socket is barely
visible and definitely not usable.

Overall: I'd call this one "almost as good as Snarl," not just because
of the shared elements. It also presents a fresh take on a G1 character and does a decent job with limited resources. Points off for the weird weapon, though.


AUTOBOT: OPTIMUS PRIME
Zone: City
Altmode: Semitractor
Transformation Difficulty: 4 steps
Previous Name Use: Yes
Previous Mold Use: None
Package Cosells: Galvatron, Dinobot Snarl

Packaging: Five ties hold the robot to the tray, he does not get a
weapon.

Robot Mode: Well, it's Optimus Prime, although they made the unusual
(but precedented) choice to make the pelvis and thighs white rather than
light gray, and there's only four wheels (one on each elbow, one sticking out ahead of each shin on the outer boot faces). The chest window is a single connected piece, no strut between the panels, but there is a suggestion of
fuel tanks molded on the boots. Front bumper halves stick out the fronts of the shoulders, probably for the best that they're not painted since with this design I think emphasizing the robot mode rather than truck mode is the best plan.
4" (10cm) to the top of the head, with the backpack shell rising a few millimeters above that, in mostly red-white-and-blue with black wheels.
Brigh red plastic for most of the torso and the arms. Some of the internal mechanisms of the torso are white, as are the shoulder struts, pelvis, and thighs. The boots and head are dark blue plastic, and the wheels are black plastic. The fists are painted dark blue, while the windshield is painted a slightly different shade of dark blue. Silver on the faceplate (but not the helmet crest) and abdomen, bright blue eyes. There's a white Autobot symbol printed on back, which becomes the roof in vhielc mode. The wheel hubs and short smokestacks (which end up looking like under-bumper guns in vehicle
mode) are unpainted.
Ball joint shoulders and hips, hinge knees. Rather than being snapped
in straight position, they can bend a little before hitting a stiff section
in the middle third of the bend, and then smooth the rest of the way to 90 degrees. The stiff bit is meant to help you find the point to stop bending
for transformation. Unlike the other three in this wave, his waist turns on
a smooth swivel.
5mm socket fists, but due to the wheels there's no 5mm sockets on the forearms. Instead, there's a 5mm socket on the upper back and another on the back of the waist. The pelvis itself doesn't lend itself to a 3mm socket, so they put one on the back just below the upper 5mm socket. The smokestacks
are 2.5mm diameter, but just long enough that you can rest a Fire Blast atop each reasonably securely. A skinny enough one will even stay on in vehicle mode to play up the under-bumper guns idea, particularly if you paint them silver to thicken them up a bit.
While Optimus gets an energy axe early on in the series, this toy comes with no weapon. Armored Cyber Changer Optimus Prime is more of a Hummvee and has a cannon weapon, so no axe there either.

Transformation: Lift up the chest and fold it and the backplate down, which lets the head collapse into the chest with the grille on the back of
the head. Fold the arms together in front of the chest and fiddle with the tabs to get everything connected. Then tab the boots together. The instructions stop here.
The instructions are incorrect, and very definitely leave out a step.
You can see from the cosell on Sky-Byte that after you get to the end of the official instructions you need to fold the thighs down a little bit so that
the shins are even with the backs of the fists.

Altmode: Yeah, not worth the effort. Maybe not the worst Optimus Prime altmode, but definitely in the bottom tier. And while the two quadrupeds in this wave are kinda unimaginative, their only serious flaw is the visible
robot fist. This has major gaps all along the sides and in back, on top of being a four-wheeled semitractor. It looks like Prime lost a fight and got both sides of his cab torn off, exposing the robot abdomen and hips, plus the shoulder struts (making those red would've helped a little). It's not even
as if it looks okay just from the front, because it's too skinny viewed that way.
A little over 3.5" (9cm) long in red, blue, black, and too much white.
The side windows are painted the same color as the front, and while there's
no yellow paint on the robot's belt, the belt details are moldedas headlights and painted yellow here. The bumper and grille are unpainted, as are the
tiny roof lights.
It rolls okay on the four big snap-on wheels. No articulation, as one would expect from a truck. The roof has a 5mm socket and a 3mm socket, all
the other connectors are inaccessible in this mode.

Overall: Pretty skippable, frankly. He doesn't even have a weapon that Megatron can steal. And it's not like Optimus Prime is hard to find in toy form.


DECEPTICON: SKY-BYTE
Zone: Water
Altmode: Shark with Wheels
Transformation Difficulty: 4 steps
Previous Name Use: RiD01, T30, Cyberverse, AoP
Previous Mold Use: None
Package Cosells: Megatron, Optimus Prime (swapped zones)

This was the only one I really wanted to get just from pictures, because it's clearly a reference to one of the weirder parts of the 2001 Robots in Disguise series: a race episode where Sky-Byte disguises himself as a racecar in order to compete. So, this is a shark with wheels. In the cartoon,
they're explained as an upgrade, so he can be equally deadly on land and in
the water.
Now, I admit I might have pumped up expectations for this toy somewhat, particularly by calling it the best of the wave up in the capsules. But keep in mind, that it's basically what would have been a $5 toy at most back in
2001 when Sky-Byte the character was introduced. It's impressive for
something barely above the level of cake-topper in terms of budget.

Packaging: Five ties hold the robot to the tray, the tail claw weapon is held in the lower right by a single tie.

Robot Mode: The "traditional" asymmetric cyborg shark face for the
chest, backwards fin atop the head (although it doesn't become the altmode's fin), toothy grin, tail-claw left hand...it hits the Sky-Byte notes
adequately. The back of the head is a bit weird, but that's so that it rests flush with the beast head. There's also engine blocks molded onto the forearms, wheels in the armpits and on the sides of the boots, and a row of headlights in the collarbone area, marking it as a clear vehicle/shark
fusion. The arms are a bit awkward because all the shark fins (dorsal and pectoral) are stuck onto the shoulders. One downside in terms of stability
is that the torso isn't snapped together, so the chest lifts pretty easily during handling.
4.25" (11cm) tall, mostly in light gray, bright yellow, and dark blue, with black wheels and some accent colors. The wheels are black plastic.
Bright yellow plastic is used for the left claw, shoulder struts, spine, abdomen/pelvis, and thighs. The rest is light gray plastic. There is no
blue plastic, just paint.
The shoulders/upper arms and the top of the head are painted dark blue, the right side of the shark face is painted light blue. The robot face is painted yellow with silver teeth and red eyes. The shark eyes are also red, although on mine that paint is really sloppy. Silver wheel hubs, and a no-border purple Decepticon symbol on the right...bicep area, I guess.
There's not much distinction between shoulder and bicep here.
Shoulders, hips, and knees are ball joints. Since the left arm's claw
is pegged in place, it can rotate. Loads of 5mm sockets beyond the one where the claw is supposed to go. The right arm has a fist with a 5mm socket, there's two 5mm sockets on the back of each forearm, there's one on the back
of the head, and one in the back of the pelvis. The claw itself also has a
5mm socket in the center, suitable for 5mm peg Fire Blasts. All sorts of places to mount upgrades taken from his victims or granted to him by
Megatron.

Transformation: Lift the chest up, swing the shoulders and arms back behind it to make the top of the altmode and make sure the fins are oriented
so that one claw is pointed straight down. Peg the legs together and swing
up so that the claw slots in between the feet, then massage until all the
tabs go into their slots.

Altmode: It's a cybershark with racing tires and a big block engine in back, a V-8 to judge by the molded wires leading away from spark plugs. The robot head's outline is visible, but it fits neatly into a slot of the same shape and the lack of paint on the back of the head means it blends in pretty nicely with the rest of the beast head. Since the feet are stuck through the tail, you can't put a Fire Blast into that socket in this mode, sadly. On
the plus side, the wheels are pinned rather than snap-on, so the roll a lot better than Prime's wheels. (Sometimes too well, I note as I chase it across the floor when it rolled off the table.)
4.25" (11cm) long with a maximum width of 1.75" (4cm) in case you're considering finding a track it can race on, the mix of colors makes it look like a gray shark wearing a blue shirt with a yellow collar. He's also a bit yellow-bellied, literally, due to the robot thighs on the underside. The
robot head paints are hidden, otherwise all the same colors in this mode. If
I were to do any touchups, it would be to paint the headlight lenses yellow.
While the 5mm socket on the pelvis is covered up and the fist socket is partly blocked by the rear wheel on that side, the one from the back of the robot head is now on top of the shark's head (make your own "blowhole" joke), plus there's a cluster of four 5mm sockets on top of the engine block. Rolls very well as noted earlier, although the robot toes mean there's not a lot of clearance and it can't do a wheelie or go through a loop very well.

Overall: A pretty good toy given the extremely tight budget it must've been under. If you only get one Cyberworld figure, get this one.


Dave Van Domelen, finally got his Age of the Primes Sky-Byte in the mail during the time he was working on this review.

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