From Newsgroup: alt.toys.transformers

Dave's Transformers Timelines Rant: Hearts of Steel set 1

Optimus Prime (Steam Engine)
Starscream (Steampunk Biplane)

Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Artifacts/HoS1

The packaging says this is a Timelines set, an imprint previously used
for the convention exclusives from TFCC, so I'm putting it in Artifacts with the convention exclusives and other small-run lines (we're getting at least
one more set, with Bumblebee and Megatron, but probably not enough to spawn a whole page for these).

CAPSULE

$60 from HasbroPulse for the two-pack. They're basically Deluxe size,
so we're probably paying a bit extra for nice packaging and perhaps a
slightly higher paint or parts budget (particularly parts on Starscream).

Optimus Prime: The robot mode does a very good job of being a steampunk Optimus, although storage for the accessories when not being held would be nice. The transformation is decent, and the train mode is almost comically small due to the very compact transformation. Recommended if you can put up with Tiny Train Prime.

Starscream: This design would've been better served by a Voyager size simply due to some of the complexity, and I dislike one of the paint
choices. Otherwise, it aims high and doesn't miss too badly. Recommended.

Set Overall: Hey, outside of 3P stuff, I didn't expect to see either of these show up. It's a pretty deep cut, and they went with all new molds (as opposed to things like Flame and Xaaron being minor retools), so I appreciate the effort. The results are decent, too. Recommended.


RANTS

History: Hearts of Steel started as an IDW comic miniseries, initially advertised as the first of many "Evolutions" titles, but it ended up being
the first of one. The premise was to look at alternate universes where the
G1 Transformers woke up at different points in history, such as the mid to
late 1800s. They'd interact with figures of history or legend (John Henry
was a major human character in Hearts of Steel), and so forth. The exact
date of the Hearts of Steel story is hard to nail down because of some contradictory references, but it's probably somewhere in the 1866 to 1874 according to analysis on TFWiki. That does make it a little early for the traditional "steampunk" era, but steampunk is more of an aesthetic anyway, rather than something that actually happened.
Later on, when it was clear there would be no more (other than the
briefly glimpsed "Ice Age Wars" shown in the prelude of Hearts of Steel), the events got worked into the main IDW continuity as one of Shockwave's various experiments. Other than Shockwave himself, everyone appearing in Hearts of Steel was a previously unseen Cybertronian who Shockwave had brainwashed
(using "Shadowplay") into thinking they were one of the Ark or Nemesis crew
(or a few oddballs, like Scourge). The fake Bumblebee showed up as Centurion late in the first IDW continuity.
If there had been plans back in 2006 to do toys based on Hearts of
Steel, they got shelved. That didn't stop the characters from getting some attention from the 3P companies, including steam engine Knight Commander (Optimus Prime), a Seeker trio, and not-Bumblebee at the least. I do own a
HoS Bumblebee 3P toy, and will likely compare it to the official one that I have in my to be reviewed stack (after I started writing this review, it
popped up as a Comicon special, shipping a few days after the con).
While a 20 year old comic seems an unlikely place to mine for toys,
Hasbro has been digging ever deeper lately, especially for the online- exclusive collector bait. (See, for instance, Flame...who appeared in one
arc of the UK comic, but got a toy last year.) It does seem to suggest that Hasbro has been using 3P for inspiration beyond just the new type of combiner team, though.

Packaging: This is significantly fancier than the usual two-pack boxes, it's two linked boxes that fold together into a block and then go into a sleeve. The sleepve has lots of embossed (raised) details and gloss coating
on the raised bits. The general design theme is rusty steampunk, as one
might expect from the story being referenced.
Closed and in the slipcase, it's 8.75" (22cm) tall, 6" (15cm) wide, and
5" (12.5cm) deep, with a general brown vibe. The top, bottom, and sides have
a rusted plate metal pattern with occasional brass pipes, dials, wheels, and what look to be big fuses. The sides are mirror images of each other except for the faction symbols...each has a large porthole feature not quite
centered and inside it is an embossed and glossy corroded iron faction symbol (Autobot on the right side, Decepticon on the left). Both have HEARTS OF
STEEL in Cybertronian glyphs near the top.
The front of the sleeve has painted-style art of Optimus and Starscream
in robot modes facing each other in combat (well, Starscream seems to be
trying to ambush Prime from above), with a discontinuous background. The
lower left has a bank with smokestacks (they got money to burn), while the lower right shows a bit of smoky cityscape with a rail depot, and tracks
under the logo lead into it. I suppose it might be all one scene, but the perspective on the bank looks wrong for it to be actually next to the rail depot. The logo actoss the bottom has "HEARTS OF STEEL" printed above the
MERS part, while the nameplates are below it. Both append Timelines to the name of the character.
The back has the usual robot and vehicle mode renders but embossed and shiny, in front of a parchment sort of background that has a random gear and some pipes behind it.
When you remove the sleeve, the front and back have expanded art based
on the sleeve sides, although the Autobot side on the Optimus half replaces
the fuses with a vent grill, and neither face has Hearts of Steel on it. The hinge side has more random steampunk patterns, while the other side adds a printed latch and pipes that terminate just before the seam, to make it look like a vault door that's almost ready to open.
Opening it up reveals two window boxes, Optimus on the left and
Starscream on the right, both in robot mode. Across the top is a big Cybertronian font HEARTS OF STEEL, while the bottom has the Transformers logo over the nameplates. Each inner tray has a diamondplate pattern (an anachronism, as that wasn't invented until the mid-1900s), the relevant
faction symbol really big in a corroded iron color, and the Transformers logo on the outer panel. The instructions are loose behind Optimus's inner tray (which has more room behind it), while a tissue bundle at Starscream's feet holds all the loose accessories. The bundle has Optimus's smokestack rifle, his cab roof, and Starscream's gatling-ish arm cannons.


AUTOBOT: TIMELINES OPTIMUS PRIME
Assortment: G1095
Altmode: Steam Engine
Transformation Difficulty: 19 steps
Previous Name Use: None with "Timelines," otherwise so very yes.
Previous Mold Use: None

Packaging: Six ties hold the robot to the tray, accessories as above.

It's worth noting that Optimus did not actually do anything in the
comics, seen only in shutdown, and he never actually adopted an Earth mode in the story. Conveniently, this made it so they didn't need to later retcon someone as having been fake Optimus, they could just say it was an inanimate prop. However, there WAS concept art of several characters who didn't appear in the story, including the basis for this toy (and Knight Commander) and the second assortment's Megatron (they used the artillery cannon version, not the pistol version, for obvious legal reasons).

Robot Mode: Okay, so this is a steampunk-flavored Optimus Prime, and steampunk usually means on thing: random gears. And there are a few, molded into the backs of the quarter-cylinder shoulderpads, but they're neither painted nor prominent. However, other than gears, steampunk loves it some rivets, because welding is too modern (despite the oxyacetylene welding torch having been invented before 1850). To be fair, rivets were generally
stronger than welds until well after the steampunk period. So, anyway, loads and loads of molded rivets, I started trying to list where they were and realized that "almost every part of the toy" would be sufficient description. It's giving me flashbacks to my Warmachine Metroplex mod, where I glued
rivets onto all of the new parts I'd molded. Other train elements include a split cowcatcher as the armor skirt, flared smokestacks on the shoulderpads
as well as replacing the antennae on the helmet (the gun is the main smokestack), the chest being the front of the train boiler, and a lot of vent details that are reminiscent of the grates on the doors of the boiler
firebox. The helmet has a sort of raised knight's helmet visor with molded diagonal slits so that if it could be lowered over the eyes (it can't) then Optimus could see through the slits while offering his eyes some protection. There are some classic Optimus elements in the mix, such as the triangle and line design on the wrists, the thick silver stripes on the sides of the abdomen, and the shin vents (although these look more like barred windows).
In short, it does a credible job of looking like a steampunk Optimus Prime.
The color balance is also pretty close to the standard, aside from the gold
on the chest (instead of blue windows) and the red on the back of the boots.
5.5" (14cm) tall in, as noted, the usual Optimus Prime colors for the
most part. Red plastic with some metalflake is used for most of the torso,
the shoulderpads, the inner forearms/fists, and the backs of the boots.
Medium slightly grayish blue with metalswirl plastic is used for the head,
the outer faces of the forearms (these are vehicle shell bits), the pelvis front (but not the skirt pieces), the front and outer faces of the boots, the feet, and the shield. Very dark gray plastic is used for the collar area,
the armor skirt, the back of the pelvis, all of the actual wheels (one on
butt, two on each boot), the shoulder hinges, the knee hinges, the transformation struts inside the boots, and the gun. Light gray plastic
makes up the upper arms, thighs, ankles, and shoulderblades (transformation struts with pistons and springs molded on them).
The outer faces of the forearm panels are painted in a slightly
metalflake red that is not a great match for the plastic, partly because the swirly aspects of embedded metalflake are missing, but mostly because the
color is just noticeably brighter. The fists are painted metallic blue, but this isn't even close to the plastic color. Silver on the faceplate, helmet crest front, abdomen-side stripes, a circle at the center of the chest, and depressions in the upper corners of the chest that are likely supposed to
evoke the usual chest windows. I wonder if they tried a version that painted them blue and decided it didn't really work? The eyes are bright gloss blue (which would've been the natural color for chest windows). A dark (almost black) gunmetal paint is used for the brackets holding the shoulder pipes,
some bits on the pelvis front, the kneecap grates, stripes across the front "cuff" part of the boots, and the fake middle wheel of each chunk on the
boots. (The front and rear wheel in each set are real, the middle one is
just molded and raised a couple millimeters off the ground in vehicle mode.)
A sort of "antique gold" paint is on the shoulder pipes, on pipes molded into the upper chest and its sides, the big ring around the center front-of-train shape on the chest, a ladder-like shape below that, and a round thing at the belt buckle location. A red Autobot symbol is printed in the center of the silver part of the chest, and a silver-outline Autobot symbol is printed on
the shield.
The neck is a ball joint, and the socket is in the neck part rather than the head, in a departure from the usual. The waist is a smooth if kinda
stiff swivel, and the bit of hanging back panel doesn't get in the way nearly as much as I expected it to. The shoulders are a bit weird, since the shoulderpads are angled 20-30 degrees up from horizontal, which controls the axis of the swivel part, but the hinge where the upper arm meets the inside
of the shoulderpad can drop the arms down to vertical as well as lift them almost all the way out to the sides (kibble gets in the way of a purely horizontal pose). Swivels above the biceps, hinge elbows, no wrist articulation. The hips are hinge and swivel universal joints, there's
swivels a little below mid-thigh, hinge knees that bend 20-30 degrees past a right angle, and the ankles have forwards-backwards hinges at the top and instep hinges at the bottom of each ankle strut. The knees have a slight soft-ratchet effect to keep the legs straight without making it particularly hard to bend them. The armor skirt cowcatcher halves are on ball joints with the sockets in the waist, so they can lift out of the way of a raised leg or rotate to the side.
The fists hold 5mm pegs, and there's raised-border hexagonal 5mm sockets on the outer faces of the forearms. That's it for standard connectors, they didn't even put 5mm sockets in the soles of the feet.
The gun is the main smokestack, which folds open on a hinge near its
base so that a gun barrel can be folded out before closing the stack. It
ends up looking like a stretched out black iron megaphone, although the
figure doesn't have quite enough range of arm motion to put it up to Prime's faceplate. The business end looks kind of like a ball bearing housing, two rings with little round bits in between, I'm not exactly sure what they were going for here, but definitely not gatling gun. The whole thing is all metalflake black plastic with no paint, and with the barrel deployed is 1.75" (4.5cm) long. The 5mm peg grip is at the back end, and the muzzle is a 3mm socket, or close enough for jamming in peg-style Fire Blasts.
The shield is basically just the roof of the engineer's compartment, a rectangle of riveted plate curved down on the short sides, with a vent of
some sort molded onto the face of it. A single piece of the blue plastic
about 1.5" (4cm) by 1.25" (3.2cm). One of the long sides is straight, the other slightly curved, and the straight side goes to the front in vehicle
mode. There's a 5mm peg on the back along the centerline, closer to the
front edge than the back.
There is no robot mode storage for the gun or shield on the back, or anywhere else besides the hands and arms. Technically the gun can stick on
the back in its vehicle mode location, but it points backwards rather than paralleling the back. It kinda bugs me that they did go with a nonstandard smokestack connector...if they'd just put a 5mm socket in the middle of the back and a 5mm peg on the butt end of the gun, it wpould be able to attach
much more securely in vehicle mode, in addition to the gun being able to
store parallel to the back, or the shield storing there instead. It would
have to be a fairly shallow socket due to being on top of a hinge, but still.

Transformation: Very involved, for instance the head doesn't just fold into the chest but rather the entire panel that the neck is attached to ends
up rotated on multiple hinges to get the head inside. The legs do the
"thighs collapse into the boots on struts" thing, and you need to bend the
feet ALL the way inside once the panels on the boots have been moved out of
the way (or popped off, oops), because once you snap the legs to each other
the feet can't be folded into their proper spot...you can kinda get a train mode with the toes hanging out, it doesn't affect stability much, but it does seem to have some effect. Definitely wait until the very end to put the smokestack gun on top, it doesn't stay on solidly enough to survive the rest
of transformation (two thin and fairly short tabs rather than a 5mm socket).
Going back to robot mode, the hinges at the ends of the black struts
that hold the boot-backs in place feel like they want to snap rather than
bend, and getting all the struts on the robot back into place requires some effort. Not too difficult other than those two bits, though.

Altmode: Wow, this is a small engine. A 0-6-0 (albeit only four of the wheels turn, plus there's a hidden wheel under the center in front) that
looks more like a yard engine than a proper locomotive. The lack of proper front wheels (which would make it 2-6-0) is likely because they'd have to attach to the hips and this thing already has way too many parts for a Deluxe as it stands. That, or this is doing a TF:Animated where we're just expected to ignore the lack of front wheels and the effects on balance. Oddly, the wheel cover has a molded detail suggesting that there's just one bigger wheel on each side, but that's probably just an aesthetic detail rather than an indication of a hidden big wheel. It's worth keeping in mind that during the time when Hearts of Steel was set, train standardization wasn't really a
thing yet, and all sorts of designs were being experimented with. Anything that looked vaguely like a locomotive would work as a plausible disguise.
3.75" (9.5cm) long and about 3.25" (8cm) tall in mostly red and blue
with some black and gold. The red paint from the forearms doesn't really
match the red plastic, which is pretty obvious on the sides. Note, if we assume the wheels are meant for the 56.5" rail gauge in use in the Northeast around the time of Hearts ot Steel, that makes this about 1:36 scale, give or take a bit. At that scale, a typical human would be about 2" (5cm) tall.
(The same engine done at HO scale would be about an inch and a half or 4cm long, which is pretty small.) As an aside, the 3P HoS Bumblebee toy I got years ago is 4" (10cm) long in locomotive mode for comparison. The blue plastic ends up mostly on the roof in back, the wheel covers, and a bit of pelvis visible behind the cowcatcher, plus the red-painted panels on the
sides. The main smokestack, the five real wheels, and the cowcatcher are
black plastic, and a bit of light gray is visible (hinges from the torso,
robot hips). The rest is red plastic.
A metallic black paint is used for the two fake wheels and the roots of what I'm guessing are whistles (the stand-ins for the shoulder smokestacks in robot mode). The whistles themselves are painted gold, and all the gold and silver bits from the torso and pelvis in robot mode are visible on the front end. The silver outline Autobot symbol from the shield remains visible in
its role as the roof. No other paint in this mode.
It rolls decently on the five real wheels, but with almost no ground clearance, and if the surface is too smooth the wheels may just slide. The forearm 5mm sockets remain somewhat accessible in this mode on the sides, although too-short pegs won't be able to reach past some of the details
around the sockets.

Overall: While the robot mode looks good at the Deluxe scale, the
vehicle mode is almost silly in its smallness, especially if compared to
stuff like Knight Commander. Maybe someone will make a coal car trailer to beef up the train mode a little? Anyway, other than the tiny train thing,
it's a pretty good toy with only the usual number of minor issues.


DECEPTICON: TIMELINES STARSCREAM
Assortment: G1095
Altmode: Biplane
Transformation Difficulty: 19 steps
Previous Name Use: None with Timelines, many without.
Previous Mold Use: None

The Seekers did show up in the comics, just the traditional original
trio. I suppose if these sets sell well, they might release a Thundercracker and Skywarp two-pack to get more mileage out of the mold.

Packaging: Five ties hold the robot to the tray, with one of them also securing a plastic shield over the chest propeller. Packaged with his toes pointed down, although he can still stand that way thanks to the bat wings on this toes. The instructions do show how to get his back panel up over his
head for the proper robot mode (it's flat against his back in package), but don't mention the feet. The hinged tail fin seems to just be for fitting in the box better, as both modes have it pulled out all the way in the instructions.

Robot Mode: Because his vehicle mode has a batwing theme to it, he gets wings on his helmet that also call Mindwipe to mind, in addition to all the scalloped batarang-ish propellers. There's even batwings that poke up out of the tops of the feet. Forget the other Seekers, we need a black and gray
deco with yellow engine circle on the chest. He also has cowcatchers on his pelvis and butt for aesthetic reasons. The butt skirt one does at least act
as a landing gear tail in vehicle mode. And there are, of course, rivets, if not as many as Optimus has. This one relies a bit more on color to be recognizable as a Seeker, although it does have a few of the usual elements
in the molding, such as the pillars flanking the head and the shinguards.
The gatling cannons mount on the forearms rather than the shoulders, though. The design goes with the animation colors, so bright blue rather than dark,
and a black helmet with silver face and red eyes.
The panel covering the spine that has the vertical tailfin is supposed
to be lifted up and tabbed in place over the head, like a mechanical hood or something, but I don't much care for the aesthetics there, and it only
loosely sits in place rather than locking into position anyway.
5" (12.5cm) tall to the top of the head, 5.5" (14cm) to the top of the hood, in mostly light gray, bold red, and bright blue, with some black,
silver, and gold. Bright blue plastic is used for the forearm/fist pieces,
the feet, the tail fin on the hood and the hood panel itself, the central pelvis, both the front and back cowcatcher panels, and the almost completely painted over front of the torso. The head is that metalflake black used for Optimus's gun. Everything else is light gray plastic, all of the red is
paint.
And there's a lot of that red paint. The torso front and sides, the pillars on either side of the head, the leading edges of the wings, and the outer faces of the cowcatcher skirts are all gloss bright red. The shinguard panels are paitned bright blue in a pretty good match to the plastic. The
hood top is painted silver, probably meant to blend in with the silvery gray plastic and failing badly. The face is also silver, with red eyes. Gold
paint (same shade as Optimus's) is used for the ring around the propeller mount, a sort of windscreen grating on top of the center chest, pipes on the flanks, and a sort of belt buckel. The center of the propeller mount is dark gunmetal. There's Decepticon symbols printed on the forwards faces of the
main wings, but they're mostly covered up when the wings are folded down.
The head can turn, although between the pylons flanking it and the hood, it's hard to get in there to make it turn. Due to the nature of the transformation, there is no waist joint. The shoulderpads are on swivels
(and there's a panel that needs to be folded down for robot mode and up for vehicle mode, and they don't always follow the rest of the arm down), with out-to-the-sides hinges where the upper arms attach to the shoulders. Smooth swivels right above the ratcheting hinge elbows, no wrist articulation. The usual pinned hinge and swivel hips, with the lower wing panels on hinges to
get out of the way (and for transformation), so he has side skirts. Swivels just below the hips, smooth hinge knees, keep-the- feet-flat hinges at the ankles, and the toes can point down as long as the sideways hinges are in the straight up and down position. The main wings are not hinged to fold back,
but the wingtips are folded down to the sides (which hides the Decepticon symbols). The instructions and box art never use these joints, having the wings spread fully in both modes. Even the "get it into robot mode from out
of the box" instructions ignore the fact that the wings were folded down to
fit in the box. The two-blade propellers atop the wing engines spin freely,
as does the three-blade prop in the center of the chest.
The fists can hold 5mm pegs, and there are 5mm sockets on the outer
faces of the forearms. There's holes on the back sides of the wings (tops of the engine pods in vehicle mode) that can hold 3mm pegs. That's basically
it, like a lot of recent toys it relies much more on nonstandard tabs and
slots for transformation and doesn't bother with more than a minimum of 5mm
or 3mm ports.
Rather than looking like missile launchers, the arm cannons are molded
to resemble Gatling cannons, and they're clearly supposed to mount on the forearms, but they can be held in the fists as well. They're identical, each
a little less than 2" (5cm) long and made of unpainted light gray plastic. There's a short 5mm peg near the back end, and the barrel is a 3mm stud
that's too short to actually hold any Fire Blasts in place. They have tiny little bat wing details at the back end.

Transformation: Reasonably forgiving, I did a lot of stuff in the wrong order and it was fairly easy to back up just enough to get something in
place. I did miss one bit that's in the instructions, the butt cowcatcher
has to connect to tabs on top of the hips for maximum stability. I did have trouble getting the main wing to tab properly onto the upper torso, but it didn't prevent other things from fitting, and once everything else was in
place the connection slowly settled into place from the stress of the other parts.
Transformation back to robot mode is on the one hand reasonably obvious since now you just need to get parts into the shape of a humanoid, but
there's a lot of fiddly bits and hinges that can outright pop off since
they're not pinned. The fact that the main wing's center chunk doesn't fold does make some of the moves more difficult.

Altmode: Okay, one problem with setting the story in the mid to late
1800s was that there really weren't any aircraft aside from hot air balloons. As a result, the airborne Decepticons tended towards stuff from proto-SF,
like Jules Verne and other writers of fantastica. (TFWiki notes that it's
hard to nail down the actual year, with dates from 1864 to 1874 being
plausible assuming there were no outright errors or deliberate changes in timelines. The design used for Scourge would be consistent with Verne's 1886 Robur story, but even in that story it was thought that heavier than air
craft were impractical.) Anyway, it's Steampunk, strict adherence to historical facts is really not a strong point of the genre, which is more
about vibes. So it is that the Seekers all got to be weird bat-themed
biplanes with three engines and canards. Even the propeller blades are bat-winged. There's three landing wheels, one under each wing (attached to
the robot ankles) and one under the cowcatcher tail. Oddly, the center of
the top wing is blue plastic painted silver (really bad match to the light
gray plastic) while the fin on top of it is light gray plastic painted blue. One would think it would have been cheaper to swap the sprues and save the paint, unless they were packing things super tight and all the extra paint would be cheaper than more space on the light gray sprue. Perhaps it won't need paint on the Thundercracker and Skywarp redecos, assuming those happen.
4" (10cm) long counting the cowcatcher tail, with a wingspan of 7.5" (19cm). Not even gonna try guessing at a scale on this one. The gray is a
bit more dominant and the black is gone in this mode, otherwise same basic colors as robot mode. The folded out wings have red paint on the molded rivet-filled protective leading edges, and the top of the wing is as
mentioned above. The Decepticon symbols are on the undersides of the top wings.
The fists are visible, but not in terribly useful locations. The guns
are on the forearm sockets, but pointed the opposite direction, and you have
to partly disassemble the wings to get them in or out. The shallow 3mm
sockets on the tops of the wing engines are accessible, but that's it for connectors. There isn't really a good place for a flight base. It rolls
okay on the three light gray plastic wheels, and the propellers all spin freely.

Overall: On the one hand, the original comics designs were definitely
done with an eye towards being made into toys, because that's just how Guido Guidi rolls. On the other, I suspect this was anticipated to be a Voyager class toy, and some of the compromises involved in squeezing it down to "complicated Deluxe" do show. I suppose if I have a substantive objection
not related to the ambitious nature of the mold itself, the hood piece really should've been painted in a closer match to the gray plastic if they
absolutely couldn't fit it on the gray sprue, rather than silver. It just looks cheap and lazy in silver.


Dave Van Domelen, already has Megatron and Centurion/Bumblebee lined
up.
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