From Newsgroup: alt.toys.transformers

Dave's Transformers Age of the Primes Rant: Voyager Wave 2

Rescue Bot Heatwave (Firetruck, heavy retool of Legacy Bulkhead)

Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/AoP/VHeatwave

Legacy Chase is joined by Age of the Primes Heatwave, who gets to tower over his fellow Rescue Bot. With the Rescue Bots line itself (and the Heroes sequel) pretty much defunct, Generations is probably the only place we'll get these characters again for a while, spread out over several years and various sizes.
https://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Legacy/VBulkhead - Bulkhead mold


CAPSULE

$35 price point.

Rescue Bot Heatwave: Original mold was mildly recommended. This does a decent job of reskinning the toy as Heatwave, and to be honest the vehicle
mode despite all compromises stands up well next to the original Rescue Bots Heatwave toys. Of course, they didn't really fix any of the problems with
the original mold. Mildly recommended.


RANT

Packaging: Same as other 2025 Age of the Primes Voyagers. The statue gallery section on the right side of the box has Liege Maximo, Megatronus,
and Star Optimus Prime. As with Chase, the packaging and the toy itself use
a regular Autobot symbol rather than the Rescue Bots variant.


AUTOBOT: HEATWAVE
Assortment: G1018
Altmode: Firetruck
Transformation Difficulty: 29 steps
Previous Name Use: Rescue Bots, Angry Birds
Previous Mold Use: None
Origin Universe: Rescue Bots

Packaging: A double string tie across the chest and another across the legs, single ties on each arm. The ladder is held to the left side of the inner tray by two ties, each of the Energize weapons (axe and double
barrelled water sprayer) is held in the lower right of the main tray by a single tie.
The instructions show how to attach the ladder to the back.

Shared Parts: Everything below the knees, some of the internal struts in the torso, the shoulder roots, shoulder wheels, biceps, inner faces of the forearms (the outer faces are new), fists, collar area, the back panels, the harness that holds the ladder (or the shield on Bulkhead) but NOT the other hinged piece on the back (which is now just big enough to plug a gap in
vehicle mode). Yeah, that's a large percentage of the parts, but I'm still going to mostly review it as new.

Robot Mode: The general shape here suits Heatwave better than it did Bulkhead, that's for sure. Cube-bodied, with blocky limbs and a head with a firefighter helmet motif and big goggles that use very effective lightpiping
to add glowing eyes inside the goggles instead of having the entire goggle surface glow. The clear blue plastic weapons mark this as being from the slightly later in the series "Energize Gear" phase. Of course, since this doesn't transform like the original toys, the "headlights and part of the grille are just the robot fists" motif is kind of doubled...there's the headlights on the forearms, as well as the fake fist detailing on the chest below the windshield. Rather than a ragtop for the truck that turns into a shield, there's the short ladder Heatwave sported in the original toys (it
can still be worn as a shield, not just put on the back).
6.5" (16.5cm) tall at the head, the ladder pokes a few millimeters
higher, in mostly red, gray, silver, and clear blue with some yellow and
white. Red plastic for the torso shell, some of the back struts, forearms, pelvis, and boot fronts. A slightly darker red plastic is used for the shoulder joints, the shoulderblades, the bit of the back strut that holds the ladder, a bit inside the abdomen, and the peg on the ladder. The ladder
itself is light gray that's also used for the head and thighs. A slightly darker light gray makes up the biceps, fists, and a strut at the small of the back. Dark gunmetal gray is used for the feet, the backs of the boots, and
the collar area. I'm not sure what the shoulders are made of, either the
bicep plastic (more likely) or the thigh plastic, they're painted over pretty heavily. The wheels and the hip joints are black plastic. Clear "Energize" blue plastic is used for the lightpiping/goggles, windshield, and Energize Gear.
The shoulders are fully painted red, and the same shade is used for the firefighter's helmet part of the head (except for the open bit for lightpiping). Gunmetal paint on the face, silver on the goggle frames.
There's also silver on the abdomen grille, the forearm headlight frames,
other bits on the upper faces of the forearms, and much of the shins. The helmet badge is painted yellow, as are details flanking the head, the real headlights on the torso front, and the fake headlights on the forearms. The window borders and windshield wipers are painted white, and a white-outline Autobot symbol is in the center of the collarbone area. Note, while the
backs of the fake fists on the sides of the torso are molded, they're not painted silver the way the backs of the forearms are.
The neck is a ball joint with the socket inside the head an a decent amount of motion, and there's a smooth swivel between the "belt" part of the pelvis and the lower pelvis that does the job of a waist. Pinned hinge and swivel shoulders, although the roots come undone from the sides of the torso pretty easily, so you need to be careful moving the arms. Bicep swivels,
hinge elbows, swivel wrists. Pinned hinge and swivel hips mostly concealed
by the thighs, which also have a swivel where they connect. Hinge knees, instep hinges on the feet and some range of motion rocking forwards and backwards on the ankles as well.
The fists can hold 5mm pegs, there's 5mm sockets on the outer faces of
the forearms and the undersides of the heels. All six wheels have 5mm
sockets at their hubs, and there's two sockets on the back of each boot plus one on the outer face of each boot. So, all the connectors Bulkhead has. There's also a 3mm socket under the pelvis. The ladder has a pair of nonstandard slots for storage of the Energize Gear. There is also the 5mm socket on the backpack panel that's used for the ladder, and was used for the roof on Bulkhead.
The Energize Gear is a short-handled fire axe that uses a 5mm peg to be held in either hand, and a dual-nozzle water cannon that fits over either
fist. Both are made of clear bright blue plastic. The axe is a total of
1.5" (3.5cm) long, with the blade itself being an inch (2.5cm) long. It has
a tab on the back of the base for attachment to the ladder or the back of the boot. The water cannon is 1.75" (4cm) long and ends in two hose-like barrels that hve 3mm studs, although they're close enough together that only the narrowest Fire Blasts can dual-mount. Fortunately, I have a pair of blue
ones in the "stream of liquid" shape. :) There's additional peg-like
details on the top and side, but they're not 3mm or 5mm, just decorative.
The left side has the tab used for storage on the ladder or the boot.
The ladder is 2.75" (7cm) long and 1.5" (about 4cm) wide, with six rungs (not six Rungs, even I only have four of those) that are mostly decorative,
as connection point stuff gets in the way of several of them. At the middle
is a fold-out 5mm peg for storage on the back, or using the ladder as a sort
of shield. Not exactly a great shield with all those gaps, mind you. It has two short tabs on the second rung for the top, which stabilizes the ladder on the back. There's also some notches on the sides around that level, which go onto the toes in vehicle mode. The bottom has a couple of slots that are
also used for connecting to vehicle mode. (It doesn't just stay connected to the back like Bulkhead's rear roof does.)

Transformation: Mostly the same as Bulkhead's, although there's no
wheels on the robot back to mess around with. The ladder does not stay connected to the socket on the back panel, instead it gets wedged between
tabs on the thighs and the undersides of the toes, which is a reasonably
clever way to get it to slope upwards to the back instead of down, but
there's just this backplate hinge piece trying in vain to cover up the robot pelvis. The original mold and its other redecos and retools hide the pretty bad back end under the ragtop, but this toy has no such saving grace.
Officially the weapons store on the ladder just like in robot mode, but
I think they look a little better using the same tabs to go into the slots on the truck bed on either side of the ladder.

Altmode: To be honest, fire truck Heatwave in its various sizes and incarnations didn't really impress me much back in the day, to the point I don't even own one (the closest I have is the trailer-puller one, which I
never even bothered to review). The cab looks right, including the molded
fist bumper/headligh details from the original Rescue Bots toy, and there's a ladder, and the rest is sort of the visual equivalent of an embarrassed
mumble. The darker red plastic of the roof-filler panel looks very out of place, though. If you leave the ladder on the backplate, it doesn't look as good (or as not bad, I guess) as the official mode, but it can be lifted up.
5.5" (14cm) long in the same basic colors as the robot. The fold-out
fuel tanks on the sides are the slightly darker light silvery gray used for
the robot upper arms rather than the lighter matte gray of the thighs they partially cover.
It rolls okay on the six wheels, but without much ground clearance. The hinged backplate is the only articulation, and it doesn't do much unless you put the ladder on it. If not, the backplate's socket is available for the
axe or a borrowed gun, although the water cannon can't quite fit on it. Otherwise, the same sockets as Bulkhead (all six wheels have 5mm sockets in
the hubs, a 5mm socket above each pair of rear wheels, and the 3mm sockets on the base of the backflap).

Overall: Pretty good retool to get the robot mode, definitely a good "growing up" of the character. Transformation still as annoying as Bulkhead, and the vehicle mode has a lot of compromises, but in general the competition from the original Rescue Bots molds was slim.

Dave Van Domelen, does really like how they did the lightpiping. And still typos it as lightpoping.

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