From Newsgroup: alt.toys.transformers

Dave's Transformers Retro Rant: Wave 8

Seaspray (hovercraft)
Brawn (toy-head retool, not reviewed)

Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Artifacts/Retro8

Wait, what happened to waves 1-7? Well, 1-6 were purely G1 reissues,
and while I got a few of them on clearance, I felt no particular interest in reviewing them. Wave 7 was the first to shift to Deluxe-sized Minibots, with Bumblebee (redeco of the Netflix-series one) and Gears (toy-style faceplate redeco), and I wasn't interested in either of these Walmart exclusives.
Yeah, this is a Walmart exclusive line, although like most store exclusives these days they can be pre-ordered on Hasbro Pulse (or even
regular ordered if they don't sell out). Wave 7 and onward are on retro- styled blister cards in a callback to how the original Minibots were on cards rather than in boxes. Brawn has gotten a lot of toys lately, and I prefer
the cartoon face anyway, so I didn't bother getting that one.
Wave 9 will be Outback (from the Brawn mold) and Wheelie (new mold),
I'll be getting both of those. Outback doesn't get a lot of toys, especially since they lost the trademark for a while and had to go to a...Fallback... position on the character.


CAPSULE

$25 price point. (Going up to $28 with other Deluxes next year.)

Seaspray: A decent Deluxe in both modes. Transformation has a few
fiddly bits, but they don't seem to be places where poor QC can doom the toy, just steps you need to watch out for. Recommended.


RANT

Packaging: I have occasionally commented on how a G1 homage marketed at adults needs to be bigger than the toy it updates, so that it feels the right size. Someone who had Minibots as a grade school kid might look at an authentic reissue today and boggle at how tiny it is. This blister card is scaled up with the intended audience, though, at 10" (25cm) tall and 7.5" (19cm) wide. The blister in the lower right is 6" (15cm) tall, 3.5" (9cm) wide, and just under 2.5" (6cm) deep.
The card front is inspired by the 1985 packaging design with a
background that's black at the top and fades down to red, with a light gray gridwork over the bottom 3/4 and a yellow-to-white sunburst in the middle. A touched up version of the G1 package art is on the right side, with a photo
or render of the vehicle mode partially covering up the feet and with a gray border around it. One concession to modernity is the Hasbro logo in the
lower left corner is the current one.
On the back is the 1985 box back mural with Dinobots, Insecticons, and
so forth. Like, a LOT of Dinobots, I guess the artist thought they could duplicate like the Insecticons? The upper right corner has a tagline in five languages (another moden concession), reading in English, "IT IS A WORLD OF CONSTANT CHANGE, WHERE THINGS ARE NOT WHAT THEY SEEM. IT IS THE WORLD OF THE TRANSFORMERS... A WORLD OF HEROIC AUTOBOTS AND EVIL DECEPTICONS!" (The other languages are the usual: French, German, Spanish, Portuguese.) The lower
left corner has a shorter techspec card with just the four modern stats on a "use a red filter to make it clear, but it's pretty clear already," style background. As one might expect, the motto and bio are repeated in the same languages as the tagline.
The figure and its accessory are mostly held by the shape of the inner
and outer blisters, with the instructions folded up under the feet between inner and outer trays. The instructions use modern grayscale with an accent color (red), but follow the general look of 1985 instructions where feasible otherwise. There is no red filter included.


AUTOBOT: SEASPRAY
Assortment: G1382 (not on the packaging, just stamped on the right boot) Altmode: Hovercraft
Transformation Difficulty: 22 steps
Previous Name Use: G1, G2, Gen:TR (RotF was "Sea Spray")
Previous Mold Use: None
Origin Universe: G1
Function: Naval Defense
Motto: "Be unyielding as the ocean waves and your enemies shall fall."

Displays a zest for his job unmatched by fellow Autobots. Loves the
ocean and its creatures. Loves the thrill of naval battle.

STR 3 INT 8 SPD 6 FRB 6

Lost of point of INT compared to Titans Return, but TR gave him more brains than in G1 anyway. I will note that the Legends class TR toy has a
lot of similarities with this new toy, but this isn't just an upscale. It's merely that there's only so many ways to get G1 accuracy in both modes.

Packaging: A single tie is around the belly, I think more to keep the belly from falling open/apart than to hold the figure in. There's also a rubber band around the feet. The pistol is held just by blister shape.

Robot Mode: Where the original G1 toy had the windows of the upper bridge facing downwards in this mode, the animation model had the front end of the bridge (minus windows) facing upwards, something this toy copies. If you'd rather have it windows-down, you can do that, although the torso sides don't match up, being designed to go along with potbelly Seaspray. There's several panels that are folded under the feet so that they're not too terribly big, although it's physically impossible to shrink them as far as the animation model does. More show-accurate than the Titans Return toy, the propellers on the struts over the head are black and have three blades each, in addition to the connecting wing having more space above the robot head. Speaking of the head, the mold is based on the G1 toy rather than the animation model, as has been the standard for the newer Retro figures. The fact that the belly goes with the animation model suggests that there might be tooling to gate off
this head and instead provide an animation-style head...while no such co-tooling has been announced yet, I wouldn't be surprised if it's on
Hasbro's schedule for 2026...every mold must be reused if it can, and this isn't a Collaborative (those seem to be non-reusable near as anyone can
tell).
4.5" (11.5cm) tall at the head, total height around 5" depending on how you position the propellers. Mostly in bright yellow, bright blue, and
white, with some black and silver. Bright yellow plastic is used for the
upper torso piece with the engines and connecting wing, the neck root, the shoulder joints and elbow joints, some internal bits on the torso including
the upper part of the waist joint, most of the hip joints, all of the thighs and lower legs. The front bits of the hip joints are white plastic that
curls over the top of the outer yellow thigh piece to make for part of the bikini briefs. The pelvis and most of the outer shell parts of the torso are white plastic. The pistol and the robot head are also white plastic. The
arms other than the shoulder and elbow joints, and all of the parts of the
feet are bright blue plastic. I don't know what color plastic the propellers are, they're completely painted over and there really isn't a discreet place
to scrape the paint off.
The head is covered in bright yellow paint, then the visor is painted black over that. There's also black paint on the belly windows and the front windows on the feet, as well as completely covering the propellers. The side bits of the abdomen have sticker-like printed details on their fronts in
bright blue, yellow, and silver, with thin red borders. The pistol is
covered in silver paint except for the grip peg. There's no proper Autobot symbol in this mode, but you can sort of see the vehicle mode insignia under the shins.
The neck is a very stiff swivel, probably not helped by the thick yellow paint on the head. Smooth swivel waist with nothing blocking it. Pinned
hinge and swivel shoulders, swivels just above the hinge elbows, the wrists
can wiggle up and down in a way that made me waste time trying to figure out how to open up the forearms to store them (they do not store, the joint just helps them get into their place). Pinned hinge and swivel hips, hinge knees that snap in place straight, instep joints on the ankles. Both the elbows
and knees have rather small blocks to partially fill the gaps caused by
bending the joints, and they don't really do a good job of that. Oh, and the propellers spin freely, which counts as articulation.
The fists can hold 5mm pegs, there's 5mm sockets on the outer faces of
the forearms and shoulders (suggesting this was designed to be Armorizer compatible, although I have seen a picture of someone using the Tidal Wave armor up parts on Seaspray), on the soles of the feet (which are hoverskirt bits), and one in the center of the backplate. There's also a 3mm socket in the back of the pelvis, and a 3mm stud on the left side of the propeller
strut unit (for storing the pistol in vehicle mode).
The pistol is one of those semi-generic designs that the animators gave anyone whose toy didn't come with a gun, which is to say most of the
Minibots. This one has a sort of ammo clip ahead of the grip, which does
mean it can't store on the back using the 5mm socket, as the clip is longer than the grip. It also looks hollow from both sides, the sort of thing you used to only see on cheap knockoffs, a sort of "Mac & Cheese shape" version
of a gun. 1.75" (a little over 4cm) long, with a 5mm peg grip, a short 3mm stud at the barrel tip, and a 3mm socket on the right side that goes onto the propeller strut peg. BTW, the grip is about 5mm by 4mm, but too far across
the diagonal to fit into a 5mm socket.

Transformation: It's even harder to turn the head around at the end if
you neglected to do so at the beginning, so turn it around early on. :) Technically, the head doesn't have to be turned because it's fairly well covered, but it's not perfectly covered. Other steps can be done in the
wrong order without too much struggle, though. It's unsurprisingly similar
in broad strokes to the Titans Return version, but there's additional panels
in various places to cover some of the gaps or to make the feet less proportionally huge, although getting the ones out that become the front underside of the hoverskirt can be difficult if not painful. Notably unlike the old Legends Class toy, the bridge section is not a removable piece, it
just rotates on a swivel so that the animation model can be obeyed. When trying to get the front end securely tabbed together, the underside panels in front can pop out of position if you're not also supporting them as you squeeze.
Going back to robot mode, it can be a little frustrating trying to get
the side of abdomen pieces aligned properly, they look like they're not quite right when they're exactly where they need to be. Additionally, you need to make sure you fold the hoverskirt panels underneath the feet in the right
order before folding the gap filler piece in.
There is a panel that fills a gap between the shins in vehicle mode, and it's easy to pop it off if you fold it in the wrong order compared to the
outer heel panel. Both feet get the outer panels, but only one gets the gap- filler panel.

Altmode: Okay, so it's the G1 hovercraft, based loosely on a real life British hovercraft (Saunders-Roe SR.N6), with big windows in the front of the hull and smaller ones in the raised bridge in the back (although as noted above, the bridge windows weren't really there on the G1 toy), although
lacking windows on the sides. Vent details from the shins are now intakes
for the lift fans, and there's even little ladder rungs molded on the sides
of the hoverskirt. The big wing connecting two engines with their drive propellers is a notable departure from the SR.N6
5" (12.5cm) long total, which if it's meant to be the same size as the SR.N6 makes it fairly close to the model robot standard 1:144 scale (and
thus, if no mass-shifting, would make the robot mode same-scale as 1:144
scale Gundam models and action figures). The blue plastic ends up as the entire hoverskirt and most of the front half of the hull, while the rear
third or so of the hull is white torso plastic, nd the yellow shins are in
the center of the top (with that gap-filler piece of blue between them) and
the propeller truss in yellow in back.
The roof at the front has a rectangle that's painted silver with a
printed red Autobot symbol split down the middle by the seam between the
feet. TFWiki indicates some people have had trouble with the paint/printing there cracking due to stress, but so far mine is fine. No other paints not already mentioned. There's molded grooves along the sides of the hull
instead of rows of windows, but no paint in them.
Three of the 5mm sockets end up on the underside (fists and the
backplate, but the robot head limits how deeply something can be put into the backplate socket). There's two accessible 5mm sockets on either side of the hoverskirt, one near the front and one at the back. While the 3mm stud on
the side of the left propeller strut is still there for pistol storage, the
3mm socket is hidden in this mode. No new connectors are revealed in this mode.
Other than the spinning propellers, no articulation, nor are there
wheels on the underside. I suppose if you could find the right shape of Hot Wheels/Matchbox car, it could fit into the underside gap and provide wheels
for this vehicle mode. (The Twin Dorado is reasonably stable, although too tall to look like hovering, might need a finger skateboard instead.)

Overall: It's a little fiddly in places and bits will fly off if you try to transform some parts in the wrong order, but it's a pretty good Deluxe- ification of another of the Minibots. Note, it does seem to be selling
better than Brawn, not too surprising given that it's a new mold, but I also wonder if the case assortment was imbalanced since I see a lot more Brawn on the shelves.


Dave Van Domelen, now to finish Superion.

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