From Newsgroup: alt.toys.transformers

Dave's Transformers Collaborative Rant Wave 1

Bone Shaker
Twin Mill

Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Collab/HotWheels1

Each transforms into its namesake Hot Wheels-created vehicle. Good choices for the first wave, while maybe not the most iconic Hot Wheels originals, they're in the top tier. The second wave reportedly includes Twin Mill II (possibly a store exclusive retool/redeco), El Segundo, and GT Scorcher. The El Segundo (yes, I know that's "The The" there) is not as iconic, although reportedly it's one of the stars of a current Hot Wheels cartoon, as is the GT Scorcher. Too bad they didn't decide to go with a
Deora (or the Twin Dorado fuzor of Deora and Twin Mill) instead, though.


CAPSULES

$30 price point, mix of licensing tax and tariffs, so more expensive
than regular Deluxes.

Bone Shaker: Striking vehicle mode, interesting transformation, decent robot mode. Has some minor flaws, but still recommended.

Twin Mill: Another good vehicle mode, okay transformation and robot
mode, but the weapons represent a lot of wasted potential. Recommended, but not as good as Bone Shaker.


RANTS

Packaging: These are blister cards, with the toys in altmode, meant to evoke the look of Hot Wheels packaging (although they have peg holes rather than hooks and the vehicles are almost viewed top-on rather than side-on).
The cards are 9" (23cm) tall and 7" (18cm) wide, with the blister being 3.5" (9cm) tall and 2.5" (6.5cm) deep, and not as wide as the full card.
The Hot Wheels banner is in the upper left corner of the card, with art
of vehicle mode below it and robot mode in the upper right with the Mattel
logo in the very upper right corner. The Transformers logo runs all the way across, covering up the robot legs. The rest of the art background is a glowing track emerging from a round portal, which I presume is related to the current cartoon. The main colors are black and red with yellow and blue accents. The cardstock between the blister and the inner tray is black with white lettering and some red accents, showing the name and faction symbol (Autobot in both cases) plus the Hasbro logo and 8+ age recommendation. The card on the underside has the usual legalese and UPC symbol. The cardback
has renders of both modes, the Collaborative logo (flames in the left side of the X, and the relevant toy car to the left of the X). Below the robot
render is a little silhouette claiming that the toy is 5" or 12.7cm tall. We shall see.
The instructions are hidden behind the inner cardstock piece, and since they're slightly taller than the blister is deep, they're bent to fit.
As an aside, I suspect Bone Shaker is only an Autobot because Mattel didn't want any of their cars to be cast as Bad Guys. He really looks like
he belongs with the Decepticon Laser Rods. (I would love some of the old RD-series villain cars as Decepticons, though.)


AUTOBOT: BONE SHAKER
Crossover: Hot Wheels
Altmode: Bone Shaker ("rat rod" hotrodded car)
Transformation Difficulty: 22 steps
Previous Name Use: None
Previous Mold Use: None

Bone Shaker is a "new" vehicle, being designed in 2006 as a sort of
"rat rod," so called because of the aesthetic taken from Rat Fink style hotrodded vehicles. It looks like Laser Rod Sizzle (the black one) with more of the driver's compartment cut down and the back turned into a sort of short pickup truck bed (albeit filled with more engine/fuel stuff).

Packaging: Two ties hold the vehicle mode into the blister, while the stick shift weapon is held in just by the blister tray shape. The
instructions don't show where to store the stick shift in vehicle mode, although it does go into the regular place for a stick shift, despite being
way too big for that.

Vehicle Mode: Packaged in this mode, so starting with it. Okay, so I introduced the basics above, here's some more details. The grill in front is molded as a skull with hands (not exactly skeletal, probably should be but
they might be just blowing up the lower-detail Hot Wheels car) gripping the headlights. The heads of the 8 cylinders of the engine stick up through the hood, and four exhaust pipes curve away from each side...I guess giving each cylinder a separate exhaust pipe helps with power. Or it just makes things louder for aesthetics. The open-topped cabin has two seats and a low-detail steering wheel molded in front of the driver's seat (again, I'm guessing they're being 1:64-faithful rather than molding a more detailed wheel). The trunk-like end has a fuel tank and what I'm guessing is a battery pack molded in it, so that the front end doesn't need to sacrifice any room for those things and can just put in the biggest engine available. There is a molded license plate holder in back, but no molded or printed plate.
4.5" (11cm) long, which makes it about 5/3 as long as the Hot Wheels original, or about 1:38 scale give or take a bit. Mostly black and silver
with yellow flames edged in red. The front grill/headlights skull chunk and the stick shift are light silvery gray plastic, and a lottle of that is also visible in the trunk (some of the black there should've been painted light gray, or the light gray painted black). Otherwise, various types of black plastic. I think the sides with the exhaust pipes might also be light gray plastic, since they're painted gloss black where they aren't painted silver.
There's flames printed on the hood and sides, mostly yellow with red edging, and they glow REALLY strongly under UV...which also reveals how
sloppy the applications were, as there's yellow spatter on the window frames. The Hot Wheels logo is done in negative space black at the front of the hood just behind the skull. The headlight lenses are painted a lighter yellow, while the taillights and the molded shock absorbers behind the headlights are painted red. The rest of the skull part is painted silver, as are the engine cylinder heads, exhaust pipes, wheel hubs, and the fuel tank in the back.
The seats are painted gloss brown. If you disagree with the Autobot assignment, the forehead of the skull is a good place for a small Decepticon symbol, since it would also be on the chest in robot mode.
There's no standard connectors in this mode, just a nonstandard slot for the stick shift. It rolls REALLY well on the pinned wheels, which isn't actually surprising, as I expect the Hot Wheels side of the license would
have insisted on that. If displaying in vehicle mode, make sure you have something keeping it from rolling away.
The stick shift does look kinda goofy sticking up out of the open roof
of this mode, but there's nowhere else to store it. It's 1.75" (4.5cm) long with a spherical top that's painted red with a white symbol on top. The
symbol is a skull and crossbones, but with the skull part replaced by an Autobot symbol. The ball is a separate piece of plastic, painted over
entirely and glued in place, so I'm not positive it's light gray plastic, but it probably is if only because painting over black is always more difficult. There's blunt spikes sticking out the sides just below the ball, and then the bottom third is wrapped in a spring. It ends in a 5mm peg with a short 2mm
by 3.7mm tab sticking out that bottom that goes into a slot in the
dashboard. The robot mode uses it as a mace.

Transformation: The back half splits to make the legs, as one might expect, but the way the seats rotate to become heels anmd the back end of the vehicle swings down to become the toes while avoiding the cabin posts (which fold away) is clever. The wheels and exhaust pipes fold out as shoulderpads, then the arms come out from under the hood and let the grill section fold
down. The shoulder roots need to end up clipped in behind the skull, but
it's not too hard to back up a step.
Going back to vehicle mode, getting the arms in the right position is really the only tricky step.

Robot Mode: The helmet has elements evocative of Soundwave's
(particularly the helmet front), plus exhaust pipe wings on either side and a faceplate under a visor rather than individual eyes. This is not a friendly lack-of-face. The skull now dominates the chest, the vehicle's exhaust pipes flare out the back of the shoulderpads, with the front wheels on the tops of the shoulderpads. The arms are otherwise a little spindly compared to the
big stomper boots and the (not attached to the arms) shoulderpads. The hips are the variety where the right and left thirds of the pelvis are part of the hip joint. The front center of the pelvis is molded to be reminiscent of the engine cylinder heads, although only six of them, and not painted silver.
Getting out my vernier calipers I see that the robot mode is a little
over 5" tall, at 12.8cm instead of 12.7. So there! The balance skews a bit lighter with more silvery light gray in the mix, plus some yellowy orange
here and there (interestingly, UV tests show multiple paints despite looking the same under regular light). Silvery gray plastic (same as the mace stickshift) is used for the shoulders, upper arms, chestplate, abdomen front and spine core, center third of the pelvis, thighs, and hinges insides the feet. Everything else is black plastic.
In addition to the silver on all the vehicle parts, the faceplate and
the helmet pipes are silver. There's yellow-orange paint on the tops of the rorearms, the belt buckle, and the pelvis front (pelvis apps are deep orange under UV, forearms are almost yellow). Red visor, gloss black on most of the abdomen front and some panels on the thigh fronts. The Hot Wheels logo ends
up on the collar.
The neck is a ball joint with the socket in the head and the ability to tilt the head back, the waist is a smooth swivel. The shoulderpads are
hinged to lift up out of the way if needed. Pinned hinge and swivel
shoulders, bicep swivels, hinge elbows. Wrists are hinged to bend inwards
for transformation. Pinned hinge and swivel hips, upper thigh swivels, hinge knees that bend double. The part of the foot with the heels has a hinge halfway up the boot to let them bend inwards to stay flat, while the toes can swing out on transformations hinges halfway up the shin to allow some extra stability in dynamic poses. The heels can also fold down on transformation hinges to further stabilize things.
The fists can hold 5mm pegs, which is it for connectors. The stick
shift is held in either hand as a mace in this mode. There isn't really storage for it in this mode, although you can rest it on the windshield on
back and it'll stay reasonably secure.

Redeco potential: Given that most Hot Wheels cars come out in multiple color schemes over the years, I'm sure there's plenty of room to release alternate color schemes of this figure should the line sell well. We do know that Twin Mill is getting tweaked for a future wave, after all.

Overall: Some interesting mechanics not generally seen on other Transformers and an alt mode that is technically nostalgic for people old enough to be collectors. It could stand better weapon storage, but that's a minor issue. Worth picking up, even with the licensing tax.


AUTOBOT: TWIN MILL
Crossover: Hot Wheels
Altmode: Twin Mill
Transformation Difficulty:
Previous Name Use:
Previous Mold Use: None

The Twin Mill was designed in 1969 as one of the older Hot Wheels originals, and reflects the late 60s "super car" aesthetic. There's been a bunch of variants since then, although this doesn't quite match any of the
ones I've found on the Hot Wheels wikia, it has the taller engines seen on
the Hardnoze and Tooned variants. It doesn't quite match the Twin Mill III either, although that comes closer than the original. Both the turbocharger intakes and side exhaust pipes can be removed (they attach via 5mm pegs) to
get something closer to the original design, though.

Packaging: Two plastic ties hold the vehicle into the tray, while each Fire Blast is held by a single tie.

Vehicle Mode: Okay, as noted above, this is based on the original Twin Mill design, but with oversized engines and exhaust pipes, plus a more modern color scheme (the very oldest ones basically had one paint color other than silver/chrome). The shape is vaguely like a spearhead or short-and-wide
sword, with the rear wheels at the very back with no rear bumper...anything that rear-ends this car is hitting the wheels first. The driver's
compartment is in the rear third and the engines dominate the middle third,
so the nose end is probably pure crumple zone (but not Crumplezone). This is probably a design where the entire roof/windshield chunk opens up like a fighter jet canopy, although the toy lacks articulation for that. The
minimal interior does suggest space for both a driver and a passenger rather than putting the driver on the centerline.
4.25" (11cm) long in mostly shades of blue with silver and light gray on the engines. The braille Twin Mill (the one I had most handy) is 72mm long, making the Transformer version only 1.5 times larger, making this about 1:42 scale. (The regular Bone Shaker car is shorter than Twin Mill, but the Transformers versions are the same length in vehicle mode.) The windshield/ roof piece and the headlights are clear light blue plastic, the engines, exhaust pipes, and tires are light gray plastic, the rest is a slightly metalswirled dark blue plastic. The flame effect pieces are clear plastic either colored yellow or painted over in clear yellow.
The tires are painted black and the exhaust pipes are painted silver.
The roof part that's clear plastic is painted a metallic blue that's a decent match for the blue plastic, and there's silver and bright blue stripes and details printed on the roof and hood. The tailpipes are painted silver, there's a silver Hot Wheels logo on the back end between the red-painted taillights, the turn signals on the front fenders are painted orange-ish yellow. There's a red Autobot symbol printed on each side just ahead of the rear wheel, where they get kinda covered by the flame effects.
As with Boneshaker, it rolls very well. The tailpipes are very short
3mm studs, and you can add extra Fire Blasts to them. The main side pipes
are a nonstandard diameter, so the included flame effects can't be used on anything else. They also bend to avoid the wheels, so you need to make sure they're aligned just right to avoid scraping on the rear wheels. The exhaust pipes can be removed, leaving behind shallow 5mm sockets with grooves leading forwards that fit shallow raised bits next to the exhaust pipe pegs to keep them from rotating. The supercharger intakes are also attached via pegs, but just simple pegs so they can be rotated for robot mode or detached to be held as tiny weapons on their own. (This also makes it easier to swap out
different pieces for retools or co-tools.) As noted, if you just remove both the pipes and intakes, it looks more like the original Twin Mill. Each
engine can be slid off, they attach via nonstandard pegs, another thing that will make minor retools easier. I'll discuss them in robot mode, since they become weapons there. There's no other connectors in this mode.

Transformation: You can't leave the engines in place, as they block the front end (arms) from moving and they don't clip onto the same place in robot mode anyway. If you stop at transforming the arms, I am reminded of one of those minor-brand pull-back-motor robots I got from an arcade claw game at
Six Flags once. However, the rounded back end of the vehicle mode means it can't stand up like this. Next, the roof folds up and rotates to become the chest front, with a bit of non-clear filler folding inside to keep the chest from looking too hollow. Then the rear fenders fold open to let the legs unfold, with the feet coming out from in between the rear wheels. Rotate the waist 180 degrees and clip the engines over the forearms to cover up the
extra transformation joints in the forearms. The cardback shows the turbocharger intakes detached and placed in the hands as tiny guns.
It can be a little tricky aligning things when going back to vehicle
mode, but it's not too bad.

Robot Mode: Quite leggy and gangly with big pointy shoulderpads and extra-long shins. The helmet has a crest that reminds me of the Senate Guard or Security Services symbol, if simplified, and there's a face rather than a faceplate, marking this one as more heroic. There's exhaust pipes stickint
out the back of the top of the helmet, and a slim visor rather than separate eyes. The front end of the car becomes the pointy shoulderpads, and the roof/windshield makes the chest.
A bit over 5" (12.7cm) tall and very blue with bright blue and silver. There's not a lot of extra light gray plastic in this mode, most of it ends
up inside the boots. Lighr gray plastic makes up the engine weapon and its parts, the shoulder roots, lower biceps, fists, inner hip joint parts, knees and shins (mostly hidden from the front), heels, and wheels. The chest is clear light blue plastic, as are the headlights now on the undersides of the shoulderpads, everything else is some variety of dark blue plastic.
Lots of light bright blue paint in this moder to go with the roof/chest stuff, including triangles on the shoulderpad fronts, a pattern on the
pelvis, and a lot of the shins. There's silver on the face, helmet pipes,
and vents on the kneecaps and shins. The inner faces of the engine gun clips are the same dark slightly metallic blue as the chest/roof, the visor is
gloss canary yellow. The printed Autobot symbols end up on the outer faces
of the boots.
The neck is a ball joint that can wiggle a little, the waist is a smooth swivel and a bit high up the abdomen. The shoulderpads are on transformation lifting hinges and swivels at the end of their struts, plus the upper arms
are hinged to lift almost all the way up. Bicep swivels, hinge elbows, and extra transformation hinges in the forearms, swivel wrists. Pinned hinge and swivel hips, swivels just above the hinge knees. The ankles are restricted ball joints on transformation hinges that do the job of the usual instep hinges, although they're on the outer edges instead. The heels have transformation hinges that can be used to help with stability.
The fists can hold 5mm pegs, and then there's the sockets on the
engines, that's basically it for connectors. The guns just sort of slide around the forearms, and don't stay on very well.
The weapons are mirror images of each other, the cores are engine blocks on those clips. Fully assembled they're 1.5" (3.5cm) long without the
flames, 3.25" (8cm) long with the flames. There's nowhere to store them
other than on the arms, unfortunately, so if you want to use the pipes along
as blasters, you just need to set the engines aside somewhere. Given the massively hollow boots, it'd have been nice if the engine blocks could snap into them. Ultimately, I appreciate the effort that went into being more clever with the weapons here than on Bone Shaker's mace, but the result just doesn't quite work in this mode. I understand the importance of prioritizing the vehicle mode for a licensed vehicle, but a couple of extra tabs or pegs
not even visible in vehicle mode would've gone a long way.

Overall: It's decent, but I'm not sure I want to bother with the
expected retool/redeco given that my problems with the mold are unlikely to
be addressed in any retooling (which will be at most the exhaust pipes, supercharger intake, and the head).


Dave Van Domelen, will probably display both of these in vehicle mode.

--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2