From Newsgroup: alt.toys.transformers

Dave's Transformers Cyberworld Rant: Armored Cyber Changers wave 2

Chop Shop (beetle)
Optimus Prime (Hummvee-like offroad vehicle)

Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/CW/Armored2

The Armored Cyber Changers continue to not actually be armored, they're beweaponed. They're $10 Cyber Changer figures with an action-feature bulky gimmick weapon that adds $5 to the price. As with wave 2 of Cyber Changers, I'm going to be more terse than my review of Galvatron.

$15 price point, still no elbows. Chop Shop is mildly recommended, the weapon is weird but does have some fidget value. Optimus Prime is a little better, but I still wouldn't bring it up all the way to Recommended.


DECEPTICON: CHOP SHOP
Zone: Desert (he first appears in the Jungle, though)
Altmode: Beetle
Transformation Difficulty: 4 steps
Package Cosells: Optimus Prime (Armored), Bumblebee, Elita-1.

While named Chop Shop, he's more like a reference to Beast Wars
Insecticon or maybe Barrage in terms of colors. There's more plastic colors than usual, with bright chartreuse, forest green, orange, and bright yellow. Other than the red eyes in robot mode and the Decepticon symbol, all the
paint is one of the plastic colors. Well, the pelvis is metallic green for some reason, a paint color that doesn't otherwise appear. There's the usual five 5mm sockets, plus two more on the back so that the jaws from the weapon can be placed there instead of on the weapon. There's also a 5mm socket for attaching the jaws, but you can put the weapon there instead to be weird.
The transformation is basically the same as Wheeljack's, pull up the
chest and squeeze the arms in and legs up, then massage to get everything together. The mouthparts can be left on the robot chest, or detached as a melee weapon. For some reason, they break it into four steps here, even
though it's two for Wheeljack (and Optimus below).
The gimmick weapon is a weird fusion of a sword stuck in a hammer with mancatcher claws on top of that. The claws can be removed, they're just
pegged in place (one socket is talled than the other so that they can scissor across each other). Pulling the hilt out makes the sword blade also stick
out while rotating the sockets for the claws. The hammer head has a 5mm peg
on the side opposite the sockets, for mounting on the back of insect mode (or any other altmode, really, with people swapping gear). The hilt has a sword/ hammer mode peg, and then another peg on the side of the crosspiece so the weapon can be held as a catcher claw. The claws CAN scissor across each
other, but are normally aligned to snap together, you have to manually press them past each other. Fully closed, it's either a weird hammer or a bulky cannon.
Oh, and the rear pair of legs in beast mode, which are attached to the boots, are only pegged in place and held stable with secondary tiny pegs, so they can be rotated a bit if you want, or attached to the forearm sockets (which actually stick out past the fists) to put all the insect legs on the arms in robot mode. (They do need to be out of their stable notches in
insect mode if you want all six legs touching the same flat surface, though.)


AUTOBOT: OPTIMUS PRIME
Zone: Desert
Altmode: Hummvee
Transformation Difficulty: 2 steps
Package Cosells: Chop Shop, Bumblebee, Elita-1

So, one of the Big Problems in the cartoon was that the intact shuttle
was in the desert area, which not only had Scorponok as a guardian, it also
had sand. Lots of sand. And neither Bumblebee nor Optimus Prime could drive in it. So when they got reformatted, it was specifically to be able to drive on Sand. (Elita-1 was left out of this reformatting because there were only two plot devices and she's not a major enough character to get a second toy.) Prime also gets a cannon-jetpack, the toys never do give him the axe upgrade
he uses in the show. (Bumblebee's offroad upgrade toy has no weapon, but in the show he kept the Armored Cyber Changer weapon, it just got bigger.)
As often happens when Optimus has a retractable faceplate in the media, some toys have the faceplate deployed and some don't. Unfortunately, this is the one that shows the face. Why unfortunate? Because the sculpt is...bad. Oversized upper lip that makes it look like he's morphing into Primal instead of Prime. Munkytrukk. Robot mode has the usual articulation (or lack
thereof) and 5mm ports, plus a 3mm socket at the bottom of the backpack (back of the roof).
Same basic transformation as Wheeljack as well. Getting it back to
robot mode takes more force than I'm comfortable using, I feel like I'm going to pop an arm off. The off-road mode is more or less a Hummvee, but with big truck exhaust pipes. (Episode 20 of the cartoon showed that Bumblebee can revert to his sportscar altmode, so Optimus can probably do the semitractor
if he finds a situation where it's preferable.)
The weapon is the usual big chunk, in this case with a 6-barrel minigun cannon sticking out the front, and wings folded up on top. Pushing the gray bit in back forwards makes the wings spread out and the cannon splits into
two parts, I suppose for that sort of "energy crackles between two pylons" anime mecha weapon. The wings themselves are attached via pegs to their
hinge roots, so they can be taken off and given to someone else, although not
a lot of figures have two sockets on their back. For Prime himself, the deployed wingpack mode goes on the back with barrels down as thrusters or something, although I can't recall seeing him use the wingpack to fly in the cartoon yet (might be an upgrade he'll get later, he still uses the axe he picked up early on). The 3mm socket is accessible when the wingpack is attached, so you can use a flight stand. The deployed wingpack on its own
also looks kind of like a fighter drone.


Dave Van Domelen, wishes they'd sell an upgrade pack so that all the
Cyber Changers could have themely weapons rather than just borrowing stuff
from other lines.


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