From Newsgroup: alt.toys.transformers

Dave's Transforming Robot Toy Rant: Metal Cardbots

Machina Stealth Helicopter Shadow X (tiltrotor)

Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~misc/Cardbot3

https://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/misc/Cardbot1 has details about the line
in general, trade dress, etc.


CAPSULE

$25 from Agabyss.

Shadow X: While the leg articulation is somewhat lacking and they missed
a trope-following storage option for the Card Gear, this is otherwise a
pretty good robot mode with a simple but solid transformation to a good tiltrotor helicopter mode. Recommended.


RANT

This is not the only purple ninja transforming robot toy I own, so it's kinda a trope. (Off the top of my head there's Volfogg from GaoGaiGar and
you could make a strong case for Armada Sideways having ninja masks on his Mini-Con faces. I guess Tarantulas is also usually purple and his original techspec alled him a ninja, but as ToyBox Comix points out, he's rather
lacking in that department.)

Packaging: Same size box as Blue Star, and probably the reason this
price point is called Stealth Class.


MACHINA STEALTH HELICOPTER: SHADOW X
Altmode: Tiltrotor helicopter
Transformation Difficulty: 13 steps (Shadow X), 7 steps (X Wheel)
Card Gear: X Wheel
Motto: "I am like the wind. I can be loud like a tornado or silent like
a breeze!"

Shadow X is one of the toys that didn't get a name change. According to the wiki, he was an early antagonist of the "thinks the protagonist is a villain" variety, which wasn't an unreasonable position given the whole
"sealed by a card" thing Jun the blue-haired kid had been doing. The wiki
also describes him as somewhat child-like and mischievous, which makes me wonder if he was a Naruto riff despite not being orange. His plot device
power is the Heli-Tornado, so he's a wind-aspect ninja.

Packaging: The robot is held between the clamshell blister halves, with the Card Gear in a slot on the upper right and the regular rotors folded up
in the lower right. As with the rest of the line, the robot and vehicle mode pictures on the box are animation models, not toy pictures or toy design renders, which renders them a little less faithful to the product within.
The sticker sheet that comes with the full-wave set includes two
optional stickers for the vehicle cockpit eyes, and two options for the robot eyes.

Robot Mode: The head is a stylized ninja hood with a black headband that has a white plate in front with a red X on it. They do show some restraint, with that being the only X motif aside from the throwing star card gear.
While the helicopter blades are his main weapons, there's an 8-pack missile launcher in each shoulder, so he can probably inflict a bit of the old Itano Circus on opponents as well. The engine pods for his altmode are big blocks
on his wrists. Generally pretty leggy with a lot of that length in the shins (the knee spikes fit into grooves on the thigh fronts and rise almost to the hips). Interestingly, there's fake kneepads lower down the legs from where
the legs actually bend, and the package art does have the legs bending there.
6" (15cm) tall in mostly purple, silver, and black, with some bits of accent colors. Most of the figure is a rich "Decepticon Purple" plastic.
Black plastic is used for the collar, the shoulder struts, bits on the backs
of the shoulders, the fists, shins, rotor sockets on the big engine pods, missile pods on the shoulders, and the cores of the main rotors. Light gray plastic with a faint metal swirl is used for the faceplate ("why paint when
you can use a different plastic?" seems to be one of their design philosophies, I keep having to carefully double check bits to see if they're painted or plastic, they have some pretty good color matches), forearms (but not the big engine pods), kneespikes, fake kneepads, and lines down the backs of the calves. The lower nose end of the vehicle on the back is also light gray plastic. The cockpit piece also on the back is clear blue plastic with
a black plastic piece inserted to make it solid and have the molded vehicle mode eyes. The three blades of each rotor are orangeish-yellow plastic.
Silver is probably the most common paint on the toy, being used for the collar front, a shallow V on the chest, the abdomen sides, stripes and panels on the engine pods, stripes (one thick on top, two thin below) on the outer thighs, and the molded tail rotors on the ankles. The robot eyes are painted gold, as are the vent intakes on the tops of the shoulderpads, a Y-like
detail on the belly, and the tops of the toes. The middle of the abdomen is painted gloss black, as is most of the headband. (The animation model has
the shuriken motifs on the ear cups painted red, but the toy leaves the ear cups entirely black.) The plate on the headband is painted light gray with a red X, and the 8 missile tips on each shoulder are also painted red. I'll discuss the cockpit/nose-art paint in the vehicle mode section. There's pale purple/lavender paint stripes on the tops of the forearms. (In the animation model, the forearms aren't even that shape, so I can't really talk about a
bad color match.)
The neck is a ball joint with the socket in the collar, but unlike the last two that I reviewed it is not prone to popping out. The waist does not turn because of the transformation hinges, but those two hinges do let you
put this in one of those anime "chest and pelvis forwards, stomach back"
poses that seems to pop up a lot in Final Fantasy XIV. The shoulders have ratcheting swivels (45 degrees to a click) for rotation and hard-ratcheting hinges (like, they shake enough to make a rotor blade fall out of the forearm socket) with ten degrees per click. There's bicep swivels that soft-ratchet
45 degrees at a time (aka octagonal pegs inside), end soft-ratcheting elbows that go from straight to 45 degrees to 90 degrees. The wrists do not turn,
but they have transformation hinges to let them hide inside the engine
chunks. The hips are like the shoulders, with 18 degrees per click and range from straight forwards to almost straight back (the backpack gets in the way
of that last click), and 10 degrees per click out to the sides with a 12
click range (one click inward of straight down for transformation, and two clicks above horizontal for high kicking). The knees are really just transformation joints, being about a centimeter above the molded kneecaps,
and only going through clicks of about 25 degrees each. No articulation at
the molded knees, no ankles, no thigh swivels.
The fists are 4.5mm sockets, while the rotor roots on the forearms are deliberately slightly loose for 4.5mm rods so that the rotors can spin freely (the 4.5mm rods on the rotors and the Card Gear are long enough that while loose to spin they don't fall out too easily...if you turn them facing down
and shake they'll fall out, but not if you're careful). That's it for connectors, although I'm tempted to try drilling a 4.5mm hole in the black plastic of the cockpit so that the X Wheel can store on the back in the tradition of "ninja with ludicrous throwing star on his back" tropes.
The rotors are the main non-Card weapons, and they can either go on the forearms as spinning blades (for the Heli-Tornado, one presumes) or fold up into pointy melee weapons. I guess they're supposed to be kinda like kunai, rather than swords? They're a little too conical to be swords. Anyway, including the handle peg they're a little under 2.5" (6cm) long. When the three blades are unfolded, the rotors are a little too pointy to be proper helicopter blades, but they do have molding details that suggest a direction
of rotation (positive along the axis of the peg, or counter-clockwise when you're looking down on them from above). The rotor circle is 4" (10cm). The sockets for them on the forearms are so that they can face outwards in robot mode rather than backwards, but then hinge to face the correct direction when the forearm pods are engines. They don't fold completely flat, which evokes how rotors tend to flex upwards when supporting weight. If you jam them into the engine pod sockets hard enough, they won't spin but also won't fall out,
so the sockets probably narrow as you go further down.
Note, the animation model has the rotors with joints that would make
them fold sideways rather than up, so on the forearms they become backwards pointing spikes. You can sort of fake this look by folding the socket into vehicle configuration and having the kunai-ish blades pointing backwards, although it's a bit awkward.

Card Gear: The faceplate is a vibrant purple that's a little brighter
than the toy's purple, with gold accent paint. The Card Gear itself is clear plastic somewhere between magneta and a warm violet. The card has four rectangular slots at the corners but the Gear face only has two tabs at opposite corners, so the faceplate can be attached two different ways. Why
not four tabs? Well, having just two lets the whole Card Gear be transformed without removing the faceplate.
The Gear part itself is 16mm thick with a long 4.5mm peg that folds out
of the back with great difficulty. It's split into two similar layers that
can rotate 45 degrees at a time on soft ratchets, and each layer unfolds into
a slightly bent long spike 7.25" (18.5cm) long, although you can leave the
tip pieces bent for more of a pinwheel look. The front face has a lot of
gold and black paint along the interiors of the spines, and the front layer
has additional molded details painted gold in the center. The peg in back is meant to go in one of the spinny sockets, but it can be held in either fist
as long as the arm is nearly straight.

Transformation: Fairly intuitive and there's minimal hassle, mostly related to stiff joints. It's kinda like the robot going into a partial
crouch and tucking his head into his chest while the cockpit parts on the
back fold together on top and the arms twist into wings and rotor assemblies, very "ninja disguise art" in feel. One nice little bit at the end is that
tiny nubs fold out on the underside so that the nose of the vehicle is lifted
a little off the ground. They're not true landing gear, but along with the edges of the hips form a small four-point stand of sorts. The thigh pads
that act like knee spikes in robot mode serve the purpose of partly filling
in the "lap" gap in back. The head doesn't completely hide, but it does
enough to not be a problem.

Vehicle Mode: The tiltrotors tilt, which is pretty much a requirement
for a good tiltrotor altmode, yes? There's a shark motif to the cockpit, so not only are there window eyes there's a toothy maw in the tradition of airplane nose art. The package animation art has more red paint on the nose than the toy does, although that's fixed easily enough if you have red
paint. The shoulder missile pods now face backwards, I guess the idea is to discourage pursuit or even lay down smokescreens during the inevitable
running away phase. The exposed screws on the backs of the shoulderpads now face forwards, which is a bit disappointing, stickers to cover those up would've been nice, although I could probably cut something out of electrical tape or even use a bit of styrene sheet and paint it.
6.25" (16.5cm) long, 7" (18cm) wide without the rotors, a maximum of 10" (25cm) with rotors in place. Color balance is about the same, although the cockpit/nose section is more salient now. That light purple from the forearm stripes is used for the cockpit framework, which is a big mismatch from the animation model and kinda stands out. The pupil and "white" of the molded
eyes inside the cockpit are painted silver, with the iris left a black ring arc. The inside of the shark mouth is painted red, but the teeth are left
the same light gray as the rest of that piece, which is consistent with the animation model.
As far as articulation goes, the bicep hinges are used to tilt the
rotors between VTOL and level flight. Technically the transformation hinge
of the cockpit lets it open, but there's no detail inside to reveal nor a
place to put a tiny pilot figure if you happen to have one.

Overall: It has a few deficiencies, mostly in the legs, but it's a solid robot and a pretty good not-an-Osprey with a transformation that's fairly simple but works. Definitely worth the price.


Dave Van Domelen, "Voyager for less than a Deluxe" would be a good ad tagline if they didn't mind the chance of being sued by Hasbro.

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