From Newsgroup: alt.toys.transformers

Dave's Transformers Age of the Primes Rant: Voyager Wave 5

Sideways (motorcycle)
Rook (Mini-Con Headmaster)
Crosswise (Mini-Con Headmaster)
Mirror (combined Mini-Con)

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

I did finally get this something like a month or so after Nexus Prime, technically the other part of this wave.

https://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Armada/Deluxe2 - Original Sideways (which never officially named the combined rider, something this new toy addresses).

CAPSULE

$42 price point (but at least it's bigger than the original)

Sideways: Decent robot mode and vehicle mode, but the transformation needed to actually be tested in physical space at some point, it's annoying
in many ways.

Rook: Somewhat gorilla-armed due to undersized removable legs. Good
head mode, but cheats by throwing away the legs.

Crosswise: The removable arms don't move at all and the legs can't move much without ruining the looks. Also a good head mode, but cheats by setting aside the arms.

Mirror: Decent little dude who can sort of use the abandoned body parts
of the components as weapons or a jetpack. They definitely prioritizing this looking better than the original.

Set Overall: This really could've been a Recommended set with a little more design tweaking and testing. As it stands, just mildly recommended
(like the original).


RANTS

So, this is basically a set of three figures, a Voyager plus two
Mini-Cons that can become alternate heads, robots on their own, or combine
into a bigger robot that doesn't look too terribly tiny riding the motorcycle mode. There's been a lot of Sideways toys since Armada, including a recent Generations revival of the Cybertron "version" of the character (who in the Japanese source material had no connection at all). This is the first update of the specific Armada version in a quarter of a century, though. It doesn't have launchable missiles, but it'd be hard to not have a lot better articulation (the original was kinda bricky), and they did preserve the core gimmick of horned Headmasters.

Packaging: Standard AotP Voyager window box. The art shows Mirror
riding the motorcycle mode, but there's no indication of the Headmaster
gimmick on the outside of the box. The gimmick does take up a big chunk of
the instructions, though. Every place there would be a faction symbol
there's a split symbol with half Autobot (on the left) and half Decepticon
(on the right). Mine is packaged with the figure's Autobot symbol showing,
but I wouldn't be surprised if some have that bit flipped.


AUTOBOT/DECEPTICON: SIDEWAYS
Assortment: G1999
Altmode: Motorcycle
Transformation Difficulty: 23 steps
Previous Name Use: RiD01, Armada, Cybertron, RotF, Studio, AotP
Previous Mold Use: None
Origin Universe: Armada

Packaging: Five ties hold the robot in the middle of he tray. Combined Mirror is held in the lower left by a corner flap and one tie. The plastic
bag taped to the lower right has the front and rear wheels, the arm cannon missiles (I've already seen a 3P kit that replaces these with longer clear plastic missiles), Rook's legs, and Crosscut's arms (yeah, the Mirror
combiner cheats by shedding a lot of parts).
The assembly instructions involve attaching the wheels and missiles,
plus show how to flip the faction symbol. This isn't a partformer, the
wheels are left off in package purely to avoid the figure needing a deeper
box. Okay, they're just pegged on so they probably WILL come off during transformation, but it's not a required part-forming step like Mirror's combination and separation.
Oh, and be careful with the flipping faction symbol panel, it pops out pretty easily if you're trying to pull the chest down without making sure the shoulders are folded out first when head-swapping.

Robot Mode: Despite the significantly improved articulation, this
manages to still look like the Armada brick, although with the head sitting a bit too high compared to the chest due to the joints under it. The front and rear wheels are folded up on back like samurai flags, and there's bulky but non-functional missile launcher chunks on the forearms. The feet are a bit weird because they fold together as part of the motorcycle seat, giving a slightly pigeon-toed look. Since it doesn't transform the same way as the original, the head looks more like the animation model (the original was basically a cylinder with handlebars). The right forearm chunk has a short immobile kick stand molded into it.
A little over 6" (15.5cm) tall at the handlebar horns in a mix of Decepticon Purple, medium gray, black, and pale gold. The prominent
windshield on the chest (and much of its border) is made of smoky clear plastic. The shoulder inner joints, biceps, forearms, feet, motorcycle
wheels, and struts inside the boots are black plastic. The handlebar horns, backpack wheel struts, fender on the front wheel (over the right shoulder), fists, missiles, and thighs are medium gray plastic. The outer parts of the hips seem to be a slightly darker gray plastic, but I'm not sure if that's intentional or accidental batch variation. The rest of the toy is Decepticon Purple.
The purple paint on parts of the chest and the front wheel fender is a decent match for the plastic under normal light, but not even close under UV (and therefore might look off under sunlight if I ever took my toys into
direct sunlight like a fool). Pale gold paint is used for the faceplate, sides, kneecaps, shins, and the stripe down the middle of the front fender. There's matte black stripes on either side of the central gold stripe on the fender. The shallow-V optic visor and the abdomen headlights are metallic medium blue, and the tops of the wrists are silver. The flipping panel at
the top of the chest windshield has a red Autobot symbol on one side and a purple Decepticon symbol on the other.
The neck is a ball joint with the socket in the head and a cut in back
so the head can look up, although the handlebars smack into the wheels. The handlebars are on swivel joints, mostly used for transformation but you can also have the horns down if you prefer (and this frees up more range of
motion for the neck). Pinned hinge and swivel shoulders, bicep swivels,
hinge elbows, restricted ball joint wrists. Note, the shoulder roots aren't tabbed to the sides very firmly, so trying to move the arms can just un-tab them. Smooth swivel waist, pinned hinge and swivel hips, upper thigh
swivels, hinge knees. Ankles have tilt hinges and rotation swivels.
Finally, a panel in the windshield can flip over and snap in place, but it's not pinned and as I found out the hard way can just pop off and try to get lost.
The fists hold 5mm pegs, there's additional 5mm sockets on the fronts of the forearm launcher chunks (meant to hold the missiles), on the outer faces
of the chunks, on the fronts of the shoulders, the outer faces of the knees, the soles of the feet, and one in the center of the wheel strut unit on the back. There's 3mm sockets on the outer faces of the boot bottoms, but not in the usual rear pelvis location.
The missiles are fairly simple and identical, pieces of gray plastic hollow on one side and looking like baseball bats with hoops around them near the front, middle, and end. The ends are 5mm pegs meant to go into the
forearm blocks, but they can be wielded as batons as well. Each is 1.5"
(4cm) long not counting the short 5mm peg at the end. They can be left in place during transformation.

Transformation: In principle fairly basic, the arms end up behind the
back after the wheel backpack rotates into place, the thighs collapse into
the boots, the feet become part of the seat, the windshield and head rotate
to face forwards. But it feels like every step is more awkward than it needs to be, the backpack wheels pop off easily as predicted, and I also had some other joints pop off or apart in the process. Definitely feels like they
never tested it in meatspace to make sure it worked smoothly.
Going back to robot mode, getting the fists out of the forearms requires long nails or a tool, there isn't a tab or anything like that to help get purchase and the launcher chunks don't fold far enough out of the way to let
me get leverage with my fingers. Even with a knife I had a hard time of it,
a hooked dental-style tool would be the best option. Again, the design
clearly wasn't actually tested in the physical world before being sent to the factory.
Either direction, you might as well just remove the wheels at the start and reattach them at the end, trying to keep them from popping off is super frustrating and an exercise in futility.

Altmode: While the windshield is more along the lines of a "crotch
rocket" racing motorcycle, the rest is pure touring cycle with panniers for cargo. There's a long seat for a second rider, but it's blocked by the panniers, so only the main rider can fit. The missiles are now twin exhaust pipes, and the kickstand does sort of work, although the forearm chunks are close enough to the ground already that if it falls over the wrong way (which mine tends to do) it doesn't have far to go, the kickstand only ends up a few millimeters up.
5.25" (13cm) long, making it around 1:18 scale give or take. That in
turn would make a 2m tall rider a bit over 4" (10-11cm) tall, and there's plenty of action figures around that size (GIJoe scale is a little too short, but not too bad). Same colors as robot mode, but the purple is a lot more dominant. The main visible gray plastic is the front wheel strut,
handlebars, exhaust pipes, and a bit of the interior. The seat is black (the robot feet plus painted pelvis) and the windshield smoky clear. The main new paint visible in this mode is more pale gold on the sides at the bottom even with the handlebars, the part that was the interior of the shoulder attachments. There are molded dials and a little screen between the handlebars, but no paint on them.
The handlebars can move up and down a bit to fit the rider, and the
whole thing rolls nicely while part of the underside skids along, but it
can't really fall over. There's 5mm sockets on the right and left sides from the upper boots (now on the panniers) and the forearms (now the underside).
The 3mm sockets are at the rear sides of the panniers now. The shoulder-
front 5mm sockets are on the underside at the level of the handlebars. The
5mm sockets meant for the exhaust pipe missiles aren't that useful for
anything else. I suppose you might be able to connect something to the 5mm
peg under the handlebars, but there's not a lot of stuff that could fit in there.

Overall: Both modes are pretty good, with only minor issues, it's the transformation where I lose a lot of enthusiasm. Some of it might just be QC issues (joints too tight or not tight enough in a bad combination), but I
feel like a lot of it comes down to a lack of "let someone just try to transform a physical copy" testing.


AUTOBOT: ROOK
DECEPTICON: CROSSWISE
COMBINER: MIRROR
Assortment: G1999
Altmode: Heads, combiner top and bottom
Transformation Difficulty: 6 steps (Mirror to Rook and Crosscut), 5 steps
(Crosscut to head), 3 steps (Rook to head)
Previous Name Use: Rook None (convention exclusive is only separate use);
Crosswise RiD01, Cybertron; Mirror None
Previous Mold Use: None
Origin Universe: Armada

Packaging: Noted above, packaged as Mirror.

Combiner Mode: I suppose Mirror evokes someone in a black leather jacket and gloves and gray jeans, but while the head definitely has a helmet shape it's an open-faced helmet with little resemblance to a motorcycle helmet. Because Rook's head is folded down and Crosswise's faceplate is folded up against the back, there's little visible to betray the pseudo-Headmaster aspects (the abdomen is a ninja mask, but since it's all black it doesn't scream robot face). Note, this is not all of Rook plus all of Crosswise as with the original toy, there's two chunks set to the side.
2.5" (6.5cm) tall in a mix of black, gray, and silver with some red accents. At 1:18 scale, that would result in a person under 4 feet tall
(about 1.2m). Everything below the waist is medium gray plastic, as is the sort of backpack formed by Crosswise's faceplate being folded up. The rest
is black plastic. The head is painted silver with gold eyes, while there's
red stripes up the shins. The Crosswise arms chunk is gray plastic and the Rook legs piece is black plastic, they're technically just set aside in this mode with the pieces plugged into Sideways via 3mm pegs.
No real neck joint, but you can use the transformation hinge to let the head tilt back and look up a bit before you see Rook's head instead. Technically the waist is a peg that can rotate, but you have to fold down Crosswise's faceplate a bit to let it move. The shoulders, elbows, hips, and knees are ball and socket joints, the ankles are front-back hinges. There's
no wrists, so the hands are pretty much stuck in "hold a horizontal bar" pose unless you have the entire arm straightened. The main reason for all of this is to let Mirror ride the motorcycle mode, which it can do, although it looks like a small child athwart a motorcycle when it does so.
The hands can hold 3mm rods/pegs, of which there are many on this toy, there's a 3mm socket in the middle of the back, and the chest has a 5mm peg (Rook's head) sticking out of it.
There's a significant undocumented feature here, the Rook's-Legs piece
has the same waist grooves as Crosswise's body, so Crosswise's arms can be attached to Rook's legs with arms either up or down, as a sort of drone bot with no real head (it would've been easy enough to mold a face onto the peg like the main Mini-Cons have, though). This also works as a sort of jet pack or gun pack for Mirror using the 3mm socket in the back. With arms up it
also sort of looks like a cheap Targetmaster, but since it only has a 3mm peg and there's no 3mm sockets on Sideways's hands or arms, it's not that
helpful. (Officially the extras store on the 3mm sockets on the outer faces
of the boots/panniers.)

Transformation To Robots: Fold down the backpack, fold back Mirror's
head, then separate the top from the bottom. Plug the black legs piece into Rook's waist socket, and snap the gray arms chunk around Crosswise's torso
then rotate the shins at the knees.
Unlike the originals, there are not panels to fold down/up to cover the Headmaster faces.

Robot Modes: Both are about the same size at 47mm (a bit under 2"), although Crosswise might be a fraction of a millimeter taller. Both have
faces molded to fit inside the shape of 5mm pegs, since those are the neck
pegs for their head modes, but only Rook has any paint on his face. Both
have upside-down Headmaster faces on their torso fronts.
Rook is all black plastic, with a bit of a case of gorilla arms since he still has Mirror's arms. The eyes are painted red, and then the Headmaster faceplate has silver on the upside-down mask and red on the eyes. The Mirror head is folded back. The arms retain ball joint shoulders and elbows, with
the 3mm socket hands posed for holding onto horizontal bars. The waist is a peg, so technically turns. No articulation below that. The soles of the
feet have 3mm sockets, and there's a 3mm peg on the back of the waist. Technically this can attach to the 3mm sockets on the sides of the boots/ panniers of the main figure, but not well. Those are really meant for
storing just the legs (or just Crosswise's arms).
Crosswise as somewhat spindly straight arms, and uses the Headmaster faceplate to cover the thighs and pretend that Mirror's knees are the hips, sort of. If you ignore the actual hips up under the armpits, the proportions aren't too bad. All medium gray plastic, with gold on the upside down Headmaster faceplate's eyes and red on the shins. They could've painted Crosswise's eyes gold too, and I wasn't entirely sure they hadn't (it would have kinda blended in) until I went over the face with a strong flashlight. They're recessed enough you could easily paint them yourself without worries
of rubbing off, though. Technically all of Mirror's leg articulation
remains, but other than using the knees to rotate the direction the feet
point, none of it is particularly useful. The un-jointed arms end in weapon barrels with thumbs, but they're 3.5mm in diameter. There's a 3mm peg on
back, so you could store him upside down on one of the boots on Sideways.
The 3mm socket from Mirror's back is folded away and inaccessible here.

Transformation to Heads: Remove the extra parts, turn upside down, and pose the remaining limbs as horns. The instructions specify the way the
horns look, but you can fiddle with them to suit your tastes, there's nothing to securely lock them in place. The harder part is getting the original head stored inside the chest, since unlike the Armada version it doesn't just sink down into the torso, there's a bunch of rotating and folding struts. The
extra bits of the one you're using as a head go onto one of the boots using
the 3mm peg. It'd have been nice if there were 3mm sockets on the forearms
so that they could be used as bonus arm blasters. I might fix that using my 3mm drill bit.
Note, you can't flip the faction symbol once the head is stowed, so plan ahead for which head you want to attach, or you'll have to back up several steps, flip the panel, and redo those steps.

Head Modes: Well, they peg into place in a 5mm socket revealed by the folding away of the base-model head. Either of them looks better-seated than the base model, because they lack the extra neck bits and also because the hollow chest is now filled in some. The color balance is fine in either
case, since there's roughly equal amounts of black and medium gray in robot mode, although I suppose I like Rook-head a little better than Crosswise-
head.

Overall: Is it better than the original? Eh, kinda a low bar when you consider how articulation was considered optional during Armada. Adjusted
for inflation, the original would be about $20 if nothing else changed, but probably more expensive than that given the internal mechanisms. Still, this isn't a LOT better.


Dave Van Domelen, will likely display this with the Rook head on robot mode.
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