DotM Figure Review Thread

[138 Scourge]

So, I've picked up a few of these now:

Powerglide: In the hauls thread, I said:

Powerglide's a pretty solid toy. Good jet mode, cool robot mode, and without much more movie-style greebles than, say, Windcharger has going on. He's basically Classics Powerglide for those of us that passed on the Universe version. And no, I'm not sure why I passed on Universe 'Glide, but anyway.

And I stand by this, pretty much. He actually does have a bit more of the movie design elements going on than I initially picked up on. And man, this dude is TINY. Still, that just leads to him seeming even more detailed. I like him, he's a fun little figure. And once you get his missles/gun figured out, it's a pretty amazing weapon. Dude's got a gun that's just made of six or so missles, and his firepower is 3? No understand.

Icepick: Mainly, I bought this dude because I really liked the PCC Icepick, and depending on how you read his bio, this dude could be the same guy. Also, I just like the name "Icepick" and I like snow vehicles. Icepick's strengths are mainly in his vehicle and weapon modes, if you factor in the little driver guy, he's practically a MASK vehicle. The snowmobile changes into a flying chainsaw, and tell me Miles Mayhem wouldn't have liked one of those. The chainsaw mode can then plug in to the "Mechtech" ports of any of the larger figures. This is really neat, but I'd like it even better if there was more reverse-compatiblity with previous lines. But since most of the previous line's larger figures have pegs to plug mini-cons or whatnot onto, and this guy's got a peg to plug into ports, seems it'll be tougher. In theory, a figure from, say, Universe could hold this dude, since it seems to be the ol' standard 5mm peg, but he's pretty front-heavy, so it'd be tricky to balance. Still, neat idea, hope Hasbro keeps this kind of thing up. The robot mode, sadly, leaves something to be desired. While most of his parts lock down okay, the snowmobile's treads/chainsaw's chain splits into two pieces and forms kind of wings on his back. They really don't snap into anything, they just sort of go wherever. This is kind of a pet peeve of mine lately, it makes the robot feel half-finished. Also, the clip-on weapons seem to have trouble actually clipping on somewhere and staying there. Beyond that, the robot mode is okay, I like that his face resembles a modern hockey mask. Sadly, not the kind Jason wears, but it's still a neat feature. My disappointment with the robot mode is balanced out by the fun of the weapon mode, though, so overall I'd say Icepick's pretty all right.

Skyhammer: Looks great in both modes, and finds fun ways to transform the rotors and tail sections of his copter mode, which is something that helicopter Transformers usually deal with by just having 'em hang over the robot's back. Honestly, looking at the robot mode, you'd really have to think on it for a minute before you guessed what he turned into. This is something I always approve of. Everything locks down great in both modes, and the transformation can be a bit tricky, but isn't frustrating. The Mechtech weapon's kind of dumb, and I imagine all of 'em are going to be. Big blocky gun folds out into big blocky gun with a little knife on the end of it. So, he grows a bayonet, if you want to look at it charitably. It's not as dumb as the ridiculously big guns from the G.I. Joe movie line, but it still puts me in mind of 'em. Still, as worthless as this line-wide gimmick is, it's at least fairly non-intrusive. If you want, you can chuck the Mechtech thing right out the window, and still have a really solid, cool toy.

Cyberverse Commander Preview Prime: It was free, so screw it. Decent looking tiny robot mode, decent looking tiny semi with jet engine mode, incredible pain in the ass to transform. Mainly, there's a bit where you're supposed to rotate the waist to make the legs into the nose of the cab. But there's a couple of tiny pegs that plug into the top of the figure to stabilize the whole thing, you've gotta unplug those first. Instructions dont' mention that at all. Also, I've had to use excessive force to get 'em to unpeg, so I wind up pulling the legs entirely off the ball joint. Aggravating. Anyway, aside from that, I really dig this thing in vehicle mode. Reminds me of Matchbox's "RoadBlasters" line, which was basically Hot Wheels cars with snap on weapons and armor to make 'em into Mad Max cars. The size of this toy combined with the jet engine/twin rifles combination on it's back kind of evoke that. So it's not a total waste. Besides, what do I want from a free toy, right?

[BWprowl]

I gotta say, I genuinely like the Mechtech weapons; I don't see why people are getting butthurt over them. Time was, every toy would come with a missile-launching gun, and those are boooooring. Now, the toys all get included weapons, and they're ones with fun action features that I can flick back and forth while I'm bored, with no fear of losing parts. Plus they're totally separate from the figures themselves, so the gimmicks don't handicap the actual toys in any way. It's totally win-win!

The general lack of handicapping and half-assing is something that's impressing me about this line, actually. *Everyone* is getting a brand new mold for the line, even nobodies like Jolt, or Sideswipe, who already had two molds in the previous line. Hell, Bumblebee's getting two separate Deluxe molds within this line itself! Hasbro seems to be overcoming the budgetary constraints that so famously plagued ROTF's line, and I think the DOTM line is gonna be stronger for it.

I'll need to do some reviews soon. Maybe I'll start with Deluxe Starscream, since nobody seems to be talking about that one and I really like that toy.

[BWprowl]

Oh and would ya look at that, there it is.

DOTM Deluxe Mechtech Starscream
I should probably preface this review by admitting that I’m a shamelessly big fan of Movie Starscream. He didn’t do much in the movie itself, but the ‘Reign of Starscream’ tie-in comic expanded on him quite nicely, even making him something of a sympathetic and heroic character. This Starscream is much more subtle about how he undermines Megatron, and he does it because he genuinely feels what he’s doing is best for Cybertron, not out of some misguided power-hungry narcissism. So while last year’s Leader Starscream is easily one of my favorite toys ever, I was looking forward to this more manageable palm-sized version of the character. Let’s see if he was worth the wait for the street date!

Vehicle Mode
Looks like Starscream’s keeping his tattoos around for DOTM. Unlike just about everyone else I hear, I like them. Starscream’s Movie 1 plain brown/tan/silver/whatever look was flat and boring as hell, and the tattoos make him distinctive, make the jet mode his own. Plus any detail that’s kept around as a callback to ‘Reign of Starscream’ is good by me. Anyway, along with the tattoos it’s the same F-22 Raptor mode we’ve come to know and love. The color of the jet does seem a bit lighter than I’m used to, but that’ll become more visible when I’m talking about the robot mode, so I’ll address it there. There’s also an issue with the wings not wanting to line up right with the back panel portion, which is rather annoying. Other than that though, there’re no real issues with the jet mode. Undercarriage junk isn’t quite as streamlined as on ROTF’s Voyager version, or even the Leader class one, but it’s still more inconspicuous than a lot of other jet-formers; the jutting-out arms and crotch are the main offenders (that sounded only slightly wrong). Of course, attaching the Mechtech weapons pretty much kills any illusion of well-stowed kibble. He’s got no less than six Mechtech ports on his underside, though the guns are nominally supposed to go in the ones under his wings. The bigger gun can theoretically have its blade deployed when they’re pegged in, but only if the blade is swinging *outside* the jet body, and the whole thing looks better when the guns are in the opposite arrangement. The guns can also be pegged into the more central underside via the arms’ ports, and even seem designed so that they’ll work around each other in such close proximity. This does even less for the look of the vehicle though. The ports under the tailfins are pretty much inaccessible to Starscream’s weapons in this mode; the folded up legs are too close to them.

If you wanna get really ridiculous, you can combine the weapons into their fully-deployed form and peg that somewhere on the vehicle. I’ll talk more about the Mechtech weapons with the Robot Mode.

Transformation
You can pull off a Gerwalk mode, though the arms end up a bit limited no matter what you do.

Anyway, considering the intricate dance it took for Leader Starscream to get to an accurate robot mode, that this version makes it rather simple is pretty impressive. Oh, there’s a strict order of operations to the whole affair (with regards to the toy’s insistence that the wings be pulled up before all else), but once you get that down it’s quite easy and intuitive. It’s the little touches that make the whole scheme work, like the panels that fold out from under the wings to help fill out the chest.

Robot Mode
I know Deluxes are a bit smaller this go-around, but Starscream feels it more than others, in my opinion. I think it’s mainly that so much of his Robot Mode mass is concentrated in his torso, with his arms and legs being light and spindly, but he definitely has a smaller feel to him that I’ve come to expect from this side class. Which isn’t to say he’s insubstantial, rather, he’s got all the detail and posability I’d think a Deluxe should have. Arms have double hinged folding wrists, plus ball and hinge joints around the elbow, and ball shoulders on up-and-down hinges. He can’t quite pull of the Gainax-mecha-arms-crossed-across-the-chest pose like LeaderScream can, but he can get close (do wish the wrists could bend in the opposite direction though). The legs have universal hinge knees plus a second hinge right above that to recreate Starscream’s ‘chicken legs’, plus ball-jointed hips which work really well here. Definitely beats out ROTF Voyager Starscream in terms of posability and dynamics. Sculpt’s better than that one too, since his body is less made up of chopped up plane parts, so his legs can actually look like legs, and his waist/crotch can have the accurate details.

Sadly, despite all the good about his sculpt does for general model-accuracy, the colors work against it as hard as they can. Like LeaderScream, he’s primarily made up of a couple shades of grey plus some gold. Thing is, the two greys are waaaaay removed from each other, one being a dark, charcoal color, and the other, primary one being more of a ghost grey, practically white. This contrasts sharply with the gold parts to make the color difference really stick out, and make the whole thing just look off. Between the nearly-black and nearly-white, this could almost pass for a G1 Ramjet color scheme, nowhere near the silver/grey I’ve come to associate with MovieScream. I mean, it still looks nice in its own way, but it looks more like one of those arbitrary ‘different enough’ repaints it seems like everyone got down the line in ROTF.

He uses the rear landing gear from vehicle mode as heel spurs, which is kinda clever.

Anyway, Starscream’s Mechtech weapon…s. Well, one is just a single piece with a blade on one end and a gun barrel on the other. The other weapon mimics the shape of that enough, but is bulkier, with the blade partially hidden in a sheath. Pushing on a cylinder on the side of this one causes the sheath to fold forward and the blade to flip out of that, in a rather impressively fluid motion. Like I was talking about, it’s fun just to flick back and forth. Anyway, you can peg these guns-forward onto Starscream’s arms in a call-back to G1 Starscream’s arm-mounted null-ray cannons, or have them with the blades pointed forward for pointier fun. If the guns are pointed forward, the blade on the one can be deployed to have Starscream strike out at anyone that might be in his way, but the main intent is to use the secondary weapon to *keep* that blade deployed, resulting in a giant, two-blades-pegged-together super weapon that can’t help but remind me of Energon Starscream’s combined Buster Sword. Unfortunately, the peg that holds the smaller weapon in the bigger on isn’t quit up to the task, so it can’t really keep the blade deployed all the way, and will even eventually fall out. This would be a bigger deal to me if I didn’t just like flicking the blade forward on my own, but it is an annoying engineering shortcoming.

This is actually a pretty terrific mold, as far as Starscreams go. It isn’t quite as ‘wow’-worthy as some other Deluxes out there, but it’s a solid Starscream. It’s a real pity that even that aspect of it is held back by the unfortunate color choices, which all look really out of place on what is otherwise a solid Movie Starscream sculpt. I’m kinda hoping that Hasbro’ll give us a more movie-accurate redeco in the future. If they do, and considering that I’m already thinking that upcoming Thundercracker repaint looks nice, I could wind up with a few versions of this mold. So it’s a good thing it’s a nice toy. If you’re a fan of Movie jet-formers in general or Starscream in particular, you’ll wanna give this one a look. Just be aware that better-colored versions could be on their way.

[andersonh1]

How are the human figures with the basics for DOTM? Anyone bought one of these? I imagine they're limited being as small as they are, but are they a good accessory for the Transformer?

[BWprowl]

How are the human figures with the basics for DOTM? Anyone bought one of these? I imagine they're limited being as small as they are, but are they a good accessory for the Transformer?

Do you have any of the ROTF Human Alliance figures? Because they're about the same as those, though with the addition of wrist swivels, which is nice. They're actually pretty impressive action figures for their size, with universal hips, knees, shoulders, plus neck swivels and the aforementioned wrists. They're a bit hard to stand up, and not *quite* in scale with the vehicles their TF buddies turn into, but they make for decent riders for them. I'll also reiterate here how awesome Tungsten's interaction with Thunderhead is; I love a TF that turns into an exo-suit and includes a guy to drive that around. That said, the humans do kinda lack a purpose when the TFs are in robot mode; there isn't a lot of robot/human interaction like on the larger HA toys.

[andersonh1]

How are the human figures with the basics for DOTM? Anyone bought one of these? I imagine they're limited being as small as they are, but are they a good accessory for the Transformer?

Do you have any of the ROTF Human Alliance figures? Because they're about the same as those, though with the addition of wrist swivels, which is nice. They're actually pretty impressive action figures for their size, with universal hips, knees, shoulders, plus neck swivels and the aforementioned wrists. They're a bit hard to stand up, and not *quite* in scale with the vehicles their TF buddies turn into, but they make for decent riders for them. I'll also reiterate here how awesome Tungsten's interaction with Thunderhead is; I love a TF that turns into an exo-suit and includes a guy to drive that around. That said, the humans do kinda lack a purpose when the TFs are in robot mode; there isn't a lot of robot/human interaction like on the larger HA toys.

That's a good review. I'm tempted to buy some of those basics just to have the little human figures, since we haven't seen many of those in any TF line. I may have to do that.

[138 Scourge]

I gotta say, I genuinely like the Mechtech weapons; I don't see why people are getting butthurt over them. Time was, every toy would come with a missile-launching gun, and those are boooooring. Now, the toys all get included weapons, and they're ones with fun action features that I can flick back and forth while I'm bored, with no fear of losing parts. Plus they're totally separate from the figures themselves, so the gimmicks don't handicap the actual toys in any way. It's totally win-win!

Well, okay, when you put it that way, they seem a little better. The Mechtech things are better than missile-launching guns any day of the week. My biggest problem with 'em are that so many of the things just look like big goofy blocks of plastic. Skyhammer's has this going something fierce. Megatron's Mechtech thing has me thinking a little more charitably towards the line-wide gimmick.

How are the human figures with the basics for DOTM? Anyone bought one of these? I imagine they're limited being as small as they are, but are they a good accessory for the Transformer?

I've only got Professor..er, Sargent Chaos. He's..okay. Like Prowl says, they're pretty impressive for their size, but I just don't have reason to care about 'em. Chaos looks decent riding on Icepick's vehicle mode, but since I usually have Icepick in robot or chainsaw modes, he just sort of ends up hanging out. If there were more character to him, that might be a different thing, but since the space to describe the dude was limited, "human traitor" is about all we can expect.

[Onslaught Six]

Mechtech is hit or miss with me so far.

I got Icepick/Sgt. Chaos last night too, plus Topspin. Icepick is neat, some real fun stuff there in the transformation--I'd love to buy more of these guys but they just look so damn 'shitty.' A lot of them don't turn into anything cool-looking or have iffy robot modes. Thankfully, we just got pics of Drag Strip and the bike guy, which look a lot better, so I guess I'm not out of it yet. I couldn't care less about the human figures--neat little accessory, that's about it. Probably going to end up in a bin somewhere.

[138 Scourge]

So hey, that Megatron toy sure is something.

Robot Mode is a nice robot boogeyman lookin-guy. The tattered hood and cloak combined with the scarred face, mixed in with the crazy crooked clawed fingers really make him look like some kind of horrible robot monster. Like you'd expect on a movie toy, there's a fair amount of detail, especially in the face and abdomen area, but since Megatron's actually got vehicle mode parts on him this time around, it's broken up a bit by chunks of truck parts. It works a lot better, and makes him more of a transformer, less of a pile of knives that you rearrange into different bits. The detail feels more there for a reason. The figure's fairly articulated, there's especially nice arm poseability so you can have him pointing his fusion cannon on top of his arm, or to the side, or whatever. The cloak, though, it's a neat touch, and like I said, it adds to his "robot-monster" look, and it fits in pretty well with the right side of Megatron's body. But, if you move that arm into any pose other than having it right at his side, it just doesn't work quite as well. Not a knock on that feature, that's usually how I display the toy, but once I'm fiddling with it, I tend to chuck the cloak to one side and let Megatron run around naked. The scarred face looks cool, too, but I'd be curious as to how that would look on a larger version of this toy.

Transformation's a little fiddly, but not too bad for a movie toy. There's some parts going back into truck mode where you've gotta click things into place like you mean it, particularly when it comes to getting his arms into place to be the nose of the truck, and getting the back of the trailer together. The grille arrangement takes a little doing, too, since you've got to get the headlights and bumper parts that become the robot chest under the parts of the shoulders that become the big deercatcher thing.

Once you've gotten everything into place, though, the truck holds together well and is pretty neat looking. Serious bonus points for working this thing out so the trailer can turn, too. It feels like a whole lot of robot gets crammed down into a tiny truck, which is an impressive engineering feat, but a vehicle like a Mack truck does lose some of it's iconic power when it's so damn small. Still, for it's size, nice looking vehicle. There's a fair amount of detail here, too. The colors are a bit drab, a lot of beige and what looks to be unpainted grey, but this isn't exactly the sort of vehicle that need to be bright-colored or eye-catching. I do like the red windshields, might not make sense, but looks cool. Hell, I'm just glad that there's finally a movie Megatron that has a proper alt-mode, and doesn't just turn into a jet-shaped bundle of knives or whatever that was supposed to be. Not too much in the way of kibble issues, either, even when you turn the truck over the only thing that stands out as robot parts are the robot hands tucked away back there.

The Mechtech weapon I like a lot more than the previous one I've messed with. It's still kind of a big chunk of plastic, but it integrates into Megatron's vehicle mode as half the trailer, and as such feels like a real part of the toy instead of a goofy add-on gimmick. When you push the ladder on the back of the cannon, it kind of grows claws, which, depending, you could look at as Megatron using a big claw, but I just kind of see it as a scarier-lookin' type of gun. However you see it, adding this to his arm really works for the toy. Even though this is clearly a Movie Megatron, there's almost G1-esque elements going on here, and the big arm-mounted cannon reinforces that.

So overall, I'd say this thing's pretty good. Fun to fiddle with, and a neat transformation once you get it down. At this point, I understand there's no plans for a Leader version of this guy, and I'm actually sort of sorry to hear that. This figure does what it sets out to do, but I can't help but think that a larger version of this design could do some really cool stuff, too. But for now, if you want Megatron from this movie, you pretty much gotta get this one, and that's not a bad thing at all. Easily my favorite Megatron toy from the movies, even if that isn't saying much.

Damn, guys, when did movie toys get good? Because seriously, between this and Skyhammer, I kind of want to check out some more of 'em.

[Onslaught Six]

Damn, guys, when did movie toys get good? Because seriously, between this and Skyhammer, I kind of want to check out some more of 'em.

Well, the first movie toys were about the same as these, in some cases--sometimes a little too simple or cheaty for what they were. ROTF is where they went over the deep end, really--between cut gimmicks in the earliest parts of the line and overcomplex transformations...yeah. Thankfully they seem to be going for a back-to-basics approach here.

In fact, I could even say the too-complicated thing was manifesting in Universe 2.0 a bit. Sure, we got guys like Cyclonus and Sunstreaker, but we also got Galvatron and his ilk. Generations saw more of a return to form in simpler transformations that didn't overcomplicate things (usually) and DOTM seems to be carrying that on. Seems like Hasbro's response to the "TFs are getting too hard" thing.