Car Shatter is one of the biggest misfires of the line for poor accuracy and poor quality. I really don’t like helicopter Dropkick for again, lack of accuracy, but there’s a valid argument that he’s a nice toy in his own right. Crankcase is awful just because of how they made him the wrong mould, though according to Wreckgar/somebody, they had no choice due to losing the mould or something. Crowbar himself was a pleasant surprise for being a solid retool of the original Berserker, but yeah I never bought him. Satellite Soundwave is disappointing and pales compared to the ROTF Deluxe. Cliffjumper was a waste. I don’t like the Shadow Raider’s vibrant orange paint job.
Personally the one that comes to mind is that Crankcase they made, all they had to do was repaint Berserker and call it a day, but instead they made a hilariously inaccurate retool using Crowbar.
The Arcee pack and Lockdown are two of the biggest bombs to me. I don’t even know where to start with the Arcee pack. I never managed to transform them because they were so tiny and fiddly and pieces would continually pop off. They allegedly have a combined mode but I couldn’t get the figures to cooperate. Chalk it up to ham hands, but handling them was a miserable experience and I just gave them away in the end. Lockdown was a special case. It’s a design I didn’t like to begin with, it’s oddly fiddly and the arms look terrible no matter what you do. Add that to the missile rack that sheared off on first transformation and he was just glued and stood on a shelf until he was removed during a purge. Vehicle mode was probably nice but I never finished the transformation after a piece broke off. Car Shatter is another mess, largely due to the lack of swivels and pins in her construction. The hood flaps needed to be pinned so they aren’t flying off constantly, and the arms being ball joints leads to them constantly falling off. Other than that, she’s not that horrible. Jet Shatter does everything Car Shatter does but better, with the exception of the alt mode. The souped up muscle car is much cooler than the jet. I’m also gonna give a dishonorable mention to SS86 Kup. Much improved alt mode over the TR, it ditches the gimmick that destined that crippled the TR version but manages significantly worse proportions overall and caps it off with a terrible headsculpt. The Legends release of TR Kup remains the Gold standard even if the headmaster gimmick drags him down to Silver.
The funny thing is they didn't even need to repaint Berserker, they could have literally stuck the same figure unchanged in the Studio Series box and called it a day, and they still somehow screwed it up. I ended up just buying a second Berserker. In terms of new molds, Car Shatter is the only true dud to me. The figure is just falling apart everywhere. At least Jet Shatter was a super solid figure. ROTF Soundwave is pretty meh too, but I feel like he gets the job done.
Satellite Soundwave deserved a leader class. What they did for him as a deluxe class is actually horrible. The good news is, the addon parts and cables you can get to turn him into a Voyager class make him pretty great.
Two kits: new panels for the arms and torso, and tentacles. I have 2 tentacles, but I'm probably going to get 2 more. They have a magnetic tip so if you have any little metal satellite they could probably connect to them. They are NOT posable though and hang rather awkwardly. The included stand is still the worst Transformers product ever made (albeit, it's amazing they actually included a flight stand on a mass release figure), but that's easily fixable. All in all, he's pretty cool now and much bigger. He's a very healthy modern voyager class. Considering we never saw him in robot mode in this form, I think it fixes him well enough. BDT Studio BDT-01 Wing Shields for Studio Series SS62 Soundwave Upgrade Kit Shockwave Lab SL-85 SL85 Tentacles & Gap Fillers for Studio Series SS62 Soundwave Upgrade Kit Comparison (early design, used for promo art and both ROTF and SS action figures): Final design (only used in the movie itself): So yeah, we're never getting near that final design. It would be either a Commander class. But with the addons, the SS figure is quite close to the original design! Lastly I don't own it, but I think this little metal Hubble Space Telescope Model would in scale (more or less) with him. It works too because the HST shares the same basic design and spacecraft bus as the KH-11 Kennen spy sattelite family (that is, the guts, which are the expensive parts are different, but the solar panels structure of it are mostly the same). The model of sattelite he grabbed in the movie is fictional (and ridiculous looking), so this is close enough. https://www.amazon.com/Metal-Earth-...s=metal+satellite+model&qid=1620217780&sr=8-7
The included stand made me feel like I didn't waste all of my money on the figure. I actually quite like it.
That's right, I didn't remember. I think it was more a QC problem with reaaaaaaallyy loose tolerances and people were really losing their shit over it. I'm pretty sure it was fixed, or I got an extremely good copy because I got mine many months after the initial batch and he had good tolerances.
Honestly, any of the SS non SS86 figures have been pretty awful except Blitzwing and BB movie Starscream. It really feels like the SS line is just... not great to me.
Stinger crumbled to bits like a knock off. I think I got a terrible QC but the plastic was so brittle
I seriously don't understand how and why they screwed up Kups proportions so badly. I mean, when the G1 figure has better proportions and face* sculpt you've seriously gone off the rails. *note I said "face" not "head", lol
im disappointed with Dino's alt-mode. in my opinion the overall design looks more like an 80's model "Ferrari". i call it the feux-rrari..
Its absolutely baffling. Should have been an easy slam dunk but they just went head first into the net.
I kind of agree. While I'm certainly happy that we have a full-fledged Movie line that's gone on this long, a lot of the figures have disappointed me personally because they sacrifice vehicle mode and transformation elements for super robot mode accuracy. I just find older Movie toys, especially ones from the ROTF and HFTD era, to be better made and more fun.
