Dave's Transformers Age of the Primes Rant: Deluxe wave 5

Smokescreen (TFPrime, racecar)
Autobot Powerglide (G1, A-10-like jet)
Swerve (G1, Legacy Gears retool)
Autobot Ratchet (TFA, ambulance)

Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/AoP/Deluxe5

The wave also includes a package refresh of Legacy Cliffjumper.

https://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Legacy/Deluxe9 - Gears review

Vocabulary reminder, since I'm bound to use the term more than once, WIRNIR is short for Worked In Renders, Not In Reality.


CAPSULES

$28 each at Hasbro Pulse.

Smokescreen: Decent job of being as cartoon-accurate as physics allows, transformation is a bit hinky but nothing actually broke off or flew across
the room when I was transforming it, which these days is a win. Recommended.

Autobot Powerglide: Good robot mode, complex and a bit finicky in the transformation, okay vehicle mode. More gimmicks than usual for a modern Deluxe. Recommended.

Swerve: Original mold was Recommended. This is a significant retool
that goes beyond just cosmetic changes. Some improvements, some downgrades (including a pretty inexplicable one removing 5mm sockets), overall about as good. Recommended.

Autobot Ratchet: A pretty good reinterpretation of the TF:Animated character, although the transformation has a couple of iffier bits. Recommended.


RANTS

Interestingly, not only is this entire wave Autobots, except for Smokescreen it's red and white-or-gray Autobots.

Packaging: Same as previous waves of Deluxes in Age of the Primes.


AUTOBOT: SMOKESCREEN
Assortment: G2008
Altmode: Racecar
Transformation Difficulty: 20 steps
Previous Name Use: Yes
Previous Mold Use: None
Origin Universe: Prime

I'll admit to remembering very little about this version of
Smokescreen. His role was mostly, "Hot Rod/Bumblebee cocky kid now that Bumblebee has to be a grown-up." I don't even recall whether he even used a smokescreen in combat, although he probably did since smoke is an easy
special effect.
A fairly late addition to the cast, he didn't even get toys until the Beast Hunters final season, at which point he got many toys. I liked the Cyberverse Class (the ones with Hot Wheels sized vehicle modes, no connection to the Cyberverse show) better than the Deluxe he got, though.

Packaging: Three single plastic ties plus double tie across the chest
and shins hold the robot into the tray. The smoke dispenser nozzles are in a plastic bag taped to the lower right side. Rubber bands around the root
joints keep the door wings from flopping around. I ended up having to cut
the tray apart to get the toy out.
In package, the rear fenders on the outer faces of the boots are not rotated into robot mode position (or maybe they were, but they rotated back when I was getting the toy out) amd the door wings were rubber banded into a weird pose (this one the instructions cover).

Robot Mode: Okay, so the big problem with trying to be show-accurate
with TF Prime designs is that the cartoon took a lot of cues from the
Bayformer designs in terms of lots of curved armor panels and random pointy bits where there's no way to get the robot mode without massive morphing.
Like, Smokescreen's vehicle headlights are sort of on his chest, but not in a physically possible way for a toy. The colors are largely there, but the shapes less so. To see what I'm talking about, check out TFWiki's image at https://tfwiki.net/wiki/File:PrimeSmokescreenTVAichiPromoRender.jpg (this is
a stock render, but it reflects the final animation model well enough). By contrast, this toy has the actual hood split in parts across the upper torso and belly as two distinct pieces rather than just sort of molded like foam sheeting. Interestingly, the headlights on the upper chest are molded as if they were going to have clear plastic bubbles over them, but there's no such bubble. As with a lot of the actual Prime-era toys, the mold details exist
for the glow lines (like on the forearms and thighs), but they're not painted in. Unlike Prime toys, they didn't try to do the ring iris bit for the eyes, which are solid G1-style surfaces all in bright blue...there's something
about those ring irises that really said "Transformers Prime" in a way that
the other details possible in an actual toy don't. Oh, and another thing the toy can't do is make the rear fenders vanish, so they're stuck to the outer faces of the boots, tilted at a more rakish angle. They did add a nice touch where they could, the Phase Shifter (a Forge of Solus creation that was one
of the Relics one of the seasons hunted for) is molded on the left forearm
and even mostly painted silver...it kinda makes him look like he's
auditioning for Kamen Rider Zeztz. Oh, and he has door wings, if more prominently than the animation model showed. The printing on them is a mix
of red and blue racing checkers with the classic number 38 on them, and
ghostly afterimages trailing towards the back.
A bit over 5.25" (13.5cm) tall in mostly white and darkish gray with
blue, red, and silver accents. I suppose he technically fits the "red and white or gray" theme of this wave, but he's more strongly white and blue. A darkish gray plastic is used for the torso core, pelvis except for the front plate, biceps, elbow joints, fists, hip joints, knee joints, ankle joints, toes, wing struts, and vehicle wheels. The windows on the wings and the windshield/roof piece on his backpack are smoky transparent plastic.
Everything else is white, including the belly front plate and the pelvis
front.
There's no actual blue plastic, the blue on most of the belly is paint, which is also found on the wings, the back, the boot fenders, a few bits on
the forearms, and a line on the upper torso behind the head...all of which
are vehicle shell bits. There's no medium blue on any part that's not
visible in vehicle mode. The robot eyes are a bright "Energon Blue" with no iris details. Similarly, the only red is paint, although some of it is
purely for robot mode, including the helmet crest, cheek guards, and stripes
on the bottom edges of the shoulderpads. There's more red on the doors and
the spoiler heels. The face is silver, as is the center of the helmet crest, the headlights and foglamps on the chest, the pelvis front, the kneecap
spikes, and the blaster nozzles. There's no bright blue glowy accent paint, but there's good molded slots to add your own on the forearms, thighs, and
the not-whitewalls of the tires. (There aren't molded places on the pelvis front for the animation style glowing lines.) There's no silver on the wheel hubs, and the snap-in tire molding puts gaps in some of the hub bits that
would become a lot more obvious if you did paint them.
I decided to do some touch-up, mostly adding blue glow but also redoing the eyes. https://www.dvandom.com/kitbash/AotPSmokescreen.JPG
The neck is a ball joint with the socket in the head and a cut in back
to let the head look almost straight up, the waist has a transformation
swivel but also a tab locked into a slot in back in this mode to lock it in place, so no waist articulation unless you're willing to pop the backpack out noticeably. The shoulderpads are on swivels where they meet the torso and
the biceps are attached via hinges to let the arms lift to the sides.
There's swivels just below the hinges on the biceps, the elbows are double- hinged struts as part of the transformation folding, and the wrists have transformation hinges to let them fold inside the hollow forearms for vehicle mode. They snap into place for robot mode, and while they don't snap into
the forearms they can be a hassle to get back out. Pinned hinge and swivel hips, upper thigh swivels covered by thigh armor, hinge knees. There's additional hinges inside the shins for transformation, and you need to make sure those are snapped into the right place for robot mode or it makes the knees wonky. Instep hinges on the ankles, plus a single click of forwards backwards hinge for transformation (it snaps into each position for
stability). The door wings are on struts that are hinged where they meet the back of the upper torso piece and swivels where they meet the doors.
The fists can hold 5mm pegs, there's 5mm sockets on the backs of the
door wings (storage for the nozzles), one in the small of the back, and one under each toe. There's no 3mm sockets, so maybe the peg in the back is
meant for a flight stand. If you fold a fist all the way in, the back side
of the piece has a 5mm socket used for one of the nozzles.
The nozzles themselves are a reference to how Prime also borrowed the
"arm transforms into a weapon" bit from the Bayformer movies. They're white plastic and painted silver except for the pegs in the back. The pegs are flattened on two sides, so they're only 4mm across at the narrow side.
They're identical and 16mm long including the attachment pegs. The apertures are about 3mm in diameter but slightly tapered. The hard plastic 3D printed 3mm peg Fire Blasts I commissioned from Trent Troop don't really stay in, but the more rubbery 3mm peg ones from R.E.D. figures fit nicely. I can just
about get a 1/8" Lego rod in far enough to stay.

Transformation: In broad strokes this is the standard G1 car transformation, with the chest lifting up to be the hood, the wings becoming the doors, the legs collapsing down to make the rear. However, a lot of the details are different, such as how the abdomen panel folds up inside the
chest and the forearms actually bend together not just to hide under the hood but to become a tiny part of the hood surface. The legs don't telescope shorter like in G1, rather the boots open up and an extra strut lets the
thighs partially collapse inside (like so many Combiner Wars limbs had).
Note, you can't leave the smoke dispensers stored on the doors in this mode, there isn't quite enough space inside for them. Instead, they go into slots
on the rear bumper.
Be prepared for a lot of panel massaging and "pull apart, realign, try again" to get all the bits properly together. It's not impossible, but
neither is it smooth and easy, a mile case of WIRNIR assuming things will
just neatly slot into place and stay there.
Going back to robot mode was relatively straightforwards, although once the hood is properly snapped together it can be kinda hard to get it apart.

Altmode: This is basically the same sort of not-quite-licensed sportscar as the one from Prime, a McLaren MP4-12C with a big spoiler in back. Almost all of the dark gray is hidden, just the rear bumper and the wheels remain visible from all but the underside view. All the clear smoky parts unite to form the driver's compartment top (wraparound windshield and most of the
roof).
5" (12.5cm) long without the smoke dispensers, 5.5" (14cm) with them. Mostly white with smoky windows, red and blue printed deco, and dark gray wheels. A little bit of the roof is white plastic, otherwise the roof is painted white down the middle (not a great match for the plastic) with blue
on the right and left thirds. The center trapezoid of the hood is also
painted blue, some of the panel massaging mentione above is required to get them to all line up. Annoyingly, the hood bits that are on the forearms are easy to gouge during transformation, mine already has a chunk of plastic scraped out. The paint border on that bit of forearm is also kinda sloppy.
The wing decals are now on the doors, there's red on the outer faces of the spoiler, silver on the headlights and foglamps. There's a no-outline red Autobot symbol on the hood that really could stand a silver or white border
to help it stand out. There is no paint on the wheel hubs or the grille, although the grille is separated across enough parts that it would be
difficult to manage. No taillight paint either, nor is there blue on the top of the spoiler.
The snap-in wheels mostly spin okay and there's a few millimeters of ground clearance. However, on mine, the right front wheel is sticky. After shaving off all visible flash, I was able to determine by swapping front
wheels that it was the white plastic part that was the problem, not the wheel itself. Despite carefully scraping away at what I could and adding some
"cube lube" (made for speed Rubik's Cubes) I still couldn't get it to spin freely, although I did improve the motion somewhat. Maybe it's just slightly oval and I can't see where it needs shaving down.
The slots for the smoke dispensers are narrow and flat on the sides to match the flattened sides of their pegs, so they can only fit in one of two orientations. The toe 5mm sockets are accessible on the underside, and
there's a 5mm socket on the rear edge of the roof...which is odd since he has no gun. Maybe there was an early plan for one and he lost it to a budget
cut? Then again, Prime was big into the "arm turns into a cannon" trick anyway, and just because the 2013 toy had a gun doesn't mean the 2026 toy
needs one.

Overall: Robot mode is about as show-accurate as something without 100+ transformation steps can manage, and while the transformation has some
finicky panel-massaging steps, it's a lot less frustrating than my old Beast Hunters era review suggests that one was. The usual "could use more paint"
bit applies, doubly so for a toy from one of the shows that has glowing lines (like Prime and its sorta-sequel RiD2015). Decent toy.


AUTOBOT: AUTOBOT POWERGLIDE
Assortment: G2009
Altmode: A-10 assault airplane
Transformation Difficulty: 20 steps
Previous Name Use: G1, Universe2, CW, DotM
Previous Mold Use: None
Origin Universe: G1

He comes with an alien monster mask based on what he (and other
Autobots) wore in the G1 episode "Hoist Goes Hollywood." He also has the opening chest panel with the heart from "The Girl Who Loved Powerglide."
While smaller than most recent Minibots, they really went all out with complexity, to the point Hasbro's factories may not be able to reliably
produce this toy...the issues I had during transformation feel like I got off lightly.

Packaging: Five ties hold the robot to the tray, the bag taped to the lower right side has alien mask and another iteration of the generic pistol.

Robot Mode: Pretty closely based on the animation model, short and
stocky, although the engines aren't as shrunken because toys can't do
animation cheats without costing a LOT more and having a hundred steps to
their transformation. In fact, it looks like they might've taken more direct inspiration from the MtMtE comic roster entry that's at the top of
Powerglide's TFWiki page (although they kept the cool gray of animation and
not the almost yellowed gray of the MtMtE entry). A bit of a conehead with a little gun barrel at the top of the cone, wings folded against the sides of
the torso, jet engines on the sides of the boots, etc. There's little
partial pod bits on the backs of the wrist armor that aren't present in the animation model, but become relevant for vehicle mode (these bits were left attached to the wings in the MtMtE art). The feet are folded up tail fins
and come pretty close to looking like the somewhat generic animation feet, if hollow from the sides.
A little more htan 4.25" (11cm) tall in mostly dark red and slightly silvery medium-light gray. The faceplate, arms from shoulder on down (but
not the wings they're attached to), hip joints, thighs, gun, and alien mask
are slightly metallic medium-light gray plastic. Everything else is dark red plastic. The upper face and the forehead dot are silver, as is most of the laser pistol (just the peg left unpainted). It's less obvious, but the
molded ring of turbines inside the top of each leg engine is also painted silver. There's dark red paint on those partial pods on the wrists and
bright blue eyes. There's a red on silver Autobot symbol printed on the
center of the chest. Inside the chest the panels (inside of the door and inside the chest) are painted gunmetal, and the heart-LEDs (more on that
later) are either metallic pink or clear pink over the gunmetal). The alien mask is mostly painted pale light green with red bug eyes (black dot irises doing the googly thing) and white teeth. The center of the pelvis front is painted blue with a yellow raised vertical stripe down the center and a
raised dot under it painted red...he has a ! on his crotch, I guess that's
one of the things Astoria liked about him.
The neck is a little tricky, you have to pull the head up to unlock it, and then it seems to be on a ball joint that can wobble a little in addition
to turning. The waist is a simple smooth swivel. The shoulders are swivels
at their roots on the wings, with lift-to-the-sides hinges between the
shoulder and the upper arm. There's snap in (and pop out, sigh) bicep
swivels, hinge elbows, and the wrists have bend-down transformation hinges.
The hips have a third of the pelvis on swivels to act as the outer part of
the joint, with hinges to let the legs lift to the sides, but those hinges
are kinda low and moving the legs too far to the side looks weird. Mid-thigh swivels, hinge knees, and the transformation hinge for the feet also acts as
an instep hinge to about 20 degrees maybe. The transformation swivels also
let the feet swivel side to side a bit.
The chest panel is hinged to open up revealing a heart-shape made of
pink LEDs (well, painted metallic pink), you can either pry it open in a
narrow slot, or push on the corner of the hinge. They also hide the screws holding the torso together inside the chest, but they sort of look like they belong there. (I am tempted to repaint the heart LEDs in neon pink so they glow under UV...however, UV light also shows how there's two different types
of red plastic and only one of them glows strongly, so maybe not a great candidate for blacklight tricks.)
Another bit of articulation involves pulling the nose gun on top of the head up, which unlocks the face to rotate. No, he doesn't have a different facial expression like some Lego minifigs, the back side has two slots for holding the alien mask on. I guess they figured this would be easier than
just making it so it could clip on the regular face somehow. (I suppose they could also release new versions of the other characters from Hoist Goes Hollywood with the same face swap trick, so they could all use the same mask mold.)
The fists can hold 5mm pegs, there's 5mm sockets on the outer faces of
the wing tops, and one in the center of the back. The hinges for the wings coincidentally act as shallow 3mm sockets, two on the front and two on back just above the waist. The boots peg together in vehicle mode using 3mm studs and sockets, but that's not really a good place to attach anything.
The alien mask is goofy in that "making fun of 1950s B-movie Sci-Fi"
way, although if you removed the cross-eyed expression it'd fit in pretty
well with S2 and S3 alien races. When in place the range of motion of the
neck is limited, but it can still turn. Antennae included, the mask is a little over an inch (27mm) tall. It attaches to the back of the face via two rectangular tabs...I wonder why they didn't just use a 5mm peg so that the
mask could store on the back on its own? Instead, it stores on top of the laser pistol.
The laser pistol is the same "generic Autobot pistol" design other toys have gotten lately, but it's not just a copy of one of those molds, in part because it needed a tab on top to hold the mask. 1.75" (4.5cm) long and
hollow on both sides, it has a 5mm peg grip and annoyingly has a barrel tip that is wider than 3mm. Like, dudes, it's easy enough to have every gun end
in a 3mm stud even if you don't sell toys with Fire Blasts anymore. It
stores on the robot back, with the mask clipped onto it if necessary.

Transformation: So many pieces popped off the first time I transformed this. There's a LOT of snap-on hinges that are either next to very stiff joints or ARE stiff joints, so the force required to bend the joint is comparable to the force required to pull it apart entirely. The second time
I managed to avoid any part detachment, although I still can't get the wings
to stay tabbed into place, I suspect there's some hidden flash or just a
basic lack of "parts being the right size" involved.
The arms and wings transform roughly the same way as in G1, although the specific bending of the arms is different because of the desire to make the arms more animation-accurate, and getting them turned and bent correctly is
one of the places where a joint (the bicep swivel) can pop pretty easily and
be hard to put back. The legs turn and snap together in back with the feet folding around to become the tail, the backpack panel folds down over the
legs, and the engines fold away and forwards on stiff snap-together hinges
that are another of those failure points.
My only real hassle going back to robot mode is that the fists are hard
to pull back out, but you can just use the pistol as a lever, insert it into the fists.

Altmode: This is another jet based on the A-10 Thunderbolt II ground attack jet with the usual "please ignore the arms folded up under the wings" bit, but with a fatter fuselage to accomodate the robot mode, and a weird choice of dropping the engines to basically melt off his tail assembly in flight. This isn't even a reference to the G1 toy or animation model, which correctly had the engines raised up to send their thrust over the tail. I do get that there's already too many joints in them for transformation already
and trying to add an extra one would probably have broken the budget (or just led to the engines falling off a lot), but it's kinda disturbing. One
positive bit is that red-painted part on each forearm snaps onto the front of the wing and becomes an actual detail from the A-10's wing. Also, if you
leave the face locking peg pulled out, it does a credible job of looking like the A-10's nose cannon.
Historical aside: it's weird that the A-10 is still in true active US military service in 2026 (one got shot down in the Iran war), almost fifty years after it entered service. Its retirement keeps getting pushed off.
Even the F-15 of Starscream fame is largely retired except for a few used in National Guard units and those used in other countries (it SHOULD be retired
by now, be cuts to F-22 production has kept some refurbished and new-variant F-15's in service until at least 2030). Car and truck altmodes from G1 are
all pretty dated by now, cassette players aren't even made anymore outside of tiny niche collector markets, the Space Shuttle has been retired for a while now...but the Warthog keeps flying.
4.25" (11cm) long with a 5.25" (13cm) wingspan, overwhelmingly dark red. Only the arms tucked under the wings are visible in terms of gray plastic.
The paints are minimalist in keeping with the original Minibot, with just silver on the cockpit windows and engine intakes, the dark red on the backs
of the wrists, red-on-silver Autobot symbols on the wings, and a fake rubsign in gloss black on silver on top near the back.
There's 5mm sockets under the wingtips and one on the top centerline
just rear of the middle. The engine intake 5mm sockets are now deep enough
for stuff, but too close to the wings to be useful. The gun and mask
together are supposed to store on the top socket, although I suppose you
could leave the mask on the face (upside down to keep the antennae somewhat hidden) and the gun on one of the wings. There's no landing gear, but
there's prongs off the bottoms of the tail fins that go along with the arms
to let it support the plane levelly. Putting the gun under a wing tilts things, though, and leaving the mask on turns it into the front landing gear.

Overall: An interestingly complex design for a Deluxe, and while it suffers from "Hasbro factories can't cash that check" syndrome, there wasn't anything in my copy that couldn't be avoided once I knew it was coming.


AUTOBOT: SWERVE
Assortment: G2011
Altmode: Pickup Truck
Transformation Difficulty: 15 steps
Previous Name Use: G1, Universe, Alternators, Gen, Gen:T30, Cybertron, RotF Previous Mold Use: Legacy
Origin Universe: G1

Packaging: Four plastic strings in front and one in the back of the legs hold the robot into the tray. The plastic bag taped to the lower right has
the blaster and the chestplate.
Note, comes with the same generic blaster that Gears had, and not the My First Blaster seen in the comics (and referenced in the Blokees Wheels version).

Okay, so the more I look at this, the more parts are different. So I'll be doing the thing where I review it as a new mold after listing the shared bits.

Common Parts: Inner torso front (but not the back), all the gray plastic parts (which are a slightly darker gray), the strut holding the backpack, wheels (although they're not all in the same places, the ones Gears has
inside the chest are on the backs of the boots for Swerve), hips (outer and inner bits), and the buttplate. A lot of the other pieces are similar, but
not identical.

Robot Mode: So as suggested above, it starts out looking like a minor retool of Gears (new head, chest, and shoulders), but the closer you look the more differences there are. The head is a separate piece from the pylons flanking it, which evoke how the G1 toy's head is basically a relief piece on the underside of the vehicle. There's fake front wheels molded onto the shoulders...which now that I look closely are also present on Gears, but on Gears they're unpainted bits of tread only, while here they're big fat tires complete with hubs, although there's gaps in the tread on the tops to accomodate the shoulder joints. The chestplate is a roughly rectangular
chest part and then a short abdomen under it, rather than the curved trapezoid-like shape of Gears's chestplate. The rear fenders on the boots
are more pronounced as well...in general, where Gears downplayed a lot of the vehicle elements in order to stick closer to the simplified animation model, Swerve doesn't. (Swerve also doesn't show up much in the cartoon, so I guess they didn't put as much of a premium on making him easier to draw.)
4.5" (11.5cm) tall in mostly red and white with some black and gray.
The gray plastic parts are the same as the lighter gray pieces on Gears.
White plastic is used for the head, shoulder pylons, almost the entire torso, shoulder joints, outer bit of the upper elbow joints, pelvis, hips, upper thighs, shins, feet, struts holding the backpack, and the struts holding the rear wheels into the boots. Red plastic is used for most of the backpack, shoulders, forearms, and the backs of the boots. The wheels and gun are
black plastic.
The fake wheels on the shoulders are painted gloss black with silver
hubs. Much of the chestplace is painted matte black with some details left white, and a red Autobot symbol with white outline in the center. A lot of
the head is painted gloss red...unfortunately, some of the inside of the neck socket is also painted. Red is also used on the outer faces of the heels and the soles of the feet for vehicle mode reasons. The visor is bright blue,
and the rest of the paints will be discussed in vehicle mode.
The neck appears to be a ball joint, but mine is so paint-locked in position that I can't get it to turn. The pylons flanking the head make this harder, and I don't want to risk breaking the neck shaft by twisting or
pushing any harder than I have already. All other articulation is identical
to Gears, including the ability to lift the chest panel up on a hinge.
The fists can hold 5mm pegs, there's 5mm sockets on the soles of the
feet and one on each side of the backpack. The new boots do not have 5mm sockets, although the wider finders would keep the gun's side peg from attaching to them right-side-up.
The gun is identical to the one that Gears comes with. Somewhere I have an old 3P "My First Blaster," but it was designed to go with a 4mm socket 3P Swerve, so it's not really worth digging out. (What'd be cool but almost definitely not happening would be a Walmart retool with a more IDW-like head and chestplate, plus a My First Blaster.)

Transformation: Given the different location of the tires, it's unsurprising that the transformation is not identical. However, the only difference is in the back end, with the tires folding out of the boots and
then tabbing into slots on the chest block that no longer has tires in it.
This does lead to the rear wheels being a few millimeters farther apart than
on Gears. They're also much more stable, and not prone to collapsing inwards like the front wheels are (and all the wheels on Gears).

Vehicle Mode: As with robot mode, at first it looks pretty similar, but the closer you look the more details are different. Unfortunately, probably the most obvious difference is on the roof, where I think they made a mistake casting the soles of the feet in white and then painting them red and black, because the reds don't even come close to matching. There must've been some serious sprue-optimization issues preventing red feet, because having those pieces red wouldn't have had a significant effect on the looks of robot mode, and they could've avoided painting the soles of the feet. (The moonroof
window is recessed, so paint there is far less likely to scratch.) In
positive matters, the backs of the fake-wheel shoulders are steps for getting into the cab, complete with molded diamondplate. The hood has the
Microchange M shape molded into it, and as noted the roof has a recessed moon roof. The part of the hood ahead of the M has a molded shape for the Autobot symbol, and the front end molding is different from Gears. Another
unfortunate mold change is on the rear fenders, where the 5mm sockets have
been omitted. I found a solution, see below. As with Gears, the upside-
down robot chest is on the back of the vehicle.
3.75" (9.5cm) long in mostly red and white with some black and silver.
Red plastic ends up on the front end, part of the cab, part of the lower
sides (including the step), part of the rear fender. The wheels are black.
The "stuff in the pickup bed" is white plastic, as is the front third of each pickup bed side. The right and left thirds of the roof and most of each side window are white plastic, as are the rounded bits on the doors and part of
the side...it's kinda patchwork because the robot mode colors took priority. The front wheel hub mushroom pegs are gray plastic and sort of blend into the paint of the rest of the hub, but the rear ones are white plastic and stand
out pretty badly, I might just paint them all silver. (These are probably "unpaintable" plastic even if they had the budget to paint the hub posts.)
All of the windows and the moon roof are painted gloss black. The white plastic parts of the cab are painted bright red in a poor match to the red plastic, while the bed sides are also painted red but in a better match...
this makes me suspect batch variations. The wheel hubs and diamondplate
steps are painted silver. The grille and center of the front bumper are painted white, and there's a white-outline Autobot symbol in the hood
ornament position. No paint on the headlights. The robot chest paints are visible upside-down in back.
Two 5mm sockets on the roof, one on each front fender, and that's it for connectors. The snap-on wheels roll okay, and the changed chest block
between the rear wheels makes them more stable than Gears's are.
Because of the inexplicable lack of 5mm sockets on the rear fenders in this version, the gun can only store on the roof (sideways) or on a front fender. I just figured out a clever hack that either this or Gears can use, though, if you have the left fist turned so that the socket is on the
underside of the vehicle, you can stick the gun there without reducing ground clearance. The barrel ends up sticking out a little under the front bumper, and it can be a little troublesome getting the gun into the fist here, but
it's doable and doesn't require any modding of the toy to work.
http://www.dvandom.com/images/SwerveGunStorage.JPG

Overall: Some of the changes are improvements, some are downgrades, and their decision to paint the inside of the neck socket was a bad one, although
I suppose some copies might not be as badly paintlocked as mine. Worth
picking up even if it doesn't run a bar. (I still have Omega Supreme Titan
in base mode, so now Swerve can stand inside the track ring as if it's his bar.)



AUTOBOT: AUTOBOT RATCHET
Assortment: G2012
Altmode: SUV Ambulance
Transformation Difficulty: 19 steps
Previous Name Use: Yes, although a lot are just "Ratchet," there's too many
for me to want to wade through and see which ones had to attach the
"Autobot" for trademark purposes, but probably all of them since 2003 Previous Mold Use: None
Origin Universe: Animated

And now the entire original TF:Animated crew has new toys, although in Bulkhead's case it's the Prime Universe version with more of an AoE spin, so
I guess there's still room to do a proper TFA Bulkhead.

Packaging: Five plastic ties hold the robot mode into the tray, but the roof of the back end is held to the lower right by two more strings and a plastic bag. The accessories plastic bag is taped along the bottom edge, holding the forearm claw blasters and four tools.
The box render doesn't quite match the toy, having white on the center
bit of the hood hinge (which is part of an otherwise hidden core piece) and
the inner part of the hip joint, both of which are red on the toy. There's also two copies of the hammer tool, one on the backpack and one on the inner left boot (which is where it goes for vehicle mode). The mouth area on the render is light gray instead of light blue, but that *might* be a lighting issue.

Robot Mode: A little less pot-bellied and bow-legged than the animation model, and the panels on the shoulders are behind the shoulders rather than
on the outer faces, but the mold does an otherwise credible job of managing
the animation model to the extent it's physically possible. The forearms are
a bit departure, but show-accurate forearms would've made the transformation nearly impossible. Color-wise, it's missing a lot of the black border lines, although some of them are molded. The fingers aren't white, but I'm pretty sure the hands use the "unpaintable" plastic (you can paint on it, but it
won't bond and is hard to keep from scraping off). Still, if you see it as "TFA design as seen in a neo-G1 world" like the other Animated characters in Legacy and Age of the Primes, they did a good job. Too good in the case of
the feet, which are kinda short and rounded like the animation model, even
with the heel spurs.
A pretty tall modern Deluxe at 5.75" (14.5cm), or 6" (15cm) to the top
of the backpack. Mostly white and dark red with some black, light blue, and accent colors. Black plastic is used for the wheels on ankles and belly
sides, and on the shoulder roots. White plastic is found on the head, upper torso, panels behind the shoulders, upper arms, forearms, belly overhand, thighs, feet, and taser claw weapons. The rest, including the collar area
and the shoulder cores, is made of dark red plastic (two kinds, though,
joints and accessories being a duller finish and bright orange UV response).
Dark red paint is on the fronts of the helmet crest bits (and yes, the right hand one is broken) but not the edges of back, as well as on the cheek vents and part of the face. The area around the mouth is the same light desaturated blue as the chest windshield and some bits on top of the shoulder roots. The eyes are bright blue with black borders. The tops of the
forearms are painted dark red. Bits of the vehicle shell are painted dark
red or white as appropriate, more details about that under vehicle mode. The lightbar bits flanking the head are bright blue on his right and bright red
on his left, and a white outline Autobot symbol is printed on the belly-hood around where a navel would be on a human. The tines of the wrist taser-claw things are painted silver.
The neck is a restricted ball joint that can wiggle to the sides and forwards/backwards a little, the waist is a smooth swivel. The door panel shoulders are on swivel joints on the black root pieces which themselves can wiggle up and down a little, and then there's a swivel to let the arms lift
to the sides. There's bicep swivels, hinge elbows with mold shaping to let them bend to about 40 degrees acute, swivel wrists. The forearms are hollow enough that ball joint wrists that can let the fists fold into the forearms might've been an early plan, but it must've been abandoned fairly early if it was ever considered. Pinned hinge and swivel hips of the sort that have a third of the pelvis move with the hip, upper thigh swivels, hinge knees,
instep hinge ankles. The backpack can fold open via a hinge at the bottom.
The fists can hold 5mm pegs, there's additional 5mm sockets on the outer faces of the forearms, the inner faces of the boots, the wheel hubs on the outer faces of the boots (these are a bit loose), two on the back face of the backpack, one on each side of the backpack, and two more inside the backpack (mainly meant for storing the taser claws). There's a 3mm socket in the back of the pelvis, and a 3mm stud on the front of each upper arm.
The taser claws are identical pieces of white plastic about an inch (2.5cm) long and slightly wider, with 5mm pegs on the underside near the
back. When placed on the forearms, the tines don't quite extend past the fists. The pegs are short, but long enough to firmly go into the fists.
They store in the backpack in either mode.
Finally, we get to his medical tools, each of which has a 5mm main shaft ending in a pointy bit (NOT 3mm studs, oddly, given that the toy does have
some on the arms), and a side 5mm peg for storage. There's a flat-faced
hammer that looks more like a tiny warhammer, a lite adjustable-style wrench (that is not adjustable), a thing that looks like a flat-head screwdriver
with a slight notch so it's probably a laser scalpel, and...a bottle opener. Pop-a-top! They're all made of the duller softer dark red plastic. The hammer is 28mm long and 24mm from front to peen, the wrench is 27mm long, the scalpel is 27 mm long (and the only one that looks good held in the hand
using the side peg), and the bottle opener is 33mm long.

Transformation: An interesting twist on the usual SUV-type transformations, and for the most part I didn't need the instructions other than a brief glance at "where the tools store" panel which I mostly did to
make sure they weren't just supposed to cling to the outside. However, this
is also one of those SUV transformations where the arms jam up under the hood and BARELY have any ground clearance, you have to push in until something
snaps or the fists will lift the front end up a little. I do wonder if the original design had the fists folding into the forearms, which would have not only made the ground clearance less of an issue, it'd have allowed for the "tool replaces hand" trick that's missing on this toy. It takes a little massaging to get everything properly in place, but once you've done that the vehicle mode is very stable.
Going back to robot mode, getting the shoulders out is a bit tricky
since they need to be turned just right to let the side window bits fold out. Getting the torso tabbed together involves a little fiddling about with
hinges. The only other hard part is getting some of the stored weapons out, especially the bottle opener.

Altmode: This is a reasonable approximation of the TF:A ambulance mode, although shaped more like a pickup truck with a camper shell, with a hood a
bit closer to horizontal and a windshield a little closer to vertical. The front end is kinda hollow, I guess they didn't have the parts budget for a fold-down panel to fill in the front bumper. The roof also lacks white paint on the center bit, which is the underside of the collar area, but other than the points already mentioned the aesthetics are pretty good for a Deluxe.
4.25" (11cm) long in mostly white and dark red, plus light blue windows and some accent colors. White plastic is used for the front grille and
partial bumper, the middle of the sides, and most of the cab. The wheels and the middle chunks of the side windows are black plastic. The rest of the vehicle shell is dark red plastic.
With one small exception (a small bit of the red lower edge just ahead
of the rear fenders), the paint does a very good job of matching up. The
white paint looks like the white plastic under normal lighting, most of the
red paint looks like the red plastic, and the windshield light blue looks the same on both white and black plastic sections. The white paint is mostly on the sides where needed, plus the little bit in the middle of the lightbar.
The dark red paint is on the lower edges on the sides, plus the trademarkable emergency symbol is printed in dark red on the sides of the rear shell. The windshield and side windows are painted light slightly desaturated blue. The right lobe of the lightbar is bright blue, while the left lobe is bright
red. The headlights are yellow with black around them, and the taillights
are left unpainted so they're red if not bright red, so that's something.
The white outline Autobot symbol is on the center of the hood.
It rolls decently on snap-on wheels, although the ground clearance is a millimeter or two at best. The top of the rear shell can be opened up to reveal the stored taser claws or act as a battle platform for a Mini-Con (I wonder if the inevitable Ironhide retool will have a cannon that can mount there). There's two hexagonal 5mm sockets on the roof, one on each side of
the rear shell below the roof sockets, and the rear wheel hubs are 5mm
sockets. Sadly, the bottom of the hammer shaft is not a 3mm stud, or you
could put a Fire Blast on it as exhaust.

Overall: There's a few things that could've been done better but
probably not on the budget they had. Good enough that I'll probably also get the nigh-inevitable Ironhide retool.


Dave Van Domelen, gonna do Liokaiser next, so that's gonna take a
while.


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