Darkside SOUNDWAVE

Series - Lost Age Advanced Line
Sub-line – Movie Advanced
Wave: Wave 2? - 2014
Size/class - Deluxe
New/remould/redeco - Redeco of DOTM Soundwave
Released here – No
Approximate Price - AU$35-40 + postage
Approximate Size – 14cm
Allegiance – Decepticon
Alt-mode – Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG
Main Features/Gimmicks – None
Main Colours – Black, Black, oh and Silver
Main Accessories – None

ROBOT MODE:

Sings: "Back in black I hit the sack
I been too long I'm glad to be back"...

...ahem, sorry about that Soundwave is back in black and let me tell you he looks absolutely stunningly superb!! The black and silver deco on this guy really works and completely blows away the bland washed out grey that he was for the DOTM toy. His body is well proportioned with arms and legs being in scale with his body and no excessive backpack weighing him down making him top heavy. His hands are sculpted nicely with finger nails too (not your plain closed fist). If I had to fault anything it would be the roof panel that hangs down between his legs at the back, but that's it really.

VEHICLE MODE:

Another very good looking representation of a modern luxury car in the form of a Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG. This mold looks excellent in black and the techno honey comb detailing adds a nice finishing touch to this mode. Soundwave folds up fairly tidy inside with only his head being the obvious robot part when you flip it upsides down. Nice silver painted rims. Only painted head and tail lights though.

TRANSFORMATION:

Soundwave is moderately difficult to transform, but like most, once you have done it a few times it becomes easier. There were two steps I found a little challenging (when converting back to car). The first being getting the roof panels to extend out. I found them quite tight and thought I might break the fragile plastic windows if I exerted to much pressure. A bit of fiddling and re-arranging of other parts eventually got this sorted for me. The Second was getting his arms in the correct position (I actually referred to the manual for this ) but was able to sort it out quickly after this once I realised the arms needed to rotated as well as needed to be in a Z formation to allow enough clearance for the car to roll on its wheels. Those aside Soundwave actually has a fairly fun Transform. I especially like the way you fold the side panels of the car around the to make the bottom and sides of his feet

ARTICULATION:

Not a lot on this guy. Head can move 360˚as do his arms at the shoulder sockets (but his kibble does hinder this a bit). Elbows allow the fore arm to move 180˚from straight out in front to straight out backwards and his biceps can be rotated 360˚. He has 360˚ rotation of the legs at the hips ball joints (but again his kibble hinders this) but no movement at the waist, however his quads can move 360˚ for extra pose-ability. The knees can bend 90˚ forward or back but nothing for his feet other than they can be adjusted straight up or down slightly if needed.

OVERALL:

This is a really nice figure with stunning robot and car modes. The only negatives would be the roof design which could of been rectified with an extra pin to help it fold up a bit more and the lack of a weapon (not sure why they didn't bundle something in with him to hold ) I would definitely recommend picking him up even if you already own the DOTM (grey) version as this Redco blows that version away!



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