Toy Review - TR Soundwave with Soundblaster

[shockNwave]

This guy's tape player mode would not be out of place in a Grandmaster Flash or Duran Duran film clip. It truly captures the spirit of the 80's.

[FatalityPitt]

I opened this guy up last night and had a good play around. I'm keeping Blaster MIB, so this is my first time actually handling the mould. I like it a lot.

I wasn't initially going to get this guy mostly for superficial reasons. The flip-over helmet makes his forehead a bit too big for my liking, and I didn't think he'd scale well with the other TR toys (being leader class and all). Also, Soundwave is a pretty iconic character, so we can always count on Hasbro/Takara to give us another Soundwave toy in a few years. I was going to wait for the 'next' Soundwave, but I saw this guy cheap on eBay (there should be a couple units left), and it was my birthday, so I caved in. I have no regrets.

Strangely, the things that I thought would bug me about this toy didn't phase me at all. Robot mode is distinctly Soundwave-like despite being a retool of Blaster, and he looks even better when you pose him next to TR Rumble. It actually makes me want to go out and buy TR Laserbeak. TBH, I think Laserbeak is only really worth getting if you have Soundwave.

The boombox mode looks good even though it doesn't look exactly like his G1 alt-mode. I think like Megatron's gun mode; it's easy to forget that Soundwave used to be a tape player and end up thinking of him as an amoured car. The boombox isn't 100% perfect since it has some holes between the speakers and 'tape compartment', but it's easy to ignore.

Aesthetically, the base/city mode looks OK, but it's selling point to me is really the fun factor of having it as 'scenery' for the Titanmasters to 'interact' within. It's a really fun playset, but half-decent as a display piece.

A lot of the joints and hinges on my copy of the toy are pretty tight, and I was fearful of breaking it, especially when transforming the legs. Also, it took a bit of jostling to get everything to tab together in boombox mode. But overall, I think it's durable enough.

I also kind of wish there was a way to Transform Soundwave into boombox without removing the head, kind of like Sixshot.

I like TR Soundwave. He does everything a Soundwave toy should do - turns into a media player, and is compatible with smaller minions who can fit in his chest. Great substitute if the Masterpeice Soundwave is out of your budget. Soundwave is 'nice' toy, but he becomes a 'very fun' toy when you make him interact with other toys like TR Rumble (and maybe Laserbeak and Ravage), and some of the little titanmasters.