Special thanks to The Scream Man for lending me his Soundwave toy.
A stylistic blend of Animated, War For/Fall of Cybertron and TF Prime Soundwave. The colours work pretty well on this toy and the metallic blue on the waist, shins and weapon are nice. The only part of the colour scheme that bugs me are the transparent red wheels, they look tacky although they are a nod to FoC Soundblaster. But still silly looking. The face is interesting as it actually has a visor and mouthplate sculpted on it, but the entire face is transparent red. The toy's card art shows off the face design better as the mouthguard is coloured grey, but on the toy it's all transparent red. This appears to have been done as a homage to TFP Soundwave whose face is all featureless and monotone, but with a sculpted homage to the traditional Soundwave face. It's kind of a shame that the sculpting is lost in sea of glowing red though. It'll be interesting to see if Hasbro redecos this, say as RiD Soundblaster, with the mouthguard painted. The weapon also has the "gatling gun" barrels sculpted on the end of it like G1 Soundwave's shoulder weapon. The weapon also has a swivel joint on the handle which allows for the it to elevate as a shoulder-mounted launcher.
This Soundwave's body proportion is a hulking mass, similar to DotM Soundwave's screen model. He looks more like a heavy hitter and very different from the lithe figure we saw in Prime (who fought with guile over brawn). But greater amount of bulk allows this toy to have a greater range of overall motion and stability (although TF Prime Soundwave is still quite good in its own right).
The transformation has some interesting elements, particularly with the waist. But the vehicle mode is disappointing, especially with the open rear section with exposed hands and legs.
They couldn't even make the hands fold in?The vehicle mode is pretty much a hybrid between Animated Soundwave's civilian van with elements from WFC/FOC Soundwave (no killer bull bar though).
Overall... not entirely convinced by this toy, especially when compared with his other Aligned Deluxe Class counterparts. WFC Deluxe Soundwave pulls off basically the same concept a whole lot better, and both WFC and TFP Soundwave had more detailed sculpting and paint ops. And WFC Soundwave had the chest-opening weapon-storage gimmick, whereas TFP Soundwave had the Laserbeak Breast Force gimmick. RiD Soundwave's chest does ... wait for it ... absolutely nothing. Animated Soundwave's chest didn't do anything, but he did come with Laserbeak who transformed into a sweet guitar.
This toy just feels like it's offering a whole lot less for the same Deluxe price point. I managed to pick this figure up for The Scream Man at Big W for $20, which is an alright price to pay for this toy if you really wanna get it, but I can't justify paying a dollar over that. There's nothing inherently wrong with this toy, but I don't think it's fantastic either. The main advantage that this toy has over its TFP forerunner is that it comes with a Decepticon logo sticker (it really bugged me that some of the TFPRiD figures were logo-less).
Is Hasbro seriously called Laserbeak that?!?Originally Posted by reillyd
I get that Hasbro used "Lazorbeak" during BW because of trademark issues, but we know that Hasbro holds the trademark for "Laserbeak" now (I still can't believe that Hasbro went and called a toy Lazerback too
). Or don't tell me that they somehow managed to lose the rights to the name "Laserbeak" ...
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