I decided to write a short review of the City Commander armour kit. As I have never written a review on toys before, there are most likely aspects to reviewing toys that I am not aware of. If you think my comments are not fair / objective, I'd be happy for you to point this out to me. Thanks.
Packaging and presentation:
The box does not seem bad, if somewhat plain. However, the plastic bubble does a good job of securing the kit, and the instruction book in the form of a comic is definitely a nice, creative touch. The inclusion of decals sealed in its own bag definitely gives the whole kit a sense of "official-ness" (I know that's not really a word). The cardboard box could do with thicker cardboard material being used, but this is only a minor complaint. 9/10
Armour design - combining it with the figure:
The armour comes together fairly nicely, and the way the components are separated and combined to the limbs and torso of the Ultra Magnus figure really shows the designer's creativity. Having a trailer that can separate into various pieces of an armour requires careful planning. However, in my view its design is not without flaws and room for improvement.
First, the arm pieces connect somewhat loosely. There doesn't seem to be in their design that allows them to "catch" onto Magnus' arms. Thus, even after removing the arm pieces once, I could already feel that they were slightly looser than before. The blame probably lies with how Magnus' arms were designed, with the truck's doors being attached to them in a rather awkward alignment. However, I was probably hoping that if the designer could design such a nice set of armour, working his magic on the arm pieces would have been relatively easier.
Second, the hole on the left shoulder armour piece for holding the wind vane blaster could have been made slightly smaller, allowing for a tighter grip. This seems to be made necessary by the fact that the hole is not deep enough for the blaster's handle. As it is with my armour kit, the wind vane blaster does not even fit, the hole is simply too large. The issue may exist because there is variance in the thickness of the blaster's handle, so perhaps this complaint is not entirely fair. At any rate, it is a minor issue.
Third, what seems to be a more serious issue is the difficulty with which I have when attaching the leg armour pieces to Magnus. Even looking at the instruction booklet / comic carefully, I could not help but feel that despite putting the leg in at an angle, I'd eventually have to "force" it in. The plastic turned out to be fairly strong, but for a while I did not wish to chance it. In my mind an additional hinge element near the ankles would have greatly alleviated the problem, and to me seemed like an oversight (though there may have been design decisions I was not aware of which prevented the inclusion of an additional hinge element). The ability of the feet to slant was a good design element.
Finally, my biggest complaint regarding the design of the armour is the big rocket launcher. It isn't that I don't love robots holding big weapons, but it is just too heavy for one arm to hold. I know there is a fix that increases the stiffness of the shoulder / arm, but I think good design should aim to remove the need for such "fixes". Had the rocket launcher been designed to be able to split into two smaller symmetrical weapons, this would not only have retained the rocket launcher option, but also removed this problem.
Despite these issues, the armour is still fairly well designed. 7.5/10
Armour design - articulation:
For armour that is considered bulky, there is surprisingly little sacrifice in the way of articulation for Magnus once the armour is on. The only real complaint I have is that the head only rotates horizontally and not vertically. This is not a big deal, but it did not seem all that difficult to include.
Edit: However Kyle tells me it's actually fixable and that the joint is just too stiff on some of the kits. So new score is: 9/10
Edit: also forgot to include two aspects of the review. See below.
Paint:
The paint quality is very good, all the colours are where they should be, and they don't creep. I see no problems. 10/10
Quality Control:
With the exception of a couple of existing stress marks, the plastic is of good quality. 9/10
Overall: (9 + 7.5 + 9 + 9 + 10) / 5 = 8.9 (out of 10)
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Originally Posted by Sam
