Toy Review - DOTM Shockwave

[LordCyrusOmega]

Thing of beauty, even if it is Bayverse.
Looks menacing in Robot mode and Alt mode looks good as well. Given that the Cybertron mode of Bayverse toys have been pretty disapointing Shockwave is a far cry from this.
Love everything about him

[tjparkside]

this is a cool re-interpretation of shockwave,worth purchasing!

[Fonecrusher]

This is coming very close to knocking Voyager Megatron off for being best DOTM toy so far. Aboslutely love everything about him, even his alt mode which doesn't get much praise, I really dig.

[LordCyrusOmega]

Cybertron modes for Bayverse have been an epic fail when it comes to toys (except protoform Starscream and Optimus) but Shockwave is just stunning.
Best one so far by a long streak.

[Hursticon]

Awesome figure in both modes, lovely colours and great personalty in the face sculpt.
Backpack assembly is a little fiddly to get everything pegged-up right but apart from that, his transformation is quite intuitive and is rather fun.
(Still not sold on the whole Mechtech gimmick though )

A great figure, when you can find it, especially at circa $35.

[BigTransformerTrev]

This is coming very close to knocking Voyager Megatron off for being best DOTM toy so far. Aboslutely love everything about him, even his alt mode which doesn't get much praise, I really dig.

Any Shockwave that has the pipe/cord/thingie going from his arm to his shoulder gets a big fat YES from me!

I didn't mind his alt-form too much. Beats the hell out of TFP's Shockwaves, but it's the robot mode that does it for me. Even to the extent his torso has an abs/ribcage thing going on that makes it look like he pumps cyber-iron at night.

Overall, considering what the Bay-verse has done to so many classic characters, Shockwave could have come off a LOT worse. He has a cannon arm and cord (even if it is right instead of left), he has the one eye, he has the grey ear cover thingies and he turns into a big gun thing. Sure, you have to use the term 'thing' more often with this figure than you would usually have to with an awesome figure, but overall he is still very good

[GoktimusPrime]

What really risk me with this toy, as well as TF1 and ROTF Megatron (moreso the latter) and the Fallen is that they just utterly FAIL as Robots In Disguise. Cos despite all the flaws with the Bayverse movies, one really cool thing about the live action films was that it made the Transformers feel real and living among us. Cars, trucks, military vehicles, emergency vehicles, appliances, people etc.; anything and anyone could be a Transformer! And one great thing I've enjoyed about the movie toys is getting all these great licensed vehicle alt modes; not generic cars and planes, but actual makes and models of automobiles, aircraft etc. Since then we've seen an explosion in people driving around with Transformers logos on their cars, playing along an international game where any car could be a Transformer. Just the day before yesterday I saw a car here in China with a bumper sticker that had a Decepticon logo and said, "Get away from this car or it will transform."

But toys like Megatron (TF1/ROTF), Shockwave, Soundwave (ROTF) and the Fallen deviate away from what is otherwise a really cool running theme with the live action movie characters and toys. At least TF1 gave us an excuse for why Megatron didn't have an Earthen mode in TF1; but after that they just stopped trying and there would be random Transformers who just didn't have Earth modes. Admittedly Shockwave's Cybertronian alt mode is a big improvement over others; but probably because the alt mode never existed in the film, giving designers more creative freedom to design a relatively better vehicle (whereas TF1/ROTF Megatron's alt modes just look like faecal excrement).

Look at Binaltech Shockwave. Great robot mode that homages the character well, plus he transforms into a Mazda RX-8 w/ body kit. The ability to scan a local form and move about freely in disguise is just more logical. It'd sure beat drilling around underground... that would be a far less efficient and expedient form of movement as opposed to just rolling or flying about on the planet's surface.

[UltraMarginal]

I quite like the robot mode for this guy.

it's an interesting discussion about the realism of alt modes for the films. I too have really enjoyed the "realism" and detail of vehicle alt modes for these movies. I've been frustrated by the non-earthen alt modes where they have appeared but they have always appeared on characters who either haven't yet taken earth form or appear to me to be too arrogant to bother taking an earth form. I found it very interesting that the war weary and tragically damaged megatron did take an earth form for the third movie as he was less self assured and more vunerable than he had been at any prior point in the films.

While "logical" the movie shockwave probably didn't feel a need to take an alt form as by the time he was spending much time in anyones view the decepticons had already started their invasion. Why then would he bother to conceal himself.