Badly Shockwaved.

I have always had a soft spot for the logical emotionless Shockwave, so any iteration of the cyclopsian Transformer is good in my mind.  However one hasn’t really come about.  Aside from G1 Shockwave and Fall of Cybertron Shockwave the toys have been a bit disappointing. 

 

Always willing to give the new guy a go, I got Shockwave from Prime.  Actually I got the Japanese version which is ‘Transformers Go,’ to be more precise.  Not sure why exactly, I think it may have been due to the shinier colours and the different colour of his Beast Armour.

 

 

You see, this is why I can’t have nice toys.  After the orgasmic nature of Bulkhead, Optimus of a First edition nature and the clever compact Prime Vehicon, all other toys from Prime have been rather disappointing.  It would seem FE set the bar too high.  Um, so obviously I am not terribly impressed with Shockers here.  Don’t get me wrong, he does have his good points, but for me the bad outweigh the good fairly significantly.

 

First off, let’s look at the box.  I was a bit surprised by the box, so have taken a few snaps and will talk/type my way through it.

 

 

It is quite a lot brighter than I expected especially for a Decepticon.  The cool artwork for his robot mode is a bit obscured, but considering how he is in robot mode in the box, I guess that’s fine.  He has his stats on the side, with both Japanese Kanji and English there.  Oddly, if you have a look at his speed, the bar looks like a 5 but the number has it as three.  I wonder what the US box has?

 

 

The Transformers logo has the kanji that reads Sanjyo gattai above it.  Which if you go to google translate means ’See omnibus Body.’  To me and looking at the characters separately it is alluding to a ‘single continuity.’  Maybe the ‘Aligned’ thing that Hasbro go on about?  It has the 30th anniversary logo ( a year early?) and technicality level of 3.  This toy is a 2 at the most.

 

They have really dumbed it down a little bit I think here which I am surprised at.  (that will make more sense later)

Nicely displayed and spread in the box.  His hunter armour on the side.  The US version has this armour a a horrible orange/red colour.  I don’t like the design of the armour that much, it reminds me too much of bad guys from the bad Sonic games (Shadow the Hedgehog, Sonic 06, Sonic Unleashed for example.)

Shockwave is actually ‘Hunter Shockwave’ because he has his hunter armour.  They have still included his function, which is still Science Officer.  What I find most interesting is that they have written above the tank mode:

ロボットからタンクにトランスフォーム

(Transforms from Robot to Tank)

‘Nothing new there’ I hear you say. But there is.  They used  “タンク"  (phonetic spelling of tank) as opposed to 戦車 (senshya – Japanese word for Tank [characters lit. mean ‘war’ & ‘vehicle’)

 

Chance are if you looks on older boxes, you’ll see

ロボットから戦車にトランスフォーム

(Transformers from robot to Tank [Senshya]).

 

Might just be nothing, but it strikes me as odd, as their demographic (young boys) would probably understand the kanji for senshya.

 

And that’s enough of the Japanese lesson.

 

 

He’s held on a nice backing bit.

 

Surprised to see that Takaratomy have adopted the massive poster sized instructions sheets.  It is missing the story part and the blurb about the weapons.  More annoyingly, despite being simple to transform, if you follow the instructions you will find them relatively useless.  Despite it taking 20 steps apparently.  The problem lies in un-descriptive photos.  A couple of times, I remember looking at the photo wondering what it was trying to tell me.  They even have shots of bits that are not required.  Like folding his hand down (it’s in one photo on the sheet), but if you do this, it gets in the way of putting his arm in the right spot.  bUh?

 

 

The robot mode is pretty good.  The armour can be donned or left off.  But just be aware that the chest armour covers his trademark chest up.  The claws on the shoulder look like an after thought.  There is a lot to like in the robot mode.

• Light Piping is effective.
• Balance is good.
• His big girly feet are solid providing good balance. ( he could almost join the Starscream brigade).
• Clever use of the tank tread to make the ammo clip/energy supply for his cannon.
• It looks like the TV show model.
• Has nicely coloured plastic with a good finish and nice blues for highlights.
• No crappy little arms micron.
• No awful sticker application (YAY!)

 

Plus you can do silly things with the armour. Like big shoulder bits.  and Head gear.

 

 

“It is only logical that I should be the Grand Poo-Bah of the Decepticons.  But first I need to remake the secret handshake a right-handed one…”

 

The head and chest sculpts are really nice.  Being from Prime, his ambient sculpting (I love that phrase!) is a bit lacking as they generally are all smooth and shiny.

 

 

He does have very effective light piping in his eye.

 

I do like that you can see the dots in the eye as well.  Niiiice.

 

He can be posed pretty easily and the spinning gimmick on his cannon arm is easily accessible.  not so easy to photograph in action though…

 

Sadly mine has a dodgy hip and even though it’s supposed to be ratcheted, one side doesn’t work.  He needs it too, due to the size of the cannon.

  If you point his arm out, he will tilt over.

 

 

Luckily his big feet keep him very stable and they are strong as they don’t have any ankles.  He does have wheels in his heels.  I kind of like this for some reason.

 

Generally the robot is pretty good..  Aside from some bad QC in the hip (and then only his left one) it is a fairly fun little fellow.

 

All my hate stems from the vehicle mode.

 

 

Actually, that’s a bit of a lie.  Part of my hate stems from the vehicle mode and part from the transformation itself.  It’s horrifically lazy.  He lies down, and shimmies his arms over the front and back, looks down and bam.  Shitty tank mode.  Just look at it from the back.  What an abomination!

 

It looks flimsy and it is flimsy.  How does the powerful looking Shockwave turn into this piss-poor Shitwave tank?????

 

The armour clips onto the feet and chest again, making him look a bit like a monster.  It does roll well and the spinning laser gun gimmick works well.  But then you look at it from the rear.

 

The rear just looks like, well ARSE!  Underneath is horrible, it looks like he is trying to feel his own nuts.  Just look, there’s a VERY obvious arm underneath there.  The hand doesn’t even try to hide anywhere.

 

 

The chest has this splitting piece, but it just hangs over the edge to add some faux bulk to the cannon holding platform.  It is just so, so, so awful, lazy, weak and all over shit.

 

I have more impressive McDonalds tanks than this thing that change.  Man, I just hate this vehicle mode SO MUCH!  Such a weak effort.  Shit. H-tanks are usually the way they go when they want an easy tank mode.  But this thing just sucks so much.  I had no idea the vehicle mode was so crap.  For all intents and purposes, I LOATHE 50% of this toy.  I hate this tank mode more than I hate the Energon Grimlock/Swoop horror combination.

 

And I didn’t think that was possible.

 

So could I recommend this guy?   No.

 

Sure his robot mode is nice, looks the part and I can guarantee I will only transform it to make me angry (meaning he will stand behind Megatron on the shelf), but with Transformers, I always think of them as 50% robot, 50% something else.  This guy totally fails as his ‘something else.’  I can’t really think of any positives for the tank mode.

 

 

In fact, if I had bought this guy from my local shop which had a returns policy, I would return it and tell them my kid already had one.  It is that bad.Now that I have it and I can’t really return it, I kind of want to keep it because it is so horrible.

 

Sad but true.

 

P.S

I was thinking about this on the way home from work and I think my strong feelings for this boil down to the fact that I quite like to look of  the robot and perhaps was expecting a bit too much from it.  Aaaw.  How sad I be