WFC Soundwave–Revisited

In my Madness, I ended up getting some of the WFC characters from Japan as well.  Megatron was a great improvement.  So is Optimus (probably to come on the blog much later), but howsabout Soundwave?  Can a new paint job make him that much sexier than his cross-the-ocean counterpart?


The answer to that question is a little bit yes and a little bit no.  We’ll start off in vehicle mode, where the differences are most obvious.  Sadly the Takaratomy (TT from now on) comes out not looking the best.

From the front and back it looks OK. But when viewing from the side, it is very noticeable that he isn’t all the same sexy blue.  The panels in the middle of the vehicle are unpainted and really stick out, especially since there is a painted section in the middle of the blue plastic.  At least Hasbro’s (HB from now on) has the same standard colour throughout, even though it isn’t as impressive as TT’s darker blue paint.

They did do a good job on adding the purple to the wheels and sides, something the HB version is sadly lacking, having added a blue there instead.  I also really like the grey they used for the um, goring spikes (? ) on the front side spikes for the vehicle.  Come one guys, why not ALL the spikes the same colour?

When comparing the two, you can see that the HB(right) one just seems to blend together so much nicer than TT(left). Also worth noting that the blue hi-lights are lacking on the front part where TT have the purple.

The TT has a slightly darker shade of metallic grey for the front spikes as well.  A small difference, but I prefer the darker colour.  The same can be said for the weapons, but they are so similar it’s hard to really tell.

 

The grey is also a bit more streamlined on the top of the roof of the vehicle mode as well on TT.

Overall, I prefer the HB more in vehicle mode, mainly because he is a solid colour throughout.  How will they go with robot mode?


Pretty damn fine.  Sure the inconsistent blue is still noticeable on TT, but not to the same extent as in vehicle mode.  The elbows are (again) the worst offenders, as that is the spot that I complained about in vehicle mode.  Generally the darker blue looks good as robot mode hi-lights and the purple lining breaks up the darker blue nicely.

There are a few differences, TT has a more gold looking chest and his head is all blue.  Check out the comparison pics below.

They both have very sexy light piping eyes.

As a final test, I brought out my Rumble and Frenzy from the HenkeiHenkei line, and both Soundwaves look pretty good next to those guys as well.

So in the end, there isn’t that much that puts one Soundwave over the other in my opinion.  Both have a few flaws and both have a lot of positives.  For me though, since I primarily display my Transformers in robot mode, the TT version is the better one. I just prefer the way the darker blue has been applied for the robot mode.  It’s a shame it’ so jarringly sporadic in vehicle mode, but I think the robot mode manages to make up for it.