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I haven't seen too many posts talking about the flaws of this figure besides how he looks, so I felt I'll add this as a "buyer beware" tale.

Like many, I've always liked the casettes. I mean, there's just so much to like about them. They had such a presence on the show. Especially Soundwave himself. As a kid I wanted them all ... and got none of them since they were too expencive. Well, that only got worse until the Encore line came along and let us all get casettes at a reasonable price.

So I figured ... I'd just get ALL the damned casettes. You know, all the official molds and colors and ones based off official characters. (The only KOs in my collection of casettes are the Dinocasettes; the differently colored KOs do not intrest me at all ... they have to be based on an official character). So, to this end I got Nightfang and Savage. It helped that I want to fill out a Neo G1 movie collection and that I'm disappointed with Classics Ravage.

When looking at early pictures I though "at least this guy is better than Classics Ravage".

Oh, how nieve I was.

I'm not even going to talk about how the look. That's in the eye of the beholder, and I think the looks are just fine. Granted, Savage doesn't look like a cat let alone a jaguar, but I knew what I was buying.

Now, Nightfang is awsome. If you buy this, you want Nightfang! Someone else may make a tape based Ratbat in the future, but this guy will be hard to top. Savage on the other hand...

The first one I got barely held together, especially one of the front legs. And the hind legs were glued together! Prying them apart for transformation reuired excessive force and split the guy in the middle (no prob, I have good glue). Then I pull back the hind legs only to have the damned thing break off! The head was also incredible floppy. He can hold a pose decently, when you finally get everything together, but he's terrible.

So BBTS sent me a new one and they transformed him themselves to make sure he was okay. Almost makes up for the price gouging on Hercules.

So the new one ... hold together just fine, but that's where the compliments end. I thought that they couldn't have designed the knees to really bend the wrong way. Why not double joints? Well, I guess Savage just has one akward run becaus ehis front legs just bend the wrong way.

That's a big part of the problem, but it doesn't stop there. The guy barely fits into G1 Soundwave. I kind of had to put him in on the side, not up from the top. This is due to those damned rivets on his legs again.

He also doesn't quite fit into his own casette case. It's not too bad, but it's there.

Finally, even though this one holds togeher, his joints are still floppy. The plastic is also pretty cheap; the same as on Sonicron. But I guess it's fitting that a deeply flawed figure like that deserves and eaqually flawed minion. Pictures don't really convey how flawed this guy is; you really need to have him in-hand to appreaciate it.

So yeah. I don't know if these issues were mentioned before anywhere. But I figured I'll put them out there now.

I was happy with Sonicron .... because I bought him for $30. That may be too much, but he's decent enough. Not worth $60, though. And you have to be aware that he's deeply flawed; his chest won't stay closed in player mode with a tape in it unless you don't lock in his lower chest during transformation.

If you've bought Savage from BBTS, at least you can use customer service like I did should he turn out to be a freakin' disaster like the first one I got. But beware on the quality. He's, by far, the most fragile out of their three tape molds.