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Cliffjumper

Only they're not little. Getting them out of the packaging once I got home, I found that Cliffjumper is pretty lanky. These bots are around the height of a large Deluxe to a small Voyager, with proportions more in line with the latter. They don't necessarily feel as hefty, especially when you're putting them together, because it's all small skinny skeletal bits and pieces, but once you've completed them and armoured them up they've got some decent presence. Now, they do all have the same basic construction and basically the same transformation scheme. That's kind of a negative point. It's also kinda cool, because once you've built one, you more or less know how to do the others. I got Cliffy set up pretty easy and had a go at transforming him. Easy, and relatively satisfying. It's a bit messy and the alt modes are questionable, but easily at least as good as a G1 Pretender's inner bot, and 80,000 times as poseable. (I'm rounding up)

Silverbolt

Next was Silverbolt and his gorgeous swordgeous. Even though he transforms the same, and is made up of very similar pieces, the plane bits and just the variation in shapes of the torso and arm and leg guards made him feel quite different. This was when I knew I was onto a winner. I'm not particularly fond of buying the same thing in different colours of plastic, unless there's a character reason (a Seeker trio, or the Datsun boys for example) but I will take a repaint (or better yet, a retool with new pieces) if the new colours evoke enough of a difference in my head. That Silverbolt was different enough from Cliffjumper to make me still like him was great, because I'd already seen Megatron and Shockwave's heads and those both fitted their characters perfectly.

Megatron

I quickly got stuck into the two Decepticon commanders, tackling Megatron first. The packaging for the larger bots is really great, with the outer cardboard box of the smaller ones being strengthened and made oh so much prettier by the inclusion of a solid coloured translucent plastic tray. This also made it easier for me to just cut the pieces out of their bags and dump everything into the tray to get started building. Cool addition that makes a minor but appreciated difference. Where the more basic sets just have the bot's skeleton and base armour and one weapon, I immediately noticed there seemed like a lot more stuff with Megatron. Building him up I noticed he has extra armour on his shoulders, bulking him up a bit, as well as some wheel-arches that make the vehicle mode look a little more solid and again add to his robot silhouette. He's also packing 2 swords and his big f-off cannon...which I almost struggled to get all on him at once. Almost.

Shockwave

Shockwave was similarly packed with goodies. There's options there to give him a gun over his hand that resembles his G1 laser-hand or a much larger chunky one that encases the hand and looks like an extension of his arm, like the Beast Hunters/TF Prime version of the character. Very cool, and the instructions say to put the pieces of this large gun on his back when not being used, even including extra bits to let them hang off his shoulders, sitting on his back like big rocket booster engines or something. Really appreciate the options for variations on the standard theme with this guy, even more than Megatron, who does have a few nice, simple alterations that can be made to change up his look a bit. But of course, the construction and customisation of these things is their main selling point, so this makes sense.

craggy wrote:Updated my blog with a load of photos.