Well that's what arrived today. Shall we do a little run down?
Shockwave
Aside from the altered head this is pretty nice. Tight joints and a smooth transformation, although getting the legs to slide out to the side is a little clunky. The electronics worked a little too well on mine, the moment that I pulled out the plastic strip that prevents the batteries from connecting with the terminals it went wild. Only way to shut the thing up was to whip out the old precision screwdriver and take out the batteries. The tubing containing the wire to the gun arm sits quite naturally in gun mode, but gets twisted out of shape near where it comes out of the back in robot mode, but I believe that this is a common problem with the official ones too.
I've never had a Shockwave or Galaxy Man, so I'm quite curious as to whether this is the same size as the original. He's posed with Soundwave in the pictures above so that should give peeps with a good knowledge of early G1 a pretty good guide to comment on this. If he is the same size I'll probably try to find myself a junker Shockwave to make a hybrid out of, particularly since I've got a bash in mind that the head from this would quite suit.
Trainbots/Raiden
Sorry that there's no pics of the individual bots at the moment, but putting him together is quite a faff on, more so than a G1 Devestator, and I couldn't be bothered mucking about with him again tonight.
Plastic seems a bit brittle, but manages to stand up to a bit of force. The gestalt goes together tightly, some of the connections actually being quite hard to push home. The neck connection was a notable example of this.
The colours aren't far off the originals and the stickers have a similar asthetic, despite not being 100% faithful to the original designs. In the manner of KOs the stickers were applied rather crookedly in places, but I've sorted these out without damaging any of them. They do appear to be of the kind that don't adhere particularly well, so I'll just have to see how well they hold up.
No weapons for the individual bots, but he should come with all the gestalt parts. Should? Yes, unfortunately mine came with two right fists. Irritating, but not the worst thing in the world and I'm assuming that this doesn't affect all of them and that I just got unlucky.
Overall I'd say that the quality is better than the average Scramble style gestalt KO and that it's quite a nice set to have.
As with Shockwave I'm curious as to how this compares with the original size wise. Reprolabels don't have a set for Raiden as yet, but if they ever do one and it would fit the KO version I'd certainly give it a look. I'm pretty sure that I've seen this version on ebay labelled as original size before, but again some confirmation from somebody in the know wouldn't go amiss.
Rebirth Megatron
"I will call him... Mini Me."
My favourite of the bunch. I've always loved the Hero Megatron mould and this oversized version is pretty damned sweet. The joints are tighter than any of my three official variants and it seems to support it's weight and hold poses better than it's smaller cousins. Plastic quality seems pretty decent and the missile launcher works.
Couple of simplifications to the mould. First off the small moulded faction symbol fron just below the chin of the Megatron head is gone, but that's to be expected. Secondly the lower arms no longer have an opening flap, but since RM Rebirth Megatron didn't come with the missiles that earlier versions had and the previous versions' missiles would be too small to fit on the KO anyway it's something of a moot point.
This last one is totally recommended, the other two provide a cheap option for getting a version of relatively expensive and hard to find characters and are certainly worth thinking about.
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