by Valandar » Thu Sep 13, 2007 11:19 am
- Motto: "It doesn't matter if the glass is half full or half empty, only that you work to make it full."
- Weapon: Particle Beam Cannon
Okay, I broke down and got the 1/18 Lamborghini Roadbot from BBTS (and the shipping came right on time, BTW). So, my opinions:
Car mode:
Outstanding, though the head scrapes the ground ever so slightly no matter how I position it. The tires are plastic, not rubber, but that's not a significant hit. The interior is highly detailed, and the doors work exactly the war they should. The "trunk" opens, and some of the markings are spot on (like the "Murcielago" printed on the lower inside of the door frame). Looking at photos, the proportions seem spot on, and a quick use of the ruler shows it's a pretty faithful reproduction of the real car. Most of the paint apps are relatively neat (compared to, say, Hasbro), although I'm not very fond of the faintly metallic flake green paintjob of the car - call it personal taste. What surprised me were some of the little details - for example, if you look through the chrome hubcaps, you can actually see molded brakes, and they even molded on the gas cap.
Oh, and since the sound/light chip is placed in the front "trunk", there's a button that when pressed plays a siren, and flashes the headlights with red flashes, as if it's some sort of undercover emergency vehicle.
Transformation:
Sad to say, there's a LOT of pieces that are pretty much required for car mode that are completely removed for the transform, though they're used later. The rear bumper and part of the top rear end are removed to make a shield, the entire rear underside is removed to make a rather oversized gun, and the side running panels are removed to add on to the gun. Once that's done, you now have to fight EXTREMELY tight joints, and panels pinned to each other (again far tighter than they should be) to otherwise transform it. For all practical purposes, the transformation is very similar to a modified G1 Sideswipe, except the arms fit under the hood instead of behind the doors, and the doors end up as horizontally oriented "wings" / shoulder plates. Getting past the stiffness, it's actually a nice little transform, partsforming aside.
Robot Mode:
This is actually the biggest letdown of the entire toy, for articulation reasons. Most annoying of all, he has no knees. Oh, there's a joint at mid-thigh that could PRETEND to be knees, but it looks totally wonky. His arms have decent articulation except they cannot extend to the side, and the head is on a ball joint, but a figure of this size SHOULD have some decent form of knees. Bending in mid-thigh doesn't cut it.
Looks-wise, the figure is quite stocky for a sportscar transformer, but not very wide front-to-back. His very Gundam-esque head is a little small, and the hood doesn't so much form his chest as it does his lower chest and abdomen (the dashboard forms his upper chest. He has a pair of neat fold-out claws on each forearm (for when he's not using his shield and gun - though the shield actually fits better when his left arm claws are out), and the sound chip is now in the gun with a different button showing, which makes the barrel flash, and has rapid-fire laser sounds. Thankfully, the volume is about half that of a Cybertron toy with sounds (for example). His detailing is pretty good, and he stands about 9 1/2 inches tall, and is about the same size as Leader Class Cybertron Optimus Prime's Super Mode (not counting the wings and guns, that is).
Overall:
I just got a Leader-class toy for the cost of a Voyager. Yes, there are Deluxe figures with better articulation and less parts-forming, but the vehicle mode is so sweet it more than makes up for it. The plastic quality is a lot better than I expected, and the super-tight joints are both a plus (not floppy at all) and a minus (difficult in places to transform, though I never felt like I was going to break it the way I did MP-03).
Final tally: 3 1/2 stars out of 5. A solid buy worth the $20.
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