Seibertron himself gave a rare but very welcomed review of this toy in the form of problems he has with it. And I thought I should share it in this thread too. I also included my thoughts on the same points so that any fan can see where both of us are coming from and see what may influence our opinions:
Seibertron wrote: Normally I try to refrain from posting my opinions when I strongly dislike something, but in this case I've got to level with all of you because I find all of the "wow this toy is amazing" comments from so many of you kind of odd when I find the toy frustrating overall.
I welcome that immensely, and I hope you wont mind if I, in return say why I think this toy is amazing.
This is the WRONG color purple. It doesn't match the cartoon and to be honest I'm not sure I'd want any Shockwave toy to "match" the color of his cartoon counterpart. Dark purplish blue, bluish purple. Not lavender or light purple or whatever! This toy's color was the hardest color to photograph that I've ever dealt with in 12.5 years of photographing Transformers toys (well aside from some of the crazy neon orange and pink colors like G2 Starscream). I couldn't match it no matter what camera settings I used, no matter how much I tinkered with the RAW files (adjusting hue, saturation, color temperature, contrast, etc). The toy doesn't match the cartoon, and like AutobotAlvaron said above, cartoon accuracy should be used as a guide but common sense should take over at some point.
I was fine with the hue of purple chosen. I dont want anything bluish, so this was good. And the colour matches the show model. But they did make a mistake with the finish though. Its not a full colour. By that I mean it looks like they went with a pastel tint even though the purple itself is a nice purple (which reminds me of the colour used on packages of kids medecine when somthing is grape flavoured). And then when you combine bathing him in light for a photograph along with the brightness of screen monitors, he looks a shade lighter with a whitish finish enveloping him (he looks closer to the colour I see in hand when I look at your pics on my phone rather than my laptop). It was an odd choice on their part and it could have been corrected if the colour they chose was fuller/deeper and maybe matte instead of glossy. I wouldnt want it darker though, since then it wouldnt match the show at all. I have no complaints about the colour in hand though and he is a big step up from that cyclonus and galvatron. Sadly, it looks like they are going back to that even lighter lilac with their
next shockwave release What the heck is up with his backpack? I'm in disbelief that this was the best solution they could come up with. All we did was trade one partsforming piece for another, hardly an improvement on a toy designed by a lesser known company called Toyco back in the 1980s. If you transform the front of the cannon properly, it screws with his silhouette and overall color scheme since he know has a giant light gray piece on his back. It doesn't get any better when you add the backpack cover, because then he just ends up with a massive purple block on his back (which looks better, but not as good as it does on the original).
As someone mentionned before, the partsforming is improved since you arent forced to clip on that backpack cover unless you want to achieve a look. With the G1 toy, the parsforming was a must and the parts went nowhere in robot mode. Here in robot mode, you can attach it all, get the nice G1 look and have no peices left over which was not the case in the G1 toy. So thats a pretty massive improvement. And the cover works dual purpose as a stand to make up for the fact that he cant stand on his own as a gun.
The light grayish purple hands, left arm cannon, and ears ... Takara you're killing me. Not interested in colors like this on my Transformers that should be silver and dark purple!!!!!!
If you are basing your want for dark purple on the G1 toy (which I agree looks awesome), then Takara actually gives you the translucent hands that achieve the G1 toy look. And I see you have used those for many of the pics and thats awesome. As for the other coloured hands, I have never seen any portrayal of G1 shockwave where his "hands" are coloured the way you are describing it. The only thing I can think of is the action master which has a grey hand but then his canon was orange and I doubt you would want that instead.
The lower legs are a mess. I can't tell you how many few dozens of times his leg panels collapsed or didn't stay together when I would move him into a new position or different angle for the camera.
Your toy might be defective. This doesnt appear to be the case that was with roadrage where her shoulders unpeg for everyone, instead this seems to be isolated. The legs on mine peg realy well together and they stay together (its similar to the stellar pegging we see at points in the Hot Rodimus transformation). There are no gaps when I have everything pegged in to the point where you wouldnt be able to tell that the legs transform that way if you didnt know. The bell bottoms can have a gap but taking just a moment to make sure everything is alligned makes it work. This reminds me of the issue with Hot Rodimus' ground clearance which was fixed once everything was tabbed in properly. The Legs are my favourite part of his transformation and I find it really innovative how this creates a nice sleek handle, as well as the back of the gun, which comes together to make legs that are beefier than the G1 but not as huge and odd as Quakewave. This to me is what really sells this toy.
... which brings me to his feet. Ok in robot mode, but the fact that you can't even do what the G1 toy does so that he can "stand" in gun mode is absurd and unfortunate. But hey, we ended up with a silly looking purple stand instead. Nice.
As I said above, the stand makes up for that. So when posing him in either Robot or Alt mode, all pieces of the toy are used, which beats the G1 version where the barrel went nowhere in robot mode.
As for the light piping for his singular eye ... it's a nice feature, but the light piping is too dark or something.
This surprises me because this is probably the best lightpipng I have ever seen. Not in terms of implementation or the effect (this is just a dot), but simply in the way that you dont need much of a lightsource to have his eye glow. And the yellow looks great. Once again, it might be deffective. While that would be too high a conicidence I am holding out hope that if you do return this one for his legs which arent holding as well as they should, the next one you get will have that stellar light piping I experience with mine.
The light up feature was kind of a slap-in-the-face. It was a nice touch, but also a reminder that the sound effects were absent, which is what helped make G1 Shockwave so iconic. I liked how they implemented the light up feature, especially with the brief "stay-on" feature, but the lack of sound was disappointing.
I never had the G1 toy and I didnt grow up in that era, so I didnt have any of these expectations. I looked up his sounds and I preffer that we only got the light. Those radioshack sounds would have been a bit jarring with this toy that is honouring more the cartoon than the original toy.
The "hose" is also another disappointment. That metal coil will not last. It will become dented or bent, or whatever. We'll just end up with a hose with a different problem from the original. I just can't believe that was the best they could come up with.
Its better than you might think. While I dont encourage it, if you try bending or stretching the metal spring, you will realize that it cant be done. There is actually a wire within it, keeping it in shape and making it so that it cant be worn out. This is a far better than rubber and I dont see how they could do better. I also dont find it fair to score marks off for something that might happen. The only annoying thing that can happen, after I looked into it online, is that the paint might chip a bit from the spring. I would have preferred they didnt paint it.
His size ... Shockwave should have been bigger. And please for the love of god, if someone pulls out that silly G1 size chart, I'll go crazy. Shockwave should be big. Optimus Prime or bigger. Just like his G1 toy was bigger. He should be bigger than Soundwave and Starscream and I wouldn't mind if he was bigger than Megatron (though not the MP-5 Megatron). Ultimately, he just feels like another take on the original G1 toy with the only improvement being posability. So many details are the same, which is probably good, but at the same time it just feels like a rip-off of sorts or a 3rd party G1 Shockwave's original toy is so iconic that to not do it right just seems like an injustice.
I always thought he was a head shorter than Megatron, so he should be ahead shorter than optimus in this line and thats pretty much what he is. I have no issues with his size especially since I want to pose him with others, like the seekers. I do get that someone of that stature, icon wise, would be fun to have bigger, but then all he would scale with would be MP 05.
So those are my thoughts. I've unloaded my opinions. Bummed about Shockwave and a few others recently released. Here's hoping we can get back to figures along the "masterpiece" levels of Masterpiece Wheeljack and Prowl soon.
I agree that he isnt as good as Wheeljack who is the best so far. But I dont really see what they could have done. The cartoon model was already very close to the toy (aside from the colours) so what they did is recreate the G1 toy but make him more accurate in proportion to the cartoon. This is great news to me since I always wanted a G1 shockwave toy but due to his high after market price (since a rerelease of the toy has some rights issues) I didnt think I would get him. And now this toy comes along which is basically the G1 toy with better proportions and modernized articulation without the jarring retro sound effects. So I can still marvel at what was the G1 toy while also having a modernized Shockwave toy. Its like the best of both worlds.
And I totally get that we have differring points of view. I for isntance do not like Prowl for the reasons you dont like this Shockwave. His backpack extends too far and I am surprised its the best they could do. And just like you do not like how cartoon accurate Shockwave is in colour, I dislike Prowl's cartoon accurate feet. Unlike wheeljack, they dont look like feet at all and while I get what its going for, I also find it a bit lazy and clunky in a line that I thought was about giving the perfect figures. But its not, its about working off the show models. I begrudgingly accepted it for Prowl when he came along and I now revel in it with Shockwave.
I do have 3 issues with Shockwave though that you did not bring up, just to show you that I am not looking at this toy through rose coloured glasses:
1. I hate how that robot head locks. It isnt obvious at all and the amount of strentgh needed is very unnatural and it has happened that his head would come off in the process. This is no fun.
2. Its really too bad that the small garage door on his stomach cannot peg into his waist. It ends up being a bit loose and keeps coming up. We can see that in the gallery too. That whole waist area is a little odd. I dont like that sensation of it popping in and out as I play with him.
3. While I love this toy and think he is very good, I have no clue where that price came from. Its not the parts count and we both know that electronics and die cast have little to know impact on the cost. I feel they just look at their development cost as a pool and then even out the prices based on size. For instance, I am pretty sure MP Bumblebee had as much (if not more) development time and costs put in but due to his small stature, they couldnt price him that high. And thus toys that are bigger but have less development costs (like the seekers) make up for that.