My Ironhide/Prowl review, copy/pasted from Facebook.
So, Ironhide and Prowl thoughts. I came into this set expecting to love Prowl and not like Ironhide as much as Siege. Now I've fiddled with them, I was pretty on the nose.
Prowl isn't spectacular but he's definitely a Prowl. I got Smokescreen a week or so ago so I knew what to expect from the mold already. I think if I could give him Siege's lower legs, clear wheels, and the yellow highlights, he'd be perfect. I will probably swap his head with the Siege version since he's got Bluestreak's head. The big issues he has are some... I guess warping on his main body piece. It doesn't align with his arms right, so you have to work to get them to tab in. Once they're locked in they're solid but it takes a little effort, especially on his right side. Also, I didn't realize this until after taking the pictures, but his neck panel is supposed to snap into his torso, and it took an almost frightening amount of force to do so. Seems to have been a first time problem, now it slots in without issue. Anyway, if you own one Datsun you own them all, there's no surprises here if you've already handled Bluestreak or Smokescreen. Most notable thing is that he has Siege Red Alert's lightbar piece instead of Siege Prowl's, and it is clear plastic painted solid red and black.
Ironhide..... he's alright, fixes some issues I had with siege (the flimsiness of the leg panels and the gap where the biceps are in alt mode). I admire the attention to detail in the sculpting, like the windshield wipers on his chest or the windows on the rear of the van. There was a bad QC issue with a tab from the mold that wasn't cut off enough, I had to disassemble his torso and slice that off (last two pictures are that piece on the ER and Siege figures to compare). He reuses 28 pieces from the Siege figure and has 12 new pieces making up his body, plus 8 for his weapons. Aesthetically he's better in hand than I thought he looked from the preview pictures, but paint and plastic choices were certainly made here. While the Siege figure is a vibrant, bright red; Earthrise is three different shades of red. His forearms and feet (which I assume are on the same mold sprue) are a similar red to Siege. The backs of his legs, biceps, and shoulder attachment (all parts inherited from Siege again) are a more maroon shade. Contrarily, the new pieces (including his head, which is a new sculpt) are molded in a paler red that's almost pink. The clear window pieces have red paint to match this shade. I have no idea why they didn't mold all these parts in the same shade of red (or since they appear to be different types of plastic, very similar shades like Siege). That aside, there's also some areas lacking paint that could really use it. The Siege painted the interior of his robot chest silver, which really pops through the clear window. The ER figure, however, is unpainted in there. While it's admittedly a fake alien vehicle that doesn't ahve to look much like anything, the Siege figure had some silver stripes down his les that could be seen as possible windows in his alt mode. The Earthrise figure has molded windows, including two that continue from clear window parts on his roof piece, but they are not painted, only his iconic yellow stripes are painted on, as well as some door handles. This makes the rear of his vehicle mode look REALLY unfinished. There's also a red patch on his crotch on Siege that's unpainted on the ER, which much like Prowl's accents, is not essential but it would help break up the monochrome. However I guess most of the paint for this one went to the bumper areas and masking the clear plastic. Before I move on to the biggest change of this mold, I want to compliment the molding on the interior of the van panels The ones that make the outside of his legs make sense for looking like they do, , but the ones that form his shins are never seen from the inside, and yet they're detailed in there beyond what parts are necessary for function. I didn't think to photograph them but they're impressive for parts most people will probably never look at. In fact, the Siege figure did the same thing and I only just noticed it now.
Now for the elephant in the room with this Ironhide, and the reason he can't be sold as a normal deluxe: the roof shield. Siege IH was already on the big side for a deluxe and compensated for it with lots of hollow voids in unobtrusive areas. To make a convincing Earth van out of this mold, the designers gave him a new roof piece with windows to fill in the gaps. This is a hefty chunk of plastic and it doesn't DO much. It turns into a riot shield but unfortunately the peg isn't pointed in a way where he can hold it like a normal shield, so you have to mount it on his arm or shoulder instead. Not the end of the world, but options are nice. There is a neat feature where sliding the mounting peg moves a gun array in and out. It's a serviceable shield but it is quite LARGE and so your options are somewhat limited. It can go on his back, but.... why. I suppose it hearkens back to the original Ironhide toy and its Diaclone predecessor, which was just a mobile battle station with the infamous "battle sled" made from the entire lower half of the van, but that might be giving too much credit. It exists because they wanted to turn Siege Ironhide into an Earth van and there was no easy way to resculpt the roof of that figure while maintaining his shape in robot mode, so they just slapped a roof on there.
also he comes with a dinky little pistol but I will probably continue to use Sixgun's legs as cannons for him so whatever.
I was initially going to sell Ironhide from this set and keep the Siege one as my shelf Ironhide, but now I'm not sure what I want to do with him. He could be great with some deco changes. Both molds have their merits, I kind of want to lean towards earth modes rather than cybertronian, because that's their more iconic look, but unlike Prowl where there's a clear improvement, Ironhide is more of a lateral change and I'll have to think more to decide what I want to do.
Gallery:
https://imgur.com/a/z2SI5zg
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. So I strongly believe, that wave 3 will be shipping as normal and will receive full saturation soon, which makes me wonder what is going on with wave 2? I mean I have the ones I want thanks to online ordering, but what happened to them at retail? If these all appear at some discount store inaccessible to most fans in a few months, that is a huge screw up on somebodies part, because they would have sold so well, just like all the other ER deluxes, you can barely find them anywhere at the moment.
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