As with Brawl, Megatron and Jazz, while Studio Series wave 2 has hit a few retailers, there is little talk about them. They have yet to reach saturation and their higher prices at several retailers might make them less obvious to own. I have a pictorial review for every toy of Wave 2 so far so I thought I would complete that with Lockdown. As with every other toy in this wave (and line), there is a lot to like but it is also far from perfect.
The first thing I would like to get out of the way is that unlike what it seemed at first, this is not a tall deluxe. For the life of me I could not find his previous deluxe in my collection bins, so I have a comparison to a bunch of other toys instead to show you what I mean.
People had wondered if this was a retool of Cogman but it isn't. It is as similar to Cogman as it is to TLK Barricade, which are all shellformers with the feet in the back and the torso at the front. That is basically where the similarities end. Unlike Cogman, I found Lockdown to have an uninventive transformation for a shellformer.
While the backpack does fold into itself, it is still pretty big and definitely takes away from the silhouette the robot mode sculpting promises. It doesn't help him feel more boxy and wide than he should be, which is already conveyed with his truncated neck and wide arms. About the arms, I do not know why they chose to have the upper arm be actual car mode detail rather than sculpting some robot mode detail under that piece and making it face that way. it just looks off. Yes, they do add these flip out robot mode detail launchers and while it is a good idea, it is not done well. They have a very flimsy connection and can easily pop off.
The weapons are fine. No gun face, but we do get the hook. We also get a Sword/Blaster (something very common in Age of Extinction) but he cant hold it as a blaster. Both weapons can be hooked onto the outside of the forearms, which is also where they can be hooked on in vehicle mode.
The sculpting is clearly the best part though. Too bad the deco doesn't highlight as much as I would like, they don't even paint the Lamborghini symbol split across his chest.
While the face sculpt is nice, the expression they gave him is that of massive boredom. To the point that it can really get in the way of a cool scene.
I don't have any issue with the car mode. I like that they painted the tail lights but I would have really liked that they gave some detail to the Lamborghini symbol in the front, like they had done with last year's Hot Rod.
So in the end it's a great sculpt and cool car mode, definitely better than the previous attempt. However this is still a very typical shellformer at a scale that doesn't really help me. The nice sculpting hides away the fact that this toy doesn't accomplish much aside from looking good in a few areas, making it feel more like a mild improvement over the definite version of a character. Add that to a the lackluster deco and this is another example of a movie toy in the Studio Series line that doesn't feel more "premium" than any other movie toy from previous lines. He is fine but it's not a toy I think I will go back to often (until I have an accompanying Optimus).
side has been confirmed yet, as far as numbers being assigned (other than #19 as an exclusive for the BB Movie)
it's listed as release number 9 in their release list.
Plus the evidence in potp that they are getting non-exclusive nem and wreck gar would suggest that thundercracker is not going to be a problem.