For the people that know me, it's no secret that I've been a Transformers fan since I was but a wee lad. I grew up with the Generation 1 series, which was just the coolest thing ever when I was that age. My appreciation for the franchise has remained to this day. In recent years, I've begun collecting some of the newer toys they've been releasing (staying far away from the blasphemies that had anything to do with the movies). Today, I obtained one of the figures from the new line, which is based upon the video game The Fall of Cybertron. I've been eagerly awaiting this series since I first saw the pictures released at various conventions. They're doing a lot of really cool things in the series that are throwbacks to the originals. They are bringing back the combiners (sadly, they decided to do the Combaticons instead of the Constructicons, but still cool), they are releasing Blaster and Soundwave figures that have the minicons able to be stored inside them, and they are making figures for bots that haven't been seen in about a decade (in a visually appealing form, at least) including Starscream, Ultra Magnus, and Grimlock.
Being the complete nerd that I am, I have decided that I will periodically (i.e, whenever I get a new one) be doing in-depth reviews of the figures. I'll look a bit at the character of the bot and give some background, then look at the aspects of the figure including articulation, design (both robot and vehicle modes), and complexity of Transformation. So without further ado...
Shockwave (Fall of Cybertron)
"SHOCKWAVE may appear to be loyal to MEGATRON, but in reality he serves only one master - pure logic. Behind his emotionless face rests the mind of a brilliant strategist and mathematician. He calculates constantly, and enforces his solutions through the precise application of the vast power of his laser cannon."
Strength - 8
Intelligence - 10
Speed - 5
Endurance - 7
Rank - 8
Courage - 6
Fireblast - 10
Skill - 6
I'll be honest, I don't ever remember Shockwave from the cartoon when I was young. I don't ever recall hearing about him until the third movie was coming out. At that point I decided to look up this bot and realized that he did exist in the earliest Transformer media, but I just didn't remember him at all. Like with a lot of Transformers, there's a lot of contradicting representations of him early on. In the Marvel comics, he was apparently quite powerful and sought to overthrow Megatron. In the animated series however, he was rather weak (which makes little sense given that Megatron left him in charge of Cybertron while he was gone) and completely loyal to Megatron. The version from the Marvel comics seems to have struck more of a chord with the fans, possibly because of the animated version's similarities to Soundwave (in personality and name of course, they look nothing alike). For whatever reason though, Shockwave's coldly logical idea of supplanting Megatron has stuck with the character, as well as his great power. Now, onto talking about the figure.
The articulation is not bad. The legs and the arms have several joints, and are also able to be twisted, giving him a wide range of possible poses. The downside however, is the lack of articulation in the torso and head. There is no waist swivel point, nor one for the neck, meaning that he cannot turn to face something without turning his whole body (a rather important short-coming, given that his cycloptic eye has a lower visual range than any of the other Transformers). Still there are some decent poses you can put him in while maintaining the figure's balance.
The design for both vehicle and robot mode are interesting. His robot form has only a single eye, which is very unusual, given that most bots have a more traditional two-eyed visage, or at least have a hint at something close like Soundwave. His body is formed of all rough sides and sharp angles, which seems to be a consistent design among this generation of Decepticons (while the Autobots have a much more rounded and smooth look). He has a seemingly disproportionally large torso compared to his legs, and yet it doesn't seem to make him imbalanced at all which is nice. The deep violet color of his body also fits in with the Decepticon color scheme (which Megatron never seems to fit with, oddly enough). His vehicle mode is a Cybertronian mobile artillery cannon, which bears a striking resemblance to one of Galvatron's ships from the original animated movie. Overall, the design of both vehicle and robot are distinctly alien, unlike some of the other Transformers whose form resembles in at least some ways vehicles or figures we are familiar with. This makes Shockwave seem a bit more intimidating and dangerous than other bots.
Finally, the difficulty of transformation. I've been pretty good about being able to figure out a lot of the transformations of the bots in my collection, but this one stumped me, and I had to peek at the directions to figure it out. Turns out his shoulders moved in a way I hadn't seen, and were preventing any of the rest of the transformation from happening. But, once I got that, the rest was cake. It's a pretty quick transformation to go through, only like 5 real steps.
Overall, it's a pretty neat Transformer. My only real complaints are the lack of torso and head movement, and that the foremost part of his laser cannon keeps falling off. So far, this series is living up to my expectations. I'm looking forward to my next acquisition, Jazz.
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