Dave's Transformers Studio Series Rant - Voyager Wave 22

#86-23 Autobot Ratchet (Ironhide retool)

http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Studio/VRatchet

The rest of the case was reships of #103 Rhinox.

https://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Studio/VIronhide86 - Ironhide mold

CAPSULE

$35 at Target.

#86-23 Autobot Ratchet: Original mold was mildly recommended, brought
down from recommended by bad quality control. I had a better spin of the
wheel on QC this time, and the vehicle mode holds together properly, but
there's still fundamental issues with the design that are just very
vulnerable to even small assembly errors. Sticking with mildly recommended.

RANT

Packaging: Same style as Ironhide's, the art on the front has a shouting
Ratchet charging forwards and brandishing his two pistols. These boxes
continue to have cardstock too thin on the outer box, leading to the top
border tearing easily when the box is picked up by the top.

AUTOBOT: AUTOBOT RATCHET
Assortment: #86-23
Altmode: Ambulance Van
Transformation Difficulty: 25 steps (one less than Ironhide)
Previous Name Use: Yes
Previous Mold Use: Studio Series
Movie: TFtM
Scene: Decepticon Shuttle Ambush

RATCHET and the AUTOBOT crew fight to defend the shuttle against a
DECEPTICON attack.

Packaging: Five plastic ties hold the robot to the inner tray, the
pistols are each held by one tie in the bottom corners of the tray. The
lightbar halves are held onto the boot backs by rubber bands.
Interestingly, instead of just cutting out the holes in the tray to let
the backpack and boot backs poke through, they cut the cardboard and folded
the excess around to help support the tray inside the box. It generally uses
more of the extra cardboard as folded supports.
Same backdrop as Ironhide, they both died about the same way within
seconds of each other in the movie.
The instructions repeat all the pistol storage advice given in
Ironhide's instructions, adding a "remove the lightbars" step for the roof
panel tab storage locations.

Color Swaps: The clear light blue plastic and the black plastic remain
unchanged. The lower abdomen, waist, pelvis, pelvis skirt, and ankles are
now a somewhat flexible dull red plastic. Everything else is white plastic
with a strong UV glow. There's at least two different kinds of white
plastic, one of them has a slightly less bright UV response, and it also
looks a little more gray under normal lighting.

Paint Apps: The face is silver, the eyes light blue, and the shallow
chevron helmet crest is painted gray. The fists are painted over in gloss
red. There's white paint (no UV glow, so it really stands out in vehicle
mode as being not the same sort of white) on most of the clear plastic parts
to provide boundaries and window frames. Red "Autobot symbol on a medical
asterisk" symbols are printed on the fronts of the shoulders. A smaller
simple Autobot symbol is printed below the windshield on his chest. The
pistols are painted silver except on the 5mm peg grips.
In vehicle mode, the front bumper and wheel hubs are also painted
silver, and there's more white paint around the window pieces that were
concealed inside the feet. No paint on the back end, but it'd end up on the
soles of the feet and be prone to scraping off anyway.

Mold Changes: Most obviously there's a new head, plus new lightbar
pieces that go on the roof pegs (backs of boots). Less obvious is the new
mold skirt front on the pelvis.
The head is white plastic, and while he's shouting on the package art
his expression here is neutral. The lightbars are clear blue plastic but
then painted over entirely red on the lights and white on the borders. I
guess a clear red plastic run was out of the question.

Other Notes: One of the gun storage pegs on the back is mis-molded or
something, I can't get either gun to stay on it. It looks like the peg was
pushed in slightly while still soft, so it's too thick and kind of rounded.
Once I trimmed off some of the flash and rounded stuff, it worked fine.
Similarly, the tab that holds the side panel onto the right boot doesn't stay
on with mine, but that seems to be a pin alignment issue rather than
removable mold flash or bulge. (The left side panel stays put.)
Really minor difference, where Ironhide's pistols had 1 and 4 stamped in
them, these have 3 and 4. I guess four to a sprue?
I didn't have any trouble with panel alignment on this the way I did on
Ironhide, but just as Ironhide's vehicle mode suffers from the three shades
of red (two plastics and one paint) looking different when right next to each
other, this has three shades of white. Both modes are much more stable than
I experienced with Ironhide, supporting my suspicion that this design is very
susceptible to quality control roulette (and possibly wasn't seriously tested
outside of a computer before being sent to the factory for tooling).
The downside of vehicle mode holding together properly is that it's even
harder to get the transformation back to robot mode going.
In retrospect, it'd have been nice if they'd designed this in the first
place with the rectangular sockets and pegs reversed, so it'd be possible to
put socket on top of the shoulders for the lightbar halves...although that
wouldn't be animation-accurate and would run counter to the line's design
imperatives. (Tabs on top of the shoulders would interfere with
transformation.)

Overall: If you get good luck with QC, this is a pretty good
representation of the character (modulo "white head vs. red head" preferences
as always), but even if you get lucky a lot of stress is put onto clear
plastic parts in this design.

Dave Van Domelen, tempted to at least paint the rear windows since the
raised trim parts would protect the paint from damage.