Dave's Transformers Legacy United Rant: Voyager Wave 1 (overall wave 8)

Prime Universe Thundertron (Mecha-Lion)

Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Legacy/VThundertron

Okay, the original of this toy was BAD. About the only reason I didn't
give it a straight up "avoid" rating was that it was a curiosity from the
fiction, a character who appeared in the "aligned" novels and nowhere else.
Scuttlebutt (which may have been since supported by more knowledgeable
sources) was that the never-happened fourth season of Prime was originally
going to involve the Star Seekers pirate crew mentioned in the novels, but
only Thundertron as a teaser figure had been greenlit before the corporate
shakeup that led to RiD15 as a new direction. Interestingly, the Star
Seekers are the 2024 Walmart "capsule" line, but this figure is being
released at regular retail. Poor pirate captain, has to shop at Walmart for
his crew.

https://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Prime/VThundertron - Original

Wavemates are Animated Universe Optimus Prime (to be reviewed
separately) and a repackage of Beast Wars Inferno in some cases (not to be
reviewed separately, I already did the previous package version).

CAPSULE

$35 price point.

Prime Universe Thundertron: Pretty good robot mode, decent
transformation, altmode looks nice but can't really move much without ceasing
to look nice. MUCH better than the toy it homages, though. Recommended.

RANT

Packaging: Same basic trade dress as seen on Core Class Wave 8
(https://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Legacy/Core8) but in the same box shape as
previous Legacy Voyagers, so open from the bottom rather than the top.
(Looks like Hasbro is giving up on plastic-free packaging, at least for some
toys, so plastic windows may be returning next year.) The box does use the
Star Seeker faction symbol developed for the original Thundertron toy, it's
sort of a fusion of Autobot and Decepticon symbols with crossed shards at the
bottom instead of crossed bones. The inner tray is mostly shades of hellow
in a vaguely crystal-shard pattern, with splatters of pinks and purples.
Thundertron features prominently on the left half of this year's
"diptych" art (Magmatron being the central figure being split in half down
the middle).
The QR codes are definitely gone, and were not replaced by any on-box
information. So I'll be making up some of the data below. The instructions
use dark blue ink as the main color and light red for the accent, so are
kinda reminiscent of the cheap two-color printing used in some manga
weeklies.

STAR SEEKER: PRIME UNICERSE THUNDERTRON
Assortment: F8541
Altmode: Mecha-Lion
Transformation Difficulty: 24 steps
Previous Name Use: None with "Prime Universe," TF:Prime without
Previous Mold Use: None
Function: Star Seeker Captain
Special Unit: Star Seekers
Origin Universe: Prime

Packaging: Five single ties and three double ties (on chest and shins)
hold the robot mode to the inner tray. The sword is held to the side by a
single tie. The robot has both feet on in-package, and the instructions
include a four-step guide to removing the right foot and attaching it to the
sword so that he has the peg leg.

Robot Mode: The good news is that nothing fell off, popped apart, or
otherwise felt wrong upon removal of the toy from the box. This also has
very little issue with kibble, unlike the original, with the beast forelimbs
all curled up inside the shoulderpads instead of hanging off the back, the
figure looks decent from all angles. There's still the general impression of
someone in a tall hat in a greatcoat, although the coat bits have more of a
Gundam armor skirt feel to them now. He retains the full beard, and has the
commonly-seen "beast face on the chest" design. There's molded but not
painted battle damage scars to the buttcape, side skirt bits, right forearm,
left chest, thighs, kneecaps, helmet, and sword. Some of it is really
obvious, some fairly subtle, and many parts have no damage at all which looks
a little odd, but maybe those parts got so badly damaged he had them
replaced. (According to TFWiki the original plan had been barnacles, but
they didn't work out very well, so were replaced by scars.) His beast tail
is pinned in place and does not become a removable whip weapon.
A respectable 7" (17.5cm) tall in a mix of white, dark blue, medium
gray, and metalic copper. Dark blue plastic is used for the head, much of
the torso aside from the beast face, shoulderpad shells, forearms, shins, and
peg leg. Bright white plastic is used on the upper toros, all the beast face
and mane pieces on the torso, some internal bits to the shoulderpads, the
fists, and the knees. Medium gray plastic makes up the upper arms, some
internal torso bits, the thighs, the feet, the coattails, the tail, and the
sword.
They weren't shy about paint on this toy. Lots of metallic copper
paint: shoulderpad details (front and back), along the nose of the beast
face, claws molded onto the forearms, tops of the armor skirt side panels,
shins, central three claws on each foot. There's dark blue paint (slightly
less dark than the plastic) on the beast eyebrows and mane, silver beard and
beast teeth, medium gray face, metallic light blue eyes and beast eyes. The
top of the head is painted white, in a decent match to the plastic under
normal lighting (although the UV response is different). The Star Seeker
symbol is printed on the left coattail, like a sort of robotic cutie mark.
Really, the only bit that looks like it could stand some paint is the sword,
although an obvious customizing project would be to fill in all the battle
scars with darker colors and apply a gray wash to the white parts.
The neck is a ball and socket joint, but the high collar of the
"greatcoat" restricts the range of motion significantly. The waist is a
smooth swivel, but since the coattails are attached to the back and the hip
armor is attached to the waist, there's only a little wiggling possible
without significant rearrangement of armor panels. The shoulderpads have
limited hinges-both-ways articulation that lets them at least partially get
out of the way of the arms, the actual shoulders are pinned hinge and swivel
universal joints. There's swivels right above the hinge elbows (which can
bend to about 45 degrees acute), and the wrists are swivels but the claws
molded from the forearms make them more difficult to turn. The sword helps
add leverage, but its guard gets in the way of the claws and further
restricts range of motion. The hip armor is attached via ball and socket
joints, while the coattails are hinged and can wiggle a little. Hinge and
swivel pinned hip joints, upper thigh swivels AND swivels just above the
hinge knees. There's extra hinges mid-shin for transformation. The feet are
both hinged forwards/backwards, but only the left foot has a sideways hinge
since that's in the shin and the right shin has the peg leg. There's a notch
in the socket on the right foot to keep it from rotating at the connection
point, but you can always unseat the peg just a little to turn the foot. The
outer claws on each foot are on a transformation hinge that can give you a
little more to work with in terms of stability for more dynamic posing. The
tail root is hinged but is partly blocked by the coattails.
The fists have shallow 5mm sockets, so only short pegs work for them,
not anything that relies on going all the way through. Part of the reason
for this is that there's 2.5mm sockets on the heels of the fists, which are
used for transformation, but they interfere with the 5mm sockets going all
the way through. There's also 5mm sockets on the outer faces of the
forearms, the top of the left shoulderpad, the tops of the side armor skirt
pieces, and the outer faces of the calves. There's two slots on top of the
right shoulderpad that can hold the tab on the side of the sword and might be
an alternate storage spot for beast mode, but see later in this review for my
expectation of their true purpose. Another slot on the same coattail as the
Star Seeker symbol is definitely meant for sword storage.
The sword is vaguely scimitar-like with big gouges molded along the
sides of the blade that one would think should be repaired before it
shatters. I guess Thundertron does it all for the aesthetic. 4.5" (11.5cm)
long and made of a single piece of slightly silvery gray plastic, it has a
very short 5mm peg grip with a guard in front of it, so that a figure with
too-large of a fist can't hold it. There's a rectangular tab on one side
near the root of the blade that is used to store the blade on the coattails
(I tried, it won't go into the 5mm sockets on the hip armor). It also has a
rectangular tab on the guard, which is used to attach the right foot when
you're doing the peg leg thing.
Pulling off the right foot reveals a peg leg with a 3mm stud tip. The
foot attaches to the sword to create a more elaborate basket hilt sort of
guard. This is a good thing, since otherwise there's nowhere to put the foot
when you're not using it.
The two slots on top of the right shoulderpad are technically the right
size for the sword's tab, but their spacing is also perfect for the Ratbat/
Wingthing mold from the War for Cybertron trilogy. Not that hardly anyone
got Ratbat without going through scalpers, I had to settle for Wingthing.
The instructions offer no suggestions for what the slots are for in any case,
so Ratbat/Wingthing perch may well have been the intention. It does make me
wonder if the 5mm socket on the left shoulderpad was intended for "armor
mode" cassettes. I did manage to get Laserbeak to perch there, albeit with
legs splayed a little.
http://www.dvandom.com/images/ThundertronPets.JPG