Still Full of Crap

So, over the last thirty days, I've been saying that I didn't foresee buying any TF: Prime toys anytime soon, and sort-of-complaining that I already have a huge backlog of stuff to post about anyway, and what happens?

I get two solid weeks of pretty well-paid work, and Tesco go and put an introductory discount on all TF: Prime toys.

You know where this is going, right?

Yep, that's Wave 1 right there. 'Poweriser' (Voyager) Megatron and Optimus Prime, 'Revealer' (Deluxe) Wheeljack, Bumblebee, Cliffjumper and Soundwave.

Well, aren't I mercurial?

First impressions? Well, I have to say I'm not sure where the plastic quality complaints are coming from. It sounds different when you tap it but, to me, it feels better than some of the Dark of the Moon toys. There were signs of plastic stress on a couple straight out of the packaging, but no signs of it worsening (so far). There are some oddly rubbery parts to some (Soundwave's forearms, and both sets of Cliffjumper's horns) but, unless you regularly prod the spiky parts of your toys, it's really never going to be an issue. I'm still a little dubious about some of the design choices, versus what we all saw of the First Edition models, but all of them have quite satisfying, fun transformations. Aside from some rather astonishing decisions in the paintwork - or, rather, the lack thereof - they all look quite good... it's just a shame that Bumblebee's rear end is completely unpainted, and the colour matching between his yellow plastic and the yellow-painted transparent plastic us just diabolical.

The designers of these toys are clearly getting better at folding quite large robots into very compact vehicles (Soundwave and Cliffjumper are particularly impressive in this respect), but the Animated/Live Action Movie crossbreed aesthetic really isn't doing Megatron any favours...

And those 'Mech Tech' weapon for the Powerisers are pretty darned crappy. They're too large, the gears are somewhat loose, and they don't lock in place. I was amused to see that Prime's blaster is molded to look like his forearm but, since there's no option to switch out the forearm for the blaster, that seems a little redundant.