There's probably a very good reason that seafaring TransFormers are a rarity. Even if one assumes Cybertron has no oceans of any kind, the very nature of its sentient robotic life is inclined toward adapting to its environment, and lack of exposure does not automatically preclude the ability to acclimatise. That said, I just don't feel that the open ocean on Earth presents as many opportunities for TransFormers stories as the land... I mean, even in the G1 TV show, the Decepticons gave up on attacking oil rigs after a single battle with the Autobots, despite the fact that the Autobots were largely unable to fly after the pilot episode, let alone travel over or through water.
Vehicle Mode:
According to TFWiki, Shortround transforms into a military troop-carrying hovercraft... but I have to admit that I can see no evidence in the vehicle's design to support this assertion. For starters, a troop-carrying craft of any kind would generally have a means of rapidly deploying those troops. Military hovercraft invariably have large decks, with at least one wall (normally at the front) capable of dropping down to act as a ramp. Shortround is a fully-enclosed vehicle with large turbines visible on the midship roof, and the only thing that might represent a ramp - the blue plastic/metallic blue painted section on the nose - doesn't really look like something that could practically flap down over the front of the skirt, or open up in any other way, for that matter. What's present as sculpted detail throughout the vehicle is excellent, and I'd even concede that the sets of three raised circular details - poking up from the sides of the vehicle just in front of the roof turbines - may be intended to represent missile pods, due to the distinctive line across their diameter... but pretty much everything else suggests to me that this is non-military.
Then there's the colourscheme, which is decidedly not your standard naval/military paint job. Off-white (possibly a little sun-yellowing in the case of mine) for the most part, with bright cyan turbines at the back, the aforementioned cyan patch on the nose, and bronze accents down the side doesn't exactly scream nautical camouflage. The roof-mounted turnbines are framed with a dark grey paint that matches the skirt, while the blades are painted gold... and then there are purple touches dotted about thanks to the use of purple plastic for most of the toy's joints.
Overall, it's really an excellent representation of a hovercraft, but I fail to see how it can be considered military... I'm not sure what type of vessel it would be, as the scale makes it difficult to determine the intended size. My best guess, based on what appears to be headlights sculpted into the front, is that it's a fairly small, perhaps only 2-3 man vessel, but with massively overpowered engines. To simulate the hovercraft's gliding, he's equipped with three free-rolling plastic wheels embedded in the skirt, which raise him just over a millimetre of whatever surface he's on.
Shortround comes packaged with a large pistol, molded in the cyan plastic, which can be plugged into the roof of the vehicle mode, just behind the roof-mounted turbines, via a non-standard rectangular slot (approx 3x4mm). It helps disguise the head somewhat, since it's otherwise easily visible between the vehicle's main thrust turbines at the back and, while there is sculpted technical detail on the back of the head, it's a loose fit into the space it occupies in vehicle mode. The gun itself looks pretty good, but it's interesting to note that, even back in 2006, guns ended up as slim blocks with patterns of raised panels designed to suggest a rather more solid and bulky weapon that it actually is. It's not anything like as hollow as the weapons we often get these days, but there were far better weapons in the Cybertron/Galaxy Force toyline.
The key-activated gimmick is very simple, but very effective, and can be deployed equally well in both vehicle and robot mode. Plugging the key in at the rear causes the turbines to transform into missile launchers, with the gold-painted missiles normally disguised as the turbines' hubs. The key slot is one of the most low-profile in the line, as it's quite well hidden between and below the main turbines at the back, and features no paintwork to draw attention to it, where almost every other figure at least has the small triangle detail painted in. The key is an extremely tight fit on mine, and I sometimes struggle to remove it.
Robot Mode:
I'm always in favour of the irregular and the asymmetrical - the idea that all TransFormers should be bipedal and look as humanoid as possible starts to make less sense the more you think about it - but there's something completely misbegotten about Shortround's robot mode. At first glance, there's a distinct similarity to G1 Seaspray: the front of the vehicle makes up his feet and his legs, while the body is formed out of the rear; the head pops up between the vehicle mode's turbines, which then stick up over his shoulders (as well as out behind him, by about an inch)... But then you look at the arms. They're almost as long as he is tall (which is hardly unique, even in Cybertron/Galaxy Force, let alone TransFormers as a whole), yet they're bulky (being made up of almost the entire hovercraft skirt) and, rather than ending with hands, he has enormous, crab/lobster claws which, in and of themselves, are as long as his legs. It's certainly a unique look, even taking some of the stranger Beast Wars figures into account... but is it a good look?
On balance, I think it works... Though I have to admit I wish they'd found a way to give him more normal arms as an alternative transformation. Considering his enormous bingo wings, there's more than enough bulk left on his upper arms to contain more normal-looking and proportional forearms. though this would inevitably lead to the claws basically hanging off his elbows...
While his overall similarity to Seaspray means that most of his robot mode detail comes from large chunks of vehicle mode, the upper legs and slender torso feature their own unique detailing, and I really like the way the upper chest remains in its vehicle mode orientation, revealing large, gold-painted vents previously concealed behind his knees. Of course, that simplicity also leads to problems, in that he has - proportionally - one of the largest, bulkiest, most outstanding backpacks I've seen on a TransFormers toy, yet the backs of his legs are utterly hollow, and the feet only offer any support thanks to a long, flat heel spur coming out of the inner face of each ankle. It really feels as though about a third of the bulk of this figure has been wasted... though I suspect Shortround would have had to be a larger figure to make much of an improvement.
While a lot of vehicle mode's paintwork is concealed by his enormous, clawed appendages, robot mode gets a little more colour variety in the form of purple thighs and a cyan band across the bottom of his chest, where a small section of the torso part has been left unpainted.
The weapon works quite well in robot mode, with a slot having been made in cyan section of each claw, right at the back of the piece. Shortround has to wield the gun sideways if you want to retain any useful elbow/wrist articulation, as rotating the claw/forearm so the gun is upright means he can only tilt his claws out to the sides. It's also frustrating that the position of the socket for the gun is so far back that the upper arm nudges the back end of the gun up out of place. It's easily remedied by sliding the claw forward slightly (about 2mm clears the upper arm), but that just makes me wonder why it was designed to slide so far back in the first place.
As mentioned above, the key activated gimmick functions exactly the same way in robot mode as it did in vehicle mode, just that the missile launchers now end up either side of Shortround's head, and just above the extent of his antennae.
And, honestly, looking at that head sculpt, I have a hard time thinking this wasn't originally planned as an update to Seaspray. Were it not for the antennae and the central crest, the overall shape of his head is quite similar, and the goggles-and-rebreather look was later used for the Voyager class Seaspray figure released in the 2010 portion of the ongoing Classics line (and who, coincidentally, is unambiguously a military-style hovercraft thanks to his large open stern which was designed to accommodate contemporary Scout class vehicles or small Deluxes). It's a nicely sculpted head with some small, ridged details on the 'mask', and even a raised frame for his goggles. The goggles themselves use the same gold paint as the missiles, the roof-mounted turbines (now at his knees) and the vents in his chest, while the mask is painted grey, matching the arms and lower torso, and the pipework leading off it is painted silver. The antennae feel superfluous, so I can't help but feel they're present purely to make it easier to lever his head out of his body during transformation.
In many ways, Shortround's transformation isn't dissimilar to some G1 Mini Autobots - the arms pull out from the sides, the legs extend from the front, and the head pops out of a deeply unsatisfactory hiding place. It's interesting to note that the head does come very slightly out of its niche automatically once the torso clips into place, because the peg extends a short way through the base of the vehicle via the connection slot, to push up against the very front of the mask. The rudimentary transformation does leave him with oversized arms and a huge key gimmick backpack, but it's quite cleverly done, for what it is.
Given the inherent limitations of his size class, Shortround's articulation is pretty OK... The shoulders are hinged inside the torso for transformation, which allows the robot a slight shrug, with a large ball joint embedded in the upper arm offering full 360° rotation, but barely any outward swing. The elbow combines a 90° bend and a 360° rotation joint which, on mine, is a little loose. The claws don't really articulate in any meaningful way, but the cyan part can utilise its transformation joint to 'close'. The hips are ball joints but, due to the chunky chest and protruding backpack, offer a forward/backward swing range of a little over 180° and a range of outward swing not much better than that of the arms. The knee is also a transformation joint whose full range is something like 120°, while the ankle has only the 90° tilt required for transformation. Given the construction of the feet, they offer a surprisingly stable base, but the lack of any waist articulation and the basic jointing of the legs don't offer a great variety of posing options - he certainly can't do a superhero landing pose. The jointing of the arms is just plain weird, but it does mean that Shortround is one of the select few TransFormers toys able to cross his arms in front of his chest.
Shortround was one of the last Cybertron figures to arrive, and one of the final unique molds in the last handful of waves of Scout class toys. I don't remember for certain but, given that I'd had so much fun with almost all the Cybertron and Galaxy Force toys I'd bought, and that Shortround looks kind of cute, I probably felt compelled to buy him. He's not going to go down in history as one of the best TransFormers toys, but might perhaps scrape into a list of the best Scout class toys from the Cybertron line. Probably the most interesting thing about him was that his (inevitable) repurposing as a Target exclusive movie toy was, itself, repurposed as Shattered Glass Seaspray and, while no other additional repaints made it to retail, the design was used to represent a pre-Beast Wars Scorponok in the Collectors' Club animated short, Theft of the Golden Disk.
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