Studio Series #83 Soundwave (& Ravage)

The arrival of a Cybertronian Starscream in the Studio Series toyline, based on the brief appearance of the Seekers and Coneheads in the Bumblebee movie, certainly got people excited for the prospect of more toys based on the robots seen in that short CGI sequence.

From my point of view, while Starscream himself was a huge disappointment - firmly putting me off buying the Thundercracker repaint, even if they do subsequently produce a Skywarp repaint as well - the next round of Cybertronian toys made for a very refreshing change from the ugly, blocky simplicity of the War for Cybertron: Siege line... But that's not to say the Studio Series figures weren't without their controversies.

Because, while a certain amount of suspension of disbelief is pretty much prerequisite when it comes to the concept of alien robots transforming into vehicles - even alien vehicles - some folks felt that Soundwave stretched credulity. But could he truly be the straw that broke the donkey's back?

Vehicle Mode:

I'm going to say something pretty controversial: I frequently accuse Hasbro of taking a low-effort approach to its toys, particularly when it comes to engineering, but it's my opinion that this vehicle mode for Soundwave's appearance in the Bumblebee movie is actually pretty good... And certainly better than the Third Party efforts thusfar, not just in terms of value for money.

Given that the Soundwave we saw in the Bumblebee movie never transformed, and so never had a vehicle mode designed before the Studio Series team tackled it, it's pretty much no surprise that they ended up developing a complete nonsense 'vehicle' mode with no relatable features giving it a discernible form and function. It's one of the most basic bits of robo-yoga I've seen in years... But (a) it's an alien vehicle and (b) the only transforming Third Party interpretation of this Soundwave to have been released so far turns into a box on undersized treads.

I've seen and heard many complaints, to the effect that Hasbro's Bumblebee movie Soundwave "transforms into a pancake"... but that's just not true. Transformed correctly, he's not flat. The legs are supposed to angle downward, such that one face of his lower legs is pretty much flush with his elbows and the 'cassette door' on the underside. Granted, the 'cockpit' section isn't raised particularly high off the upper surface of his vehicle mode, but it has to fold inside for robot mode and yet still leave space to accommodate Ravage. The sculpted detail inside that cockpit is, in my opinion, a masterwork in forced perspective - giving the illusion of being larger and deeper to the point that, as far as a £35-odd toy is concerned, it's a genuinely impressive achievement... Certainly in comparison to the £200+ figure from Mechanical Alliance that doesn't do any better, while the upcoming Lemon Tree version literally just turns into a box, in weak homage to the original G1 toy.

I will grant that the main problem with this 'alternate mode' is that the vast majority of what you're looking it is robot mode parts in a slightly different configuration... but then, the whole TransFormers toyline, since its very inception, has been based around the idea of rearranging vehicle parts around a robot... so... what's the difference? If one can presume that this vehicle mode is the starting point then, strange as it is, it works.

For me, the main issue is that this is evidently supposed to be some kind of flying (or hovering) machine, yet there's no visible form of propulsion, either at the back or along the underside. Toyhax have produced a set of upgrade stickers, but even these do little to address this problem... So, at the end of the day, it becomes a matter of suspension of disbelief. It's also, to be completely fair and honest, a little crummy that Soundwave's head isn't involved in transformation, it simply gets mostly covered over by sections of his shoulder armour, folded out and clipped on to the back of the vehicle. That said, it does allow him to accommodate Ravage inside his chest compartment/bomb bay even in this mode.

What I like about this vehicle mode is that it probably led to some huge upgrades in the robot's articulation to accommodate any vehicle mode. In particular, the legs are basically folded back on themselves, with the kneecaps extended like claws on the front of the vehicle. There was no reason to make these separately articulated except to allow them to extend for vehicle mode.

The integration of Soundwave's weapons is pretty disappointing. He has 5mm ports on the undersides of his forearms but, while these are adequate for his rifle, the shoulder launcher ends up sitting at a weird angle. Thankfully, the screw holes on Soundwave's legs are 5mm diameter, so they can act as alternate mounting points. If those aren't good enough, one fanmode partially transforms the back so that the cockpit is stowed in its robot mode configuration, with the middle part of his back remaining in its vehicle mode configuration. This allows the two 5mm ports on Soundwave's back to come into play, such that the weapons can be pegged in to the roof for a more traditional 'alien tank' vibe.

Robot Mode:

While this is instantly recognisable as Soundwave, I have to confess I was mildly disappointed by his appearance in the Bumblebee movie... He and Shockwave seemed to have altogether too much bulk around the thighs, and I wasn't overly impressed by the design of either head. Nevertheless, the Studio Series toy has turned out well and, in hand, is a far more tolerable reimagining of the iconic G1 character who was the first Decepticon toy I ever owned.

I suspect part of my problem with this version of Soundwave is the extensive use of white... which appears to be a result of the colouration of the G1 animation model. While I'd have much preferred silver on the arms and legs, more like the G1 toy, I have to accept that it would more likely have been unpainted, dull grey plastic so, on that score, the use of white is acceptable, even if not ideal. It certainly holds its sculpted detail quite well. And, in person, the thighs are very much not as chunky as those of the CGI model. The outer faces are nicely detailed representations of his armour, but the inner part of each thigh is a hollow mess with perfunctory detail added around the thicker section of plastic that contains the knee joint's pin. The hip and knee joints show a lot more sculpted mechanical detail, while the lower leg is another part made up of large, mostly nondescript armour panels. Soundwave's arms are probably the biggest sticking point I have with the toy, since the forearms are disproportionately large compared to the upper arms. The bicep section is actually surprisingly slim, but the elbow area is massively bulky, and then tapers down to a more reasonably-sized wrist but, as with the legs, the sculpt is mainly armour panelling with just a few areas of mechanical detail around the joints.

The chest door is technically oversized - comprising the entire front of the robot rather than the gold-framed window, and hinged at the waist - but this is to allow for ease of access in getting Ravage in and out. The button-operated mechanism is powered by a spring which I consider a little overpowered and, since the entire panel, including its delicate latch, is molded in translucent plastic, I fully expect it to break sooner or later, so I try to be scrupulous about pushing the button as I close his chest, not just when I open it.

Paintwork is sparing, but mostly quite strategically applied. The entire front panel of the chest was molded in translucent grey plastic, and is painted over with blue around the edges. It's not a perfect match for the plastic, but it's certainly good enough, and the addition of gold-painted trim on the outside and red linework inside the door helps bring it to life. The pelvic plate probably has the most intricate sculpting and paintwork for its size, with multiple small, angular panels over gunmetal-painted hints of inner mechanical detail, and then the lower, outermost panels have both white and red paint paying homage to the control buttons on the iconic G1 toy. I feel that the limbs are let down in terms of paintwork, with the forearms receiving a positively baffling amount of gunmetal paint in the 'inside' of the elbow area, most of which tends to be obscured simply because of the forearm's shape. They then have about two thirds of the ring of red paint that's supposed to run around his wrist, in homage to the G1 toy's stickers. The legs are largely bare of paint, with the recessed area of his shins being framed with gold, and then the dabs of red on the calves that are most apparent in vehicle mode.

Soundwave's weapons are not quite the iconic pair of the original toy. The shoulder launcher is present and mostly correct, but his rifle is a bog-standard sci-fi rifle that doesn't really suit him. It's nicely detailed, and the charcoal paintwork looks great... but the fact that it's so generic, and that it's not compatible with the accessory provided with Ravage, really lets it down. This really means that the shoulder launcher is carrying a greater weight of significance than it should have to... It does look good, mounted on his shoulder, and is well-detailed in its own right... but it's only able to tilt up and down, side to side... and I think it pegs in a bit too close to Soundwave's head for comfort. Had it been able to rotate so that it pointed slightly to the right, away from his head, it would have worked better, so I think it's a problem with the choice of mounting point more than anything else. It actually pegs into his back via a hinged arm, perhaps because it was felt that there wasn't enough space to accommodate a socket between his head and his shoulder joint. Along with the accessory packaged with Ravage, the launcher can double as Soundwave's traditional hand weapon, but the 5mm peg is a bit too short for him to reliably hold, given the bulkiness of his forearms and, as mentioned before, it's just too long and thin to really convince. It's a nice attempt, and I'm glad the accessory was included with Ravage... but I'm hoping one of the Third Party accessory-makers comes up with a better version of his iconic handgun.

As mentioned, I'm a little dubious about the head sculpt and the CGI design it's based upon. Soundwave seems to be a character who is very hard to do 'right', with the designs from RID2015, TransFormers Prime, TransFormers Animated and Cybertron/Galaxy Force being the best recent versions in my opinion. Even the Masterpiece skews too close to the G1 animation, and loses some of the character of the original toy. This version certainly has all the key features one would expect from a Soundwave - the prominent crest on his forehead, the visor, the battlemask... but it all feels a bit overdone, and the basic shape of the head seems too rounded - almost like one of those 'voice changer' helmets that keep cropping up in various toylines. It's a shame, because the sculpt is nicely detailed... it's just that some of the details feel surplus to requirement - he almost has too many features. The battlemask in particular is more complicated than it needs to be, and the split section in the middle, revealing a band of blue, feels out of place. The main complaint I've seen is the error in the shape of the visor, which gives him a sad, almost apologetic expression. On the upside, the paintwork is fantastic, with the outermost parts of his battlemask painted silver, and the details on the sides of his head picked out in a slightly darker, flatter gunmetal. While the toy technically features light piping, the plastic used is translucent grey - per his chest door - so it has been painted over in opaque red.

Given how basic G1 Soundwave's transformation was - and how difficult it seems to be for Hasbro to adequately replicate it in their contemporary versions - as well as the alien 'vehicle' mode, it's no surprise that the transformation given to this interpretation of Soundwave is comparatively simple. The head does nothing (though there's the option to rotate it 180° for better concealment), the arms end up in a sort of intense shrug, with the shoulder chunks opening up to allow some panels of armour to cover the head, while the forearms simply tab into his sides. The thighs have to be rotated to a fairly precise angle, but then the calves simply open up, allowing the legs to fold back on themselves and the feet to attach to the forearms by flipping upside down and swinging round on the ankle joint. His back opens up, and then rotates 180° at two different hinges, allowing the inner faces of its two components to peg back in and complete the roof of the vehicle. The only truly complicated part is that the unfurled panels of his calves have to be manoeuvred over his thighs so that the smaller of the two panels can peg into its counterpart from the other leg, while also slotting in underneath his crotch. All of this relies on the thighs being rotated to the correct angle, but the calf panels have precious little clearance over the thighs. After that, getting the feet tabbed onto his forearms can be tricky and - again, unless the thighs are at the precise angle intended for vehicle mode - has a habit of untabbing the forearms from the torso.

However, while some may find his transformation lacking, his articulation is incredibly good up until the waist. The feet can tilt forward/back by almost 90°, inward by well over 90° and rotate freely due to transformation. The double-jointed knees are able to get beyond 90° bend even without the calf panels being open, but their presence is somewhat restrictive. The thigh rotation joint has a range of about 180°, while the hip can swing nearly 90° forward, backward and out to the sides, though the forward swing requires the pelvic panel to be lifted for clearance and, since it's a single panel running across both hips, that's a little unsightly. On top of this, his feet offer an impressively stable base in some pretty extreme poses thanks to their myriad joints. The waist can rotate a full 360° even though that's not required for transformation, but the pelvic plate gets in the way of that too, allowing only a couple of degrees' movement in either direction before it gets pushed up out of the way by his hips. The arms can rotate a full 360° and raise 90° out to the sides for transformation, but the joint is embedded in the torso, so the whole shoulder chunk has to move, rather than having the more traditional joint within the shoulder mass, with a hinged panel on the outside to allow the arm to raise outward. There's the usual bicep rotation joint, thankfully unrestricted by the arrangement of the shoulder, while the elbow is double-jointed, but can't manage much more than 90° regardless of how far each joint is bent, and there's no rotation at the wrist. The head is on a ball joint, and only clashes with the two hooks directly behind it if it's rotated without first tilting it back, and its range of tilt is only just adequate to the task.

Ravage:

Just like his master, this Core class figure - bafflingly sold separately, yet without the Studio Series' characteristic numbering - is instantly recognisable, if a little too canine/lupine/vulpine, when he should be clearly feline. Given the size of him, I am impressed by almost everything about this figure - the sculpted detail, the paint job and the articulation... but the bottom line is that he transforms into a box. That might make perfect sense in the context of the brief Cybertron scene at the start of the Bumblebee movie... but it's definitely not as impressive as the G1 toy transforming into a reasonably good facsimile of an actual-size microcassette.

And there's basically nothing to talk about in this alternate mode... It a way, it can't even be called a 'transformation', because the legs, head and tail remain fully visible, and his weapons have to be manually removed and reattached in 'box'-specific locations. His missiles tab into the base of his tail rather than the backs of his thighs, and the shoulder launcher relocates to his belly. Nevertheless, the fact that they can properly integrate in this mode without affecting his ability to fit into Soundwave's chest cavity is at least a little impressive. When I first starting transforming him, I had a hard time getting Ravage into Soundwave's chest, but that turned out to be because I hadn't pushed his head all the way down: there's what feels like a natural stopping point in the range of the neck, but pushing past that locks the head into its properly stowed position.

Ravage's robot mode is surprisingly pretty, though the design of the limbs has been made a little awkward and unnatural in service of his transformation. The back legs aren't too bad, but the knee joint on the front legs feels like it's too high up, and the design of the front feet leaves the ankle far too high compared to the back feet, making for a particularly odd-looking 'pounce' pose. Nevertheless, he's well articulated, and the joints are strong enough to support him in a pose, yet loose enough that they can be accidentally knocked out of a pose all too easily. The head is only on a hinge, so it can only tilt up and down, but he also has a hinged jaw, which goes some way to improving the expressiveness of the head. The tail is less impressive, as it can barely raise past the horizontal - the priority seems to have been allowing it to tuck away for 'box' mode.

Given that it's such a small toy, I was surprised by how extensive the paintwork is... though it's likely not especially great in terms of paint volume or surface area covered. Applications of red and white appear on his legs, while metallic red and blue appear over the head, and the eyes are picked out in yellow.

It seems as though Studio Series Soundwave is destined to be one of those figures that divides the fanbase. There are those who like it in both modes, there are those that like the robot mode but only tolerate the vehicle mode on the grounds that they'll never transform it, and there are those that feel it's an all-round terrible toy simply because of its nonsense vehicle mode and an underlying bias against the live action movies. Personally, I'm very much in the first group. I feel far more positively toward this toy's vehicle mode than, for example, the TransFormers Legacy version of Blitzwing... which misses the mark on both of its vehicle modes, and presents only a tolerably good robot mode if you're a fan of slavish adherence to the almost 40-year-old animation model.

I find Soundwave's transformation fun - bar the frustration of getting his legs aligned symmetrically and with the two halves of the centre part properly connected - but I am obviously not going to display him in vehicle mode. Hasbro's team have done an admirable job of turning the movie's G1-inspired CGI into a plastic toy and, while the paintwork is as lacking here as it has been on other Studio Series toys, his excellent range of articulation makes for a very expressive robot mode. And considering the only Third Party versions I'm aware of at the time of writing both turn into ridiculous-looking boxes, I'd have to say that Hasbro's team have outdone the Third Parties for once.

That's not to say I have no complaints, though. The weapons are disappointing, to say the least. While Ravage includes an accessory intended to homage Soundwave's G1 weapon, the only weapon it can attach to is Soundwave's shoulder launcher... and, while it can then be used as an alternate handgun, that leaves him without his shoulder launcher, and the 'complete' accessory just doesn't look right as his handgun because it's too long and the wrong shape. But, ultimately, it's the fact that Ravage was sold separately that rankles the most. I don't even care that he cost an additional £13, since that only takes it to the equivalent of Leader class price for what I'd consider to be a 'complete' toy. Because, let's face it, how many versions of Soundwave have been released without a single minion as a packed-in accessory?

Much as I disapprove the addition of Core class to the Studio Series line, Voyager class Soundwave is incomplete without Ravage... and if Hasbro felt the only way to adequately address that at the proper scale was by releasing a separate figure in a new size class, I am obliged to accept that if I want a 'complete' version of Soundwave. Of course, if they later release a Premium Finish version that includes Ravage, I'm going to be pretty angry...