War for Cybertron Trilogy Covert Agent Ravage/Decepticons Forever Ravage

Every so often, even now, a set of TransFormers toys comes along that has the potential to get me excited. Whether it's something new and unique, or simply a repaint into a favourite character, Hasbro sometimes manages transcend the current mediocrity of their products... and this was once such set.

It excited me because I was interested in the Beast Wars Metals Jaguar - the 1999 Japan-only retooling of Transmetals Cheetor into the Tripredacus Agent seen in the three-part Season 2 finale of Mainframe's seminal Beast Wars television series - but the toy, frankly, looks a bit crappy and, these days, tends to be very expensive on the secondary market, with some sellers asking over £350 for the boxed figure.

Hasbro's new version, released in 2021, didn't quite hit all the right notes for me and, at its full asking price of £49, was an easy pass. However, during their Advent Calendar sale, they dropped the price by 50%, and I felt almost obliged to order, just to have a version of such a fantastic reimagining of G1 Ravage, even though the accompanying part of the set would be possibly the fourth copy of the actual G1 Ravage toy that I've owned.

But was it a worthwhile investment, even at half price? Read on, and find out!

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?

Alternators Battle Ravage (Chevrolet Corvette Z06 Convertible)

The connection between Generation 1 and Beast Wars might seem tenuous if one were to look at the toys in isolation. Aside from a very familiar-looking head on the Maximals' leader, there was no real visual continuity. It was the TV show that very cleverly posited that the Maximals and Predacons were descendants of the Autobots and Decepticons, respectively, and the two small teams travelled back in time to prehistoric Earth, where the Beast Wars were waged.

Why am I writing about Beast Wars in the writeup for an Alternators model? OK, kids... this is where it gets complicated (and also involves a major Beast Wars spoiler for anyone who's not yet enjoyed that series): In the TV show, Tripredacus agent Ravage - a rebuilt version of G1 Ravage - is sent back in time to put a stop to Megatron's plans, but ends up helping due to a fragment of message from the original Megatron, encoded on the Golden Disk. He ends up getting destroyed, but not before downloading his consciousness into his ship's black box, only to be recovered in the present day and installed in a Binaltech body... along with G1 Ravage, stasis-locked in his cassette form, in the dashboard of his Chevrolet Corvette Z06 alternate mode to provide the body with a Spark. So Binaltech Battle Ravage = Beast Wars Ravage + G1 Ravage... but BW Ravage is a future version of G1 Ravage, for whom the events of the Binaltech story must already have happened, so Binaltech Battle Ravage represents an infinite temporal loop of Ravage personalities.

Or something...

Now, I hadn't planned on buying BT11 both because I wasn't overkeen on BT06 Tracks and because a humanoid form of Ravage didn't appeal... but then my best mate gave me the Alternators version for my birthday!

Revenge of the Fallen Ravage (Legends)

Continuing my recent theme of ten-year-old movie toys and - finally - completing the write-ups for my collection of Revenge of the Fallen toys, here we have the second mold made of Ravage, yet another G1 character who got a bit of a raw deal out of that movie.

The Decepticons' master spy, a renowned lurker-in-the-shadows, got turned into a shiny, bare-metallic cyclopean robo-kitty whose contributions to comic relief far outweighed his few awesome moments of action. Rather than sneaking into the N.E.S.T. holding facility to steal their Allspark fragment, he went in all guns blazing and essentially provided a distraction for the weird gestalt known as Reedman, which he had merely deployed by coughing his component ballbearings down a ventilator shaft. His only other significant contributions were delivering Scalpel to the captive Sam Witwicky (anyone else find it odd that Soundwave ejects Ravage, then Ravage ejects both Reeman and Scalpel, without any indication of how either got inside him?), and then getting his spine ripped out by the tail when it went up against Bumblebee during the climactic battle of the movie.

His Deluxe class toy proved to be disappointing, in that it had only a perfunctory alternate mode - dubbed 'Re-entry Mode' and supposedly representing his 'missile' form after Soundwave shot him down to Earth - and a colourscheme that was more G1 than movie. After about a year - and a couple of repaints - Hasbro released a completely new mold, in the smallest current size class. There were two positive signs on this version - first and foremost, his colourscheme was very much movie-style bare metallic. Perhaps more interestingly, its alternate mode was based on the fish/submersible form Ravage was given in his concept art, but which didn't make it into the movie.

Is it possible that a tiny Legends class figure is better than a Deluxe?

TransFormers Go! Hunter Soundwave

Takara Tomy's take on the Beast Hunters extension to TF Prime was a bit of a surprise. Most of the beasts/Predacons were incorporated into their TransFormers Go! TV show, but only a few of the non-beast toys made it into the toyline. Shockwave was one, receiving a far better paint job than the Hasbro/Beast Hunters version, and Soundwave was another. While Hasbro's release seemed to channel an old TransFormers Universe toy, Takara Tomy went a bit more traditional...

One might wonder why I'd pick up another version of TF Prime Soundwave when I already have the original TF Prime Deluxe and Hasbro's Beast Hunters version... but remember I also went and bought the Collectors' Club's Old Snake & Advanced Steath BATs set... and read on.

War for Cybertron: Siege Soundwave + Spy Patrol

Long-time readers of this blog may be aware that G1 Soundwave (& Buzzsaw) was the very first Decepticon toy I ever owned so, while I don't end up buying every iteration of the character, I do have a strong nostalgic connection to that particular physical form. Thus, when a Soundwave toy enters my collection, it tends to happen very much with reference to how it makes me feel versus the original. For example, Music Label Soundwave - who has been my Classics Soundwave for over a decade - was a decent reworking of the original, albeit on a smaller scale and with a poorly executed MP3 player gimmick installed. TF Prime Soundwave took an entirely different tack, and put the original character into a sinister, spindly new form. I didn't bother with the Titans Return version as it lost too much of what makes Soundwave Soundwave in service of the line's HeadMaster and base mode gimmicks...

...But here we have a new Soundwave for the latest chapter of Generations, taking the character back to his pre-G1 state, but not taking any cues from the War for Cybertron videogame and instead focussing on his G1 appearance, but with what passes for 'a fresh spin' at Hasbro these days.

I knew going in that I wasn't going to like this toy, but I'd had £30 of Forbidden Planet vouchers in my wallet since last year, and no clue what to do with them, so I took the opportunity to pick up this toy - and the 'Soundwave Spy Patrol' set of Ravage and Laserbeak - for next to nothing... And since I don't feel that one has much value without the other, I'm going to write about them together.

Masterpiece Cassetticons: Rumble, Frenzy, Ravage & Laserbeak

Way back in July 2014, when I decided to write about the Masterpiece Soundwave set in three parts - based on the way he was packaged in G1 and according to the split Takara Tomy releases - I figured I was being terribly clever, and honestly thought I'd get to the remainder of the minions a bit sooner than this. Then again, there's not much to them, so they're fairly easily dismissed considering some of the drafts I've had lying around in Blogger for substantially longer.

Still, I figure it's about time to get on to them but, rather than split them into two further posts, I've decided to lump them all together in one, just for (my) convenience.

And, just so there are no surprises, the characters are named per their G1 toys rather than the G1 TV show, so Rumble is the red/black one. I don't care about the arguments - to me, the toyline (and Bob Budiansky's bios) are correctly assigned (though I concede that Sunstreaker and Sideswipe's bios were switched, most likely because their Diaclone colourschemes were switched). Others are free to name them as they see fit...

TransFormers: Prime Beast Hunters Soundwave

Very few of the Beast Hunters toys were of any interest to me - it was good that Smokescreen got released (even if it was only a poor representation of his original colourscheme), but the remolds - in all their gaudy, marble-plastic glory - seemed superfluous because the characters in the TV show didn't change to match. In total, I picked up three: Arcee (because, duh), Knock Out (aka Croc Out, because he did look awesome) and Soundwave.

The original version was eerie enough, being very well executed in plastic despite being so slender and oddly-proportioned. How does a Predator-style drone TransFormer fare once it's had the Beast Hunters wackiness treatment?

Classics Hound with Ravage

It might seem strange to pair an Autobot with a Decepticon in a single Deluxe package but, as any fan of the Generation 1 cartoon will tell you, Hound and Ravage have... history. There's also the small matter of size... much like his Generation 1 self, Classics Hound is a bit on the small side. He compares better to his fellow Deluxe Autobots than G1 Hound did to his, but Hasbro clearly felt that something was lacking so, not only does he have an attachable weapon, but he has his long-time nemesis along for the ride as well.

Alternators Ravage (Jaguar XK)

Here's an oddity for the Alternators line - a British car... with a British number plate... but the steering wheel on the wrong side. Actually, that's not much of an oddity, is it? It would have been an oddity if the steering wheel had been on the right side.

And so, after the fan outcry over Alternators Battle Ravage being a biped, and therefor clearly based on X-9/Ravage from Beast Wars Metals, rather than the 'true' Ravage... One could argue back and forth for years as to whether or not they are actually one and the same, but from different parts of their timeline... but the net result would probably be a headache and a huge increase in Geek Points.

Some folks actually managed to get a passable quadruped out of Battle Ravage... but everyone wanted a proper one just the same...

Revenge of the Fallen Ravage (Deluxe)

It was quite daring of the live action movie franchise to include a character like Ravage. As one of a few G1 characters who appeared very regularly in the TV series, Ravage has a fanbase with certain... expectations. His character has remained fairly consistent throughout his long history (and between continuities - he's appeared in Beast Wars, after all), and he's never had to suffer the ignominy of becoming comic relief... His reputation as being the sneakiest Decepticon, their most perfect spy, has never been called into question (except perhaps in the pilot for the G1 cartoon)...

...Until now. And I'm not talking about Shattered Glass Ravage, either.