DNA Design DK-18 SS-56 Upgrade Kits

DNA Design have produced some truly excellent upgrade kits for the Studio Series line, though most are for figures I've not bothered picking up, or just don't quite add enough justify the expense to me, personally. I've yet to write up the first two kits I bought, for Studio Series Grimlock and Ironhide, despite them both offering substantial improvements over the stock figure. I'll get around to them eventually, I'm sure, but this one for Studio Series Shockwave - which I'd been eagerly waiting on for since its announcement around the middle last year - really earnt its swift write-up.

I finally received notification of despatch in the early part of this month, from which point it was almost two full weeks before it arrived from China. Now that I finally have it in-hand, let's see how big a deal it turned out to be after so long a wait.

TransFormers Animated Shockwave

It's not often that I have to contemplate adding a spoiler warning to a toy post, but I'd like to think that, by now, TransFormers Animated has been seen in its entirety by everyone who actually wants to watch it, and so the story spoiler inherent in this toy is thereby no longer likely to affect anyone's enjoyment of that show.

 

Essentially, Shockwave had a small but pivotal role in the show, with far-reaching consequences for several other characters, thanks to the very interesting spin the show's writers put on the G1 stalwart. Not content with having him follow tradition and be the de facto Decepticon commander on Cybertron, in Megatron's absence, they made him a spy, infiltrating Autobot Boot Camp and, from there, Cybertron Intelligence, thanks to abilities which allowed him to adopt an Autobot disguise, known as Longarm, with its own unique robot and vehicle modes.

 

Naturally, this was more successful in the cartoon than it could ever be in three-dimensional plastic, but the TF Animated toyline performed some minor miracles with its engineering in some cases, so it's really just a question of whether or not Shockwave is one of the better attempts.

Binaltech BT13 Laserwave

Based on the number of iterations of it I own - five in total - the Mazda RX-8 would seem to the casual observer to be my favourite Binaltech mold. While the first version I wrote about - BT20 Argent Meister, one of the final Binaltech releases - turned out to be a bit of a floppy mess, the original Meister - BT08, released four years prior - was really only a let-down because it was too a pedestrian car to turn into Jazz... Though this was before the movies turned him into a Pontiac Solstice which, in many ways, wasn't much better.

For the third release of the mold (the second being the red 'Zoom-Zoom' repaint of BT08) Takara seemed to have given up on the idea of the Binaltech Decepticons having commandeered bodies intended for Autobots, because this guy is unmistakeably Shockwave.

Or rather, Laserwave...

Studio Series #56 Shockwave

While I've not liked all the designs of the robots in the live action movies - particularly the randomly spiky Cybertronian forms of the Bay movies - there's no denying how striking they are, and how imposing they managed to appear in the films. Given that some Decepticons didn't even transform on-screen, they could have been given just about any alternate mode imaginable.

One such character was Dark of the Moon's distinctly non-traditional interpretation of Shockwave. Gone was the logically-minded custodian of the remnants of Decepticon Cybertron and, in his place, we got a fairly generic, virtually mute metal monster with a honkin' great cannon on one arm (and the wrong arm, at that) and an enormous, city-munching robo-phallic tentacle monster for a 'pet'. Pretty much the only things the production artists got right were the head (cyclopean, albeit heavily embellished versus the G1 character) and the power cable for his gun arm.

Not that I'd expect a movie bot to transform into an enormous space gun but, given that Shockwave's appearance in the game of the very first movie had him transform into both a helicopter and a howitzer, there's already precedent for something out of the ordinary... And yet the original toy just had him turn into a spiky tank... Now, about five years later, Shockwave has been granted a Studio Series makeover - packaged as a Leader class figure, no less - so let's see what sort of improvements Hasbro have made...

Combiner Wars Shockwave

As one of those G1 toys that transformed into a gun - albeit a sci-fi laser blaster rather than a real world handgun, like G1 Megatron - Shockwave has more recently become 'problematic' as a toy. He hasn't had a great number of toys since the 1980s, and they've tended to be tanks of one form or another.

The only version of Shockwave to appear in the Generations line was based on his appearance in the Fall of Cybertron videogame, and looked weirdly spindly in robot mode, with an unimaginative - not to mention largely unidentifiable - alternate mode, so I didn't bother picking it up.

Then came Combiner Wars, which gave us a more G1-styled Shockwave, complete with a built-in reference to the TV show... But is a Legends class Shockwave really worth bothering with?

DotM Mechtech Shockwave

When the movie series introduced characters with familiar names, it was a fair bet that the character would either look or behave nothing like the traditional bearer of that name, which accounts for a lot of the fan anger directed toward the franchise. However, when a character as iconic as Shockwave appears, surely he'd have to be the logic-fixated cyclopic scientist we all so fondly remember... Right?

TransFormers Go! Hunter Shockwave

It's been absolutely ages since I last bought an official TransFormer on import... The last time I did it regularly was the Galaxy Force line or Binaltech, though I have picked up a few Alternity models. For the most part, though, Hasbro has done a reasonably good job of bringing figures into UK toy shops, and in some cases their products have been preferable to those from Takara Tomy, if only because they're cheaper.

For example, in the main, Takara Tomy's take on the TransFormers: Prime figures has been a bit weird. The initial run of toys were partnered with 'Arms Microns' - a fairly cool extension of the Unicron Trilogy's Mini-Cons - but with virtually non-existent paintjobs supplemented only by stickers. When Hasbro introduced Beast Hunters, Takara Tomy repurposed the remolded Prime figures and Predacons, adding them - somewhat incongruously - to their TransFormers Go! line. Had I the slightest interest in the Prime Predacons, I'd certainly prefer to buy the Japanese versions simply because they look classier. Only one new figure held any interest for me, however, and that was Shockwave. But while Hasbro decked him out in a rather dull, flat purple, Takara Tomy adjusted the saturation to maximum, giving a much more satisfying colour to the Decepticons' imposing cyclops. Thus, TransFormers Go! Hunter Shockwave went onto my Christmas list... and I shall be forever grateful to my girlfriend's parents for picking him up on my behalf.

'Shackwave' (aka ToyCo 'Astro Magnum', aka Tandy/Radio Shack 'Galactic Man')

In celebration of passing the 1,000 pageviews milestone in the month of June, here's a real treat...
This model needs no further introduction, not least because I teased it almost two full years ago. It has a strange history, having been drafted into the ranks for Generation 1 TransFormers from ToyCo, where most of G1 was repurposed from Takara's Microchange/Microman and Diaclone toylines.

I may well be misunderstanding what little I know of its origins, but it seems that Shockwave was originally released only in the US and Korea, with Japan picking him up later... And he never arrived in the UK.

So when, browsing through my father's catalogue from Tandy (being the UK name for Radio Shack), I found this very familar-looking toy, and saw my chance to have one of the coolest characters from the Marvel comics at the time... And I really wasn't fussed about the colourscheme.

Superlink Laserwave

Shockwave is one of many characters who had been overlooked in the TransFormers toy ranges following G1 and, technically, he wasn't really a TransFormer anyway - he was one of many third party transforming robots who was repurposed by Hasbro.

Strangely, Hasbro/Takara Tomy seemed to lose access to the name 'Shockwave' for several years, not to mention applying it, seemingly at random, to the character known as Tidal Wave in the west, leading to miscellaneous variations on the theme of Shock/Laser/Blast/Wave for any character fans might recognise as Ol' One Eye.

As another robot who originally turned into a gun - an enormous, purple laser gun, no less - but such alternate modes are very much out of fashion these days. Since Megatron moved on to being a tank, it's surely logical that someone like Shockwave, generally to be found with a honking great cannon on one arm, would follow suit... And so, we have Laserwave...

Armada Tidal Wave

Gestalts were nothing new to TransFormers back in the early 2000s. Even leaving aside the teams of five (or six, in the case of the Constructicons), there had been a G1 Powermaster, Overlord, who consisted of two vehicles - with individual functionality, but without individual robot modes - which combined into one larger robot. Armada took this a step further, paving the way for the Autobots' 'Superlink/Powerlinx' feature in Energon, with the Dark Fleet, also known as Tidal Wave.