Fall Of Cybertron - Jazz / Shockwave

I haven't gotten anything lately because I haven't really been interested in the Prime line. I picked up Prime Arcee (both First Edition and the regular), Wheeljack, and Soundwave. FE Arcee and Wheeljack are the best designed of the bunch, though the Prime Wheeljack is not as cool as the Generations, but that's my opinion. The regular Arcee might be good for a kitbash of the Slipstream project I might do in a bit. I'm not impressed with the Soundwave. He's too pointy and he looks like he'll break at any moment. I'm not digging the ultra thin arms. The pointy winged thing is a stretch as "Laserbeak." "No, really, that looks like a random bunch of wings glued together, Mr. Soundwave." I guess for Soundwave I'd just want him to look as much like the G1 Soundwave as they can get away with. Big, blocky, cool head, and not poking my eye out. If they're going to go through the trouble of giving Wheeljack's G1 color scheme a nod with this toy even with the Generations figure, why not do the same with Soundwave? (He transforms into a drone.)

Oh, Wheeljack has swords. Why? I don't know.

So the first batch of the Generations line for this year made their way to northern Chicago on Friday. They had been showing up in the burbs and usually that meant in a few weeks or even a month I should check the TRU on Western. And usually I get beat out by the other TF seekers and vultures and just wait until a friend can make it out the burbs or until they show up at the nearby Target. Well, for some reason I thought to stop by there on the way to work and what do you know, next to dozens of unsold Prime Bumblebees and under the row of the previous Generations wave was Optimus Prime, Jazz, and...SHOCKWAVE!

Because Shockwave was one I didn't get as a kid and hard to find at a good price as a collector, I bought his Animated figure as a stand in with the G1s. I think it was my first Animated purchase, as I was attempting to just "fill in the blanks" of my G1s and not go overboard on all the Classics. (That didn't work.) Later I got an Alternator Shockwave (Shockblast?) from Quake and a working G1 from eBay, missing only the battery case. Everything else about it was in working order (lights, sound) though the legs were a little wobbly.

This Generations figure is a deluxe size representation of his Fall Of Cybertron character from the video games. He's a playable design in the online melee game but not part of the story. Not sure if he'll fit in the story of the new game. His alt mode is not a large gun. Instead it's a flying ship that resembles some kind of low ceiling roadster. He looks incredibly tiny (and is shorter than both the WFC Generations Soundwave and Megatron by almost a head). Maybe a Voyager size figure would have been more impressive. His gun also doesn't fit when you bend his elbow; what I mean is that if he's holding his gun, it blocks his elbow from bending at a 90 degree angle. You have to cradle it under his armpit (which strangely looks molded to hold the gun in such a way!). Outside of these complaints, this is a really good figure.

Jazz will be a playable figure in the FOC game. Like Shockwave, he was a playable design in the online game (note: you have to buy downloadable content for both, they don't come with the game).
His figure is...pretty weak. He might be as tall as the FOC Shockwave but his shape looks like that of a Legend or Scout class figure. He just looks cheap. He folds into a car, and for some reason his feet have round wheel shapes at his ankles, yet are not actual wheels. You fold the doors holding his arms (containing actual back wheels) over his front wheels, and thus when he's a robot, it looks like his front wheels would come from the ones on his arms and the back from the fake ones on his feet. This is pretty dumb. His face resembles Robocop for some reason, or maybe it's just me. It also seems to have an elongated jaw with two cheekbones. (I know, robots don't need cheekbones.) The Reveal The Shield Jazz is a much better figure. I know this is supposed to be a design representing his Cybertronian mode but instead it looks like a cheap knockoff with really skinny legs...and fake wheels.

What really stinks is that FOC Sideswipe, the one other character I want from the video game part of Generations, is based on this mold. I think that's most disappointing, but I will still check it out. Hopefully the head sculpt will be good as I plan to swap it with Sideswipe's Classics figure.

The video game related figures seem designed and almost feel different than the other G1 based Generations/RTS figures. Is it the plastic? Am I nuts? Why am I constantly touching things? As a result, I cancelled my pre-order the Amazon "G2" Bruticus figures from this line, which is disappointing because I wanted to see how they handle combiners, though I never was a fan of the G1 "Scramble City" combiners (the ones that were released after Devastator), they always looked really weird to me once combined, and this is no different. Jazz' quality just confirms that I can skip it.

I didn't get Optimus Prime from this line because I got the figure from the last video game and I thought it was pretty cheap lookin'. So, same thing, and am just skippin' figures that look as bad or worse than how I feel about this particular Jazz figure.

Okay, that's it for now.