Bot Reviews: Transformers: Collaborative Gigawatt

This is one I’m a bit late to, which is appropriate, considering the movie he came from. So, Transformers: Collaborative’s been doing its unique thing for awhile, putting out a few releases a year, but it’s a line I haven’t really gotten into. The idea behind Collaborative is that it’s a slow stream of unique Transformers that change into vehicles (or creatures) from other, non-Transformers franchises. What kept me away was that these other franchises were all either stuff I wasn’t really a big fan of (like Ghostbusters), or hadn’t really watched (like the 90s X-Men cartoon). That, plus the fact that these figures commanded higher price tags than regular Transformers in their size (which I’d presumed were because of licensing fees) didn’t help.

In the case of Gigawatt, who changes into the Delorean Time Machine from the Back to the Future movie trilogy, I’d only seen the first film once, and a long time ago, so it didn’t really do anything for me. However, a pandemic pastime amongst my friends has been hosting a double-feature movie night over Discord every Saturday, and after it came out that several of us hadn’t watched the full trilogy, we put them on over a few weekends, and it turns out, I thought they were pretty cool films. And, well, my local EB Games (or rather, Gamestop, as of a couple weeks ago, thanks to some kind of brand synergy) still had a few of these on the shelves, and I bought it on a whim, pricey as he is. So, let’s have a belated look at this walking 80’s reference, and see if he justifies his higher price tag, a steep $60 Canadian for something the size of a Deluxe. In fact, he’s sized the way he is because he’s an extensive retooling of Siege Deluxe Sideswipe, but he’s different enough that I’ll treat it as new.

Vehicle Mode

So, Gigawatt changes into the Delorean Time Machine as it appeared specifically in the first Back To The Future film, and, amusingly, it’s apparently not licensed by the actual car company, just the film, so there’s no GMC logo on the bumper. Other than that, it looks pretty impressively accurate, to its onscreen appearance, save for a few transformation seams.

Basically, he’s a silver, generic-looking car that has a mass of wires and technology packed into the back, and along the sides. And I’ve got to say, it’s more impressive than I was expecting. The tiny sculpted detailing on this is nuts, and I wasn’t expecting it to go this hard. There’s tons of wires and circuits along the back (along with two big vents), tiny cables and scaffolding around the roof and across the doors, and all kinds of tiny car details, like windshield wipers. It’s detailed, and feels a bit premium, certainly above the level of work you’d see on a standard Deluxe.

Something else that feels surprisingly detailed is the paint job. For one thing, that drab silvery-grey isn’t just plastic. Most of the body is slathered in paint. And it’s not painted in a normal way, but in a sort of a textured, burnished-wood way that is meant to evoke stainless steel. On one hand, it picks up dust and scratches easily, and I don’t necessarily like the way it feels on my fingers. On the other hand, I can’t deny it’s got my attention.

Outside of that, and some windows that are cast in smokey transparent black, there’s just tons of other colors on this, with nothing seemingly omitted at all. We’ve got painted bumpers, more shades of silver, painted headlights, black stripes, painted rims, bits of white bracing the wires, it’s very extra. The back is where it gets really intricate though.

There’s individual wires and tech details painted in green, blue, and red, red taillights, black vents, and even an impossibly small tampographed “OUTATIME” rear license plate that even has a microscopic “California” logo on it. I don’t know if it totally justifies the inflated budget, but they definitely had way, way more than a standard Deluxe’s worth of sculpting and tampo here.

The tiny nubs of sculpting on the car’s body (including a few rubberized wires), and the unusual-feeling body paint make this whole car feel different from a standard Transformer in your hands. It’s a bit less “mass-release all-ages toy” and a bit more “model car for old farts that remember the 80s,” but not in a way that feels bad, just in a “this is something different from a mass-release Deluxe” way.

Anyway, let’s talk features, because there’s a ton of them. First of all, the doors can open in that upwards-swinging gull-winged way the movie car could. Doing so kind of exposes Gigawatt’s nature as a retool, though, in that there’s just robot detail beneath, and clipping those doors back in is a bit challenging due to them needing to peg into his folded up arms. I’m also told this can chip the paint, so I’m a bit cautious.

Interestingly, there’s War For Cybertron-style weapon connection points beneath the doors, if you want to hang things there while they’re out, and these are newly-tooled, not left over from Sideswipe.

Next, the car rolls nicely, of course. More importantly, though, all four wheels can fold downwards for a hover mode, like in Part 2 (and I’m going to be a pedant for a movie I only just watched and point out that the Part 2 car had a new license plate). It’s a simple feature, but nice, and there’s even a peghole on the underside if you happen to own a flight stand.

For our first accessory, Gigawatt comes with the hooked lightning rod used in Part 1 to energize the car, cast in unpainted black rubber. Mine came a bit warped in the box, but it eventually reverted to its proper shape. There’s a dedicated peghole on the back of the car that you can attach it to, plus a War For Cybertron peg halfway up the rod.

The other accessory is the “Mr. Fusion,” the little reactor used to power the car after its hovering modifications. It’s impressive, because it’s tiny, intricately sculpted, and has the name tampo’d on in miniscule letters, above white paint (mine has a big chip on one side, though). There’s another dedicated peghole on the car’s back to place it in its location from the film, but it’s not a very tight connection, and comes off easily.

Oh, there’s also a rifle for use in robot mode that you can stash beneath his front bumper, but what I really wish was that there were places to store the other two accessories. Still, this is a surprisingly impressive car mode.

Transformation

Being a retool, Gigawatt’s transformation is broadly similar to Sideswipe’s. Legs down and around, chest down, arms out. That being said, this retool changes enough things to warrant a glance at the instructions (like two tiny panels on the shoulders that need to fold down.) Still, it’s simple enough.

A word of caution with moving the hood over the head, though. I’ve heard that the top of the head can scrape the tampography off his chest if you’re not careful. I’ve found that keeping his flippable chest panel straight, and tilting his head as far forward as it’ll go before folding down his hood seems to avoid them touching, though

Robot Mode

In this form, Gigawatt’s a lot more obviously a Sideswipe retool, due to the same traditional carformer hoodchest design, and a similar silhouette.

But if you look closer, you’ll see that his, his thighs, pelvis, lower arms and hands, and the inside of his torso are all they kept from the original. Everything else is new, even stuff like his lower legs that seems the same at first. Gigawatt’s got a bit of an awkward shape to him thanks to his huge, wide hood-chest, and the flip-out doors hanging off the back, but at least everything stays out of the way.

Right out of the gate, the best bit of new sculpting in this mode is his chest, which contains the Flux Capacitor, the vehicle’s time travel device.

What makes it impressive is that it’s a fully transparent panel with blue detailing sculpted underneath (he also has tiny unpainted versions of the same shape sculpted into his shins). Below the panel is a replica of the Delorean’s time-and-date-selecting dashboard, with the dates on it tampo’d on specifically being the three major eras visited in the first two films (this is the stuff that’ll scratch off if you’re not careful.) This is, again, way more detailing than I’d expect on a normal Deluxe, and to me, makes up for the rest of him feeling a bit plain.

Funny enough, his head initially reads as “they put glasses on the Sideswipe head” but is actually totally new, albeit a similar design, with round, Rung-like lenses, and a determined face. His colors are mostly the same, but with a bit more black due to his exposed limbs, and again, a bit more plain outside of his chest thanks to most of the wires and circuits being less visible. His eyes are blue and his face is dark silver, though.

In terms of build quality, Gigawatt is still as excellent and sturdy as Sideswipe. In fact, they made him sturdier! His new chest actually properly pegs into his torso (the Siege tooling was a bit too loose and just hung there), and additional tabs have been added to lock his shoulders in better. That, plus all the unpainted plastic makes him feel a bit more like a regular knockaround Transformer than the other mode, but only a bit. Gigawatt’s poseability is also identical to Sideswipe, which is to say, everything but wrist swivels, and he comes with big feet for big stability. I don’t have too much to say about it, only that it’s got everything you’d expect.

Gigawatt’s new (or rather, now-relevant) accessory is a gun, cast in light silver, that resembles Optimus Prime’s traditional Ion Blaster, but scaled down. The Mr. Fusion can plug into the back of it, as per the instructions, suggesting some kind of power-up.

But undocumented is the fact that it plugs on top, too, which is actually a better place to stash it, since the other way blocks it from sitting totally flush in his hands.

Finally, the lightning rod sees some use in this form, thanks to its War for Cybertron pegs letting it fit into Gigawatt’s forearms, or shoulders, as some sort of melee weapon.

In addition to those four new ports, there’s another two on his feet, plus the ones on his doors are still accessible, making him surprisingly cross-compatible with the main Generations line.

Overall

I was way more impressed with Gigawatt than I thought I’d be.

I was expecting a Sideswipe that happened to change into a cool car from some neat movies I’d just seen. Instead, I found him to be far more interesting and fun than even that. He’s got an impressively intricate, detailed car mode, and a bunch of fun accessories and features, on top of that solid transformation and robot mode, and just feels like a surprisingly premium release. A lot of work clearly went into him. That being said, I don’t know if he’s worth that full price still, but I will say that he’s not a marked-up Deluxe, there’s clearly a higher budget at work here, for the car mode alone. I recommend him if you can get a deal, and if you can’t, I’m still actually having a lot of fun with my copy. That being said, I’ve heard mixed things about the rest of the Transformers: Collaborative line, and each figure’s quality seems to be all over the place, in addition to each of them having the same inflated price tag, so only take my word on this particular one. But this is a good one.

For over 100 Bot, Non-Bot, and Retro Bot Reviews, click here to view my archive.

Anyway, enjoy some time-hopping adventures: