Bot Reviews: Transformers: Studio Series Core Shockwave (Bumblebee Version)

Like most of the Bumblebee Movie entries in the Studio Series, Shockwave had a single-line cameo in the film’s opening sequence, mostly memorable for his voice actor doing a spot-on impression of Corey Burton’s G1 performance. In that brief appearance, he was scaled at roughly the same size as Soundwave and Starscream, meaning a Studio Series figure of him would probably be a Voyager, like they were. But instead, HasTak opted to make him a tiny Core-class guy, for some reason.

You know, ever since the Studio Series belatedly added smaller Core-class figures to the lineup this year, it already feels like they’re struggling a bit to figure out what they can actually release in it, largely thanks to how committed the Studio Series line is to Scale Accuracy (™), and the lack of Little Guys in the Transformers Movies that are exactly the right size, so it feels like they just kinda threw in the towel, and did this guy (and a tiny 1986 Ratchet) at a small, inaccurate scale. Maybe there wasn’t a new-tooling Voyager-class slot available, and they just wanted to get the full Bee Movie cast out there no matter what size they were? Maybe Shockwave drew the short straw (hah) since Soundwave being big meant they could make Ravage, and Starscream gets his costs offset with Seeker repaints? Whatever the reason, Shockwave’s the only tiny guy.

I’m gradually filling out a Bee Movie shelf, and, despite otherwise completing the cast, I was going to skip this one, just because of that odd size disparity, and the off-chance they might do a full-sized one later on. And it seems that a lot of people agreed with me, because this mini-monoeye has been peg-warming pretty hard all over my neck of the woods. But, well, Wal-Mart’s put him on sale (probably because of the warming), so I decided to belatedly grab him anyway, and maybe see if I was being unfair to the poor little guy.

Robot Mode

Shockwave’s pretty much the exact same height as my Kingdom Cores, and impressively, feels a lot bulkier, largely thanks to this being a buff take in his design.

Speaking of that design, Shockwave’s a character that really doesn’t change much across universes, so it’s almost hard to say much other than “that sure is Shockwave.” He’s still got the mono-eye, the hexagon face, and the big chest. The thick, chunky nature of this take on him makes me think of the similarly beefy Transformers: Prime version of the character, while the antenna on either side of his head, and the fact that he actually has two arms (with his traditional gun-arm being detachable) makes me think of his Fall of Cybertron look. Size aside, he’s a decently film-accurate sculpt, with the caveat that at this small scale, you can squint-test it a bit more.

And indeed, compared to his screen look, he’s got a bit of a wasp-waist from transformation needs, thighs that are a bit more gappy and less gigantic (to the disappointment of some, I’m sure), and, most noticeably, tank tread sculpted into his much-bulkier forearms. Though, again, none of this is super-egregious, he basically looks correct at the scale he’s at. And, funny enough, he shares that quirk that both Arcee and Wheeljack have, with a twist: His feet are directly swiped from Optimus Prime’s design, due to his film model being modified from him, meaning he’s goe Studio Series Optimus’s feet in miniature (well, not dead-on, Optimus was using concept art for his design, I think).

His colors are similarly typical, boilerplate Shockwave: He’s cast in purple and grey, with painted accents of silver, black, and a lighter purple, plus a big yellow eye. That eye’s seemingly a magnet for quality control issues, I thumbed through a full peg of these guys at the shop, and not a single one had the yellow paint applied evenly, they all had some kind of problem. I settled for one with a tiny paint chip, I’ll just Gundam-marker over it once my photos are done.

On the positive side, these colors are impressively screen-accurate for his size, he’s really just missing some accents on his legs (which are barely seen in the film), and they even added a silver border to his chest, for an extra pop of color. It’s not a bad look at all, it’s just a very “this is exactly what Shockwave always is” kind of look.

In hand, Shockwave’s surprisingly and impressively weighty for a Core-class figure, and, feels heavier than Rattrap or Vertebreak. Plus, there’s few visible hollow bits, just the backs of his forearms, and he stands on big feet that make him nice and stable.

Shockwave’s about as well-articulated as most Core-class guys, with his transformation perhaps giving him a bit extra.

He’s got front-and-back ankle motion, swivel knees, ball-jointed hips and shoulders, a surprising forearm swivel, and a swivel neck. If he had a waist joint, he’d feel as complete as a larger figure, but what he’s got is pretty nice, and he can do a 90’s Squat of Evil pretty well.

Shockwave’s big ‘ol accessory is his gun-arm, fused to him in the movie, attachable here via a frighteningly thin gray peg on a swivel.

Probably due to his small scale, the gun-arm is actually much larger than his onscreen weapon, and lacks the hose attachment it had in the film (understandable at the scale), as well as generally being longer and thinner.

So, it’s perhaps not as accurate as it could be, but it looks impressive enough on its own merits.

Transformation, or Putting it in H

Impressively, there’s a little bit more going on here than just laying him down and fiddling with his limbs. His torso also does some flips and inversions I wasn’t expecting, and everything, including his limbs, tab together in tiny, neat, non-obvious ways, with his gun-arm plugging into the back of his head at the end

For some reason, his instructions are just blatantly wrong about how to transform his forearms/rear tank treads, telling you to put them sideways, instead of rotating the obvious sculpted treads to face the ground, which also lines up some more pegs and holes to secure them. It’s really, really obvious how they’re actually supposed to go, at least, especially considering that’s why his forearms even swivel to begin with.

Transforming him back to robot mode, there’s an issue: His gun doesn’t want to come out of the back of his head, the peghole is scary-tight on a joint that’s already scary-thin. It’s gotten looser as time has gone on, though, but it was a bit concerning the first few times. You can always leave the gun off off, spin the head around, and give him a Beast Machines Tankor-esque Head Tank Mode.

H-Tank Mode

An H-Tank is a fan-coined nickname for a really specific kind of fake tank mode that multiple Cybertronian and futuristic Transformers have changed into in the past, including previous Shockwaves, so named because of how the mode’s shaped from above.

And sure enough. Shockwave’s another one of those, sporting an alternate mode that’s nigh-identical to Transformers Prime Shockwave (who even had a minifigure in this same scale!), with this guy just being a bit less swoopy and more greebly.

It only marginally avoids looking like a Re-Arranged Robot Person, largely because, when you slap a big gun into the middle of a pile of stuff, it automatically reads as “space tank” to my eyes, no matter how ropey the rest of the mode is (looking at you, Voyager Soundwave.)

The only serious knock against it is that his whole face is visible just looking out of the back of him, but hey, it’s a Cybertronian mode that we never saw onscreen, maybe it’s just like that.

For features, his turret actually has a fairly impressive range of motion, being able to rotate with his neck joint, and raise and lower via the connection to his head.

There’s no attempt at wheels, so he can’t roll, you just look at the sculpted treads and wheels, and imagine. Or, if you like, just de-transform his legs, and turn him into a fairly convincing, Cyberverse-Shockwave-esque Spider-Tank.

Overall

Ehhh? Ehhh. He’s not bad. He’s a fairly solid Core-class figure, well-built, with no real problems outside of a somewhat conceptually iffy altmode that’s nonetheless standard from Shockwave, and maybe a dicey connection on the end of his gun. Design-wise, he’s decently accurate to his film look, but he happenes to look pretty close to several other previous Shockwaves, so he doesn’t particularly stand out in a lineup of them, especially considering there’s been a bunch of him already in this exact same scale (Dark of the Moon, Prime, Combiner Wars, and his brand-new Legacy one).

And it’s hard not to notice that, whereas all those other Small Shockwaves have similarly small friends and enemies, this Shockwave’s really a complete loner, scale-wise, since there’s few-to-no other Bumblebee movie (or even Bayverse movie) mini-guys (Ravage scales with the larger folks), meaning he’s very much alone, the odd one out.

So, he’s fairly well-done, if unremarkable, and currently cheap-ish and plentiful, but there’s also not much here to recommend unless you want to stick him in your Bee display and try and forget about scale. But he’s also perfectly cromulent if you just want a mini-Shockwave, I guess, and don’t have one of the previous ones, or the new Legacy one.

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