Originally written June 2019.
Soundwave’s one of the most familiar faces in Transformers history, one of the original 1984 crew, one of the most iconic villains in the franchise, and known to 80’s kids far and wide as “the one with the cool voice.” Part of the classic main villain trio, his role has always been the cold, rational, intensely loyal spymaster, with his army of tiny minions that shoot out of his chest. However, his original alternate form of a minicassette player is hopelessly dated, so most modern versions of him try to reinvent his alternate form into something different that still keeps the core of the character intact. Also, his face is actually the inspiration for the Decepticon logo. Transformers: Siege’s update of the character is directly based on his appearance in the first episode of the original cartoon, where instead, he changed into a lamppost, of all things.
So, instead of that, they decided to give him a spaceship alternate mode. Here’s how the new version of him stacks up. Most of the photos in this review come courtesy of Venomously Addicted Photography, who you can follow on Facebook and Instagram.
Robot Mode
In terms of sculpt, Soundwave is extremely faithful to his 80s cartoon design, to the point where he includes cassette player details despite not changing into one, including buttons on his waist, an eject button on his shoulder, and speakers on his legs.
It’s a really nice sculpt. Soundwave’s design is really just a collection of rectangles, and on this figure, they made it into a sharp one. I particularly like his headsculpt, which is super cartoon-accurate, and is literally one of the faces that launched the franchise. Also, in a lovely bit of personality, his left hand is sculpted with a finger sticking out, so he can press the eject button on his shoulder, though you can also use it for plenty of other funny-looking poses.
His colors are a bit different from how Soundwave’s usually been portrayed, in that he’s a darker blue than most iterations. Also, they decided to make him original-toy-accurate when it came to his eyes, which are yellow instead of red. They glow nicely when held up to the light, thanks to being cast in clear plastic, with a “window” on the back of his head. Soundwave’s slathered in paint, more so than most of the other Siege Voyagers, and he’s covered in gold, red and silver accents all across his body. It really looks like they went all-out on his paint budget.
His big controversy is the usual Siege coloration quirk of putting silver battle damage and grime on him, which is particularly pronounced here. His legs have a ton of silver damage on them, but what really bothers people is the paint on his chest door, which makes it looked spiderwebbed with cracks. As is usual with these figures, once you get it in hand, I think it actually looks good. But more importantly, in this case, it actually pulls a unique visual trick. The figure on his own has a hollow chest beyond the door, and the paint apps on the clear door draw the eyes away from that, and make him look more complete. In terms of his construction, Soundwave is really solid, durable and weighty, like the rest of the Siege Voyagers. He feels substantial. His only design flaw is that his backpack doesn’t really seem to want to lock down. It also gets in the way of his shoulder launcher. I wish it was cleaner, especially considering it wasn’t really needed for his alternate mode.
Poseability-wise, he’s got the same extra joints as the other Siege Voyagers, like ankle tilts, though he lack wrist swivels, thanks to his transformation. Despite that, he can, as mentioned before, press his own eject button. It’s amazing how despite being so boxy, you can make him look dynamic. Now, onto the gimmicks. And here’s an issue, on his own, his main gimmick doesn’t do much: Pressing onto his eject button makes his chest pop open, and that’s it. However, if you have the Micromaster Spy Patrol (reviewed here), one of them can be stashed in his chest, like his classic microcassettes. The thing is that basically every previous Soundwave toy that still had some variety of his classic “store and eject minions from his chest” gimmick either came with one of those minions in box, or at least some other object he could store and eject. This is the first time he hasn’t come with anything to work with in the package with him. So, unless you’re getting the Micromaster cassettes, it doesn’t do much, which is disappointing.
Soundwave’s got three additional weapons: A cylindrical machinegun-looking weapon that’s meant to mount on his left shoulder, but can go other places. He’s got a second cylinder, meant to be handheld, with a grey spiky thing that you can pull out of it.
He also comes with a really strange long grey gun that bends halfway. I’m not sure what its purpose is. The instructions have you awkwardly folding it in half in his hand. (2021 edit: While it’s an open question whether or not this was intentional, it’s been pointed out that you can mount it on Siege Megatron’s backpack, to approximate the original character model’s back-mounted gunbarrel). You can also build an absurdly long cannon with all three weapons if you like. These weapons can also be mounted on ports on his backpack, upper and lower arms, and lower legs.
Transformation
It’s a pretty simple transformation, for a pretty simple vehicle mode, and one you can mostly figure out by eyeballing how it looks on the package. Essentially, he’s bending at the waist, and everything else is dedicated to folding up and hiding his feet, arms and head. One problem with this transformation is that thanks to how vague his vehicle mode is (more on that below), it’s not obvious how his arms and hands fold up, since there’s no immediately clear “correct” configuration, unless you read the instructions.
Vehicle Mode
Gonna be honest: I’m not into it. This “spaceship” mode clearly wasn’t a priority for the designers, in that it basically just looks like a folded up robot, and not much else. Its front is clearly just his legs, his chest is clearly on the back of the vehicle, and its bottom is clearly just his folded-up arms. Aside from a tiny clear cockpit in the middle (which has trouble peeking out from the panels around it), and some sculpted missiles at the front of the ship, pretty much nothing in his sculpt was made to look like spaceship parts, which is likely why it doesn’t really read as one.
Those bulky panels that formed his robot form’s backpack are particularly odd here, in that they flop down diagonally on the sides of this mode, but don’t really lock in, and instead rattle around a lot, giving the whole thing an unstable feeling. I’d rather they have just left them out entirely. Features-wise, his two cylinder-shaped weapons are meant to mount on these panels, and his odd folding gun kind of awkwardly stashes beneath his left panel. Oh, and he’s got landing gear.
Transformation to Lamppost Mode
This is interesting. If you pull one of the bottom flaps of his box out, you’ll see a tiny diagram of the lamppost mode from the show’s first episode. You’ve got to figure it out yourself, though, since there’s no actual instructions, just the secret diagram. This clearly isn’t a fan mode, and is something the designers planned for, because he’s got some specific tabs for locking this mode down.
Lamppost Mode
I’m not going to judge this too harshly, because while it’s really obviously a standing robot folded up and hunched over, it’s accurate to how he looked in the episode, and is technically a secret bonus. Despite all of the tabs to keep him stable, I wish there was some obvious way to lock his waist bend in, though
Overall
While I generally like this guy, he’s a mixed bag. He does some things really well, other things poorly. He’s got an absolutely excellent robot mode, for one thing. It’s full of personality, well-painted, solid and fun to pose. He’s got a great gimmick, too. However, you need to purchase extra figures to really make use of his gimmick, as it’s a bit useless out of the box. Meanwhile, his alternate mode is a complete afterthought, clearly only there because he has to turn into something, and for whatever reason, they didn’t want to make him a tape player.
He’s not bad at all, but he feels incomplete, like they only worked on half of the figure, making him the weakest of the Voyagers so far. I’ll still recommend him if you want to complete the classic cartoon’s main Decepticon cast, and/or plan to get his Micromaster buddies, but caution you that it’s an incomplete experience otherwise.
(2021 notes: An extensive retooling of this guy would be released in the Wal-Mart exclusive Trilogy (aka Netflix) line, that actually restored his original tape deck alternate mode, and came with Ravage and Laserbeak in the box. However, the whole Trilogy line’s seen some pretty shoddy distribution in Canada, with the wave that he was in being particularly scarce. Between that, and how in-demand he is, the second version’s basically impossible to acquire unless you’re willing to pay steep aftermarket markup. I’ve recently acquired him at a convention, thanks to selling enough merchandise to fund my purchase, and will say he’s a pretty unilateral improvement, to me. That being said, outside of those specific circumstances, this one’s still way easier to come by. He might not have any kind of a good alternate mode, but if you want A Guy to shoot the Other Guys out of his chest, he’s Your Guy.)
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