Transformers Studio Series Shadow Raider

It is that time again and this time we are returning to a toyline I have already done a figure from, which is Studio Series, but unfortunately for Studio Series it is another figure I am not super thrilled with(I promise there are figures in this toyline I enjoy). I do think this one is an improvement from ROTF Megatron in multiple ways, especially since I don’t hate this design from the get go. So let’s take a look at one of the few seemingly toy only characters in the entire toyline, Studio Series #17 Shadow Raider.

I know, I know technically Shadow Raider did appear in the movies. He is a representation of the background Mercenaries on Lockdown’s ship in Age of Extinction but like is he really? Those models look nothing like this toy except for maybe the feet and arms plus they were never named in the movie, they were just credited with “Mercenaries”. This toy was just an excuse for Hasbro to reuse this mold in a new color and as far as I am concerned it is a new toy only character.

Looking more closely at the actual figure, and of course starting with the head, we can see that this is a very simple head as he has no real facial features to speak of. He just has a full face visor/mask/helmet which actually is closer in design to Lockdown’s than it is to the actual background mercs. It does have quite a few molded details all over the head which looks really nice but I find the ones in the front half get lost a lot more and that is because the front half of the head is black painted clear plastic. The other issue this clear plastic brings up is that you can see all the, what I assume to be, connection points for said piece in the green plastic behind and it looks awful, just random holes all over the place. Quickly looking at articulation before moving on, the head is on a ball joint and he has a neck hinge meaning he has a lot of upwards movement but because of the shape of his head and collar his side to side movement is limited and downward movement is non-existent.  

The torso is very simple in the grand scheme of things, just a black block with tons of molded detail. For real the detail here is insane and it is all super visible thanks to the black plastic, but I think my favorite part is the chest piece which is picked out in grey and orange and really helps draw attention to the chest. The back on the other hand is just the entire top half of his car mode folded up into a somewhat cohesive looking backpack. It isn’t the worst backpack I have seen on a figure, especially since it doesn’t make him back heavy and, for the most part, doesn't hinder the articulation. But it would have been nice if they did something more creative with it, but I understand that this line is all about movie accuracy and since this mold was originally Lockdown, and he had hardly any car parts in robot mode it makes sense.

Moving onto the arms which are made up of the sides of the car mode, and they are fine. They are very orange compared to the rest of the figure but they do have sections on the shoulder and bicep, which look like ammo pouches with some relatively large bullets, and the entire forearms are black as well. Articulation here is kinda lacking, and what is there gets hindered. Shoulders are on ball joints but are hindered going back because of the backpack and going upward because of the shape of the shoulder. He does have a bicep swivel but it gets stopped by the wheel that is in his inner arm, but you get enough range out of it for it to be useful. Just below that you have the elbow which is on a ball joint, so there is also a swivel there if you need some more range there, unfortunately the elbow itself only goes 90 degrees and, on my copy at least, these ball joints like to pop out which can be slightly annoying. Before moving onto the legs I should mention that there is a fairly common QC issue with this mold in general, and it should come at no surprise to you that it has to do with clear plastic. Shadow Raiders shoulders sections are cast in clear plastic, so that means both the shoulder joint and bicep swivel are affected. This clear plastic has been known to shatter especially at the bicep, since that is a transformation joint and is rotated the wrong way. I have found that rotating it clockwise without holding the wheel has given me the best results so far. 

These legs have all sorts of little issues that just add up to a not great experience. First off the waist and hips are both hindered by the shape of the hips. The waist can only move about 15 degrees in either direction, and the hips can only go out about 60 degrees, before being stopped. Other than that though the hips are also hindered going backwards by the backpack and they can only go 90 degrees forward, which is more than enough. He does have a full thigh swivel but because it is used for transformation, it is slightly off center so it looks awkward when used. His knees only go about 90 degrees, which is workable and his feet actually have about 90 degrees of movement up thanks to transformation so he can do a pretty convincing crouch. On the topic of his feet let’s talk about them for a minute and how I am a dense human being. So for the longest time, essentially since I got the figure till right now as of me writing this, I never realized that the bumper sections on his heels are on a double hinge, meaning they can be pulled out slightly allowing them to sit higher up and more importantly they let the foot sit perpendicular to the rest of the leg, meaning he can stand up straight and not lean forward at a 45 degree angle. 

Before moving onto transformation and vehicle mode he does come with this gun accessory that fits over his left hand. I do really like all the details on this gun with the 3 canisters on top, the tri-spikes at the front and just all the little molded details it has. Unfortunately, like I stated before this gun can only go in his left hand because of how it is designed. If you really want to put it on the other arm you can use the vehicle mode ports and plug it into the outside of either arm but it will be upside down on the right arm, not that that really matters. 

Speaking of vehicle mode, this vehicle mode looks absolutely amazing but getting here is the ABSOLUTE WORST. Everything has a hard time lining up, certain sections will catch on other sections and just pop off, but the real pain comes from getting the entire sides of the car lined up. Trying to fold the hands under the small panels that are attached to the backpack is truly infuriating and requires an uncomfortable amount of pressure. It gets to a point where you wonder if the transformation is really worth the trouble. Onto the car mode itself it is really nice, it is an officially licensed Lamborghini Aventador, and the orange is actually a stock color for the car. It rolls well enough and you can store the gun on the side of the car but it looks pretty ridiculous. I don’t know what else to say about this mode other than it looks cool. You may have noticed that I have indeed “painted” the rims on him, just like on TR Hot Rod, and honestly I think it really completes the look here

And just like that we are at the end of another review, Shadow Raider looks so cool but doesn’t really have the engineering needed to back it up, and combine that with the transformation he comes out at a very mediocre 5.5/10. As always the gallery for Shadow Raider is up as well if you want to look through that.

Now that all of that is over and done with I would like to point out a couple new things on the website; First off I added a Search button in the header and added a search bar at the top of the blog page(replacing the blog title), just in case you need some help finding something, Secondly you will notice the page thumbnail for the Studio Series page as well as the banner on said page has changed from Megatron to Shadow Raider, which was always the plan just to keep things fresh. Expect a couple more minor changes to the site as the weeks go on, gonna be tweaking stuff till I find something I like. Speaking of tweaking I did tweak my watermark in my pictures, and I do like it a lot better. I think i still need to adjust the sizing a bit but it works well enough for this week. Going forward I do have the next 6-7 weeks planned out, provided figures arrive on time, and it is all newer stuff too, so look forward to that and I will see you all then.

Transformers Studio Series ROTF Megatron

Welcome back, I hope you enjoyed last week's review on Earthrise Trailbreaker. I thought it turned out really well, but you're not here for last week's review, you're here for this week’s and I’ll be real for a minute, I have not been looking forward to this one. I know some people like this figure but I really don’t, so if this review seems partially negatively biased I apologize and if I am going to be fully honest, my disdain for it mainly comes from the design of this version of the character, but that doesn’t mean the toy itself doesn’t have issues of it’s own. I guess I should stop beating around the bush and just get on with it, so here is a look at Transformers Studio Series #13 Revenge of the Fallen Megatron. 

Like I said I am not a big fan of this design, and I was not originally going to get this figure because of that, but I ended up getting it as a gift so I figured I would give it a shot and man I am not impressed. It has some neat ideas going on but his color pallet is extremely dull and he is generally not fun to mess with. I can’t say I am super surprised though because out of all the live action Megatron designs we have gotten over the years, this one is definitely one of the weakest, at least to me.

Getting right into it with the head, it is your standard Bayverse Megatron head and it is one of the only parts I don’t dislike on this figure. The general design is pretty neat, with the permanently angry head crest unibrow, the spikey half mohawk and the metal shard mutton chops that go so far back they seem to turn into some type of horn. As for facial features, his mouth is set into the head a bit, which ends up pronouncing the chin, the teeth are painted gold but his facial expression is somehow anger, disbelief and disgust all rolled into one, which is kind of impressive. It isn’t helped by the beady solid red eyes that are very likely to stare into your soul. Articulation is actually really good because the ball joint is positioned at the back of the head, giving him a lot of clearance and range of movement. 

The torso is very static and very dull and that is about it. Ok, that may be an oversimplification but it is accurate nonetheless. The chest has all the right details and is accurate for the most part. The Bronze paint does help break up the grey but not enough to really pop and make a huge difference. He also has some holes in and around the lower half of his torso which are unnecessary and just bring attention to the fact that the entire torso is hollow, like completely hollow. Unlike Trailbreaker who, if you remember from last week, also had a hollow inner torso, the emptiness is visible from every angle in one way or another. The back is a bit better than the front just from a design standpoint, but it still has the same issues as the front. I really enjoy the gunmetal paint apps and the large thrusters, not to mention the movable back cannons, which unfortunately are not modern blast effect compatible. 

Megatron’s arms are unique since they’re asymmetrical. His left arm is very spindly and thin, even the shoulder is more rounded with a layered look. This arm has pretty standard articulation; full shoulder rotation, outward movement over 90 degrees, full bicep rotation, and a 90 degree elbow. The fingers are articulated as well, they’re separated into two different sections with each one able to move separately, unfortunately they don’t really look good when you do that. Now the right arm is where all the action is. This entire arm is one big cannon, and is considerably more beefy than the other one,  the shoulder has this cool trio of metal spikes. That aesthetic continues to the rest of the arm with a rather large spike protruding from the top of the cannon and he has an even bigger spike/blade that can be flipped out from its hiding place of the entire forearm. Doing this pretty much doubles the entire length of the forearm. Articulation in this arm is pretty much the same as the other one with the exceptions of the elbow going slightly more than 90 degrees and the shoulder going slightly less. Obviously since there isn’t a hand on the arm there isn’t much in the way of hand articulation, other than the single finger on the inside of the cannon and is in my opinion the most pointless thing on this figure.

Now then let's get onto what is probably my least favorite part of this figure, the legs. My hate for them stems from both the design and function, seeing as I very much dislike the digitigrade leg style on pretty much anything, this figure included obviously. As for function, let's get all of my issues out of the way right off the bat, starting with the panels. The upper leg/thigh panels, while not horrible, don’t like to tab in and if they do, they don’t like to stay that way, they can also pop off from time to time. On the subject of “popping off panels” the ones on the back of the knee I'm convinced don’t want to live there because they will come off with next to no force. My other big issue lies in the feet, and how unstable they feel. The feet are made up of a section of tank treads folded at an angle, with the front splitting to help with balance, in theory anyway. In reality the feet don’t get a chance to actually be feet because of two panels, one is there for extra support since the foot are oddly shaped so I am not going to give that on too much slack other than being slightly too tall so they end up being the only thing the toy is balancing on, but the panels on the inside of the feet do absolutely nothing for the figure other than mess with his balance since they sit too far down and mess with his balance since they are constantly at an angle. As for the legs as a whole, I do like the idea of the entirety of the treds becoming the legs and feet, even if I am not a fan of the execution, and the dark grey plastic really helps the bronze, silver and grey paint shine. Articulation is fine, full range of movement in the hips, full bicep swivel, knees go about 90 and the ankles tilt about 45 degrees inward.This would be the point where I would move on to talk about the features and accessories this toy comes with, but he doesn’t do or come with anything, so i guess I will just move onto transformation an vehicle mode. 

Transformation is pretty simple but the legs always confuse me, they never look right until I plug them into the main body. You will also be hard pressed to transform this guy and not have any of the leg panels fall off in the process. Megatron’s vehicle mode is this cybertronian tank, but it looks more like a pile of scrap metal with treads and guns attached, although that can be used to describe most bayverse designs. There aren’t really any new details here aside from the main cannon section, everything else we saw in robot mode. That being said it is all still very good, and almost works better in this mode. You may have noticed that this altmode is not very clean and you can see quite a few robot bits, from the back you can see the hands and you can very clearly see the head from the front, now this one is accurate but it doesn’t excuse how dumb and lazy it is. For features in this mode he can roll but it isn’t great as it is just on 4 small plastic wheels, the main cannon cannon can look down but not up at all, but the smaller back cannons have the same amount of articulation as in bot mode. 

And just like that we are done with Studio Series Revenge of the Fallen Megatron. As you could tell i really don’t like this figure but as modern figures go he is pretty standard with decent articulation, very good film accuracy and a simple transformation. It is the design itself that bugs me more than the toy. All that being said though, I am still going to give this guy a 5/10. I get little enjoyment from him as a whole and so I don’t think he deserves being ranked any higher. As always the gallery for this guy is up, it is a bit smaller than the others but that is because I didn’t have a lot of time this week and all the poses I put him in looked the same so I had trouble finding good poses for him. Next week is going to be a figure that was fairly well received at the time but now makes it very clear of how far we have come in 5 years. See you all then.