Posted January 12, 2013 at 12:25 am

So here's how this thing is supposed to work. These guys are these little cylinders, right? And there is a button on the bottom of them that triggers an auto-transform when it's depressed. And so you cram up to three of these dudes inside Soundwave or Soundblaster's torso, and use a chunk of kibble on his back to push these disks out through the front of his chest like he's taking a front-poop. One by one, these disks hit the ground and land on their buttons and spring-transform and you're done.
EXCEPT IT KIND OF DOESN'T WORK THAT WAY. Mostly these guys get stuck and then you push and push and push and use excessive force and then when finally one of them gives they all explode out of his chest at the same time, usually hitting you in the face no matter where your face is and then you have a scattering of half-transformed things everywhere. It would be perfect fun if it worked as advertised, but it really, really doesn't. Some folks have said sanding down the insides of their Soundwaves helps smooth things over. I may try that? But, man, it's hard to accept that these things reached stores with their main gimmickry being dead in the water.

The flying guys are my favorite. Laserbeak, Buzzsaw, and Ratbat all transform fully by having their buttons depressed, and they do this little flip, and it's easy to put them back in disk mode. Laserbeak and Buzzsaw are obviously redecoes of each other, and Ratbat's a retool. He's the same engineering, but reskinned to be a bat instead of a bird.
Frenzy and Rumble are middle-of-the-road to me. They require a few extra steps to get from "hey i've auto transformed" mode into their completed transformation. You gotta swing down the arms so they're not doing the wave and fold out their feet. It takes a little extra time to get them back into disk mode, too. You have to rotate their pelvis around and maneuver their pelvis and legs down and around at the same time. A little annoying, but not a dealbreaker.

To add insult to injury is the realization that this toy is this way because of a gimmick that doesn't work properly.
Let that sink in.
Grargh.
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