Beast Hunters Shockwave (Commander)

Prelude: Before every other Third Party company started on the Legends-scale figures, the official Transformers introduced the “Cyberverse” subline in both Prime and Dark of the Moon, featuring Legion- and Commander-sized versions of the bigger figures in a down-scaled format for smaller kids. In Prime’s Beast Hunters phase this included Shockwave, he of the angry eye, he of the gun hand, he of the mad science. So here he comes, Prime Beast Hunters Commander Class Shockwave, which sure is a mouth-full.

Robot Mode: Shockwave is basically a miniature version of the larger Voyager-class Shockwave from Prime. Thankfully without that stupid Beast Hunters armor stuff. Do I even have that anymore? I’m not sure, I think I threw it some loose parts box. Anyway, the robot is very nicely articulated and detailed for his size and price point, so no complaints there. He is clearly recognizable and he’s got the huge gun on his arm, proportionally even larger than that of Voyager Shockwave, I think. Okay, the missile gimmick is pretty basic and it doesn’t really look good if the missile is loaded, but I don’t think the spinning-and-opening thing of the larger figure could have been made to work here.

So bottom line: a very nice miniature version of a very nice Shockwave figure. Sure, it’s missing some of the finer details of his larger cousin, but for his size and price he is quite excellent. Thumbs up!

Alternate Mode: The long-standing tradition of characters called Shockwave having very, very bad alternate modes was not broken in the Prime toy line. Shockwave transforms into something that is supposed to be an alien tank of some sort. It’s really just the robot, somewhat contorted, sitting on his butt. On the plus side it looks exactly like it did in the cartoon series, where Shockwave was bad-ass enough to make it work, so there’s that. The missile firing works in this mode as well, of course. Nothing more to be said here. As is often the case, best to leave Shockwave in robot mode.

Remarks: While I didn’t collect many of the Cyberverse figures from either Prime or Dark of the Moon, I did like the idea behind it. A smaller-scale line of figures, featuring the characters from the series / movie, at a lower price point. Sure, the scaling didn’t always work (Prime Legion Breakdown complained about this long and hard), but the idea was sound. Interestingly enough Hasbro seems to have abandoned it, but quite a few 3rd Party companies have picked it up instead (DX9, Iron Factory, Magic Square, etc.), though mostly for G1-based figures so far.

Shockwave was really evil in the Prime series, teasing the creation of a Predacon army all season long without ever actually doing it. In the end the “Rise of the Predacons” consisted of just three of them, which I fully blame on old one-eye. Anyway, I don’t really remember when and why I bought this smaller Shockwave, but he’s a good figure given the scale. And with no third-party company currently doing Prime figures, all Prime fans who collect Legends-scale will be stuck with him, too. So bottom line: Shockwave is pretty good for what he is. Recommended to all fans of Prime and/or Legends-scale.

Rating: B