TF Views

Scout, Knock Out - black & green motorcycle. Bike mode is a lesson in frustration. Some good ideas, I love the grips forming the speedometer for example, but there are a few design flaws. Rear forks are locked into the wrong angle making the bike too low and stretched out, a few degrees different and it would have looked fine. The front wheel doesn't lock down, so it changes its angle easily from lower to higher (however, they designed it so the figure can turn his wheel which is cool). They sculpted brake rotors and calipers, but the rear wheel is designed with the halves on the wrong side, so the caliper ends up hidden behind the drive chain gear where it cannot be seen, and the right side ends up without a rotor looking thin and empty (the caliper is part of the fork and still waiting for the rotor) - this could be fixed with a pin-tap, but the area is VERY hard to work with because it's at the end of the arm and has little support. Finally, while they were going for a garish color scheme, it doesn't deliver, the black and dark greens don't really look good here.

Transformation is fairly bike-basic, has a cute touch with the faring becoming chest halves, but otherwise it's standard stuff. I do like how the feet become the intercooler in bike mode though, great touch. The majority of the cowling ends up as kibble on the sides of the legs, and pops off very easily (it appears to be designed intentionally that way). There's frustration in how the waist and legs transform back to alt mode, in that nobody bothered to sculpt a stop for where it goes, it's very easy to go right past the proper location which is only about 2/3rds of the way through the leg and waist range, and nothing locks down until it's found its place first.

Bot mode is also basic stuff. There are a few touches of movie, like the digitigrade ankles; and the upper thighs actually go a little skeletal to suggest the minimal materials to work with in the motorcycle, but that concept isn't carried through anywhere else, and they're hidden by the kibble panels which pop off easily. The head is stubby, slightly insect-mouthy, and Wolverine-mask shaped, it ends up low on detail and personality. The chest with faring halves looks strong from lower angles and gappy from upper ones. The front wheel rotates about 60 degrees to semi-fold-up against the back (there is a block in place so it won't rotate beyond this, or 30 degrees the opposite way, not sure why they care). The paint is kinda sloppy and thick, the black plastic hides some of the few finer details. Rear wheel halves end up as Energon Arcee-esque shoulder kibble, but at least it can be folded back or horizontal, and they sculpted a little fan blade action in there so he can be hover-man. The side kibble comes off and tabs into slots above the front wheel to become Kickback-style wings, which really are just more kibble in my book. Left arm has a hand, right arm is a gun hollow behind the barrel (I HATE HOLLOW GUNS!), and the barrel is painted titanium-champagne which is why I chose this over the upcoming Reverb repaint which leaves this unpainted. Aside from the Autobot logo on his chest, everything about this figure says "Decepticon". There's a significant design flaw with the waist, it tabs into the lower torso but nothing holds it there, so it's inevitable that he'll end up separating here with any handling. The shoulder plates also pop out when moving the the arm articulation, but not as bad as the waist failure.

Articulation is a lot of ball joints, many limited. Head is super limited ball joint, shoulders a very limited ball joint, hover-fan-wheel-halves on a ball joint, elbows on a ball joint, hips on semi-limited ball joints , kees on a ball joint, and the low digitgrade ankles are on a hinge. A lot of the joints are loose, shoulders are loose, hips are VERY loose, ankles are loose; yet the elbows are so tight they cause problems for the shoulder transformation plates. The loose joints do allow him to stand on his own, just barely though, and posing makes this worse. Between the loose joints and limited articulation, he's a rough one to pose.

Knock Out disappoints at every turn due to lazy design, underwhelming deco, and a myriad of loose joints. He feels like a basic Basic, if you know what I mean, fair detail but nowhere near enough, overused transformation, not enough new ideas or fresh takes on existing ideas, and a bit too much kibble. The Insecticon notes feel vague and well out of place on an Autobot, although the sculpt and colors fit Insecticon far better than they do Autobot. Bottom line, too much "almost", not enough "yeah!", it's not a terrible figure but it's hardly inspiring either.


Part of me wants to tap out those pins and fix the rear wheel situation, carve away the stop-block on the front wheel for a flat back, and work on those ball joints. Another part of me wants to return it for my $8 back due to the assembly design mistake.

I idiomatically agree about the lazy design ruining the toy. As I said over at MS, those side panels completely ruin it for me. They are looser than most of the joints, including transform joints.


Dom'
-thinking about moving the review thread here.

Dominic wrote:I idiomatically agree about the lazy design ruining the toy. As I said over at MS, those side panels completely ruin it for me. They are looser than most of the joints, including transform joints.


Dom'
-thinking about moving the review thread here.

The review thread is already moved here.

The panels are designed to come off, they have no pins, no friction bumps of any kind, and they have tabs that fit into slots in the front wheel's yoke in robot mode. They are a little frustrating, but I don't see how they can completely ruin the figure. Then again, mine don't come off all that much in either iteration by themselves all that often, and I don't think they look THAT bad in bot mode, they're leg kibble but they're not massive that way.

Between the odd joint tolerances, and the fact that the instructions were just not helpful at all, I found myself losing the damned panels over and over again when I first got the toy.

That took the shine off, despite it being pre-street-dated.

Dom

Dominic wrote:Between the odd joint tolerances, and the fact that the instructions were just not helpful at all, I found myself losing the damned panels over and over again when I first got the toy.

That took the shine off, despite it being pre-street-dated.

Dom

The transformation, once you get it down, is pretty quick and straightforward, making it easy to not knock the panels off TOO MUCH. They still come off for me, but not like crazy anymore.

Got Reverb, repost of my comment from Hauls:

Better joint tolerances than Knock Out, and a better shade of grey, but still kinda meh. I blame the suck ankles and the fall-off kibble. Kibble wings do nothing for me, so I screwed the leg kibble on, helps a bit. Also found that I prefer to raise the chest halves to either side of his head to free up the field of vision a bit and give the shoulders more room to move, I feel this helps give the figure a more balanced robot mode, he was too pudgy for a sleek bike-bot otherwise. Shame it removes his cleverest feature, one that O6 sold me on - the vehicle mode has the number 97 printed on it three times, the transformation makes this upside down on the robot chest, and the font used for the numbers makes it look like it's actually the number 26.

Still misassembled, took me a while to see what you meant, so hidden is the brake disc. They bulked up the waist clip and stiffened the ball jointing and pins, downside is that the back wheel's connecting struts don't clip so easily over the waist clip anymore, although I don't have Knock Out to compare next to him. Colours are deco are a solid improvement, just needed a deeper metallic flake red and translucent headlights to pass for a decent model bike.

Sides say either 'Colony' or 'Galaxy' racing, I cannot honestly tell which.

Having had time to mull it over, Reverb gets a mild recommendation from me after rearranging the chest and putting screws on the leg kibble. Okay, nothing amazing. Neat enough to fiddle with more than once and the bike mode's cool.

His gunhand helps a lot with posing, gives him a good focal point. I'm in favour of gunhands more than shitty accessories like NewBee's gun, if you're not going to do it right it's not worth doing at all. The leg kibble unbalances the figure's look a bit, but it's worse if they're used for wings. When it's screwed on, you can angle it in several different ways to help support the figure, he needs it thanks to the loose ankles. I prefer to have te spikier ends touching the ground near the front of the robot's feet, gets the kibble away from the thighs.

Headsculpt is definitely cool, although bland on top, needed a crest or something to really sell it. he's got the mask and nothing else. Do like the idea for the hoverfan shoulder wheels, don't like the exposed pegs or ball joints - again, moving the sides of the chest onto his shoulders helps here, it covers the ball joint roots for a better look.

onslaught86 wrote:Got Reverb, repost of my comment from Hauls:

Better joint tolerances than Knock Out, and a better shade of grey, but still kinda meh. I blame the suck ankles and the fall-off kibble. Kibble wings do nothing for me, so I screwed the leg kibble on, helps a bit. Also found that I prefer to raise the chest halves to either side of his head to free up the field of vision a bit and give the shoulders more room to move, I feel this helps give the figure a more balanced robot mode, he was too pudgy for a sleek bike-bot otherwise. Shame it removes his cleverest feature, one that O6 sold me on - the vehicle mode has the number 97 printed on it three times, the transformation makes this upside down on the robot chest, and the font used for the numbers makes it look like it's actually the number 26.

Still misassembled, took me a while to see what you meant, so hidden is the brake disc. They bulked up the waist clip and stiffened the ball jointing and pins, downside is that the back wheel's connecting struts don't clip so easily over the waist clip anymore, although I don't have Knock Out to compare next to him. Colours are deco are a solid improvement, just needed a deeper metallic flake red and translucent headlights to pass for a decent model bike.

Sides say either 'Colony' or 'Galaxy' racing, I cannot honestly tell which.

Are you suggesting the waist actually holds together at all now?

Yes, it does. In a perfect world, I'd like it a little tighter, but it's miles better than the floppy waist Knock Out has. Reverb's a significant improvement joint-wise.