Just picked this guy up at Toys Я Us today and thought I'd post a review.
Vehicle mode:
Not sure what this guy's supposed to be in vehicle mode. Perhaps this is what movie-verse stasis pods look like? At any rate his main colour is silver with "Transformers" tampographed on the middle piece along with both faction sigils. Unfortunately, as no bio or tech spec was included with this toy the reason for it having both Autobot and Decepticon allegance is unknown. Maybe there was some sort of treaty on Cybertron that made stasis pods (or whatever this actually is) jointly-owned.
Transformation:
This figure marks a return of the Activator gimmick from the Animated line, and works fairly well. The reason why my hand is in this picture is that the transformation is entirely spring-loaded and so in order to get an in-between shot I have to physically hold it halfway through its transformation. The Activation button is that black oval near the top and must be pushed from both sides to work.
Robot mode:
I'm not sure what to make of this. There's been quite a few figures in the RotF line that diverged significantly from the standard humanoid design for their robot mode, but none that have gone this far. More importantly this figure is a complete brick, with the only point of articulation being a small rolling ball in the tip.
This ball is an important part of the toy's action figure, which is unfortunately as incomprehensible as the rest; rolling it along certain surfaces (paper works especially well for this) causes it to leave a black trail behind it. A targeting system, perhaps? Maybe this guy's combat role is to mark bots from the enemy faction (whichever one that might be) so that his allies can more easily lock their weapons onto him.
At any rate, this section of the robot appears to be chromed, or possibly even die-cast metal (I couldn't tell for certain) but it's really small consolation considering the toy's defiencies. I got this one for free with my TЯU order so I can't really consider myself gypped, but if they start charging money for this I'd recommend waiting for the clearance sales. It has all the makings of a major shelfwarmer so it should be easy to find.
