SOUNDWAVE

TRANSFORMERS: ROBOT HEROES

Despite being a really big action figure geek (I know, shock and awe, right?), I’ve never had any real affinity for Transformers. I mean, I can appreciate them for what they are, and I like a lot of the designs. I’m a huge fan of halfway decent robot designs. Heck, I even saw two of the films in theatres (maybe that’s not a point in my favor…) Every so often, I find myself looking at a Transformers figure or two, but I think the main thing that keeps me from really getting into them is in the name. For whatever reason, the whole transforming gimmick has never done much for me (which is weird, because I love me some gimmicky action figures!) Fortunately for nut jobs like me, Hasbro’s put out more than a few lines of non-transforming Transformers over the years. In the mid-00s, they were having great success with their more child-friendly Galactic Heroes and Super Hero Squad lines for Star Wars and Marvel, so they brought Transformers into the fold with Robot Heroes. I’ll be looking at that line’s version of Soundwave today.

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Soundwave was released in the second series of Transformers: Robot Heroes, in a two-pack with Autobot Bumblebee. At this point in the line, the designs were pretty much exclusively Generation 1-based (meaning the original ‘80s line), and Soundwave was no exception. The figure stands a little over 2 inches tall, but he’s squatting, so he’d probably be about 3 inches were he standing up straight. He has three points of articulation, at the neck and each of the shoulders, which was pretty standard for the line. The articulation doesn’t really offer much actual posablity, though. He’s a glorified statue: the pose you see him in is really the only pose you’ll be getting. On the plus side, it suits the character, so that’s good. The sculpt is quite nicely done. His proportions are slightly exaggerated (this was the Heroes style), but he’s far less exaggerated than anything from Galactic Heroes or Super Hero Squad, which I think makes him a bit more versatile. The details are all sharply defined, and he’s got a very nice geometric look about him. He clearly takes a lot of influence from the animated version of Soundwave, which is hardly a bad thing. The paint follows the animated look as well, opting for flat colors instead of the usual metallics. It works quite well with the sculpt and the application is generally pretty clean, though there are a few issues with some slightly misaligned details here and there.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

Though I’ve never been much of a Transformers guy, I really liked Robot Heroes. There was a time when I owned just about all of the G1-inspired figures from the line. I’ve since sold the vast majority of them off, but I kept Soundwave for a few reasons. First, he’s always been, my favorite Transformer. Second, he was the first Robot Heroes figure I got. My brother liked Bumblebee, so we bought this set when it was released and split it, and I liked Soundwave enough to pick up a bunch more of the figures. Even with most of the others gone, I still really like this guy.