It’s so good to see Generations back on the shelves after the tsunami of Dark of the Moon has come and gone. With the return of the line comes newly rebranded packaging and I’m really digging the new look. The G1-style grid on the card tugs at my nostalgia strings, as does the very G1-inspired portrait of Shockwave. The back panel has photos of the toy and a pretty cool bio blurb about how he’ll murder you with his logic. And holy shit, check it out… they brought back the tech specs! Shockwave is packaged in his robot form and held on to the tray with a ridiculous number of string twisties. Overall, this package design gets my stamp of approval and I do hope they continue to use it forGenerations beyond Fall of Cybertron.

With Shockwave out of the package I find myself blown away by this figure. Yes, I am biased with my love for Shockwave, but it really is an absolutely amazing update to the character we all know and love. But more than that, the design is so clean and solid, the proportions are so right, that it feels more like an action figure and less like a Transformer. The head sculpt is a perfect homage and the light piping for his eye works exceptionally well. The arm cannon is also a great design, as Shockwave can simply fold back one of his hands and the cannon mounts onto either arm. It’s bigger than G1 Shockwave’s arm cannon, but not as ridiculously big as say, Energon Shockblast’s arm cannon. The sculpt features a lot of panel lines and great little details, like all the cables molded around his neck.

The one thing that I’ve been the most disappointed over with this year’s Transformers has been the lack of paint apps. Shockwave is no different, but his color scheme works without it. He’s mostly sculpted in traditional Decepticon purple, with some great translucent purple plastic and some silver paintwork on his trim. The ensemble is perfect and I wouldn’t have changed a thing. His Decepticon logo is kind of small, but I don’t know where else you could put it to make it larger.

Shockwave sports solid articulation. The head turns, but is not ball jointed. The arms rotate at the shoulders and have hinged lateral movement and ball joints in the elbows. The legs are ball jointed at the hips and have both swivels and hinges at the knees. A waist swivel would have been welcome, but I don’t think its absence really hurts the figure a lot.

I was a little concerned about Shockwave’s size, especially since the TF Prime figures have been getting smaller and smaller. He does look small in the package but once I got him out and stood him next to my War for Cybertron Megatron, my fears were vanquished. He’s perfectly sized to stand beside his leader. Some might have preferred him as a Voyager, but I’m really happy with Hasbro streamlining the figures into mostly Deluxes. It may create some scale issues in alt mode, and sure, some Transformers should be bigger than others, but Shockwave here is scaled perfectly in robot mode for the other Classics and Generations figures.

I actually had to look at the instructions to get Shockwave into his alt mode, and that’s something I almost never have to do. The reason here is not because he’s a complex Transformer, but rather his alt mode, unlike a car or jet or tank, is somewhat abstract, so it’s tough to figure out where everything is supposed to go. He’s billed as “Cybertron Mobile Artillery” which is basically like a big hovering cannon. I like to think of him more as a spaceship, but either way it is a very nice nod back to his original G1 gun mode. The alt mode locks together very nicely and looks damn good too. I’m impressed with the number of panel lines in the sculpt and while there aren’t a lot of paint apps, (he basically has the exact same color scheme as his robot mode), the coloring on the figure doesn’t feel like it’s missing anything. Well, maybe a Decepticon logo would have been nice.

How about the price? Dang, these things are getting expensive. True, I haven’t been buying a lot of Transformers since Dark of the Mooncame out, but I still remember only paying around $10-11 apiece for those Deluxes. Shockwave was $15!!! It’s kind of outrageous considering the size of the figure, but I can justify it by passing this off as a collector line. Plus, I love this figure so much that I probably would have paid even more for him if I had to. But then, even the TF: Prime Deluxes have shot up to the $15 price point at the local Walmart. I’ve been a Transformers fan from Day One, but even I think Hasbro is starting to overestimate the demand for these guys.

Shockwave has had some decent re-imaginings in lines like Energon and Animated, but this release is a bona fide stab at bringing the character into the Classics continuity. Sure, it’s his Fall of Cybertron version, but since the character never got an Earth alt mode, it fits right in, much the same way that I prefer to use my War for Cybertron Megatron and Soundwave as my default Classics versions. Shockwave is definitely a solid and well-engineered figure, and while I don’t like to use the word perfect a lot, I think this guy comes closer to being a perfect Transformer than any I’ve seen in a while. I just love him to pieces and he’s sure to be a popular release with the fans.