My schedule is really tight this week, and I wasn’t sure I was going to make it back here at all after Monday, but I was hankering to open up a new toy, and I just managed to squeeze in enough time this afternoon to shoot Studio Series Rumble. I haven’t really been collecting any of the Core Class figures, but I absolutely had to grab Rumble to see how well he would go with my Earthrise Soundwave!

Good God, I hate this packaging! Either go with a fully enclosed box, or go back to plastic windows, Hasbro! It’s bad enough that I have to risk getting a robot with boogers and candy residue stuck on it, but in a moment you’ll see my new reason to hate this packaging. So, I had this guy on pre-order through an online retailer, but I just so happened to stumble upon Rumble at the store while doing some food shopping. This was the only one they had and the box was smashed, but I decided I would get him anyway and cancel the pre-order later. Then I got home and opened him…

And this is what I saw! Now I’m going to assume that one of his Thruster Guns wasn’t actually stolen, but rather it just fell out of the sleeve and right out of the package BECAUSE IT HAS NO GODDAMN WINDOW TO KEEP THE SHIT IN IT!!! Now, this is not a huge deal, because I do still have the pre-order in place, but still… this is some serious bullshit. If having plastic windows on packaging means the world has to drown in its own seas of chemical soup so I can get my toys with all their accessories, then so be it! But this shit has got to stop, Hasbro. If you aren’t going to enclose the box, you need to secure the accessories better. Anyway, let’s get Rumble clipped off the backing and check him out.

I should take this opportunity to point out how much I absolutely love Rumble in the Sunbow cartoon. He had more personality than a lot of the other Decepticons, and a spectacular Napoleon complex to make up for his small size. On that note, it’s with the highest of praise that I say how great this little figure turned out. The sculpt is fantastic, particularly the circuitry on his chest that mimics the original toy very nicely. You also get a surprisingly diverse color palate for such a small figure. In addition to the two-tone blue and purple plastic, you get some off-white for the feet, some metallic purple accents, and even some red and yellow panels in the legs. The head sculpt is also just about perfect. I don’t know why, but I love how puffy his cheeks look. It’s like he’s pondering on something stupid to say. You want me to nitpick something? OK, I wish the feet were painted silver. Maybe I’ll try out a Sharpie on them, since I’ll eventually have two of these little buggers. Articulation is surprisingly good too, although the lack of elbows is a little disappointing.

If you are lucky enough to get both Thruster Guns, they can be worn on his back, or pegged to his forearms, just like the original G1 figure. Like the feet, I would have loved to see these painted silver, but with all the rest of the coloring on the figure, I can see why that didn’t cost out.

Of course, you also get the attachable pile drivers, which are absolutely fantastic. To put them on, you just fold in Rumble’s fists and socket them in. The pistons don’t actually move, but boy does he look great with these things equipped.

The transformation here is about what I expected. It’s nothing groundbreaking, but it does make for a decent cassette tape, and thank Primus for that! He doesn’t turn into a data chip or a PDA, or a chunky disk. It gives me a little sadistic pleasure that a lot of kids are going to have no idea what the hell this is supposed to be. Meanwhile I’m still over here using one of these ancient beauties to load Zaxxon on my Atari 400 computer!

And his cassette mode does indeed fit into Earthrise Soundwave. It’s a tad snug, but it works! Let’s check out some comparison shots with the other recent cassette releases!

I think Rumble is a huge improvement over Eject, as far as cassette to robots go. I don’t want to hate on Eject, because I actually like his translucent blue parts a lot, but these two don’t really match up all that well.

And here’s Soundwave’s menagerie when you pair up Rumble with Earthrise Leaserbeak and Ravage. Laserbeak still impresses the hell out of me, and he looks great next to Rumble. Ravage? Eh. There’s some impressive engineering going on there, but I honestly like the original G1 toy better than this update.

Rumble is without a doubt the breakout hit of the year for me. OK, maybe he’s not the best Transformers figure I got this year, but he certainly is the best official toy treatment of the guy since his original G1 release. And I’d dare say that he’s made me a lot happier than some of the more bigger and more expensive bots I got recently. He’s ridiculously fun to play with, and he looks amazing beside Big Daddy Soundwave. It’s too bad the experience had to be dampened by Hasbro’s shit packaging, but hopefully the next one I get will have all the parts in there. Lesson learned, if you are buying him at the store, check in there for the guns!