Once again, we have the Legion Class Cyberverse package. It’s pretty, compact and somewhat collector friendly. I like it. Leadfoot is packaged in his robot mode and the half-tube package does a nice job showing off what you’re going to get. The back panel of the cardback has his Tech Specs and his bio blurb, which not surprisingly doesn’t mention anywhere that he’s such an asshole that he and the other Wreckers are confined to the Autobots’ rocket base.

As usual, I’m going to start with the alt mode, which happens to be this figure’s best feature. In DotM, the Wreckers are all NASCAR style vehicles, but unlike the other Autobots who can transform into their Stealth Force modes at will, the Wreckers are almost always pictured on screen with their weapons bristling and that’s the way Hasbro decided to sculpt the Cyberverse versions. What you get then is not so much a NASCAR vehicle, but a NASCAR attack vehicle, and it’s very cool. It’s hard to overstate how impressed I am with the sculpt on this little car. Leadfoot’s paint job is a bit at odds with the on screen version. The most obvious omission is the big Target store emblem, which I presume was removed so as other retailers would agree to sell him. I think it would have been cool to have kept it and made him a Target exclusive. Either way, Leadfoot has a minigun sculpted on his roof and tons of missiles and other smaller guns everywhere.

Transforming Leadfoot is as easy as you would expect from a Legion or Legends Class. The resulting robot form is a fairly good approximation of the on-screen version for such a small scale, but I’m still not all that crazy about it. The proportions are intentinoally skewed to give him a big pot belly and stubby, little legs. I think the design just worked better on screen than in a toy. On the plus side, a lot of the great detail of the sculpt from the alt mode carry over to the robot mode.

All in all, I like this little guy. The awesome car mode makes up for his less than stellar bot mode. And in fairness my main issues with the robot mode aren’t so much the toy’s fault, but the design itself. Either way, he’s got a lot of personality, I can’t deny that.

I’ve spilled enough electronic ink on the packaging used for the Cyberverse Commander figures, so I won’t linger for long on it here. Suffice it to say, it’s attractive, shows off the figure really well, and is even collector friendly. Powerglide is packaged in his robot form, but we’re still going to start by looking at his jet mode.

Yep, that’s the Powerglide we all know and love. He’s still based on the real world A-10 Warthog, a distinctive looking aircraft that’s been in service for a really long time. Powerglide has some crazy detail for such a little toy, complete with intricate panel lines and a tiny sculpted chaingun under the nose. The coloring is pretty faithful to the original G1 toy as well, and I love the wings on the silver Autobot emblems. He’s even got flip down landing gear and removable weapon racks for under his wings. This jet mode is a homerun.

Powerglide’s transformation is very clever and fairly complex for such a little figure. The resulting robot looks very good and makes for a great homage to the original character, especially where the headsculpt is concerned. Although there are a few little things about the figure that nag at me. The parts that form his shoulders peg into his torso, but not very strongly, so when you manipulate his arms, they tend to pull right out. Granted, it’s a problem that has certainly plagued bigger and more expensive Transformers, so I’m not going to make a big deal about it here. He has very nice articulation, with hinges and swivels in the shoulders, balljoints in the hips and hinged elbows and knees.

The weapon racks that you take off of Poweglide’s wings for transformation double as hand weapons, but neither of them work all that well. One of them looks pretty good, but it’s hard to get it to stay in his hand. The other just looks awkward and I’d rather put it to the side than display him holding it.

Yeah, Powerglide has a few issues, but they aren’t enough to blemish what is otherwise a really clever design and a very impressive little Transformer. Hasbro could have probably produced this exact figure as a Scout or Deluxe and I would have been more satisfied with it as a Classics Powerglide than I would the oversized toy they actually produced for that line. He’s yet another reason why I am really amazed by Cyberverse’s Commander assortment and I think he’s well worth picking up, even for those who don’t intend to pursue this line.

The packaging on these guys is like a scaled down version of the Commander figures’ packages. You still get that half tube that displays the figure very nicely in his robot mode and mounted on a DotM cardback. It’s simple but attractive and let me say yet again how much more I like this package deco than the ones used on the previous two films. The large insignia on the lower right side clearly shows off whether the figure is a Decepticon or Autobot. They’re packaged as robots, but let’s start off with their vehicle modes.

Ratchet is a nice tiny approximation of his larger versions. In fact, the only thing that really bugs me about his ambulance mode are the large hinges on the front of the doors. Ok, I hate the radioactive green color too, but that’s more a style issue than anything else. And I’ll venture to say I like it better than the puke green used on previous versions. He still has the roof rack with the spare tire and there’s a remarkable amount of sculpted detail in the front bumper for such a little guy.

Transforming Ratchet is really easy and the resulting bot is once again quite faithful to his larger versions, albeit with the wheels and bumper that make up his chest not turned upside down. The head sculpt is excellent for its size and with ball jointed hips and rotating shoulders and balljoints in his elbows, he has a decent amount of articulation, albeit not as good as the Commander figures. I’m not blown away by Ratchet, but he’s a solid toy for his size and fun to fiddle about with.

Crowbar gets instant props for being a Decepticon car. The package actually calls him a police car but there’s no evidence of that on the toy itself. He doesn’t have any police markings or lightbars. I guess he could be an undercover cruiser. Whatever the case, the car is all black with just a few gray bits. I would have preferred the Decepticon logo on the hood, rather than reversed and offset on the roof, but that’s ok. Crowbar’s car mode does have a fair amount of seaming on it, but all in all it looks ok and holds together very well.

Transforming Crowbar is a little tough to get started because everything locks together so well. Most of the time, I just wind up pulling the ball joints out and reassembling him, but if you’re more careful and precise that isn’t necessary. His convesion is a lot more clever and impressive than Ratchet’s and the result is a very cool looking figure. His feet and legs are particularly well done, despite being mistransformed in the package. The sculpted detail on his head and torso are paritcularly well done and there’s a lot more interesting coloring going on in robot mode too.

The Legion figures retail at just under five bucks, which isn’t what I would call cheap for such small toys, but I’m not going to complain too much either. These guys are very well designed and beautifully sculpted. They also have a lot more play value than one might expect to find in such small figures. Crowbar is definitely my favorite of the pair, but Ratchet is no slouch either.

The set comes in a window box that strikes me as being somewhat similar in size and configuration as the Human Alliance toys. The artwork features the cool new Dark of the Moon deco and boasts that the contents are a “3-in-1 action set!” Starscream comes mounted in his robot mode with his Orbital Assault thingy taking up most of the interior’s real estate. The toys are set against an illustrated insert of a cityscape burning in typical Michael Bay fashion. The insert can also be taken out and folded into a cool diorama background in the same way Habsro has been doing it for some of their other lines. I don’t think the background suits these toys all that well, but it’s cool enough that I’ll probably save it for some other figures. Also included in the package is a missile and a folded instruciton sheet.

Let’s start with Starscream. Remember how I gushed about Ironhide and how awesome he was for such a little figure? Well, I won’t be doing that with Starscream. He’s not terrible. He’s certainly better than the Legends Starscreams, but he’s nowhere near Ironhide in terms of ingenuity of design. I don’t know if Hasbro is including dumbed-down figures with the larger sets as cost, but I guess I’ll find out as I pick up more of the Cyberverse toys. It could also be the difference between the so-called Commander figures and the Legion figures. It’s all pretty confusing. Either way, if I bought this Starscream on a single card for eight bucks, I would have been severely pissed off.

Starscream’s Raptor mode is about what I expected, very kibbletastic. The top of the jet looks ok, but look at it from any other angle and you can see all the robo-baggage he’s carrying underneith. He also does not hold together very well at all. On the up side, Hasbro did a decent job reproducing all his tatts. In robot mode, things are only slightly better. He looks ok, but the panel that folds up to become his back doesn’t want to stay folded up, as it doesn’t lock into anywhere. He lacks the intricate details of Ironhide and just looks kind of bland. If Ironhide looked like a Deluxe toy shrunk down, Starscream here looks more like a Legends toy enlarged a bit. He’s serviceable, but not impressive, although he really doesn’t look like he belongs in the same line of figures as Ironhide.

So, I’m guessing Hasbro through most of their efforts into the Orbital Assault Carrier, as it’s actually pretty neat. As the box proclaims, it does indeed have three modes and all of them are solid enough, which isn’t always the case with triple changers. Starscream can also interact with each mode in a different way.

The in-package mode is the Assault Drone, which is just a big flying weapons platform. There’s a harness underneith that opens up and you can put Starscream in his Raptor mode in there, but he doesn’t really fit into place all that well and just winds up getting knocked around. It seems like they could have had some pegs or clips or some better way to secure him inside the harness.

Next up is the Carrier mode. This is the one I was most interested in, as it’s basically a little airborne aircraft carrier that Starscream can land on. It looks ok, although once again, despite a number of sockets on the flattop, Starscream doesn’t really lock onto it in any way. If you get him just right you can get his landing gear into the slots, but he’ll still slide off without much coaxing.

Last up is the Battle Station mode, which is the one for Starscream’s robot mode. It’s a weapons platform with a place for Starscream to stand when he’s in robot mode. It actually looks like some kind of crazy throne with armaments. I’m not sure how it works in battle, but it looks good and it makes Starscream look a lot more formidable than when he’s standing on his own.

This set was about fifteen bucks at Walmart. Not a bad deal considering the single carded Cyberverse figures sell for about half that. Does it sound like I was disappointed in this set? Well, I think it would be more accurate to say I was disappointed with the Starscream figure, and that’s probably mostly because I opened it right after opening Ironhide. Starscream is actually pretty close to what I expected out of these figures, but then Ironhide raised the bar a lot higher. The Orbital Assault Carrier is actually pretty cool, but I do wish that Starscream interacted with it a bit better. Nonetheless, I think the overall concept works ok, and I’m not deterred from picking up more of these sets.

Ironhide comes carded in his robot mode under a big cylindrical bubble. I still really like the deco on the Dark of the Moon packages. It’s such an improvement over the Revenge of the Fallen artwork. The back panel has a little bio of Ironhide along with photos of the toy and his tech specs. If you’re a MOC collector, these should hold up really well, although probably not as easy to store as the more traditional carded figures. Either way, I love the look here.

Even though Ironhide is packaged in his robot mode, I’m going to start with a look at his alt mode. He’s still a GMC Pick Up and for such a little guy, this is one great looking and amazingly detailed truck. He has about the same amount of robot kibble in his undercarriage as the Voyager Ironhide toy from the previous movies. He locks together fairly well and there’s not an excessive amount of seams, although there is a slight gap in the hood to allow for the way those panels slant together during transformation. I’m particularly impressed by the detail work in the grill that is not only meticulously sculpted but even has a painted GMC logo and the Road Armor logos on the bumper. That’s crazy detail, right there! Because of the nature of his vehicle form Ironhide has very few paint apps to speak of. His stacks are painted silver and you have some more silver paintwork on the grill and that’s about it. I’d say this alt mode would be perfectly acceptable as a slightly larger Scout class toy, so it’s all the more impressive here.

The Cyberverse figures also manage to mimic some of the MechTech weapon gimmickry of their larger cousins, and Ironhide here is a great example of that. He comes with two cannons, which can combine into a larger weapon. There are three sockets on the truck where these can be placed, with one on each door and the third on the roof. There’s also a clip in the truck bed. This kind of versatility with the weapon gives this little truck plenty of play and display options.

Transforming Ironhide is pretty simple, but what you get is simply amazing. Hasbro has managed to take all the character and personality of the Voyager toy and shrink it down to this little guy. He looks amazing, and I don’t mean for a Transformer this size. No, I really am blown away by how faithful the design remains to the larger toys. Once again, the MechTech style weapon gives some options for play and display. You can mount the two weapons to his arms, or you can have Ironhide hold the larger combined weapon, or peg that into either of his arms.

Ironhide’s robot mode has solid articulation with ball joints in the shoulders and upper legs, hinged elbows and knees, swivels in the elbows, and hinges in the ankles. The shoulders, however, are at a strange angle, which keeps his arms from doing what I’d like them to, but you can still get some nice poses from him. The only thing that bugs me is his head doesn’t turn. Of course, his ball joints are prone to popping off, particularly the arms, but it’s not as chronic a condition as I’ve seen with some of the larger Revenge of the Fallen toys.

Ironhide cost just under eight bucks, which may make some collectors wince, since he’s smaller than a Scout and yet he’s priced about the same. It doesn’t even seem like all that long ago when we could pick up Deluxes for just a buck or two more. Whether a toy this small is worth the price tag is up to you. Personally, I think for the amount of sculpt and engineering that went into this little guy, the price is not unwarranted. Besides, it places him right around the same range as a standard 3 3/4″ action figure. I was damned curious to check out these new Cyberverse toys, and I’ve got to say if Hasbro can keep up this level of engineering, I’m going to be buying a lot of them. And that’s coming from someone who rarely bought any of the Legends class figures.

Next time, we’ll check out one of the larger Cyberverse sets.