My friend Taz has made a mention that Ratchet rhymes with hatchet. Well, it definately doesn't rhyme with sachet, that's for sure. But Ratchet is the toy I'm opening today, as part of Transformers Animated week over Animated August. So what does this have to do with hatchets and sachets?
Ratchet comes with the standard TF:A packaging. I'm not going to repeat myself about how I like the drawing of the figure on the front title card or what's so great about that. Nope. What they do highlight are the tools, of which two are visible through the bubble, and all 4 are visible on the back of the card. Because of the tools, the bubble is less "wasted" as it is less empty.
The vehicle mode is adequate. However, it reminds me of a weird fascade or shell with something hidden inside. I uess the construction of the windows and the windscreen doesn't help there. The paint is again adequate - the windows are painted, the weird Ratchet logo on the side and the autobots logon on the hood, but there is nothing exceptional about it. One downside about the vehicle mode is that there is a hinge badly disguised as the ... I was going to say door handle, but that's not where the door handle should be. It's just badly disguised and protudes way too much from the vehicle.
The robot mode... looks like someone slapped arms and legs onto the front of a van. Literally. They could have hidden the hood and stuff, but they elected to leave it intact. There's also quite a bit of left over kibble on the arms - again, it would have been easy to sold that by making them wings or something instead of just kibble. Oh well. There are some pegs to plug the tools into in the robot mode, and that increases the overall height of Ratchet. I'm not sure whether I'm a fan of that look or not.
Overall, this figure is a bit of a disappointment. I mean, there were redeeming features in all the other figures I've opened this week, but I have to say, there's close to nothing I could find about Ratchet that interests me. I'm not going to take a hatchet to it though, but maybe I should rather bury the hatchet? OK, that's a bad pun.
Ratchet comes with the standard TF:A packaging. I'm not going to repeat myself about how I like the drawing of the figure on the front title card or what's so great about that. Nope. What they do highlight are the tools, of which two are visible through the bubble, and all 4 are visible on the back of the card. Because of the tools, the bubble is less "wasted" as it is less empty.
The vehicle mode is adequate. However, it reminds me of a weird fascade or shell with something hidden inside. I uess the construction of the windows and the windscreen doesn't help there. The paint is again adequate - the windows are painted, the weird Ratchet logo on the side and the autobots logon on the hood, but there is nothing exceptional about it. One downside about the vehicle mode is that there is a hinge badly disguised as the ... I was going to say door handle, but that's not where the door handle should be. It's just badly disguised and protudes way too much from the vehicle.
The robot mode... looks like someone slapped arms and legs onto the front of a van. Literally. They could have hidden the hood and stuff, but they elected to leave it intact. There's also quite a bit of left over kibble on the arms - again, it would have been easy to sold that by making them wings or something instead of just kibble. Oh well. There are some pegs to plug the tools into in the robot mode, and that increases the overall height of Ratchet. I'm not sure whether I'm a fan of that look or not.
Overall, this figure is a bit of a disappointment. I mean, there were redeeming features in all the other figures I've opened this week, but I have to say, there's close to nothing I could find about Ratchet that interests me. I'm not going to take a hatchet to it though, but maybe I should rather bury the hatchet? OK, that's a bad pun.
The front of the car - the one with the Autobot logo - should be pushed in to give him his trademark "old man gut". Give it a try and don't be afraid of breaking it :). BTW, Hasbro had to put that "pulse" symbol instead of the Red Cross one since the Red Cross is trademarked. And now you know :D.
ReplyDeleteOoooh, thanks for the info. Sadly, Ratchet is back in the box already...
ReplyDeleteThe extra tools he comes with are pretty cool. Do those fit inside of him in vehicle mode or they only attach in robot mode?
ReplyDeleteThey do fit inside the vehicle mode, but it's a tight fit, and it interrupts with the vehicle as a whole.
ReplyDeleteThe robot mode looks so awful its hilarious! kinda like some of the bootleg transformers
ReplyDeleteYeah, I have issues with the robot modes of most of these animated. Some of them are nice. Others are a nice try!
ReplyDelete