Autobot
Camshaft (Alternator)
(NOTE: Because this is a repaint, this is not a full-blown review. This mainly covers any changes made to the mold and the color scheme, and merely compares it to Alternator Prowl. For a review on the mold itself, read the review of Alternator Prowl here.)
The Prowl mold has gotten
remolded as Camshaft, after the G1 character of the same name. However,
other than having a gray car for a vehicle mode, Alternator Camshaft bears
no resemblance to his G1 self. He has no robot mode remolding at all, which
is kinda cheap considering he's the first repaint of the figure, and up
until now all (non-exclusive) first repaints of Alternators have all have
some fairly significant remolding done to them. The only real remolding
done to Camshaft is in the vehicle mode-- Prowl's police sirens have been
removed, and a little rear spoiler has been added. However, even this isn't
really significant when you realize that these remoldings were already
done for the blue variant of Binaltech (Japanese Alternator) Prowl, released
over a year before this toy was. They should've at least given Camshaft
a G1-accurate head or something.
Regardless, the color
scheme itself is pretty good, if not the most exciting Alternator color
combo. The gray and black by itself is rather dull, so the vehicle mode
isn't anything really exciting to look at. Many people have complained
that Camshaft's gray isn't a metallic silver paint all over like Alternator
Silverstreak, but I don't think it's that big of a deal. The metallic
flake glitter is still present in the gray plastic, so it still looks reasonably
realistic. I DON'T like the swirls inherent in the plastic, though, as
that kind of detracts from the look a bit. What really spices up the colors
in robot mode, though, is the addition of a very attractive shade of blue,
along with some silver and color highlights. The gray/gold/blue color combo
in the face is especially cool-looking. However, in one of the weirdest
assembly errors I've ever seen, paint apps that were clearly meant for
the front of Camshaft's upper arm pieces have instead been painted on the
BACK of those arm pieces. You can swap the arms to have them face the front,
as in the picture above, but this makes it a bit harder to get the arms
into their assigned place when transforming the figure. One nice nod that
the robot mode gives to the G1 character is that the Autobot symbol is
in the middle of the left arm-- an odd place for an allegiance symbol,
to be sure, but it was that way on G1 Camshaft. Also going with the tradition
of Alternators recently, Camshaft has an official state license plate,
this time one from Rhode Island that says "CAMSHFT".
Alternator Camshaft
really should've been remolded more from Prowl, but he's still a fairly
good Alternator mold with a good color scheme-- the blue and gold in robot
mode look particularly good. Still, Prowl still has a more interesting
alt mode and just fits his G1 self more, so between the two toys I still
have to recommend Prowl slightly more.
No Stats
Review by Beastbot