Soundwave's alternate mode is, interestingly enough, a Scion xB-like vehicle, but with many homages to his original tape deck form. He's got what look like the inner rolls of a cassette tape on his door sides, tape player buttons on the front of this mode, a power symbol on his roof, and another set of tape reels detailed on the back end of this mode with a volume bar, though the latter isn't detailed. These details are what really make the mode-- besides just homaging his G1 form and making Soundwave more Soundwave-y, the electric blue works REALLY well as a contrast color against the dark blue and black, and the gold works pretty well, too. Soundwave has transparent windows and headlights in this mode, but there's a very dark transparent color to the point where you can't see much in them, not to mention they're only thin shards of transparent plastic over a more solid plastic piece, which is honestly how I like it-- this way the windows look somewhat realistic, but you can't see his robot internals. And speaking of robot parts, there are none whatsoever on this mode-- not even on the underside! Now THAT'S impressive. If I had any complaints about this mode, they'd be that the paint detailing on his front and back ends is sparse, but that's a very minor gripe.
    Soundwave's robot mode proportions are very exaggerated, even for Animated. He's very squat, with bulky appendages (except for his upper legs), relatively long arms/short legs, and a relatively small head. Honestly, I'm just not all that of a fan of it-- it can work for some characters, but not so much Soundwave, IMO. Soundwave's head sculpt is also one of the few in Animated that I just can't get used to-- the sunglass-optics look cool, but the top of his head is ridiculously small when compared to the bottom faceplate. It just looks goofy, in my opinion. However, that said, the actual vehicle mode extras are fairly sparse in this mode-- the roof of his vehicle mode sticks up behind his back, but the circular speaker-like details on the sides of his head make them look like, well... speakers, an they don't get in the way of movement much. The only other real vehicle mode extras are the car doors on the back of his lower arms, but again, this is pretty minor. I like how two of the wheels rotate forward on his shoulders to look like another set of speakers, and his his chest has the classic tape player-like detailng on it, with barely-visible transparent volume bars visible. (It can't open, though.) The way Soundwave's lower legs transform-- but essentially turning them all the way around on a swivel joint at the knees while flipping around the front of the vehicle to become knee pads and closing up the windshield to become the feet-- is also positively inspired, though it has the aforementioned side effect of leaving the insides of his lower legs hollow. Soundwave's articulation is fairly good-- he can move at the neck, shoulders (at two points), elbows (at two points), wrists, waist, hips, knees, and ankles (at two points, though one is fairly restricted). The aforementioned bulkiness of the toy does limit this a bit, however. His hands have also been holded palm-open so he can strum his guitar, which is awesome.
    Speaking of his guitar, Soundwave comes with a giant (relatively) electric guitar that transforms into Laserbeak! The idea here is far greater than the actual toy itself. All you do to transform Laserbeak is push in the end part and split the halves of the guitar to form wings. All Laserbeak can do for movement is move his wings back and forth, so it's not like he has a lot of play value-- I almost consider him more of an accessory than I do a full-fledged extra Transformer. Proportionally he's pretty good, except for his feet, which are ludicrously tiny. The red paint on the guitar looks great against the black, though his optics really could've used some paint. But still, dudes-- BIRD THAT TRANSFORMS INTO GUITAR. That practically sells itself, it's so outrageous it's totally awesome. The tiny feet can clip onto either Soundwave's roof in vehicle mode or onto the back of either of his lower arms in robot mode-- and Laserbeak can clip to Soundwave in either bird or guitar mode, as well.
    Animated Soundwave isn't the best iteration of the character we've had over the years, but the toy has loads of personalty jam-packed into it, and of course it's hard to ignore the GUITAR-BIRD. He also has an excellent, extra-free vehicle mode with some great homages to his G1 self-- I'm just not a huge fan of his robot mode, bulky and stocky-looking as it is with the ridiculous-looking headsculpt. Still, recommended, mostly for the rock-out factor.

Review by Beastbot

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