Reflector
(BotCon 2016 Attendee-Only Exclusive)
(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 Combiner Wars Shockwave. For a review on the mold itself, read the review of Combiner Wars Shockwave here.)
The "troop builder" set
collectively referred to as Reflector isn't Beast Wars-themed like the
rest of the BotCon 2016 exclusives, but is rather pretty much G1, with
the bio placing them in a "pseudo-IDW" universe. On a first glance, you
may be forgiven for thinking that each of the Reflector components (which
are completely identical, unlike the last few years of troop builder sets)
have the same basic plastic colors as CW Shockwave, just with different
paint apps. However, the purple is a bit more of a "blue-hued", royal purple,
compared to Shockwave's more "red-hued" purple that's a bit darker. The
gray plastic used for Reflector is a more solid, flat color, compared to
the milkier color of Shockwave. In both cases, I prefer Reflector's shades
slightly more. Reflector's transparent plastic is a really nice shade of
transparent dark green-- kind of a "forest-y" color-- that just looks fantastic
against both the purple and the gray, and fits with how Reflector was colored
in the G1 cartoon. Just from these three colors themselves, there's a good
amount of color variation, especially in robot mode, but there are a pretty
good number of paint apps added to "spice Reflector up", as it were. There's
some silver and light red on the lower robot arms, as well as silver surrounding
the chest and a purple line across said chest to make it look at least
a LITTLE less "Shockwave-y". There's a nice combo of light red, periwinkle,
and gray paint on the lower legs/sides of the vehicle mode, which also
is a nice extra detail. Speaking of the vehicle mode there is also a decent
amount of black to enhance the "camera-like" features of the mode, with
black paint along the top of the rear and middle, as well as around the
front "lens" portion. There's a couple of minor red camera-like paint apps
in vehicle mode to boot, and a small "REFLECTOR" name on the top middle
of the figure. What's REALLY awesome is that, with three Reflectors, the
BotCon people have found a way to "combine" all three vehicle modes to
form a "mega camera" mode with proportions a bit closer to the G1 camera
mode, with one lens and bulker sides. Basically, one forms the center lens
section and one forms each side. The way this is done is by pulling down
the sides (arms) of the center portion and then linking up the center robot's
arms with the side robots' arms, with each of the side robots' other arms
connecting together in the back around the center robot's rear peg. Again,
ingenious idea, and I'm glad they figured out a way to do this, though
the legs for the side guys don't really do anything beyond just kind of
hang there at the top. I wish they somehow formed something a bit boxier,
but the whole thing stays together fairly well, and again, this was never
intended for the mold, so you have to consider that. It's a pretty darned
nice "extra".
Reflector has a new
headsculpt, which apparently was NOT made by FunPub, but Hasbro, and was
left unused. It does look VERY accurate to Reflector's G1 cartoon head,
with a very fairly rounded face and head, with a flat gray face and red
eyes. No complaints about the new head here; otherwise, no mold changes
have been made compared to CW Shockwave.
BotCon 2016 Reflector
has some pretty good colors with a good number of paint apps, though the
main colors being similar to CW Shockwave's may steer away some people
given the exclusive prices. The extra combined "camera mode" is sheer genius
given that there's no remolding beyond the head, but I wish they had given
us more concete instructions, as opposed to slightly different "fan combinations"
(I picked the most stable one above), and the combined camera mode is weak
in some respects. Normally I'd recommend these if you're in the market
for exclusives, but just a couple weeks before I wrote this review news
of "Siege" Refraktor was revealed (10/18), which features a deluxe mass-retail
version of the character with a much better-looking camera mode if you
buy three, making this release a bit obsolete for many fans.
Review by Beastbot