Clone
Trooper
Clone Trooper's vehicle
mode is an ARC-170 fighter. I'm not too familiar with the vehicles seen
in Episodes II and III, as I'm not a big Star Wars fan, but I can only
imagine it's pretty accurate in its proportions, and there's pretty much
no robot extras. The feet on the rear underside don't quite mesh with their
surrounding parts, and the hands stick out just a tad below the wings,
but those are really small quibbles. I also can't imagine that the wing-mounted
guns are as big in the movies as they are on the toy, but obviously sacrifices
have to be made for safety reasons, since each gun fires a spring-loaded
missile. As far as the positives go, the ARC-170 fighter has paint apps
everywhere there needs to be any, and although the color of off-white,
gray, black, and maroonish red isn't particularly good, it doesn't clash
and it's apparently movie-accurate, so I can't voice and real complaints
there. As far as features in this mode, besides the aforementioned missile
launchers, the rear two guns can move up and down and side to side, the
front two cockpits can open and close so you can fit the Clone Trooper
mini figurine inside them, and panels can open up on the top and bottom
of each wing for "flight mode". Overall, a pretty solid vehicle mode.
Clone Trooper's Mech
mode isn't as good as his vehicle mode, but it's still a bit above-average
for a Star Wars Transformer. The proportions certainly aren't perfect,
but they aren't bordering on ugly like some other toys in the line-- the
arms could stand to be a bit bulkier and the legs a bit longer, but other
than that his proportions are decent. Clone Trooper does have quite a bit
of vehicle mode kibble, but both of the kibble wings actually accent the
mode instead of detract from it-- I especially like how the front part
of the vehicle mode splits in half to form a "samurai skirt". Using the
turbines as the shoulders was also pretty ingenious and relocating the
aft guns to the shoulders was also a good idea, to give Clone Trooper a
bit more firepower in this mode as well. The kibble on the sides of his
head and behind his upper back do just look like random kibble and don't
add anything to the mode, however. The head sculpt looks a bit too human
as far as the actual face goes, but otherwise it looks very nice, and more
like a generic Transformer than a recognizable Star Wars character, which
is a positive in my opinion. Clone Trooper also has pretty good articulation--
he can move at his shoulders (at two points), elbows (at two points), wrists,
waist, hips (at three points), knees, and he also has slight side-to-side
head movement. What's really weird is that his knee joints are WAY too
far down on his leg, being barely higher than the ankles! There's nothing
inherent in the overall design that would have made this necessary without
major modifications, so this was a really weird decision on the designers'
part. Oh, one last positive thing about this mode-- Clone Trooper can actually
hold his guns very well, which is sadly a rarity among the toyline.
Clone Trooper is a bit
above-average for a Star Wars Transformer, with an excellent vehicle mode
and a nice Mech mode, though it does suffer from some minor kibble and
odd articulation/proportion problems. Mildly recommended.
Review by Beastbot