Motorcycle
Drone
Vehicle mode is a Cybertronian
motorcycle, obviously. This mode is very nice, and extremely show-accurate.
The only real problem I have with this mode is that the jet boosters on
the side are a bit too large proportionally, so they make Motorcycle Drone
slightly off-balance in this mode- tip him just more than a teeny bit on
way, and he falls over onto his jet booster. There also could be some more
detailing on the head and "seat", where there is no paint detailing whatsoever,
and little mold detailing. Still, most parts of this toy are detailed great;
the parts that connect the front wheel to the main body of the motorcycle,
the jet boosters, and the back of the motorcycle "seat" are all extremely
well detailed and very appealing. One might also notice that Motorcycle
Drone is pretty big for a basic-sized toy. In fact, one could almost pass
this off as a deluxe if the main body was just a tad bigger.
Motorcycle Drone has
two variants of his robot mode; his "wheeled" robot mode, which is the
show-accurate version, but is very unstable, due to the fact that there's
only one wheel standing him up. The other varaint, his "legged" robot mode,
merely requires taking the two halves of the leg-wheel apart and turning
them 90 degrees upward, resulting in two dorky and oddly small legs. Unfortunately,
these rather small legs don't hold up Motorcycle Drone that well, either,
so I recommend leaving Motorcycle Drone in his much cooler-looking "wheeled"
robot mode.
As for the rest of the
robot mode, it's very nice, and pretty show-accurate as well. There are
a couple of small differences between this mode and the show version, though:
1. The arms are still too large proportionally. 2. Motorcycle Drone has
two small fins on the sides of his head, which aren't there on the robot
mode in the show. 3. He has two claws on his arms instead of three. 4.
The midsection sticks out more on the bottom than the top, which isn't
there in the show. Still, those small quibbles aside, this mode is still
very nice (although the face still needs some paint detailing). It's very
well-balanced overall and very detailed. The gimmick in this mode is that,
if you press down on the spark insignia on the upper right arm, the plates
on the lower arm separate and the arm fires its missile. Sadly, the lower
arm plates tend to jiggle around entirely too much because of this gimmick,
which is why I recommend just leaving on the transparent plastic rubber
band wrapped around the arm in the package. It allows you to fire the missle
while still keeping the plates from jiggling about. Another problem I have
with this gimmick is that the "spark crystal" isn't really a spark crystal,
just a piece of transparent yellow plastic with a Vehicon symbol engraved
on the top. Rather cheap, and it doesn't look near as good as the real
spark crystals. The left arm doesn't fire its missile, unfortunately, and
just acts to "hold" its missile in place. A push-the-missile-to-fire function
would have been appreciated, at the very least. Lastly, the rear vehicle
tire sticks out a bit too much on Motorcycle Drone's back, and there's
no real place for it to lock in back there, so it looks rather out of place
from a straight-on side view. Still, this mode is overall great. I especially
love the ingenuity Hasbro used to create the robot head- just turn around
the upper part of the robot head to give it a different mouth! Neat idea.
A pretty neat toy, and
much better than its deluxe counterpart, Thrust.
The gimmick is rather annoying and tacky, however. Still, highly recommended.
Review by Beastbot