Longview
Longview's alternate
mode is a pair of binoculars. Now, proportionally, the binoculars themselves
look just fine, but size-wise they don't. The whole point of Real Gears
seems to be having alternate modes that are at least believable at a glance,
but Longview is way too small in binoculars mode to pass as a real pair--
even if you're considering some of the smallest pairs of real binoculars,
Longview's still only about half that size. There's eyeholes you can see
alll the way through, but they're too close together for you to actually
look through them with both eyes. Longview's mold and paint detailing is
also rather sparse-- he has just enough mold detailing to pass mustard,
and sadly none of his molded-in buttons can be pushed in or anything. I
do like the "robot detailing" around the front of the binoculars, though,
like an Autobot is looking through Longview and you're seeing a magnified
view of his optics-- that was pretty clever. Longview also has a flip-up
panel on the topside of this mode, which has a few more molded-in buttons
and detailing, along with a picture of Cybertron
Crumplezone in vehicle mode, who he's apparently spying on (nevermind
that he's in the movie line, not the Cybertron line, natch). The picture
of Crumplezone is on upside down though, which is... odd. The overall color
scheme of yellow and black with a bit of gray is simple and rather unoriginal,
but still functional and it looks appropriate for binoculars.
Longview's robot mode
is nigh-perfect, with his only real flaws being a lack of weapons and still
having the "bare mininum" amount of paint and mold detailing. His proportions
are spot-on perfect, and his articulation is great-- he can move at the
head, shoulders, elbows, hips (at three points), knees, and ankles. It's
quite impressive how his robot mode integrates his entire binoculars mode
so seemlessly-- there's no binocular extras at all, to the point where
it's really hard to tell what he turns into without knowing beforehand.
His head design is also pretty good and, with the large optic visor, fits
a binocular-former perfectly.
Longview is one of the
better Real Gears, with a decent, if under-sized, binoculars mode and an
utterly fantastic robot mode design. The fact that his scale is too small
in binoculars mode is the only thing keeping him from getting a "must-buy"
rating of 9.0+, but I'd still recommend him.
Review by Beastbot