Meantime
Meantime's alternate
mode is, appropriate, a digital watch. It's one of the less convincing
alternate modes of the Real Gear toys, though, because of some rather obvious
robot extras- like the hips, shoulders, and waist halves visible on the
sides of the face of the watch. It's also fairly obvious that the parts
where the "wristband" connects are the tips of Meantime's feet hooked together--
the two different "wristband" halves don't connect like a normal watch's,
but instead overlap each other a bit, which does look rather odd. (In case
you're curious, a small kid could probably fit his wrist through the watch
with the wristband closed, but definitely not an adult. The robot head
also sticks out a little from one side of the watch's face, but it manages
to look like buttons that you could "set" the watch with, so that was actually
a pretty creative way to make the robot head fit in with the look of this
mode. The overall color scheme of blue and gray is pretty dull, but certainly
realistic for a digital watch, and at least the couple of orange and gunmetal
gray paint apps help to add contrast to the figure and spice things up
a bit. The colors given to the watch face are very realistic, with the
blue digital surface looking semi-luminous. (The time on the watch is 5:17,
which corresponds to the date the final trailer for the Transformers Movie
was released-- May 17th.) The mold detailing is very, VERY nice on Meantime,
probably the best out of any of the Real Gear toys-- he's got little stylistic
details all over the place, and the back side of the watch face is especially
detailed with little gears and dial details molded in.
Meantime's robot mode
is quite good, certainly much better than his watch mode. The face sculpt
is very good and fitting for the alternate mode, and the light piping used
for the eyes works very well. The overall proportions are very nearly spot-on
(with the only exception being that the shoulders are a bit too wide and
the head a tad too small), though I wish his arms weren't hollow on the
inside-- it sort of cheapens the look of them a bit. The feet also look
a little weird, being twice as thick at the heels as they are at the lower
legs, and Meantime essentially having two feet back-to-back at the end
of each leg-- still, it helps with his stability and doesn't hinder movement,
so this is only a minor downside. Meantime has excellent articulation--
he can move at the head, shoulders (at three points), elbows, wrists, hips
(at two points), and knees. And, given that he doesn't have any real alternate
mode kibble in this mode at all to hinder movement, you can get a ton of
poses out of him. (The only really obvious "watch part", his chest, looks
pretty good on him and adds to the look of the figure, in my opinion.)
Like most Real Gears, though, he really does need a weapon to show off...
Meantime is one of the
weaker Real Gear toys, mostly due to his unconvincing watch mode with its
overly bulky wrist straps, but he does have an excellent robot mode and
is still quite a decent toy overall. Mildly recommended.
Review by Beastbot