Shortround
Shortround's vehicle
mode is a fairly realistic hovercraft, and it looks pretty nifty. There
are no robot extras to speak of, and everything looks very solid in this
mode. There's also a ton of mold detailing, with little headlights, wires,
and other mechanical detailing all over the place. There's also a pretty
good amount of paint detaling as well-- I especially like the bronze stripes
on the side of the mode, and the bronze-and-gray turbines on the top help
to add a bit more variety to the mode. I do question the wisdom of making
the windows PURPLE of all colors, though... that's kinda weird. The overall
color scheme of off-white, light blue, gray, and purple does fit together
pretty well, and it may be a nod to the G1 Seacons, a Decepticon combiner
team with alternate modes of robotic sea monsters. Whether this was an
intentional just coincidental, however, is not known for sure. The robot
hand-held gun can plug into the middle of this mode to serve as an extra
bit of firepower, and I prefer it connected, even if it detracts from the
real-ness of the mode a bit, since it covers up the exposed balljoint of
the robot head, though that's a pretty minor thing. Shortround's Cyber
Key gimmick is pretty simple, but it's a small toy anyways, you can't expect
too much-- plug the Cyber Key into the slot at the rear of the vehicle,
and the engines flip around to become (non-firing) torpedo launchers! A
nice "gotcha!" weapon, even if it isn't much. (It's also easily activated
in robot mode, as well.)
Speaking of Shortround's
robot mode, it's really oddly proportioned, which is definitely this toy's
main, near-crippling weakness. The legs look fine, and I can deal with
the skinny waist and wide chest, even if it is a bit mis-proportioned,
as it's meant to make Shortround look a bit more lithe. However, this look
is completely blown to scrap when you see his humongous, completely ridiculous
claw--arms. For one thing, even when bent, they reach past his knees. The
upper arms are also too wide when compared to the lower arms, and the claws
themselves don't even clamp together! They're frozen in that position.
There's a slot on the inside of the claws for holding Shortround's gun,
but it just looks really awkward, given that the claws can't turn sideways
at the elbows unless you unbend the arms. However, as a bit of a plus,
Shortround does have decent articulation at the other joints besides the
elbows-- he can move at the head, shoulders, hips, and knees, and most
of those are on ball joints. His heels are also bit enough to deal with
his slight back-heavyness, so he's fairly stable. Another proportion problem
that Shortround suffers from is his head-- it's too small, and is a bit
too far back from the front of the chest for my liking. Plus, it just plain
looks goofy-- the scuba-like mask and the large optics just doesn't look
right for any Transformer, let alone an evil Decepticon.
Shortround has a very
nice vehicle mode and a great color scheme, but his robot mode just looks
way too awkward and doofy for me to recommend him-- there's a ton of Cybertron
TFs more worth your money than this guy. I can understand Hasbro wanting
to make Transformers look unique from one another, but this is going a
bit too far, methinks.
Review by Beastbot