Speed
Dial 800
Speed Dial's alternate
mode is, appropriately enough, a cell phone, and he's just the right size
for one. In fact, he's one of the most realistic-looking out of the Real
Gears-- if it wasn't for the stickers applied where the LCD screens should
be, he'd be pretty much a dead ringer for a real cell phone at a casual
glance. He has no robot mode extras at all, which certainly helps. Speed
Dial has a fairly dull color scheme of gray and silver, though he has a
pretty darned nice shade of metallic blue used as well, which spices things
up a little. It's certainly a realistic color scheme, though, and for Real
Gears I'd definitely go for realistic schemes over attractive ones. There's
paint apps and details wherever there needs to be-- each "button" has the
appropriate numbers and letters, there's the appropriate symbols where
they should be, so no worries there. The stickers used for the LCD screens
are full of neat details, too, including "area reception" and "battery
charge" icons, in addition to the time being 7:47-- pretty cute, considering
July 4th, 2007 was the movie's original release date. The "glow-in-the-dark"
Autobot symbol sticker on the backside of the cell phone is really cool,
too. The only real complaint I have about this mode is that none of the
buttons can actually be pushed in, they're molded to look like they can
be. Other than that, it's a pretty much flawless cell phone mode, for what
can be expected.
Speed Dial's transformation
is very straightforward-- you just basically unfold the bottom half of
the phone and swirl the top half of the phone around. Speed Dial's robot
mode looks rather funky-- I HATE the ridiculously huge optic he has on
his head-- and he has wrench-like claws instead of actual hands-- though
I don't mind the latter, it just makes him look more unique. His arms are
a bit on the puny side, however, and the way his legs connect to his main
body is pretty weird. They connect to the sides of the middle of his stomach,
instead of down near the bottom of his waist where they should connect--
not to mention that his upper legs are pretty tiny when compared to his
lower legs. Those are his only MAJOR proportional problems in this mode,
however. He does have good articulation, though-- he can move at the shoulders,
elbows (at two points), wrists, hips (at three points), and knees. He can
also move at the neck, but you have to lift up his LCD screen backpack
to enable him to. Said backpack also interferes with his movement a bit,
so you can't get quite as many poses out of him as the above articulation
descriptions would apply, but he's still pretty posable.
Speed Dial has an excellent,
nearly flawless cell phone mode and a fairly good robot mode. The latter
does suffer from some proportional problems and a big piece of kibble on
his back, but he's by no means a bad toy-- just not quite one of the best
Real Gears.
Review by Beastbot