Onslaught's vehicle mode has a shape that's pretty much the opposite of his original G1 form. His original toy had an exceedingly long military truck transport alt mode, while this one has a very squat, compact S.W.A.T. police vehicle alt mode. It still works, though, as it's definitely an armored vehicle that has some firepower-- namely, the twin guns on the top, under the rather odd-looking SWAT shield attachment (which can be taken off easily, I might add). By pressing the light red button near the back of said twin guns (which are on a rotating turret), one of two sound effects will be emitted. One is a very satisfying machine gun fire in which the bases of the gun light up red. The other is obviously broken-- it's supposed to be a cycling siren sound, with red light-up sirens to go with it, but they must have forgotten to program the loop into it or something, because you hear only one short wail for a fraction of a second and then it stops. Later releases of this figure have fixed this problem, though. There's also two flip-down claws at the front of this vehicle mode, to help cut through those dastardly mobs. The color scheme is very close to Onslaught's G1 colors, with blue and green being the primary colors with a bit of gray and black. The addition of transparent orange makes for a nice accent color, and though I would've hoped for a bit more green, overall Onslaught has a pretty rockin' color scheme. The mold detailing is also very good, with details like rivets and vents molded almost everywhere on his body that it makes sense. (One little fan-nod on this toy is the "MONZO" words on the side, which is the Internet name of the Transfan who notified Hasbro that the Onslaught name copyright was available again. The numbers under the name are his birthdate.) Having translucent headlights and taillights is a nice touch, too. There's no robot extras in this mode, with the exception of Onslaught's arm-gun which pokes out a bit from the bottom, but that's a minor nitpick.
    Onslaught's transformation is fairly simple for an Ultra-- just complicated enough to escape the "easy" transformation difficulty rating-- but it creates a very imposing robot mode. (And no, before you ask, he doesn't combine with other Transformers like G1 Onslaught-- apparently Hasbro wanted to make the toy better by not having him combine with anyone else.) The head sculpt is incredibly well-done, with a transparent visor and lots of paint detailing (though no light piping, sadly). His twin guns stick up behind his back, but other than those two things and his color scheme is general design is completely different from G1 Onslaught's. It's more bulky and "meched up". The proportions are pretty good when you take that into consideration, though the size difference between the upper and lower legs is pretty significant. (You can also see into the lower legs a bit-- probably my biggest beef with the robot mode.) Other minor beefs I have with this mode are that there's a bit of a gap between his head and his chest, his guns can't be brought forward over his shoulders to fire, and there's a noticeably hollow spot behind his fists. These are all fairly minor things, though, and don't take away much from the impressive look this mode has. I love how the vehicle mode claws form the shoulders, and how it looks like the front of the vehicle mode compresses down and fits into Onslaught's chest, even though it actually doesn't. Onslaught also has a gun that flips forward from his right lower arm if you press a button, and though it's a cool gimmick, I honestly would've preferred something handheld better. His other hand has a flip-out tab that you can mount Onslaught's SWAT shield on (not pictured so you can see more of his robot mode-- it's pretty big proportionally), which is a nice touch. Onslaught articulation is quite good-- he can move at the head, shoulders (at three points), elbows, wrists, hips (at two points), and knees (at two points). His large feet and lack of back-heavy kibble provide him with some pretty good stability as well, so you can get a good number of cool poses out of him.
    Universe Onslaught is the best original Ultra-class mold they've come up for the line as of this writing (1/09), and though he has a few niggling problems like hollow-looking legs in robot mode, they don't add up to much. A highly recommended purchase.

Review by Beastbot

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