For Alternators fans: Rumble and Ravage will be Wal-Mart exclusives

[Tycho]

The rumor is that any week now, Rumble and Ravage will attack your local Wal-Mart.

They are a red Honda and black Jaguar respectively. I can't wait!

[Tycho]

I got them tonight! There were at least 3 of each car (6 cars total) to a case and probably 4 cases of them to be made into an endcap. Very nice. Especially Ravage, though I haven't opened either of them yet - I want some more sleep!

I'll post my reviews as soon as I've had time to play with them.

[Tycho]

Well Ravage is very sturdy and has some cool aspects to his transformation.

His wheels do not turn in car mode, and other than Hound, he is the only Alternator to not feature that linked sterring yoke.

In beast mode, he is pretty stiff and not too poseable. This is slightly disappointing as Alternators in the past have been very articulate. But how articulated does Ravage need to be? Overall he is the better Decepticon of the two new ones and he's well worth having!

Rumble is rather fragile, light cheap plastic. I don't care for Honda Civics to begin with, so there's not much to say about his vehicle mode, except this to Honda: design better looking cars! But that's not Hasbro's fault. Still they could have chosen a different vehicle to be Rumble after all.

His "working" pile drivers are this: spring-loaded (non-firing) missles basically. There's a very-hard-to-find (VHTF) switch on either arm that pops out the pile driver from one of the read halves of the car. If it hit an Autobot Alternator, I'm sure it would knock it down. But it doesn't pulsate back and forth, it just pops out once and then you have to reset it.

Rumble is also not too poseable. Under his hood and in his truck are his "back cannons" that were characteristic of his G1 look. You have to figure out how to move the tiny clips out of the folding out cannons in order to attach them onto his windshield behind his back. The instructions don't adequately explain this of course.

Rumble is maroon in color, which harkens back to G1 TOYS, whereas the G1 cartoon confused him and Frenzy (Soundwave's other human-form cassette tape warrior) and made the blue one the character of Rumble, and the maroon one, Frenzy. Well, everyone's concerned that Alternators will be ended altogether or put on hiatus as Hasbro focuses on the movie toys. Just the same, a blue one of these called "Frenzy" whom you can pretend is Rumble, (save for the fact that the license plate on the maroon one says Rumble) won't make much difference in the quality here.

For Star Wars collectors, I liken Rumble to the BattleDroid figure: you should buy him and need him to build up your opposition army, but you can certainly imagine better quality.

[vynsane]

man. best way to make me not interested in the latest alternators? make'em freakin' walmart exclusives. that sucks.

[Tycho]

Is there no Wal-Mart near you vynsnae ? Or is their track-record with exclusives terrible?

When I got mine, they seemed to have enough to last them a few days, but I haven't had occasion to go back to the store since I made that purchase over a week ago.