A sound purchase

As much as I like the other War for Cybertron designs, I always felt Soundwave's was a little lacking. The robot mode seemed a bit too 'soundwave, only spikier' and the vehicle mode was just a van with his chestplate on the front.

Soundwave's robot mode feels a little awkward to me. Whilst Optimus and Megatron managed to incorporate a lot of the vehicle elements into the robot form, with Soundwave a lot of bits seem to hang off inelegantly. Some of this is accurate to the character design, so not all of the fault lies with the figure itself.

It isn't all bad, the figure is nicely articulated and there is a neat feature whereby his two weapons can be stored in his chest in either mode.

Vehicle mode is an improvement. Everything fits solidly and looks far more coherent than in robot mode. I wasn't too keen on the donwards slope of the roof when I first saw photos, but thankfully it is more subtle in person. The purple is perhaps a little dull, Soundwave lacks the boldness of the other War for Cyberton figures and I think that a shinier paintjob might have helped in this regard.

In the game, Sounwave interfaces with the Kaon security system by turning into an approximation of the G1 cassette deck mode, and thanks to the power of fanmodes, your's can do the same! Do yourself a favor and don't bother, there is no way to make it look right, and it is nowhere near as convincing as the microscope mode for RTS Perceptor, which was already a bit of a stretch.

I can't help but feel that I'm missing something with this figure, from what I can tell through my difficulty getting hold of him he has been quite popular, and I can't really tell why. He's not bad by any means, but he also doesn't really seem worth the scalpers' prices some people are paying.