Post by OptiMack Prime on Jul 12, 2008 18:25:00 GMT 7
Young bots—can't live with 'em, can't melt 'em down for spare parts.
a transformer with old man gut. fancy that.
Ratchet is your stereotypical grumpy old coot character on the Transformers Animated show and is the second oldest autobot in the stranded bot group. (the first is the Ship-Last resort weapon they use: Omega Supreme)
ratchet is mean, bitter, short-tempered, sarcastic, defensive, and has NO people skills whatsoever (even if he believes he does)
but despite all his shortcomings, he is one competent soldier and medic and at times serves as a mentor to Optimus Prime in times of doubt. all in all, he's alright. mostly.
Ratchet's toy is from wave 2 of the deluxe line and again this is a pretty good example of great if not amazing toy engineering, since Animated is best known for it's wacky-cool and angular-natural designs, each animated toy made is often remarkably show-accurate. (sure there are some color disparities that need to be filled out by the buyer himself but over-all they're pretty satisfactory.)
in ratchet this shows in his broken crest and "liver spots" on the face.
ratchet transforms into a stylized ambulance which is--strangely enough--the smallest Altmode in terms of toon scale among the whole of the autobots. and strangely enough, in robot mode he's even bigger than Bulkhead the largest among the regular autobots.
oh Hasbro, you so crazzzyyy!!!
Call me a Tool and i will beat the slag outta you with surgical precision!
Ratchet comes with a variety of tools (a Servo-Wrench, A Can opener (wtf?) a Screw Driver, and a disturbingly threatening hammer) all of which have C-clamp mechanism that help them attach to the magnet mechanism in his arms to simulate him holding them. they also store in his robot-mode backpack but cannot be stored inside him in his Altmode...that just sucks.
Fear my magnet-thin--what the frag are these things anyway??
Ratchet has this neat spring-deployed feature that shows off his magnets which in my personal opinion look more like mechanical bananas. though pretty cool in theory, it gets in the way of posing him in close-fisted/boxing stances as the magnets have hair-triggers. and speaking of poseability...
Ratchet has a satisfactory amount of articulation from swivel joints and hinges more than balljoints. in fact the only balljoint found on this toy is in his neck. (which itself has a cool "auto-transform" feature when his backpack is pushed into place in robot mode,this action activated a trigger that releases his head from his torso in a cool cartoon-transformation-sequence-like manner)
his swivel joint on the thighs where the red part meets the white in a bicycle shorts-like manner is very loose and prone to frequently(and annoyingly) pop off.
d**n it hasbro!
this is easily fixed by the superglue technique that widens the head of the swivel enough to allow it articulation and not pop off.
his "war-wound on his left forearm can house the EMP generator accessory found on the Lockdown toy. this provides a bit of show-accuracy even more to the toy, since following the story of the show, lockdown actually stole the component from ratchet during an event in Ratchet's service in the war.
awesome.
final thoughts:
ratchet is highly satisfactory in terms of gimmickry and look, but he's average when it comes to poseability and articulation. he's no Prowl, we know but hey, old bots aren't as nimble as they used to be, right?
also what's good about this mold is it's potential for a retool.
Animated Ironhide, anyone?
and at 700 php, (roughly around 13$) he's a good buy for a deluxe toy.
8 out of 10
