2012 San Diego Comic Con Exclusive GI Joe/Transformers Crossover HISS Tank/Shockwave

One Sentence Review: I didn’t think Hasbro could screw a toy up this badly.

Now for a little more detail on just how badly Hasbro screwed the pooch.  I didn’t really look that closely at the pics of this before I got it, so some of this probably should have been obvious.

Soundwave – First off, he’s too big, completely out of scale with the figures.  Scale aside, they can’t hold him in any way, he s essentially a backpack for Destro.  The tapes fall out if you tip him over, and with how small they are it’s going to be really hard not to lose them.  Also, instead of texturing the tapes, they would have done better to just to plastic rectangles with stickers.  That would have looked much better.

Energon Cubes and Cart – I thought this would be a really neat accessory.  I was wrong.  The cubes themselves are cheaply made.  They used the molds for the three elements of the MASS Device figure set with the innards painted gray and the outside translucent pink.  Of course, this has the effect of making them NOT LOOK EVEN VAGUELY LIKE ENERGON CUBES.  The translucent pink cover is not even glued to the base so they easily fall apart.  Then there is the logic of the cart to begin with.  What exactly is it for?  I assumed there had to be some kind of storage for at least the cubes, if not the whole cart, like in some kind of cargo bay.  Is the BAT supposed to push it and follow the tank?  Stupid.  My friends Dom suggested that the idea was to use the cart to bring the cubes to the tank to refuel.  Okay…maybe.  But then I would assume there was at least a compartment to put one.

Destro – I’m not sure what he is supposed to be wearing, but he looks like a refugee from a post apocalyptic sci-fi B movie.

BAT – The BAT is okay, but I’m not sure why he has three limb accessories when his backpack only stores two.  In order to put him in the gun turret of the tank, you have two put his legs in at a slight angle.  They can’t face forward as his legs are too wide with the holster on one side and a block on his leg on the other.  Not even noticeable if you don’t look hard, but it’s still not well designed.  On the other hand, he could drive, but as I understand GI Joe fiction, a BAT has only limited ability to perform complex functions like driving.  Seems a bit silly.

Shockwave Barrel Attachment – What a let down.  First off, you have to remove the missile to put the barrel on.  It is just gray plastic, well molded to look like Shockwave’s barrel, but no paint at all or ever stickers.  Not even the opening of the barrel is painted.  They couldn’t spare the purple paint or at least a sticker sheet?  Also, they really should have designed it so that it attached around the barrel and had a hole in it so you could still fire the missile through it.

Some more issues.

When I first heard about this, I assumed they would use the original HISS mold since they used the original Skystriker last year.  Instead they used one from a newer series.  Talk about cheap.  I always wanted a HISS when I was a kid, I would have loved to have the original mold.

In the end, this toy had huge potential.  Someone came up with an amazing idea.  Then they managed to completely, totally, utterly, and spectacularly fail at every single aspect of actually turning the idea into a toy.  Even the metallic purple paintjob and painted Decepticon logos ended up as a fail.  They look nice, but there is no other detail.  A few stickers would have been nice, maybe for some controls in the cockpit.

I also don’t understand the logic of it.  Last year, they made Starscream in vehicle mode.  This year, they made a vehicle mold for Shockwave.  If they would just stick to actual vehicle molds, they would be a lot more popular.

I am almost afraid to imagine what they are going to do next year.  Perhaps P.A.C./R.A.T.s repainted as Mini Cons?  A MOBAT painted as Brawl (get it, it’s already green).  Perhaps a Snow Cat painted as Snow Cat? 🙂

Jokes aside, there are some things that would work.  How about a Cobra Rattler repainted as Powerglide?  I could get behind that if it’s the original mold, and it would go great with the Skystriker Starscream.  How about a two pack of a VAMP painted like Swindle and a RAM painted like Groove?  I’m sure they won’t do these though, because they could possibly be good ideas.

Thanks for reading!