If I was held at gunpoint for some insane reason and asked who my favorite Transformers character is I’d choose Soundwave.

As Megatron’s right hand bot, the Soundwave of the 80’s was a mini tape deck that implored the use of micro cassette soldiers to do his dirty work. Sending the thugs Rumble and Frenzy along with his falcons Laserbeak and Buzzsaw–followed by Ravage the panther and Ratbat…the rat bat–was what made him cooler than the Megatron P38 pistol and all of the seeker jets combined.

Over the years Soundwave came in many different incarnations including a jet, satellite and currently an odd truck with a cow catcher on the front.

Disliked them all!

But, what I did like was the Scion xb bass van from the Transformers Animated series. Originally made as a toy in the cartoon that danced and played music, Soundawave was made to evolve into one of the coolest versions of the character since the 80’s tape deck.

As the bass van, Soundwave was more musically inclined by including his main falcon Laserbeak in the form of a Flying V guitar.

The package; as with all Transformers Animated figures is full of great character art and on the back of the card is cartoon related info and more art/photos of the character itself.
The toy is pretty sturdy as the van and Laserbeak clips to the top in what looks to be a pretty cool, yet not to scale, strapping of the guitar to the roof.

Changing Soundwave from van to robot is not too hard until you get to the chest which needs that extra push to line it up just below his head. Other than that, Soundwave is the same skill level as Bumblebee.

Changing Laserbeak from Flying V to falcon takes 2 seconds by flipping out the wings and pressing the guitars neck in to make the tail. Once Laserbeak is a falcon, he can clip to Soundwaves arms via the door panels.

Parts of the van that compare with the tape deck are the doors which have graphics matching that of a tape reel and his front bumper has all of the buttons such as play, stop, fast forward and rewind. As a robot, Soundwave has a clear chest panel that has equalizer bars and once again the operation buttons.

Soundwave is capable of holding Laserbeak in guitar form and playing him for his fellow Decepticons–he takes tips in his G-cord!

At the end of the cartoon featuring Soundwave in the Animated series, Soundwave is defeated but not destroyed; he is shown in the form of what looks to be a tape deck, but for the modern times only MP3’s will work in his hard drive.
I give a lot of credit for how Soundwave was treated in the stories on the Transformers Animated cartoon.

The toy itself is rated high as far as I’m concerned. The detail is nice, the ease of use is very good and it’s Soundwave, so automatically he is awesome!

GRADE: A

• Tweet