Newage are certainly the darlings of the Legends-class toys right now. Jousting with Magic Square on a regular basis, their latest 2-pack is a take on the minbots Bumblebee (Herbie) and Cliffjumper (Vanishing Point). And my, they ARE tiny!
Packaged in vehicle mode, the first thing to impress is the likeness to the penny-racer inspired G1 toys - perfectly squished SD versions of a VW Beetle and Porsche 924 Turbo, they are utterly adorable in every sense. Paint is just lovely here, with shiny, primary-coloured goodness just assaulting your lucky eyeballs, and Vanishing Point even comes with a set of 4 hydrofoils so that he can take to the water for even more action. Fort Max can hold both in his Titan-class mitts simultaneously, and you can imagine them fitting into any of his storage areas with plenty of room to spare.
Just. Adorable.
Transformation is clever, with everything making sense as they twist and turn inside out with perfect tolerance for such small figures. They do feel fragile at this scale, but so far everything has stayed solid and attached at all times. Once you get them into robot mode, they are near-perfect representations of the cartoon models, which is an incredible feat at this scale. They even manage to utilise a fake chest to maintain toon-proportions, quite the achievement even if some might mutter that it's not cricket to cheat like this. Personally I'm happy to get a figure that works so well in both modes, no matter how the designer manages it.
Only the lower legs feel like a sacrifice, with unsightly chunks of car-mode hanging from the back of their feet, but unlike Takara Tomy's Masterpiece Bumblebee, they're solid and not just a bunch of panels scrunched together like an afterthought. From the sides, everything is solidly squared away, though the blue windows are a minor distraction were I picking nits. The single panel on the back of the calves isn't ideal either, but from the front they're very nice indeed, and thanks to his colour scheme and blockier car-mode, I'd say Vantage Point (sod it, I'm calling him Cliffjumper from now on) is the better of the two in terms of presentation.
When it comes to articulation, you have everything you need, if not everything you might want. There's a good range of movement on the shoulders (no butterfly, but what did we expect at this scale?), 90 degree bend in the elbows and about 30 degrees on the knees due to that aforementioned panel on the back of the calves. There's a waist swivel, plenty of ankle pivot in all directions, heads can look up and around, and they have an ab-crunch. Yes, an ab crunch at this size - crazy!
They aren't short of accessories either. Cliffjumper has his hydrofoils and bazooka from Arrival from Cybertron, all painted in a snazzy silver. Bumblebee has a tiny pistol (unpainted) jetpack and little round yellow wheel-cover for his back to match the animation model. The attention to detail is fantastic.
So they're small, cute, fun and packed with play value, so what's the catch? Simple; they're £50 for a pair of robots that wouldn't have enough plastic to make Newage Soundwave's legs. That's very expensive for what they are, and they really strain your common sense. The literal "magic beans" of the collecting world - just show your significant other what you swapped £50 for and be prepared for a noisy trip to the NHS.
Literally the perfect scale - Pictured with Newage Soundwave and Magic Square Rumble/Frenzy
If, like me, you're heavily into Legends-scale bots at this stage, they're worth it. They fill a gap, they're the right size and for what they are, mechanical marvels. Like Micro Machines, it's the size that makes them so magical. How Bumblebee can be smarter than Takara Tomy's MP effort (with a far superior face-sculpt to boot) is beyond me.
Once again, I doff my cap to the masters at Newage.
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