Robot Paradise RP-01 Acoustic Wave (Masterpiece Soundwave)

Robot Paradise RP-01 Acoustic Wave (Masterpiece Soundwave)

Ye ole Fans Toys protective film sheet.

Bio cards

To save space, this figure comes mis-transformed in the tray.

Acoustic Wave’s backplate can be rotated.

How his butt should look.

The back of his legs also requires panels to be folded down to get him to look right.

To fold down the white panels on the inner sides of his legs, fold out the knee first to unlock the flap.

…. then fold everything back up.

Since this is a Third Party, non-official item, it doesn’t come with a faction symbol. It’s best to get some stickers from Reprolabels/Toyhax.com to make this guy more “toon-accurate”. Alternately, you can also use “water slide decals” to make them look even more flawless (you won’t see the edges, unlike with stickers) but I’ve never really had the proper skills, or time (usually needs to be individually cut first) to work with those.

For water slide decals, most folks recommend the one from Ocean Studio. Here:
http://www.unclebillyshop.com/decals-poster/ocean-logo-decals.html

To apply stickers, I find the best way to stick the stickers on is to use the tip of a blade, or a flat, small-tipped object, this way you have more control over the application, as compared to using one’s stubby fingers. You can also use the blade to help gently peel off a corner of the sticker in case you didn’t center it right and need to re-apply.

Cold and calculating, Soundwave is Megatron’s right hand man. Eternally loyal to only Megatron, he functions as the Decepticons’ “communications officier”. His highly sensitive sensors are able to pick up the slightest of radio chatter from the Autobots and can even read the electrical thought impulses from the brains of other nearby Transformers and even humans.

Originally meant to be Fans Toy’s second release way back in 2012, this figure was put on the backburner when Takara unveiled their official release. It’s presumed Fans Toys redesigned and brought this back under their new “Robot Paradise” banner in case Has-Tak would sue them for copyright reasons (a year later and it hasn’t happened yet though).

Acoustic Wave stands roughly 9.25 inches tall and weighs 650 Grams.

Diecast parts include:
– main joints
– “control buttons”
– eject button
– knees
– locks for the legs
– sections of the lower legs
– feet

I love the animation model accurate hands, they look great and put the Takara version’s hands to shame.

Assembled/ inspected by QC 32?

Sigh… for the life of me, I just cannot get his left shoulder to tab into place. Dang…

The ab crunch ball joint really adds more workable poses to this figure.

Shoulder rocker launcher. I don’t recall Soundwave ever using this to fire actual rockets in the cartoons. Emit soundwaves maybe?

He also comes with his Concussion Blaster. To get the tip to pop out, you’ll have to use a tool to push it out from the underside.

Gotta love the animation accurate look of this guy! It’s like Soundwave walked right out of the screen.

Acoustic Wave also comes with clear “Energon Cubes”. To plug them into his chest, you have to take the top off first.

They don’t really fit that well, though. There’s no locking grip and they feel like they’re just hanging onto his chest panel. A slight breeze can easily knock them off his chest.

The set comes with parts for you to swap around in case you want to recreate his G1 toy look.

While the parts swap doesn’t require any unscrewing of parts and just needs simple tugs to get the default parts out, swapping the parts out can be a bit unnerving, due to the tightness of the assembly from the factory, particularly with the chest panel and the face plate. I’ll probably never mess with it again after I put back the default cartoon pieces. Lol…

Tape player mode

I’m really impressed at how good the tape deck mode looks. Feels great and hefty too.

As a throwback to the vintage G1 toy, you can compress his weapons into their “battery” modes and store them into his backpack.

Just like in the cartoons and other toys, his chest panel opens by pressing the button on his left. It is a bit hard to press down sometimes though.

“Rumble eject.”

Acoustic Wave’s insides has the space to actually carry two Cassetteticons, just use the lever at the back of the eject button to push out the second tape. Be warned though, official MP Cassettes are longer so they cannot fit inside Acoustic Wave’s chest.

Fibrir Cassetticon (Rumble)

He comes with his clear carry case.

Tough and quick-tempered, Rumble lives to fight. He uses his dual piledrivers to cause quakes that demoralize his enemies. To follow it up, he then gets in his opponent’s face while they’re down and starts bashes them in.

His name here (Fibrir) is a play on the old “Frenzy is Blue, Rumble is Red” acronym. Since that’s how Robot Paradise wants to play this, I’ll call this guy Rumble in this review(as how it was in the Marvel Comics runs before the cartoons changed things), but personally I prefer the opposite.

Fibrir stands roughly 3.75 inches tall and weighs 33 Grams.

The set comes with extra heads for Fibrir, featuring alternate facial expressions (angry and laughing).

Fibrir’s guns can be stored into the cavities in his legs for cassetticon mode.

Plugging in his guns is quite easy to do.

Sadly, the figure lacks a bicep swivel, so holding up his weapons can sometimes be awkward to look at from certain angles.

Lastly, the set comes with piledrivers to equip on Fibrir.

The piledrivers feature actual springs inside. Cool!!

“Let’s get ready to rumble!”

The full Acoustic Wave team so far.

Review gallery for the Cassette Bot set here:

Overall, an amazing piece! I’m glad Fans Toys went back a redesigned the toy. Seeing the original designs for FT-02, it would’ve been a huge miss if they decided to release it straight up as it was before. This new design just looks way better and can give the official Takara version a run for its money. The optional parts gimmick is a pretty sweet bonus as well. I might not use it, but it is nice to have those extras to add more value to the package.

As for whether this or the Takara, I think I would have to go with this one. I love the cartoon accuracy on this one. The paint finish, the shade of blue, plus the heft from the diecast just beats out the Takara by a mile.

Gold