[REVIEW] Dave's TF Artifact Rant: Bubble Twist

Dave's Transformers Artifacts Rant:

     Armada Bubble Twist

     At last, TF toys with candy/gum are no longer the exclusive province of
Kabaya!  Found a single display of these at Toys R Us yesterday: six Armada
and six GIJoe, I bought up all the Armada ones.

CAPSULES

     Clever little gimmick package, the gum is nice but loses flavor quickly,
and the blind-packed "decoys" aren't too bad.  Worth picking up a few for
novelty, if nothing else.  Recommended.  $1.99 each.

RANTS

     Display: The Point Of Purchase (POP) display for these contains six each
of the GIJoe and Transformers Bubble Twists, in four rows of three across
each.  At least on the one I saw, GIJoe had the front two ranks.  All of the
capsules are made of identical red plastic, so you have to pick them up and
look at the label to see whether it's TF or Joe.  The only differences on the
labels are the small logo near the top, and the outline of the toy surprise
in two places (Megatron's outline is used for TFs). 
     
     Capsules: The red capsules are 4.125" tall and 1.625" in diameter.  They
are slightly rounded on top and have a tab and hole for attachment to a
keychain (although I wouldn't recommend carrying an opened one on a keychain,
it doesn't hold together THAT strongly).  To open, twist either way to break
the label and pull apart the halves.
     The top part is 2.125" tall and unthreaded, it just has bumps around the
bottom lip to help it hold onto the bottom part.
     The bottom part of the outer shell is threaded on the inside all the way
down, and screws onto the pink inner core.  It is also 2.125" tall (the joint
is an eighth of an inch high, if you're wondering why the numbers don't add
up).  
     The inner core is two pieces as well, nested cups with soft bubble gum
in between and extrusion opening at the top.  The toy is inside the bottom
cup, and there's threads around the base of the top cup.  Turning the bottom
part of the outer capsule around the threads forces the inner cup upward and
squeezes out the gum in four gooey quarter-circle "snakes".
     The bottom cup of the inner core is 2.25" deep and has a 1.25" inner
diameter.  This defines the maximum dimensions of the "decoys".
     In summary, if you twist the lower capsule up, gum squeezes out.  If you
twist it down, it can be removed to reveal the toy.  With two layers of
opaque plastic around the toy, I doubt it'll be feasable to hold these up to
the light and try to see what you're about to get.
     The label shows a boy with green hair and a girl with light blue hair
enjoying the product.  The boy is licking the gum (ooookay) and the girl is
blowing a bubble.  The main logo proclaims "BUBBLE TWIST - Bubble GUM with a
TOY Inside (TM)."  To the right of the main logo are instructions of a sort,
showing how you can twist one way to get gum or the other way to get a toy.
The remainder of the label has ingredients and legalese, in English, French
and Spanish.  The front of the label is justin English and French.  Hasbro
has the main credit, but Cap Candy apparently makes the Bubble Twists line in
general, and a Canadian distributor is also listed.  The UPC code, for those
who are curious (and I do get the occasional request on these artifacts) is
76930 11671.

     The Gum: You start with 1.25" of strawberry-flavored gum, which works
out to 30 grams (1.06 oz).  Half of it is colored a sort of dark pink, half
is white.  It is very soft and very sweet, but loses its flavor after only a
couple minutes of chewing.  Can't really say how good it is at blowing
bubbles, since I'm not very good at that myself.

     The Figures: They made the decision to make every figure as large as
possible while fitting inside the capsule, which has the odd effect of
messing up the scales.  Hot Shot is the tallest of the toys at the head, and
Megatron the smallest, which is kinda odd.  But I guess they wanted all the
figures to mass about the same and make it hard to figure out which capsule
held what by shaking the product.
     I do not know the full range of figures and colors, I haven't been able
to find that information online.  It's possible that my sampling got all the
molds and all possible colors.  I got the following:
     Purple Supermode Optimus Prime (2)
     Blue Hot Shot
     Blue Megatron
     Red Starscream
     Black Starscream
     With four molds and four colors, you'd have 16 collectible units,
reasonable for a product that ships in blocks of six.  If you find any other
colors or molds, let me know.  And if you want to trade for my extra Prime,
also let me know.  }->
     All of them have a level of detail comparable to the original Decoys,
and are made of a slick flexible plastic similar (or perhaps identical) to
that used in the new MUSCLE figures.  They are not eraser-y like decoys.
There's only a very small amount of mold flash, mostly around fine details
like Megatron's horns.
     Now for a rundown on each mold that I have:
     Hot Shot: A certain amount of mold-cheating on his upper arms, with a
lot of gaps just filled in with smooth plastic.  The upper legs are round
tubes, but otherwise the mold looks good.  The visor even has the targeting
patterns molded into it, a very nice touch.  They even put the hood molding
on the insides of the boots.  Because his design has almost nothing "hanging
out", he ended up being the biggest and least deformed of the ones I have.
     Super Mode Prime: The biggest alteration was also inevitable, they
filled in the backpack and leveled it off so his torso is solid.  The
shoulderpads are not as wide, since a proper width could make the figure too
wide for the capsule.  There is no detail between the legs or on the
forward-facing part of the "dress" formed by the back of Prime's trailer, and
the smoothness is a bit jarring.  Also, the wheels on his arms are just flat
discs, no hubs or other details.  Prime is almost exactly as tall as Hot
Shot, but because Hot Shot has so much bulk over his shoulders, Prime looks
significantly shorter.
     Megatron: The tank turret is disproportionately large in order to have
his arms connect up to it.  There's no detail on the underside of the turret,
but otherwise the level of detail is great.  His left hand even has a hole so
he can hold a toothpick or something as a Star Saber stand-in.  Overall, I'd
call this the best-looking of the four.
     Starscream: This one suffers a lot from the width restrictions, and also
has the problem seen in Megatron's original decoy of a sword that is very
thick so it can connect up to his arm.  The shoulder wings are rather narrow,
and the right wing is less than a millimeter longer than the left wing,
despite the left wing being removed to form the sword.  The rear "runway" is
drastically shortened, which is good, but the arms are spindly, which is
bad.  His null laser blasters are deployed and look okay.  Overall, though,
despite being an inherently better design than Hot Shot, this one is the
least attractive of the four molds I have.  I think if they'd given up on the
sword, they could have made a better figure within the restrictions of the
capsules.  

     I have not yet tried painting any of these, although they clearly won't
paint just like decoys.  The plastic is less spongy and slicker, I suspect
it'll need a basecoat.  They're also a bit taller than decoys, at slightly
over two inches (5cm) tall.  If you're just interested in Armada decoys, you
might be better off getting the board game (8 painted figures for $20, versus
4 unpainted figures for $8 or more depending on luck).

     Dave Van Domelen, apologizes for not reviewing the board game yet, by
the way, but hasn't gotten anyone to play it against him yet.