Dave's Car Robots Rant:

Battle Convoy

Thanks much to Iggy Drouge's http://www.canit.se/~optimus/tf.html site, for never cleaning out anything. He still has up a handful of the reviews I did before setting up my own site.

CAPSULE:

Black Battle Convoy: Laser Optimus Prime was a really good toy, with loads of gimmicks and great poseability. BBC is essentially a pretty good knockoff of the original, but with less paint, less stickers and less gimmicks. It looks good, and the paint scheme may be marginally better, but it's just not quite perfect. Still, recommended. Around $50-65 depending on the dealer.

RANT:

DESTRONGER: Battle Convoy Function: Destronger Dark Commander

Transforms into a tanker truck. His amazing physical resemblance to Fire Convoy is the result of a simultaneous scanning of a tanker truck and Fire Convoy, but besides that, he seems to have a number of secrets yet hidden. His tanker portion can split apart, unfolding to become a battle base that boasts of enough firepower to equal 12 Combatrons. Battle Convoy specializes in swordsmanship, and is after not only Fire Convoy's head but Gigatron's as well.

STR 10 INT 10 SPD 10 END 8 RNK 10 COUR 10 FRP 10 SKL 10 Avg 9.75

The official name seems to be Black Convoy, but that can get confused with the black Convoy special release. Besides, Battle Convoy or Black Battle Convoy sound better. Neale has the SPD listed as 8, but on my techspec card it's clearly the END that's 8, for some reason.

Okay, now for a comparison of BBC (Black Battle Convoy) to LOP (Laser Optimus Prime).

Instructions: Well, the BBC instructions are a lot clearer than LOP's, but they still miss tricks like having the ripplefire launcher used as a handgun.

Cab: While both versions are mainly black, BBC is almost totally black, with some dark metallic teal trim. The horns and lights atop of the roof of the cab are unpainted on BBC. The windows and headlights are a ruby red, and the grille is chrome. The headlights do NOT light up on BBC. The activation button is still there, but the battery cover on the back of the cab has been replaced by a black sticker.

Cab to Robot Transformation: Identical.

Robot: The robot mode of BBC is better painted than LOP, and the four stickers look better than LOP's six. While all the wires have been yanked from BBC, his joints are still limited to not go more than 180 degrees in order to avoid pulling the wires...that no longer exist. BBC's glowing eyes trick (no LED, just from light behind it) is the same red as his windows, as is the sword.

Cab/Robot Overall: Lacks the light gimmick, but has better paintjob in robot mode. I'd call it about equal.

Trailer: There's a sticker on back with the "Black Convoy D-012" license plate, and that's pretty much it. The sides are bare chrome, the rest is bare black. Looks REALLY weak next to LOP's trailer, with its paint and its stickers and nifty art. The disc launcher works just as well (the discs are really dark brown), and the discs give a clue as to why they used an upside down G2 Autobot symbol as the alternate Destronger symbol. The G2 symbol is molded into the discs, so they were kinda stuck with it unless they wanted to do a real remold, something they obviously didn't want to do. Given that a sticker covers the battery bay, it's clear they were going for the cheapest possible recolor here...too bad they didn't have a budget to add a lid to the disc magazine.

Trailer to Station Transformation: Identical between versions.

Battle Station: Basically, the only differences are in color (lack of it, really) and the fact that BBC can't make the handcannon light up. The black missiles with red tips look a lot better than the colorful University of Missilegans, although red ripplefire missiles would have been nicer than dark brown.

Trailer/Station Overall: Same functionality, but with the exception of the pneumatic missiles, LOP looks better by a longshot.

Toy Overall: A generally lower level of decoration and the lack of the LED gimmick makes Battle Convoy a slightly less desirable toy than Laser Optimus Prime. On the other hand, BBC is actually available online right now, and you'd be lucky to find a sealed-box LOP for less than $100.

Dave Van Domelen, finally figured out how to swap collets on his Dremel so he could use a 1/16" drill bit to help assemble a Jovian Chronicles miniature...