I’m tempted to dig through my childhood stuff and find the old round kazoo/harmonica-type doohickey that I used to talk through to emulate Soundwave’s unique voice. I’ve had Soundwave standing on my desk for about two weeks now with his cannon in one hand and Megatron in the other, and I can’t help picking him up and fiddling with him or just looking him over every once in a while. In fact, I can’t think of a toy in recent memory that’s given me this much for my money. His robot mode is perfect, his tape deck mode is perfect, his articulation is stellar, it’s nigh-impossible to find anything wrong with this toy. Lazerbeak’s back-mounted twin laser cannons are no longer a separate piece that have to be connected after his transformation from cassette to robotic deathbird, but are actually part of his cassette mode. I think the one thing that really hits me most of all is a feature that isn’t even on Soundwave. Although it’s not a new addition to Masterpiece-styled figures, Soundwave is one of a very small number that should have the dubious honor of firing Megatron’s alt mode when Megatron is feeling too lazy to kill Autobots by himself. The sensor you can snap on in place of his hand is another plus, and Megatron’s gun form is always welcome. I still need to print out some type of display to put in there, but the fact that I can is completely cool. It’s such a completely odd and out there inclusion, but it attaches perfectly to his chest, and though it’s not something I ever would have thought to ask for, I love that he can do it.Īdditionally, there’s the little technical readout display panel that also fastens into place. One of his most important and oddest duties on the cartoon was creating the Energon cubes that could be filled with sweet, sweet Energon, and now this figure can replicate that peculiar talent. Though the figure itself is a pitch perfect representation of who I consider to be one of the three most important Decepticons (along with Starscream and Megatron), it’s the little details about Soundwave that impress me the most. Now that the big guy is here I’m eager to get the rest of the cassettes and load him up. His storage capacity has gone way, way up since then. The sheer cool factor of being able to slide one of the cassettes into Soundwave and closing him up inside has never worn off, and it’s just as fun now as it was then. I remember having all the cassettes and waiting for what seemed like forever to get the main guy that completed the entire ensemble.

Soundwave was one of the better Transformers in the ’80s, and he’s now one of the, if not the, best Transformers out now. So read on and enjoy as we take a look at Masterpiece Soundwave. So Ibentmyman-thing, DisThunder, and I have come together here to not necessarily “review” this figure, because there really aren’t many negatives here to nitpick, but to share our thoughts on this fantastic figure. This is the figure we’ve all been waiting years for and hoping against hope we’d someday get. Masterpiece Soundwave ignites all the same emotions and excitement the original did back in ’84. Sure, there have been many Soundwave figures that Hasbro and Takara have released over the years, but none have come close to capturing that original magic. When Takara announced last year that a Masterpiece Soundwave was on the way, a collective “FINALLY” was audible. Soundwave became the iconic “face” of Transformers in the ’80s, more so than even Optimus Prime or Bumblebee, and, to this day, he is perhaps the most fondly remembered. He was the “cool” transformer to own, and no Transformers fan could call themselves such if they didn’t own Soundwave.

At the time, cassettes were the major music medium and we all had some kind of tape deck on which to play our cassettes, so having a Transformer that transformed into something that was actually meaningful to us on a personal level elevated Soundwave from mere novelty to something that transcended the figure itself. While they were all awesome in their own way, there was something about Soundwave that just connected with people on a different, more intense level, even people who wouldn’t normally be interested in something like this suddenly became interested in Soundwave. For many people who grew up in the ’80s, Soundwave was the gateway drug into the vast world of the Transformers. They open a door that leads to a bottomless vortex of needing more, more, MORE, and suddenly nothing else seems as important. We’ve all heard about the dangers of gateway drugs.

Tapedeck transformer