Revenge of the Fallen Reverb

Reverb loves being a Decepticon. Since the war began, he´s got to travel from one end of the galaxy to the other, meet hundreds of interesting beings, and help to annihilate them. All that violence has been nonstop fun, as far as he is concerned. The other Decepticons seem to enjoy being gloomy, but that doesn´t bother Reverb. He´s not going to let them ruin his fun.

Prelude: Admit it, if someone told you that Michael Bay wanted to include a Beast Wars character in his movie that was cosplaying as Captain America, would you really have been surprised? Of course that did not happen, but Reverb, one of the toy-only characters from the Revenge of the Fallen line, certainly looks the part of Beast Wars Inferno getting his patriotic freak on, right? Anyway, with 15 years having passed since that… very special movie, it’s time to for a retro review of a Revenge of the Fallen toy. Let’s say go!

Robot Mode: Reverb is a straight-up repaint of Revenge of the Fallen Knockout, but it’s been over 15 years since I reviewed that toy, so we can give it another go, I think.

Reverb is a Scout-Class figure from 2009, meaning he is almost as tall as some of the current Deluxe figures, but with a much lower parts count. It’s rather easy to see that he transforms into a motorcycle (or some form of wheeled vehicle, at least), as he has wheels (or rather half-wheels) on his shoulders. Now the “proper” positioning of said wheels is a bit of a mystery (according to the package they should point straight up, in the novel they were folded back), and given that they are on ball joints, you can pretty much position them in whatever way you like best.

Ball joints can be found on Reverb’s limbs as well, making him a very nicely articulated little fellow. His basic look is from the live-action movies, of course, but he isn’t as over-designed as some of the other, larger figures, which I like. His blue and red color scheme gives him a bit of a Captain America vibe, yes, but is actually intended to invoke another character, at least the red.

Reverb’s head, which kind of looks like Wolverine’s mask, is also meant to invoke said other character, namely Beast Wars Inferno. I like the head design a lot, I must say, even though the Wolverine resemblance is stronger on Knockout than it is here. Reverb has a sculpted blaster on his right arm as his only weapon, which works just fine for me.

So bottom line: a nice little robot. Certainly not a revelation, but with no flaws worth mentioning and a call-back to one of my all-time favorite toy lines, he does appeal.

Alternate Mode: Reverb transforms into a racing motorcycle of no specific model that I can recognize. The transformation is complex for such a small figure, but not difficult. The resulting bike looks pretty good and shows no visible robot bits at all. No kickstand, but Reverb’s feet on the bottom are low enough that the bike does not topple over if you simply stand it up.

Here, the patriotic color scheme is even more evident, and you wouldn’t really be surprised to see Captain America ride this bike, would you? The scale is actually (mostly) compatible with the Human Alliance figures, as seen in the eighth picture. The bike features the number 97 and the writing “Calany Racing” on the side, more on that below.

Bottom line, a nice motorcycle mode. Again, nothing revolutionary, but no flaws, either.

Remarks: Reverb never appeared in the Revenge of the Fallen movie, but he did have some minor appearances in both the Titan and IDW tie-in comics, as well as the Classified novels (he died in most of them). His resemblance to Beast Wars Inferno is fully intentional, by the way. The number 97 on his bike form is the year of Inferno’s release and the writing “Calany Racing” was actually supposed to say “Colony Racing”, referencing one of Inferno’s favorite catch phrases “Defend the Colony!”, but somehow a typo made it past all quality control gates. Well, if was a toy for a Michael Bay movie, so I assume no one really spend much time thinking about the logic of things. Oh, and Reverb can also be considered a homage to the GoBot Dart, though probably not an intentional one.

For all that the ROTF movie was a hot mess, the toy line was pretty great for the most part, and I include Reverb in that assessment. I like him. Reverb is certainly a forgettable character (like most Movieverse characters not called Optimus or Bumblebee), but the figure is nice. Personally, I like the paintjob here better than on Knockout, but that is subjective. There were two more repaints of this figure, Backfire and Trenchmouth, if you need more variety. So bottom line: nice. Not a must-have, but nice.

Rating: B