Energon Tidal Wave

Prelude: Energon Tidal Wave is, of course, a repaint of Armada Tidal Wave, whom I’ve reviewed previously. Seeing as it’s been over six years since then, though, he gets the full program. Besides, I got him off my good friend Chris aka LimeWire, too.

Robot Mode: Tidal Wave was the tallest (non-combined) robot in the Armada line-up except for Unicron and the same holds true for the Energon series. Unlike other huge robots, though, he’s pretty slim and his proportions fit together very well. His posability is pretty good for a repurposed Armada figure, the only thing he’s really lacking is knee joints. The arms are very nicely posable, though, and while he doesn’t exactly have hands, he does have an approximation with a somewhat opposable thumb (sort of).

Tidal Wave’s weaponry consists of four double-barreled gun turrets on his chest. These can be activated by powerlinking his Minicon partner Ramjet to his chest, which causes the turrets to move. Unlike their portrayal in the cartoon, the turrets can’t fire forward, but it’s easy to imagine they can. Tidal Wave carries no other weapons, but he has lots of connection ports for Minicons or Energon weapons, in case he needs additional firepower.

Now whether or not you like Tidal Wave’s general look is, of course, entirely up to you, but personally I like it a lot. The figure nicely conveys size and power, the green transparent “Energon” parts look cool, too, and overall I’m a big Tidal Wave fan, so I like this robot mode. No complaints except for the lack of knee joints.

Vehicle Mode: I’m not sure if I should call Tidal Wave a triple-changer, a penta-changer, or a part-former. The point is, he has four different vehicle modes, but he achieves three of them by falling apart into three different components and the fourth by recombining those three pieces. So let’s look at the pieces, first.

Tidal Wave’s arms combine to form a small aircraft carrier. It’s a bit too boxy to look realistic, but it’s still clearly recognizable. The carrier even features an elevating hangar, where Ramjet can be stored. The second ship is some kind of double-bowed contraption with Tidal Wave’s gun turrets on top and easily the weakest of the three vessels. The final one is made from Tidal Wave’s legs and can open up into a Minicron transport vessel, complete with chairs for four Minicons.

Now I’m not a big fan of the three individual vehicles, but when they combine into Tidal Wave’s battle ship mode, they look really cool. Oh, just for those wondering: It is possible to transform Tidal Wave from robot to battle ship without taking him apart, too. The battle ship is clearly not based on any existing Earth-vehicle. It’s a science fiction vehicle, holding some similarities to the famous SDF-1 of Robotech fame. Not really much you can do here, except marvel at it’s cool look. So the bottom line: My favorite of Tidal Wave’s alternate modes.

Partner / Add-On: Just like in Armada, Tidal Wave has a Minicon partner called Ramjet. Ramjet looks good in jet mode, but is easily the weakest Minicon in robot mode. My advice is to keep him in jet mode and either have him adorn Tidal Wave’s chest in robot mode or be kept in or on his carrier in vehicle mode.

Combination Mode: Being a repaint of Armada Tidal Wave, Energon Tidal Wave can, of course, combine with Armada Megatron or Armada Galvatron. Same as before, so I didn’t take any pics here. Look at the earlier reviews for that.

Remarks: While most of the Autobots who made the transition from Armada to Energon were already in brand-new bodies when the series began, Tidal Wave - along with Demolishor and Cyclonus - merely got a repaint of his Armada body at first. All of them were reformatted into new bodies later on, in Tidal Wave’s case he became the much smaller, though somewhat smarter Mirage. He remained Tidal Wave for quite a while, though, long enough to have something of a feud with Shockblast, as well as blast lots of stuff into smithereens and shout his name a lot.

Of the three paints jobs this figure has been given, I personally like this one the best. Can’t give you a solid reason for it, it just appeals to me. And while the Tidal Wave figure does have some limitations when looked at from today’s standpoint, it is still one of the best “Big Dumb Brute” Transformers in the franchise (though Lugnut has kind of taken its throne by now). Well worth getting (at least one of him) for every Decepticon fan.

Rating: B+