Dave's Toy Rant: Toy Biz "Shape Shifters" Juggernaut Found this buried behind a bunch of Venoms on a rack which promptly collapsed. Oops. Having learned my lesson regarding collapsed Toys R Us racks long ago (i.e. don't mess with it, you'll only make things worse), I did my best to look innocent as I walked past a stocker on her way to reset another collapsed rack nearby. CAPSULE Pretty good-looking humanoid mode, although tank kibble gets in the way of some of the points of articulation. Okay transformation, so-so vehicle mode, really unstable. Still, for an early effort, it's not bad for the price. Mildly recommended. $5.99 at Toys R Us. RANT I'll say right now that based on the package art, this is the best of the X-Men Shape Shifters. Wolverine is just SAD, and Morph isn't much better. Packaging: Big bubble on card thing, with a couple stickers on the bubble to show the basic steps of the transformation. The "Shape Shifters" logo is a cardboard piece that comes out and is a sticker (peel the logo off the cardboard), a nice touch. Folded up instructions rest at the bottom of the bubble, so you don't have to get by with what's on the back of the card. Juggy himself is really snug in the plastic, I ended up cutting it apart rather than have the toy break in the process of removal. Humanoid Mode: Juggy stands just shy of 6" (15cm) tall and is almost as wide...which is about how he should be. From the front, there's very little tank kibble, just some piping on his arms, overly large feet and the "empty groin syndrome" all of the Shape Shifters seem to have. From the side, there's a bit more kibble visible, some tank treads and the cannon sticking out of the back of his head. The sculpting is okay, but given the task of making it transform, you can't expect too much. One nice touch is that the rear of the cannon has Cain Marko's face molded onto it, so there's a face behind the mask in human mode, complete with nose (despite the mask covering that). Poseability is pretty good. Limited-range ball joints on the shoulders and hips and swivel wrists work no matter what. If you bend the elbows, the forearms have a tendency to fall open, and you have to detach the tank treads in back for the figure's knees to bend. The ankles also move a bit, but this exposes some ugliness in the joints. Finally, you can turn the head a bit if you pop it off its locked position. Transformation: Very origami-like, in that you're mostly unfolding things. Excessive force is required to get his hips to shift position, and you're likely to pop the rubbery fists right off when trying to move them into the position where they can peg into the sides of the tank mode. There's an orphan peg and the tank turret has an orphan hole, suggesting that an earlier stage in the development had the turret move forwards about an inch more in transformation. However, it doesn't do that now, just flops around. Tank Mode: Very unstable. The human arms are only held on by rubbery pegs, which fall out easily. Nothing really keeps the torso parts attached to the legs, and the rear treads fall off easily. The whole contraption is reminiscent of Beast Wars B'Boom's assault mode, with a lot of platform space for no very good reason. It's about 6" (15cm) long and wide, and about 3" (7cm) high. The only real human mode kibble are the fists, which sit there looking really out of place on the tank. There's a couple pegs on the platform space, but they're just a touch too small to snugly fit in action figure feet or War Planets figure bases (although Juggy does make a nice War Planets accessory). While it's in the category of late 80s Transformers "It's a Tank/Car/ Plane/Boat because we say so" agglomerations, it's an okay fakey tank mode if you can ignore the incredible lack of stability (very difficult to pick it up without something falling apart). Weapon: Juggy's head becomes the tank turret, which shoots a missile. You almost cannot keep it from shooting the missile, in fact. It only loads in a short distance, and then the slightest vibration will set it off, flinging the missile across the room (good range, but hair trigger). Fortunately, there's storage space for the missile on both of the arms, so you can keep it with the figure and not have to worry about premature firing. Intermediate Modes: Because of the way the toy transforms, there's a couple of halfway-transformed modes which look pretty good. The simplest just deploys the foot treads and turns the head around...rollerskating turret-head Juggernaut. For a little more complicated Zakutank-type mode, fully transform the legs but not the arms or torso, head optional. This is pretty stable and not half-bad looking. Dave Van Domelen, thinks he may rechristen the toy "Rock Warrior."