This is what I was dreading.
Re-purposed , badly under-scaled, or just plain oddly assigned vehicles.
I have the "Ice Dagger"--I have a much better looking version of it in the Ice Saber. Zero incentive to get this re-hash.
Night Raven. Design is okay, but its VERY small. Its clearly intended to be derivative of the original toy design, but its missing the mark is size. What it says to me is the toy line is going cheap because there's not a lot of faith in the brand--despite the movie.
The "Hummer". This one is wrong on so many levels for me. The biggest one is that its "conventional". The movie might be setting different ground rules in design aesthetics, but throughout the toyline's history COBRA has embraced the unconventional in terms of design.
A "normal" looking 4 wheeler is prosaic for COBRA. If the thing has 7 wheels, with one in the center-line back, then it would look "COBRA-weird" enough. It would reflect the maverick weapon design philosophies of Destro and be visually distinct from vehicles that GIJOE uses.
This ain't that.
The Rockslide. The only "good" design in the bunch. This is an example of doing something with nothing. How do you make a snow mobile cool? You sleek it up on the nose, add weapon hard-points on the ski struts, and give it a camouflage paint job.
But as a toy......it misses the mark. it looks cheap. Solid cast parts like the tread assembly always says " cut corners for cost"--especially when they are unpainted plastic.
Its more of the same, and not enough of what it could be.
I was hoping for something a bit more daring, a bit more involved and a bit different.
This isn't it.
I usually agree with you on things arrow, but I think you are wrong here on many things.
1) Night Raven: It's small because Hasbro doesn't have faith in large vehicles anymore. As well, if the Night Raven isn't featured heavily in the movie, then parents/kids won't be willing to pay a lot for something that is barely remembered. The best example is the AT-TE from Star Wars. It probably did sell well, and was featured heavily, but it still had leftovers that went on sale for less than half. The movie isn't going to be another Star Wars, especially with retailers, so they won't be as willing to bank on a large vehicle. Especially since it is now known that there is a PIT coming (at $100).
2) Scarab. This vehicle is in one of the big chase scenes, and while the rest of the vehicle line up looks futuristic, when trying to get around a city, you can't really draw too much attention to yourself. A crazy design will do that, this doesn't. Overall I get it that it is a personal choice for you, but I think this is one of the best designs so far. I always preferred the more realistic/semi-realistic vehicles over the crazy designs.
3) The snow vehicles. I agree with you on the Ice Dagger/Sabre. However I find the Rockslide a design mess. From the picture of the movie version to this toy one, I feel it comes off as someone just adding a long windshield and going "TA-DA!" future snowmobile. It just doesn't work for me. However, knowing my luck it will feature in the coolest part of the movie and I will love it afterwards.
So for me, the best things shown so far are the Night Raven and Motor Viper. The Stratoviper looks like the 25th version, so I will use the original colours version. The Motor Viper is begging to take over my old STUN.
