Home Special Features Evolution Revolution: A Beast Era Retrospective
Depth Charge
Height: 41cm to tip of tail in Beast Mode and Transport Mode, 17cm head height and 24.5cm to top of wings in Robot Mode.
Articulation: 18 points total- swivel neck; 4 points each arm: double-jointed shoulder, pre-elbow swivel, hinge elbow; mid-torso joint; 4 points each leg: ball-joint hip, double-joint knee, hinged ankle.
Colors: Molded blue, silver-gray, purple, and gold(discs). Painted purple, yellow, teal, blue, and red(Robot eyes). Vac-metal lavender and gold.
Accessories: "Shrapnel Grenade" Discs x7, Cybershark Drone/Gun with missiles x2, Energon Cutlass.
Author: RAC
Depth Charge was a peace officer, driven by his duty to protect and serve. Until the day Protoform X singlehandedly destroyed every living thing in Depth Charge's protectorate, Colony Omicron. Since that day, revenge has been his only motivation. Managing to capture the ill-conceived experiment and return him to Cybertron, Depth Charge was horrified to learn that Protoform X would not be destroyed. With little confidence in the ability of the ship captain ordered to abandon the seemingly immortal monster on some distant, barren planet, Depth Charge took it upon himself to again begin the hunt for the psychopathic Maximal.
Depth Charge's quest would eventually see him pass through a temporal anomoly in the vicinity of a forbidden planet, and his body mutated by the strange radiation. Arriving on prehistoric Earth, Depth Charge couldn't care less about these 'Beast Wars' raging around him. The only thing that mattered to him is that X was there, and he finally had a chance to finish his mission by whatever means necessary.
"Stuff it up your exhaust port, Optimal!"
(Or as ExVee put it in his first draft, "Depth Charge: He's Batman.")
Beast Mode
Overall he really wouldn't look out of place with the robotic sea creatures that nearly kill Hot Rod and Kup in Transformers: The Movie. Depth Charge is a Transmetal manta ray, and is gigantic. (Which, judging from the dimensions Wikipedia states, is pretty accurate.) Being Transmetal, he's got plenty of robotic details all over his body- most noticeable is that he has replaced a normal manta ray's cephalic lobes with a pair of small guns. The body is primarily blue, with painted details in purple and yellow. The yellow fades to look more greenish towards the edges, but since the purple fades in a similar way I think the shading was intentional, so I can't fault it. The chrome is a very subtle shade of silvery purple- maybe a lavender, even? -with some hard to pick out blue sections between the eyes. The central panel of the chrome area has Depthcharge's nametag, and it's written exactly that way: as a single word. The panel also opens up to allow you to load Depth Charge's Shrapnel Grenade discs, and pressing down on the dorsal fin will launch one. (About two feet.)
On the underside, besides a host of folded-up robot parts, you have Depth Charge's Cybershark drone, clinging to his underbelly as though it were a remora. Neat!
Transport Mode
Simpler than most Transmetal third-modes, yet the size of the pieces involved makes it fairly effective. The blue panels are on large arms with multiple ratcheting joints, and you swing them out to the sides and turn them to come to a point at the nose of the ship, and you have a Space Cruiser. Outside of the tail, it does look pretty spacy- it wouldn't look completely out of place in the Star Wars prequels. The face also reminds me of the Ghoul airship used by Dr. Hell's minions in Mazinger-Z. Transport Mode also gives you the best look of all three molds at the massive teal paint applications and chrome Maximal sigils on the inside of the wings.
Transformation
The toy almost literally bends over backwards to accomodate that disc launcher. The disc-feed cover is attached to the manta face, which swings out and under the body and then turns around to form the legs. Since the tabs that hold the legs in place in Beast Mode are chromed, scraping is practically inevitable. The head folds down, and the plate it's mounted to re-covers the disc well. The forearms open in the same manner as Optimus Primal's so you can trade thrusters for chromed hands, and the arms lock to the center block. The packaging also suggests that the thrusters can be kept as arm-cannons, but the instructions don't mention this one way or the other.
There's no real consensus, going by the official materials, on how the wings are supposed to be arranged in Robot Mode. The instructions don't pull the wings close into the body, while the package photo (and control art, also on the box) does, but also both show the tops folded back. The animation, from what I've seen, also seems to show the wings closer to the body but has the tips pointing up, like the instructions. What's odd is that no matter which you listen to, the gold Maximal emblems on his wings are never facing outwards and right-side up in any mode. And also, the ratcheting joints responsible for holding up the wings are universally tight and strong- with the exception of a single pair, the set where the purple parts actually meet the central body. That is, the very first pivot point. There, they're very weak and the wings tend to swing in whatever direction their weight wants to carry them. So resting them on the body, as the box and Mainframe variants suggest, are going to be the most effective way to use them.
Robot Mode
Unlike most of the other Transmetals I own, who had previous toy incarnations, Depth Charge is all new- and interestingly, he doesn't seem to be quite as organic as the others. His midsection looks reasonably raylike and fleshy, and uncovering the secondary manta ray face on the torso also reveals a few more gills, but otherwise he's pretty distinctly robotic. There's a lot more gray in this mode too, to replace the chrome that's now hanging off his back.
I'm trying to figure out which other Transformer his face reminds me of. The eyes really would look just about right on Batman's mask, and they're sculpted in the same nice, distinct way as Transmetal Cheetor's. The mouth is reminiscent of Stormtrooper helmets, and while he looks stern he's not grimacing anywhere near as hard as Cheetor either.
Anyway, the head swivels unimpeded, which is good. The shoulders are double-jointed, but because of the flared bits on the gray part you can't quite get it straight out from the body. The swivel part will take the arm as far as the wings will allow, and the elbow gets a solid 90 degrees. There is a waist joint, or actually a mid-torso joint, directly beneath the disc launcher, which looks slightly unnatural- not that robots are limited to the features of human anatomy, of course. The joint will turn 360 degrees if you're willing to do some kibble juggling. The hips swing 90 degrees forward, and about as far back as a real person's ever would, and similarly swing out to the side's about as far as the average person's leg would without threatening some painful muscle damage. The knees are double jointed, and they'll do pretty much whatever you want, being as stiff as they are. There is some ankle articulation but it's very stiff, and overall the feet seem to be designed to rest against the bottoms of the legs and not move.
To give you an idea of how much of Depth Charge's mass and budget are eaten by that disc-launcher: sans wings, he's almost exactly as tall as Optmus Primal, who is a size class smaller. He's another toy designed to be viewed almost entirely from the front, since side or back views betray the armatures for his wings and the leftover tail for the manta ray. The end pops off to become an accessory, but the rest just points straight down. Which is actually good, since if it weren't there he'd tip over backwards in a second. It has a hinge that allows you to turn it left or right which can allow you to manage some posing, but when balancing the toy you have to think of it as a third leg.
Accessories
-Discs
The main event! Depth Charge comes with seven "Shrapnel Grenades" -gold discs (no relation) that launch from the slot in his chest. There are notches on the side that allow for an orderly feed, and also make it much faster to load one at a time instead of trying to do all seven at once. They fly about a foot and a half, as I mentioned above. ExVee reports that his gets closer to three feet which is, well, better than nothing. But for the amount of real estate the launcher takes up on a toy this size, that's pitiful!
-Cybershark Drone
So, a Shark/Remora thing that turns into a double-barreled shotgun may not be as weird as a scorpion claw that turns into a bee, but it's a pretty nice weapon. While the peg never seats all that firmly into Depth Charge's hand, the tailfin stock fits under his arm, and I suspect it was designed to, so it'll hold still when you need. It has two gold missiles with a startling amount of power and range. Mine launches about ten feet- who needs a disc launcher? I don't like to keep the gun loaded in Beast Mode, though- there's no safety, and the two gray fins on the sides are the triggers- it's way too easy to launch the missiles by accident, and with that kind of range they could go anywhere.
-Energon Cutlass
We went from tail/whips, to tail/whipaxe-things, to a tail/whipsword, and finally we have a tail you could mistake for a real sword in some lights! It's still obviously a manta ray tail, but it's mostly straight, isn't articulated, and has a point on the end, so we're getting there. Unlike his Sharkgun, he can hold this securely without any trouble.
When Buying Loose
I went for a boxed one because of all the fiddly little pieces he has to lose. If you don't do the same, the discs and missiles would be the least likely to be present, I would think, followed by the tail/sword and the Remora. The chrome on his lower legs is something you should mind, as the transformation practically guarantees scraping. There's also the Universe recolor to consider, which has no chrome to worry about, seems to generally go cheaper, and has a new deco reportedly patterned on Boba Fett. That might be a better way to go, if you're looking for the toy before the character.
Closing Remarks
Tough call here. Depth Charge is quite far from all bad- he has some appealing features. The Manta Ray Mode is impressively huge, and I really like the Cybershark drone. But it's all wrapped around a central gimmick, and the gimmick itself Could Have Been Better. I think his overall look and other features pull that up to a low Good, but I'd like to see these supplemental features supporting a better main idea.
-RAC
All figures, toy lines, and the characters they represent are Copyright and Trademark their respective owners. All reviews and photographs contained herein are the property of ExVeeBrawn and RAC. The opinions expressed herein are those of ExVeeBrawn and RAC, and do not represent the opinions of any manufacturers, or copyright or trademark owners.
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