Scalpel

Height: 10cm maximum height in Microscope Mode, 12cm tall in Robot Mode.

Articulation: 21 points total: double-jointed neck; hinged jaw; 3 points each arm- double-joint shoulder, hinged "elbow"; two points in each of six legs: ball-jointed hip and "knee."

Colors: Molded off-white, gray, black, and clear plastic. Painted red, white, purple, and silver.

Accessories: None.

Release Data: Released in Mid-June 2009 for an MSRP of $7.99.

Author: RAC

The 2007 figures that suffered least from the movie's baroque approach to Transformers would have to be the Real Gear line. This, it turns out, is because they were designed before the movie, back around the time of Cybertron. But either way, the Real Gear robots were fun, scout-sized robots that turned into everyday objects- something Transformers haven't done much since the `80s. With the previous year's Classics Megatron covering the much-desired handgun Transformer, Real Gear gave us modern equivalents of nearly every Micro Change-derived alt mode. (Assuming you're generous and substitute a one-robot digital camera for Reflector and an MP3 player for all the old cassette and cassette player-based Transformers.) There was just one holdout, which Revenge of the Fallen has generously and, I suspect, accidentally, provided: a microscope.

In the movie, Scalpel is "The Doctor," a small, creepy Decepticon with a heavy Stereotypical German Mad Scientist accent. After using the parts of a freshly killed Constructicon to revive Megatron, he goes on to extract plot points from Sam Witwicky's brain. I don't know if you have to be a genius exobiologist to find anything useful in Sam's brain, but it sure can't hurt...


Robot Mode

It's hard to say what, if anything Scalpel is really supposed to be. Y'know, other than a creepy alien robot thing. Despite being a pair of legs short and the anatomy being all wrong I tend to think of him as a spider. This may be because I'm an arachnophobe and a spider seems like as good a choice as you can get to crawl on somebody's face and cut their brain out of their head. I suppose he might be a decent mantis, except his forelegs or pedipalps or whatever those stubby little limbs in front may be don't fit the standard mantis at all. For sanity's sake, let's just stick with "Insectoid Alien Robot," OK?

He's got a ton of joints but not a lot of extreme poseability. There's hinges at both the base of the neck and the eyepiece/head, which allow for a fair range, but only along one axis- no swivels. One thing I do like, though, is that the white mandible piece is on a separate hinge, so you can manage some different expressions for the Doctor. His glasses seem to be removable, but since they have molded-on eyebrows it really takes away from his face, leaving empty red eyes. Horrifying, but not quite suitable for the character, I think. A little silver paint around the rims of the glasses would've been nice, though. The antennae are also adjustable, because of transformation requirements, but they love to fall off. His little clear-plastic forelimbs are very poseable, but they're also kind of stubby, so outside of a bit more expression they're not going to contribute much. You'd think having this many legs would help him stand up, but the narrow shape of the ball-joints at the- er, hips and knees, I guess? -really limits useful poses for him. He's front-heavy, so the rearmost pair of legs are the least-essential ones to have touching the ground. They do like to collapse on themselves, unfortunately.


Transformation

Funny story: I bought Darkwind the same day I bought Scalpel. I could transform the $30 toy on the first try with no mistakes and no sticking points, and it took me most of the day to get Scalpel down. A little bit of balance between those two extremes would be nice, y'know?

You have to twist Scalpel's ball-jointed leg sections so that the little hooklike decorative bits fold under the lower legs, and then again so the outer purple part of the lower leg faces outward when you're done. Also, the instructions could've shown the parts that slide- the microscope base halves and the one set of legs -a bit more clearly. And lastly, good luck fitting the antennae into the top of the microscope without them falling off. I imagine a lot of people have this problem, since there seems to have been a running change that introduced shorter antennae. I do have to admit, though, that the microscope leaves no evidence of any of the robotty, buggy parts. It looks like an ordinary microscope in miniature, except for the purple tattoo-like designs on the back, similar to what the new Starscream toy has.


Microscope Mode

Scalpel is a pretty decent looking microscope in approximately 1/6 scale- I kind of wish I had the 12" Mutt Williams toy for him to crawl on in Robot Mode. So far I haven't been able to match Herr Doktor to a specific model of stereo microscope, but you don't have to search long to find one with similar features, either. One thing that's slightly off is that the objective is at a slight angle; I've yet to see one in my searches that shares this feature. It can't really be helped, because the forelimbs are directly above that, and they can only collapse so far. I have to assume most full-size microscopes don't have that problem. The entire upper half of the microscope ratchets up and down the central strut, and the base has a pair of molded-on clips which would be used to hold the molded-on slide in place. The rectangle beneath the silver clips is clearly supposed to be a slide, but it's painted the same color as the base it sits on. A transparent glass slide would appear the same color as the surface it sat on, more or less, but a piece of clear plastic or some other color here would've helped distinguish the slide nicely.


Closing Remarks

Scalpel is creepy and neat, and while he's not as clean as the Real Gear Robots I liken him to he's well-executed, if complex. If you liked him in the movie, or you just like the look of his Microscope Mode, I recommend him. He's Very Good, and I would've gone for Excellent if his spindly legs and antennae were a bit more forgiving.

-RAC