Nobody wants a Deluxe Shockwave!  Shockwave is massive and powerful and awesome.  And so I'm pretty happy to get this new Beast Hunters Shockwave to take the place of my Fall of Cybertron Shockwave on my WFC/FOC/Prime shelf.  He's a Voyager!  He ain't a small Voyager either, considering he makes TFPrime Voyager Megatron look kinda puny.  Not sure what I feel about that, but whatcha gonna do.

Beast Hunters Shockwave is.... most Shockwave toys.  That is,  he's an amazing robot.  A fantastic robot.  And he transforms into... soomethiing.  I think the only Shockwave toy that transformed into an Actual Something was the Alternator.  Everything else has been, like, ray-gun-that-looks-like-a-folded-up-Shockwave or satellite-thing-that-looks-like-a-folded-up-Shockwave or tank-that-looks-like-Shockwave-with-a-turret-pegged-to-it.  BH Shockwave ain't any different.  He's an exceptional robot toy and he transforms into himself doing the splits.

Oh, it's not an overly-simple transformation, by any stretch.  It looks like it is, but there are lots of tiny little twists and turns.  His feet... slide forward at an angle, for example, I think so that they lie flush with the rest of his legs in tank mode, which in tank mode are... legs.  I guess there are tumbler-like wheels in his heels, but they're not terribly visible so it just looks like he has treads in the back and legs in the front.  His handed arm tucks underneath while his gun arm tucks overneath.  And there's some panel-rearranging with his chest and stuff....  Okay, it's kind of simple.

But, dammit, he's a great robot.  One of the rubber treads on his back unfurls and plugs into his cannon.  (The other tread is also rubber, despite not doing anything, which is some nice symmetry.)  What's the most glorious thing about this toy is the cannon.  You know those gimmicks where you push down on a lever and it causes something to spin and spin and spin until friction finally wins, eventually?  The cannon's one of those.  But, wait, there's more.  While it's spinning, the cannon is slowly opening and closing and also extending and retracting.  And while this is going on, you can peek inside the cannon through it's twirling gaps and see the missile launcher, fleetingly.  It's a fascinating contraption, and I can't stop making it do what it does.  I haven't even gotten to where I find out how that missile fires.  Why would I?  This is great.

anyway there's some beast stuff to plug into him so he looks all beast huntery the end