There's a sea green radar dish that can be mounted in one of the larger holes on the rear tread covers - beside these are two smaller holes which can be used to mount Stalker's gold Predator missile launcher on. Stalker comes with five green Predator missiles - one for the launcher and two for mounting on each side of the vehicle. What's interesting is the vehicle has *three* missile mounting points on each side - two on the rear tread cover, one on the front.
The missile can elevate up & down and can be removed from it's launcher - it's held on by a 5mm peg. The rocket also serves as a Megavisor scope - place the engine to your eye and push the clear peg forward & up to lower into place a picture showing a schematic vehicle mode image of Rotorstorm. Alternately pulling back on the black peg opens a slot on the top of the missile which allows you to attach a Predator jet to display the Megavisor data that they carry. The jets can ride on top of Stalker in a combined mode or you can separate the missile from Stalker to act as a booster for the jet.
Transformation: Remove the missile. Fold the rear treads up and forwards from the back 90 degrees. Fold the arms out from behind the toy. Fold the missile mount back and down 180 degrees. Fold the head up from the back of the vehicle. Turn the vehicle over and open the doors between the front tracks on the underside. Fold the front of the vehicle down & forward from the middle to serve as the legs. Close the doors. Rotate 180 degrees at the waist. Fold the arms down at the shoulders. Remove the missile launcher and place into the hand. Place the missile launcher into the spare large shoulder peg hole.
Stalker's robot mode is a brick of the highest order: his arms rotate at the shoulders, the waist turns and essentially that's it. Rotating the shoulders back 90 degrees will let you slightly bend the arm in across the chest but no more than about 20 degrees of movement is possible. The legs bend a little at knees - more if the doors are open - and you can get a one leg pointing back pose out of him. When you see this you realise quite how good his compatriot Rotorstorm is in the articulation stakes ! I'm sure if we started again now we could easily get more leg and arm articulation. Revealed in this mode is the black of the upper legs (only just in the case of the arms !) waist with a pale green lightpiped visor on his faceplated head, which in some ways does resemble Soundwave and Optimus Prime in shape - in fact Stalker is down as the Predator communications expert so the resemblance to Soundwave may not be coincidental (and is certainly played on later !)
OK it's a brick. But it's a brick with a decent vehicle mode, good solid robot mode and a decent gimmick allowing it to operate with other toys. I say you need one.
Missiles for Machine Wars Soundwave can be sourced from Machine Wars Starscream where they come in grey or green and are compatible with the original Predator missile launcher.
An authentic looking colour scheme for thevehicle , but one with little links to the character name.
When I spoke about Rotorstorm I mentioned about remoulding his missile mounts to become Minicon pegs. Although Soundwave doesn't have a Minicon the same modifications to the toy would have improved it. Additionally Soundwave could sorely use having his fist holes enlarged to the standard 5mm size to allow him to use modern weapons and to hold his radar dish and missile in his hand.
Soundwave comes with Spacecase, a repaint of the G2 Cyberjet Spacecase.
Generally very decent but the yellow lets the side down I'm afraid.