Empire has four new toy images from the Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen robots. Two of them are the re-vamped Bumblebee, which is fine and - yes - slightly different, but the real interest is in the other two, namely the one above, which is our first look at Soundwave.

Now, I might be wrong here (Lord knows I’m frequently wrong with my opinionating), but isn’t that design both impractical and clunky? Are we going to see this guy turning around and using his tail…uh…thing to knock over buildings? The first thing I thought about when I saw this image was Leela’s line in Futurama: The Beast With 1000 Backs when she says: “At least I don’t need to trim my elbow talons.”

Soundwave needs to trim his elbow talons. And his butt talon.

Add in my general disappointment that Soundwave is not a boombox like he used to be, thereby avoiding a Micahel Bay “boombox update” that I’m sure I could have gotten plenty pissed about, and Soundwave’s plane and/or satilliete vehicle mode is equally as disappointing.

Hopefully this movie is as massive as we’re expecing come June 26th because the toy designs are making us forget that no matter how awkward these things look, it’s fun to watch them beat the living hell out of each other.

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