Armada Wave 1
Notes

By Daniel Lipkowitz, Assistant Editor

All of the first-wave Armada toys come with a mini-comic, an 8-page story starring Hot Shot and Cyclonus along with their Mini-Con partners. With three languages in each word balloon, the text is a bit cramped, but the story is easy enough to follow in a G1 cartoon sort of way. And remember, Hot Shot is the best there is!

The flipside of the comic features an 8-page product catalog, scans of which can be found in our second Toy Fair 2002 update. In the middle of the booklet is a trilingual advertisement for Dreamwave Productions’ Generation 1 and Armada comics.

Armada instructions are color-coded, with red ink for Autobots, purple for Decepticons and dark blue for Mini-Cons. The Demolishor instructions that came with our advance sample were misprinted, with images of Demolishor appearing in the instructions for Blackout’s alternate modes. The .PDF scans on Hasbro’s Transformers site carry the correct images.

In a change since Toy Fair, all of the Mini-Cons have had tiny faction symbols in the form of a stylized "M" added to their molds.

Much to our surprise, the Armada toys that ASM received did not include any tech specs whatsoever. Although it had been assumed that the pack-in collector card would have that information printed on its back, as it turns out, the "card" is actually a sticker with only peeling paper on the other side. Fortunately, tech specs for the first-wave Armada characters can be found on Hasbro’s official website at http://www.transformers.com.

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