>>6881243Absolutely agree. He's an okay action figure but a few of his transformation joints (especially those things on the sides of his legs) don't feel good and his altmode is absolutely terrible. You know you've fucked up when the G1 version is better than your modern $100 Masterpiece.
Soundwave is definitely not one of the worst, but he is just "okay" and you're right that he just gets a pass because he's the only half-decent G1 Soundwave we had until last year. I think the cassettes are fine but if they announced a new Soundwave proper I'd have a serious think about shelling out the cash for another one.
I will say that I think another reason he is so praised is because he was scalped to hell and back. The Japanese version absurdly expensive if you bought the whole set, so many people waited for the Hasbro version. He was a TRU exclusive so you basically had to grab him online, but nobody knew when he would drop other than a general date range. I stayed up for like 3 days straight refreshing the TRU website to catch him, and he went up at like 5:00 AM and sold out in under 30 minutes. So because he was so hard to get and such a big character he picked up this air of being special.
