Klaatu has a beautiful spacecraft mode. The metallic green, black, and yellow paint applications look fantastic. I like the proportion of his bridge tower more than the one on Toyworld Spaceracer. Klaatu's head locks into place so he can't play peek-a-boo like Spaceracer can.
Transformation between modes is fairly simple. I like how the arms and feet form, but wish the backpack slab would have compressed more and that his calves would lock into place. I had to use a spludger to press the button to pop out his head. The flap to reach the button is easily flipped out by pulling on the ridges on the bottom, rather than the top, with your fingernail. Spring-loaded mechanisms are definitely not my preferred manner for revealing the head.
Robot mode looks wonderful. The newly revealed yellow paint and his red bucket head also have metallic flakes. His shins are definitely Die-cast. I'm not sure if there is more though. The two panels on either side of the center panel can flip open to reveal red circuitry and vents. Those details could have used some paint. Spaceracer does a better job of cleaning up the backpack. Klaatu could have used a few more hinges to fold away the corners that stick out over his shoulders and hips. He is quite a bit taller than Masterpiece Bumblebee, but still shorter than the other car bots.
His head is on a ball joint, but he only has a little in the way of vertical articulation. His shoulders are on swivels and double hinges. He can't quite raise his arms out and to the sides because the top of his arms will hit his head. His elbows are double-jointed and can almost perform full curls. He has fixed thumbs and single-pinned fingers that articulate as one unit. He swivels at his biceps, wrists, and waist. His waist swivel is ratcheted. His hips are on universal joints with ratchets only along the front to back swivel. He can perform full front and side splits. His thighs swivel at the universal joints, but are not hindered by their sculpt. He has double-jointed knees, with ratchets in the lower joints. The backs of his legs prevent him from doing full curls. His feet are on ratcheted rockers, but the tilts are very limited. They are not wobbly like Spaceracer's ankles.
Klaatu comes with a miniature spray bottle, tentacles, replacement eyes, a display stand, and tractor beam effects. The spray bottle is red with some metallic trim and writing. There's a slot for his thumbs. The tentacles are soft grey plastic and attach to his thrusters in either mode. His replacement eyes are translucent blue for light-piping effects, but I'll likely stick with the metallic eyes. The flight stand and tractor beam effects are transparent plastic. While the flight stand works just fine, I couldn't get the tractor beam peg to plug into the port. The Chosen Prime included a couple of miniature cows as a bonus.
I'll be displaying Klaatu on my X-Transbots shelf. On the one hand, he has a more premium look and feel to him than Spaceracer. His space shuttle mode definitely benefits from the metallic paint. On the other hand, Spaceracer seems better proportioned in bot mode and I like the way Spaceracer scales alongside Bumblebee and the other minibots. Kind of spoiled as to choices here. This is probably the first X-Transbots figure that I don't feel uncomfortable transforming back and forth. As always, I look forward to their upcoming releases.
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