It doesn’t get any better than this. Not for me at least.

Soundwave is the OG, the gold standard, the alpha and omega, and the apex of design throughout TF history. And before, with Microman – it’s just one of Takara’s best creations yet. My first experience with Soundwave was actually through a Taiwanese KO of MC-10 Cassette Man made by Shiantai that I received as a gift a year before Transformers came out, in 1983. There was a tiny toy shop around the block that always imported some hot Japanese toys somehow, and they would eventually start stocking Transformers, Robotech, and random KO’s like the Cassette Man KO, and a Reflector KO. Somehow I got Soundwave around the same time I started getting into music, which a lot was on cassette tape at the time. Thinking about Soundwave is all wrapped up in nostalgia for me. G1 Soundwave was always, and will always be my favorite GOATed toy ever.

As such, I’m super duper picky about my Waves. The MP-13 was incredibly impressive and it’s hard to imagine any significant improvements to that design, which is why I hardly pull it out of storage, because I don’t want to damage him. But mainline figures are meant to be accessible to more audiences – meaning a staple item that’s cheap to produce and sure-to-become iconic. So this guy satisfies an itch for another Soundwave that is more poseable and not as precious to me… yet. The G1 Soundwave toy set the bar so high on originality in concept, gimmicks galore, a plethora of accessories including additional figures, and a face that only a Deception logo designer could steal. He’s perfect. And the Microman set with headphones is even more perfect. And then the cartoon character had such presence. You can’t even imagine Transformers without Soundwave. Soundwave… Superior.

Being a G1 dominant collector, until this guy, I just haven’t felt the inclination to pick up any modern Soundwaves, not counting the MP release, because they never had the same “presence” that I get from my regular ass 40-yr old G1 design. So far in total I have seven Soundwaves, acquired in the following order:

But now with the Earthrise, I’ve finally got some options that made me get off my ass and shop around for the best version I could find – and the Nemesis Bridge edition is it for me. The colors, the better paint apps, the whole kit is just more premium than the Hasbro in a way only Takara could make seem premium. This paintjob is much truer to the original Cassette Man, a deeper navy with 36K gold-looking highlights and nice silver. I usually don’t care about toy accurate vs. cartoon accurate, although I almost always lean-toy. I just care about what looks good to me. And this color scheme with the red light piping eyes is the one. I’ll say it’s somewhat in the middle between Microman-homage and toon-accurate. Let’s go with that.

What I really appreciate the most about this release has got to be the detailing. All the line work does a great job evoking most if not all the original G1 features that made this character iconic in design and execution: it turns into a tape deck. In the 80s, until CD’s came out tapes were it. And a micro-recorder is even more hi-fi, super secret espionage tech stuff for spies. And at that time in the 80’s during the Cold War, it was all about James Bond, Star Wars, and super secret spy stuff – the real life Star Wars. So I remember using Soundwave as intended, like a spy tape recorder, running around taking fake memos of people’s conversations. Eventually, when I got actual tape recorders, I’d do the same. All because of Soundwave. So he’s a real influence on my childhood for sure, in so many ways.

I’m not a big fan of kibble, puzzleformers, or anything that’s not a nice and tight package… but… at least the batteries are on the… outside? Well, I’m glad there’s weapon storage, but it’s not nearly as elegant as the G1. At far as from goes, however, this guy is pretty decent as a homage to a cassette player. Maybe if the tape door were flush against the chest then it would look more like a real tape player and closer to the original, but this isn’t bad. Another big miss is the plastic quality on the gray areas that feel and look almost like disposable plastic. And all the tapes that I’ve seen just don’t look anything like the real microcassettes that Cassette Man’s minions are based off, but at least they fit.

Sizewise, they’re actually pretty close, which is a pretty big feat in and of itself, and most of the markings are close to the original. It’s funny to see a tape recorder still around in 2024, even as a toy. The original is, of course, more realistic, but it’s interesting to see the evolution of an object through multiple decades exist if only as a plastic representation of a toy based on the real object itself. It’s like a copy of a copy of a thing, which no longer even exists in modern times – a relic.

It’s funny to think that there are probably hundreds of transforming toys representing an obsolete cassette tape produced in the past 40 years thanks to Soundwave. Soundwave’s signature elements: early 80’s tape recorder stylistic elements and a spring-loaded door mechanism that can hold 1:1 size microcassette tapes which transform into diminutive minions for their larger robot partner. At this point in time, 2024, Soundwave is a cultural artifact. Anyone in the US, Asia, and Europe could probably recognize Soundwave – maybe not all by name, but by image and character, for sure. Tape deck robot with little tapes? Blue bad guy robot? Decepticon? Yeah, Soundwave is an icon.

“Ready? 1…2… Aww, you ejected first.”

Nothing beats the original G1 in production quality chonk, the tapes that fit into real working micro-cassettes (they’re blank btw and don’t play the TF theme song if you have the headphones like we rumored as kids lol), and the 1:1 AA battery weapons that store in a battery compartment complete with a belt clip for your jeans even! And that’s not even the whole set of goodies from the MC release! The photo below shows an uneven set of blaster batteries – the left is KO while the right is original. I lost the shoulder cannon from my original G1, but I also lost the shoulder cannon from my Cassette Man KO, along with the Cassette Man itself. So now I’ve got a lonely 40-yr old G1 with two plain-ass blasters without the micromissile sculpts. As you can see, the blue on the KO is a darker shade, with a tinge of purple that I don’t believe is present in the authentic MC-10 Cassette Man. That’s why I like the navy blue on the Earthrise Soundwave – this dark navy means much more to me. Since I had a KO before any official Takara Diaclone and Microman toys, prior to its 1984 Hasbro debut, CassetteMan was my first foray into the soon-to-be world of Transformers. Maybe not my first transforming toy or robot for that matter, but definitely my “first love,” so to speak. Cassette Man and subsequent releases of Soundwave had slight color variations and slight mold differences that are pretty interesting to explore, if you’re interested in stuff like that, and one of the best authorities on the subject is Fred’s Workshop.

The “cassette” decal on the sticker is actually the same sticker that Hasbro decided should be placed on his calves, supposedly as speakers, or so the story goes. That’s why you see so many poor G1 Soundwaves with these horribly placed stickers that are nearly impossible to put on perfectly – cuz they weren’t meant to be there in the first place. In any case, they’re obviously not speakers, but as an eight year old, what do you know, Joe? We just wanted to follow the instructions and get ours to look the way the toys were depicted in catalog photos and commercials, since these were the only sources of information on how the toy “should” look.

Collecting toys back then wasn’t so much of a “community” thing, where trends and standards were discovered and shared online, rather it was just something most boys in the 80’s from ages 8 – 12 got hooked on by watching the commercials and cartoons – it was the norm, not niche. Music videos on MTV and after school cartoons, Saturday and Sunday morning cartoons, day in, day out. For most of us growing up in the 80’s, playing with Transformers was about getting together with friends within your local area, either at school or at each others’ homes, and bringing your toys that they didn’t have so that you could try transforming each other’s figures – and of course to show off your most prized figures. Since we had no Internet and not all of us had cable TV, we did way more things in person than we did spending time watching things on screens. Not complaining, but it was just different. Simpler. Purer. Mostly because of having limited knowledge and number of connections. Your collector community was just your friends. You’d piece together bits of info from whatever you could find on characters, alt modes, imagine what’s going to happen in the cartoon storyline, and brainstorm ideas for future releases, and spread rumors about recent and upcoming releases. And I loved being a part of the progression, and even though I’m not as collecting as much as in my initial recollecting phase in the early 2000’s, I love having been a part of that history just by being around in 1984.

I have always had one thing I could say, “I told you so” about, now that it’s common known to be true. I stand firm being the first and only person out of my childhood friend group that realized Soundwave’s face was the basis for the Decepticon logo. I have been saying this since 1984 at the time of launch, and I have also said this about Bluestreak / Prowl / Smokescreen’s face being the basis for the Autobot logo. But I was often contested on this and of course there was no Internet as of yet to get more evidence and confirm this theory to be true. Now that we’ve got so many incredible historians and content creators like Chris Feely doing deep dives on TF history, and online communities for almost all things that could possibly be collected, there’s a real solid community-based consensus on things like this, which have been widely accepted as fact, although we don’t have a quote from the original designer or anything so concrete, but that’s a part of collecting lore that I always enjoyed. Consensus.

“Royal Blue, Indigo, or Cobalt Blue???”

When online forums like the old Yahoo Autocon group formed circa the early 2000’s, more “serious” now-adult collectors (shoutout: Maz, Fred, Himawari, Devvy, HeroicDecepticon!) gathered online from around the world to share their findings on things like variants, Japanese vs. Western releases, super exclusive Lucky Draws, and the sort. That’s where we discovered so much buried treasure, like the Finnish Black Tracks or the Korean Victory Shuttle KO (that was one of my “contributions”), and just the immense number of variants between releases from various regions and release batches. Although the only discussion around Soundwave was about how rare and expensive the original Japanese G1 Soundblaster was (and how jealous we were about the collectors we knew who had them).

Now that these 80’s franchises have been pumping out so many goods at such a fever pitch rate, I’m happy that I’ve been able to exercise a bit more deliberation and patience in collecting. I can skip all releases that don’t really suit my fancy, because I’m sure there will be some further down the line that I will need to have. And besides, I don’t want to hoard. I know I have that tendency already, and I have learned to enjoy letting go of parts of my collection in order to make room for future additions. It’s because of my journey from pre-Soundwave CassetteMan to Earthrise Soundwave that I can be thankful for being a selective Transformers collector. I also have learned from documenting my collection on this blog that I really don’t need the actual physical possessions themselves, although I naturally want to keep them than to lose them, the digital archive of photos and my thoughts about these bots is what I really want to collect and hold onto – the memories.

Awww… Soundwave. Eject.