Lego 10358 Soundwave
From rumours to actual items
I started hearing some whispers of the next Lego Transformer during H1/2025 and these whispers said it'd be Soundwave. This got confirmed before my summer vacation and it'd also have a sound brick and of his minions we'd get Laserbeak and Ravage. On the e-shelves it'd be on 4.8. unless you were an insider, you'd get to send them money on 1.8. already. Conveniently that was also the day when I returned from my vacation, absolutely perfect timing for a change.
Then all I could do was to wait for the delivery. Luckily there was the weekend, and a long enough way home, so I got enough things to keep me busy and away from fretting.
This time the express shipping was truly express
Early on Monday I got a message telling me they'd actually deliver it by the end of the day. That was a bit ambiguous but I was prepared for much worse. During my morning meetings the delivery window got specified to 13-15, and it was a timeslot I was meeting-free! The driver ended up having some trouble somewhere, so it was a bit later when I got the box, but I was so excited I didn't even think of grumbling.
Construction in three evenings
One and half a thousand pieces in twelve numbered bags required some time to assemble. As always, working on doubles the first arm/leg/whatnot was half as quick to build than the follow-up(s).
Mini-me
The bag number one gave us Soundwave's alt mode and two printed different minion tiles on the deck. Genious.
Laserbeak
Bag #2 had the bits for Laserbeak. Just the printed 1x1 tiles with the Decepticon insignia made me giggly. The lego version wasn't quite as complex as the Masterpiece versions so the engine-gun pieces had to be detached when transforming to the alt mode.
Ravage
Third up, Ravage. Ravage's engine things were detachable for the transformation as well.
They were magnificent! And that's as far as I got on Monday, but I wrapped up in good spirits.
Soundwave
On Tuesday I got to start on Soundwave's hips. Behind the now-fallen Play button we had a cavity for the sound brick. The infamous sound brick that I hadn't encountered yet.
Ah, the sound brick was immediately in bag #5, and over it I built a nice face mosaic. In the name of transparency, I may have spent a stupid amount of time playing with the sound chip. There was a silly amount of sounds in it, more than I felt like counting. The list contained some pew pew effects, the transformation sounds, the scene change jingle from the cartoons, and a pile of Frank Welker quotes such as "Soundwave superior". The rest of the family wasn't quite as extatic as I was.
Over the sound brick I built a chest cavity, with enough space for one minion at a time. The instructions said that the opening mechanism was the first thing they engineered.
This glorious Decepticon-decorated transparent bit was in a separate bag to avoid scratches. Now that I got another bagful of pieces assembled, the cassette bay door and its opening mechanism worked. Satisfying was the perfect word here, both for the tactile feel of pressing the button, and the sound that it made.
Interestingly the remaining pieces of this bag brought the craftily hinged bits where the arms were going to be attached to.
Now the next bag (I guess I was on the seventh now) gave Soundwave his arms. He had four fingers per hand, and they all were articulatable unlike Optimus Prime's sausages. In addition to the usual finger-pointing and fist-shaking he could do the heavy metal horns or just flip the bird. Or both at the same time. The limbs also had an amount of ball joints so they were going to be very nicely poseable.
On Wednesday I returned to the build and started with the right leg. The inside of the calf got a funky multi-jointed himmel, whose functionality only started being clear when the whole leg was closed and the sides encased the mechanisms properly.
\,,/ Rock rock \,,/
While in progress the spurlike thing was a silly floppy thing that didn't feel like it had a good real position.
After smashing the missing leg into his hips I was already sadly far in the building proess. I didn't even think of checking if Lego Soundwave could press his own shoulder button as coolly as MP-02 could.
I had been wondering why I had to press the front faces of the legs into the leg itself as if I was partially transforming him into his altmode. Still, I obediently followed the instructions. The reason became clear after the next bagful of pieces and the subprocess of building the feet of his. Those were easy to press into their places when the receiving ends were in a sturdy position. After setting them in place the feet were then folded out for a proper standing robot pose.
The last two bagfuls and steps gave us Soundwave's head and the head's hideout in his upper back, and the AA batteries / weapons. The final bag just had the Icons set's plaque. At this point it was a bit late and I was both excited and busy, so I didn't take too many WIP photos.
For his optics I was given two options: red ones like in the early episodes, or yellow. Instead of choosing randomly, I checked what MP-02 had and installed the yellow lenses.
Naturally I tried out the alt mode and its transformation process. It worked very nicely, thanks for asking.
Photoset - coming soon :tm:
Very much unlike my usual approach to this, this time I didn't wait to get the light tent, tripod, camera, image editors and all set up and done before sharing this post. So for a change the photos were going to be dropped in afterwards. All the essentials were already shown, so only silliness remains.
