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Yeah, instead of letting you folks wait yet another week for the next review of mine, I'll do it now, just to make sure all my reviews are online before this wave is already about to be forgotten because of any leaks of the next wave (which are somewhat bound to happen soon, I guess - though I'm just speculating here). After Frost Beast and Aquagon, it's time to review another hero now, and this time, it's Surge. I might be wrong on this, but so far, I got the feeling that Surge is the third wheel of the rookie trio, probably because he got only a Scout sized set during Breakout, while Furno and Breez made the jump to being Deluxe sets. Now with Brain Attack, the size classes got a bit mixed up. While Furno went XL, Breez got downsized to the Scout class. And now, Surge becomes not only a Deluxe in the second wave, his enemy Dragon Bolt is also the largest villain of this wave! He gets attention, yay! But does this upgrade really improves Surge? Let's find out. Set name: Surge Set Number: 44008 Price: 12.99 Euro Pieces: 66 (+ 3 spare parts) Year of release: Summer 2013 Size class: Deluxe set The bag Surge is flying across the halls of the Brain lab, while some sort of crazy lightning is going on underneath him. Always remember kids: As soon as the electricity goes haywire, better fly away! Surge got plenty of fancy features, and he can also combine with the ginormous Dragon Bolt for even bigger wings, as you can see on the back of his bag. Inside the bag - the parts As a Deluxe-sized set, Surge got a whopping 69 parts (3 of these are spare parts though). For a blue set, he got a surprisingly high amount of silver and grey parts, and his thunder theme is supported by many trans-green pieces. It's overall a good collection of parts. Surge's new helmet doesn't look that jaw-like in real as it does on this picture. I was just unable to make a picture of it that shows that fact. Aside from this, I can say almost the same I've said about Stormer's new helmet: Surge's new helmet is a nice update of his original helmet which feels a bit thicker around a few spots. The only thing I really miss on his new helmet is the speaker-like section on the front. It looked very cool on the original. Surge gets also a fancy recolour of the "generic flame/energy/spike thing" which was introduced with Pyrox and Furno XL in the past wave. It is cast in 3 instead of 2 colours like the other ones. Then there's that gun-barrel thing. Aside from it's very Space-y colour, it gives off a strong TECHNIC vibe, so I'm sure it's not an all-new Hero Factory piece. A few pics from the instructions Ah, there we got the cover of the bag again. Very nice. The picture for Surge's combiner actually manages to hide one of his wings, thanks to the slug in the upper right corner. I'm myself not all that keen on the combiner. To me, it looks mostly like Surge just with Dragon Bolt's wings (which keep their action gimmick, more on that in Dragon Bolt's review) slapped on. Building the set If you've followed my past reviews, you probably already expected that Surge's build begins with putting somethin to his back. And yeah, you're right. However, Surge takes this up to eleven, as he actually already gets most of his back (though not everything) even before he gets limbs. The instructions practically stop right before he would get his wings. Before he can start to fly, he needs to be able to walk, apparently (as usual, the left leg was left blank just for comparison). Naturally, the arms are the next part to be built. He also already gets the grip of his weapon, which is more TECHNIC-focused than that of Stormer's sword. Also, if you've followed my past reviews, you probably already know when we'll finish his weapon, right? His shoulders get transparent shells, unlike the legs, who are all solid (and mostly silver). Wait, did I forget to take a picture of Surge's visor while I was rambling about the new parts? Oh well, let me do this now then: Surge's visor is trans-green, and it ist also printed. The printing is almost symmetrical, except for a small red lense on the left (from his POV). The sleek design really fits Surge's aerial theme as well. After the head, he gets his torso done. Now it's time to finish his back by adding the wings! The build itself is rather simple. Two TECHNIC parts, a flick-missile, and we're done. It then goes of course on his back. The other wing is of course a mirrored version of this. I won't even bother with making a pictur of adding it to Surge's back. After the wings are done, we assemble Surge's thunder weapon. I guess the picture above shows how it's assembled. Add the barrel then to the machinery he already holds, and we have... The finished set! With his thunder weapon and wings, Surge is ready to fly to infinity... and beyond! Oh yeah right, spare parts. Design and playability Back in the original wave, Surge's associated element was thunder, and unlike some other heroes, he never went that far away from it as far as his weaponry goes. This time, his element is combined with a sky motif, which makes just perfect sense for him. His thunder weapon works pretty much the same as Pyrox' flame spear in the first BA wave. It's a nice gimmick, but the weapon itself is quite large and feels a bit cumbersome. Pew! Pew! The combination of silver and blue with some bright trans-green thrown in results in a fine colour scheme, my only complaint here would be the gunmetal wings, which stand a bit out. He also got some flick missiles on his back, which are connected to his wings. Aiming and firing these suckers is a bit hard though and not nearly as easy and enjoyable as it was with Stormer. I don't want to complain too much about that though, since it's not his only gimmick. Oh, in case you haven't figured it out during the building process: Surge's wings can not be easily removed like Stormer's missile launchers without leaving any traces of them there. You'll need to alter a few things if you want to remove his wings (though of course, why should anyone want to do so?). Surge's poseability is overall good. Nothing of his many parts really gets in the way of each other, and even his wings can moved downward. They rest in a 90° angle thanks to the TECHNIC piece between them, which I really like. He is, however, not perfect in terms of design. His wings are a big offender of this in various ways. As I already stated, they're gunmetal, and since most of his other metallic parts are silver, I'd wish they were silver too. The other problem is of course their asymmetry, though we already expected that since that piece debuted in Furno XL as a shield. It may be also not that big of an issue, but symmetry is something very important to me, so it does bother me a bit. Another thing that bugs me is, sadly, a visible gap between his helmet and his visor. It's noticeably large, so as soon as you look at Surge's head from the side (as in this picture), you'll notice it. But hey, at least the large eye holes on the helmet make sure that his helmet doesn't look so freakishly weird like Furno XL's helmet did. Compared with his buddy Stormer, Surge is pretty much the same height. Stormer might seems to be bulkier and wider on this picture, but that's only because Surge's wings are folded downward. Final thoughts All in all, Surge benefits greatly from the jump to the Deluxe class. Despite using not all that much blue (just like Breez in the winter wave), he still looks clearly like Surge, and he comes with a fair share of very cool parts. But still, Surge's design didn't amazed me as much as Stormer's mostly because of the minor design flaws he's plagued with. Because of that, Surge is only second to Stormer, but let me tell you, it's a very close second, and he's still a very fantastic set.
