Hammer is one of the ball Mini-Cons, and as opposed to a more typical streamlined ball, Hammer's alternate mode is a... well, a "saw ball", for lack of a better word. There's one row of spiked ridges that go about a quarter of the way around on the center of the ball, and two smaller spiked ridge rows about a third of the way towards each side. It's a pretty darned cool look, and keeps him from rolling around and off the table too easily. That said, although largely the ball mode is solid, there are a few minor telltale signs here and there of the robot mode. The most obvious is a small gap where all the parts converge, where you can see the top of the bird head. It's a small extra, as it's only visible from a fairly narrow range of angles, but it's still worth noting. The colors in this mode are mostly a milky, medium shade of orange, with two stripes of metallic black paint on the pieces that form the smaller two spiked ridges. As with basically every RID2015 Mini-Con, I wish there was a bit more paint, but at least having one significant other color in this mode-- and separated into stripes like this one-- is a step above the norm. The mold detailing is pretty fantastic, again as is typical for RID Mini-Cons-- there's segmented "spine/armor"-like details down the center stripe, with all kinds of angular, pointy details etched into the rest of the ball mode.
    As opposed to most Mini-Cons, Hammer actually has a 3-step transformation. The first step by far does most of the work-- pull apart the ball at the pieces that become the wings, and this automatically causes the head to come up, the legs to fold down, and the tail to fold out. Additionally, you have to manually flip out the black portions of the wings and turn the end of the tail 180 so that it doesn't curl down below his feet. Hammer's main mode here is very avian-like, with large wings, small little legs with penguin-like proportions and claws, and then a long tail like a parrot's. There's some more spiked ridges on the end of his tail to boot. The long neck-- along with the detailing on the head-- actually looks a bit reptilian-- incredibly intricate armored plating detailing is evident all over the face, complete with narrowed, black eyes. (The eyes are the only new bits of paint visible in this mode.) Black is a bit more apparent color-wise in this mode, with black plastic making up the bulk of the feet and some interior parts, though Hammer is still definitely mostly orange. One thing in particular that's cool about this mode is that Hammer's "auto-transformation" actually works as a bit of a "wing-flapping" gimmick-- if you move a wing up and down, the other goes up and down too, along with the head and the tail, just as if Hammer was flapping in mid-air. That's pretty darned awesome. As for articulation, the black wing parts can move back-and-forth, and the tail can rotate at the halfway point. Other than the flapping gimmick that's it, but that's still above-average for a Mini-Con. Hammer's armor pieces make an already great mode even better-- they're all a piney shade of transparent green, which contrasts very well with the orange. He's got a long horned armor piece that fits over his head and neck, along with small long pieces that fit on the front of the black part of each wing-- both of which have rather "energy"-like detailing that looks pretty nice. His other armor bits look more like mechanical weaponry extras-- he's got two dual-barreled guns that plug into the center of each circular wing piece, two single large-barreled blasters that plug into the front of each wing, and one last piece that plugs into the top of the back half of his tail. I'm... not sure what this last piece is supposed to be because of the detailing, but it still looks nice. Even better, all of these pieces can still fit on the toy in ball mode!
    Hammer is just an incredibly well-done Mini-Con, ESPECIALLY when you take into account the inherent limitations of such a small size class with a launching gimmick. The ball mode is pretty nice with some serrated edges (though the head is somewhat obvious), but MAN that bird mode... just awesome in every respect. Excellent proportions and detailing, a nice "flapping" gimmick, a really cool look overall, and great armor pieces. Overall this isn't just my favorite ball Mini-Con, it's one of my favorite RID2015 Mini-Cons period. HIGHLY recommended, even if you're not a fan of the gimmick-- it's just a fun little toy. (However, if you only want one version, for value's sake go with one of the other two versions, which both come in multi-packs.)
 

Review by Beastbot

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