Moving on to another one of my high points in the Armada line is Jetfire. The first time I caught glimpse of Armada Jetfire I was pretty torn. I wasn’t so sure about his robot mode, but I was in love with his vehicle mode from the very start. I was also happy to see that the name Jetfire went to a suitably worthy design. Once I finally found him and brought him home I couldn’t put him down and the uniqueness of his robot mode really grew on me. Let’s check him out…
The shuttle mode is gorgeous. A little toyish looking? Maybe. But I really dig the overall design of this shuttle. He’s more of a battle shuttle with missiles mounted under each wing and a pair of guns as well. There is a ridiculous amount of sculpted detail on this thing, from the panel lines to the little grills and intakes and if you open his payload doors there’s even a bunch of shematics etched on the inside of one of the doors. I think I owned this toy for months before finally taking notice of that stuff, but it just goes to show you how much love went into even the smallest details of this guy. Unfortunately, I think it was pure hate that went into his electronics, as Jetfire has one of the most annoying electronic gimmicks I’ve seen in a while. Push his back tail fin down and the thruster cone lights up and he starts this long-winded countdown, followed by sensors beeping. It’s an infuriatingly long sound clip and it has a hair trigger.
Jetfire also has what I believe to be the best Minicon connectivity of almost any toy in the Armada line. He has three live Minicon ports: One on the top, which activates his spring loaded tail fins, and he has one on each wing that drops each missile. But the coolest thing isn’t really a port at all, its the way Comettor transforms into Jetfire’s front landing gear and plugs in under his nose cone.
Transforming Jetfire is pure craziness. Stuff flops all over the place and for a while, he’s just a hollow mess. But he’s surprisingly easy to convert and the process is really clever. I’m not all that much a fan of Jetfire’s head sculpt, but it doesn’t go so far as to ruin the figure for me at all. I just wish they would have gone with something that looked a little more Transformer-y. Two of his thruster cones retract into his feet, which is really cool as it would aid in his ability to fly. The third thruster assembly becomes a rather unweildly, but serviceable weapon. You can position his wings in a variety of ways. I believe the official position is angled up over his shoulders, but I like to put them down, coming off his back. Jetfire has a good amount of articulation and he’s chock full of strong ratchet joints. His arms feature universal movement in the shoulders and hinged elbows. His legs rotate at the hips and his knees bend.
Jetfire’s Minicon is Comettor and as already hinted at he’s something of a triple changer. In addition to his landing gear mode, he also has a little moon buggy alt mode and can take on a cool wheeled robot mode. Afterall, how many Transformers have wheels instead of feet? At least outside of Beast Machines. Granted, his colors are a bit bland, but he’s definitely one of the more unique Minicons out there and his connectivity with his big bot buddy is fantastic.
Like most of the Armada molds, Jetfire was repainted and re-released as Powerlinx Jetfire. I really wanted to include some shots of the repaint, but the batteries in my camera had other plans. If I’m motivated enough, I may edit today’s entry with some additional photos, but chances are I’ll just save all the Armada repaints for a Powerlinx Week sometime in the future when I’m hard up for material. He’s also capable of joining with Armada Optimus Prime, but there just wasn’t enough alcohol time to make me attempt that for today’s entry. Either way, Jetfire here is a really fun an innovative toy, and certainly one of my favorites in the toyline.