[Phew, it’s been a long week of DC Universe Classics goodness. I’ve got a shit ton of other toys piling up, but I need a day off, so I’m just checking in today with a quickie. No, I haven’t forgot that I still need to do the two All Stars bonus figures that I got with Wave 16. I’m going to break up the DCUC run for the next three or four days with some other stuff, and then I’ll get back to take a look at All Stars Joker and Deathstroke sometime around the middle of next week. For reals! -FF.]
So… Deluxe Class Thundercracker from Dark of the Moon seemed like a good choice for a quickie, since he’s just a repaint of the Starscream figure that I reviewed a week or so back, we can take a quick look at him without doing the mold a disservice.
Bam! Dark of the Moon Deluxe packaging with the figure carded in his jet mode. The package deco still looks great. I found Thundercracker’s bio blurb a little funny as it basically says he’s Starscream’s protege. Seems as though Starscream has taken him under his wing. HA! Let’s move on…
It’s the same awesome Deluxe sized F-22 Raptor that we saw with Starscream, but the new paintjob really pops compared to Starscream’s cyber-tats. Besides the nice deep blue of G1 Thundercracker, he’s got some gorgeous red and silver striping on the wings and rear fins. The grey dorsal hinge is a little unsightly, but apart from that I couldn’t be happier with this figure’s jet mode aesthetics. On the downside, the plates on my figure don’t line up all that well, certainly not as well as on my Starscream.
I’m still impressed with the transformation on this mold and how solid the resulting robot mode is. Granted, if you don’t like Starscream’s movie design, I doubt this repaint will win you over. As I said in the Starscream review, this design has grown a lot on me and I think it looks great in the new color scheme. I’m particularly fond of the black paint job on the head.
Hasbro went an interesting route with Thundercracker’s MechTech weapons. They included one of Starscream’s Null Rays, which can peg in under the wing or onto his arm, but without the other half, it really isn’t a MechTech weapon anymore, is it? He does, however come with a repaint of my favorite MechTech weapon so far: Roadbuster’s chainsaw. I’ll grant you it doesn’t serve much purpose to have a chainsaw mounted under the wing of a Raptor, but it sure works great on his arm in robot mode.
Thundercracker is either an easy pick-up or an easy pass, depending on your take on the Deluxe Starscream mold. I was impressed with it and found it to be a big improvement over the old Voyager mold in terms of stability and playability. What’s more, Hasbro put some real love into Thundercracker’s deco. A figure that could have easily been a quick and dirty repaint cash grab, turned out to be a really snazzy looking repaint cash grab. And doesn’t that mean we all win?
FigureFan Zero 