Call me late to the party, but I finally got around to picking up the big daddy of Hasbro’s Thrilling Thirty: Leader Class Jetfire. I held off on buying this guy because I was planning on getting the Takara version, but with my toy expenses running as high as they have been lately that just never happened. Plus, I did a lot of rationalizing about how much I still dig the Classics Jetfire and maybe I didn’t really need another. Then all it took was for me to see Hasbro’s version on clearance for me to say, “Aw, slag it!” and buy him. Coincidently it just happens to be Transformers Thursday, so let’s take a look!

Ah, the Generations packaging, how I miss you! With that deliciously vintage grid pattern and familiar Transformers logo, I think this has been the pinnacle of Hasbro’s changeable robot packaging and I mourn the fact that they dumped it for the current crop. But hey, I don’t save these boxes anyway so what do I care? Jetfire comes boxed in his robot mode and all geared up with his guns and armor. The red chrome! It’s already burning my eyes!!!

It’s the back of the box that makes me cry foul on you, Hasbro. You’ll note the non-chromed armor and guns and the extra black paint apps on these pieces too. I know that all of these boxes point out that the actual product may vary from what’s pictured, but this is a pretty big leap between what’s pictured and what we got. It’s also what made me hold out for so long in favor of the more expensive Takara version until that pesky notion of fiscal responsibility got the better of me. Anyway, let’s start off with his alt mode, and to be more specific, his stripped down jet mode.

God, this is a great looking toy and a gorgeous recreation of the original G1 Jetfire’s jet mode. Little changes include a much pointier (and sexier) nose cone, and the addition of the tail wings. The cockpit is tinted blue and you get double stripes on the wings, where if I recall correctly the original only had the single stripes. Ah, but some things never change and the huge Autobot emblem is still crisply printed right on the nose cone in front of the cockpit. The primary wings can be angled back and there are three sets of landing gear for the jet to rest on. Of course, as with the original toy, you can load the jet mode up with the extra pieces to make a super armored mode…

Aaaand, here’s where Jetfire starts to stumble a little. The extra pieces consist of the booster assembly, which snaps onto the back of the aircraft, and two pairs of guns: One, which attaches under the wings, and the others that go over the rear landing gear. You can also attach his rifle under the nose cone, but I think that just looks silly. The pieces are all a lot simpler than what we got with the original toy, but I think they work really well, or at least they would if they weren’t all blinged out. Much has been made about Hasbro’s decision to use red chrome on these parts and I’m not going to beat a dead horse any further, other then to say I really don’t approve and I’m not sure why. Usually it’s just this kind of thing that makes the Takara version more desirable, but here it’s the other way around. I just don’t think it was appropriate and it makes an otherwise amazing looking jet mode look rather cheap.

Transforming Jetfire into his robot mode also results in both a stripped down robot and the armored up version. I have to say that I absolutely adore the basic robot mode. I honestly didn’t think this guy was going to replace my Classics Jetfire (other than for scale purposes) but I fell in love with this figure the first time I got him out of the box. He’s a really nice compromise between IDW and Sunbow versions of the character and he scales beautifully with most of my Classics and Generations figures. There are a few minor gripes, which I’ll get to in a second, but even so, this is the Jetfire figure that I’ve been waiting decades for.

From behind, it’s evident that there’s a lot of cheating going on with the transformation. I get it that it bugs a lot of people, but in this case I think the ends justify the means. I don’t think the cockpit hanging down the back looks bad at all. It’s a perfectly valid and stylish place to store that jet kibble and it’s quite unobtrusive. On the other hand just by being there and so visible, it advertises the way the engineering cheats. Again, if that’s what I need to sacrifice in order to get a more Sunbow accurate chest, I’m cool with that and I love the way they took the opportunity to put in all those sculpted components and an Autobot symbol inside the cockpit. I can’t see how they could have pulled that off with a legit transformation. This isn’t a case of Hasbro being lazy with the engineering, but rather just wanting to deliver an animated or comic style robot mode that never had to bend a knee to the harsh mistress of toy design.

The head sculpt is also fantastic. I dig the way the helmet frames his face and his noble expression just nails the character for me. Of course, you also get the option to put on the battle mask, which is included as a nod to the Macross head on the original toy. I’m not usually a fan of this sort of thing. I don’t think I ever displayed my Classics Jetfire with his battle mask, but I have to admit that this mask looks totally badass. It simply clips right over the face and it gives him a mouthplate, vibrant blue visor and even the antenna from the original toy.

Loading Jetfire up with his armor consists of mounting the booster package to his back, the smaller guns to his wrists and the larger ones to the sides of his legs. In theory it all looks good, and serves to cover up those unfinished looking areas on the outsides of his legs and arms. if only it weren’t for all that blasted red chrome. Honestly, I’ve usually preferred my Jetfire toys to be displayed without the extra bits, and that’s how I’ll be displaying this guy. Although, I have to admit, I do really like those arm guns.

The articulation here is pretty solid and thanks to some nice ratchets, he can hold his own weight, which admittedly isn’t all that much, and a lot of great poses. The arms have rotating hinges at the shoulders, hinges in the elbows, and swivels at the biceps. The legs are ball jointed at the hips, have swivels in the thighs, and hinges in both the knees and the ankles. I think the Third Party stuff is really starting to spoil me because I really miss having ball joints or lateral rockers in the ankles, especially on a guy this big. There’s no torso articulation, but the neck is ball jointed.

In addition to all those extra bits, Jetfire also comes with a rifle and this is one of the bigger sticking points with me and this figure. I’ve always considered the gun that came with the original toy to be something iconic to the character and what we got here is just a fairly generic looking missile launcher, which also happens to be cast in the same awful red chrome. Blah!

Shitty red chrome or no, I absolutely love this figure, and I’m genuinely surprised at how I immediately accepted it as a replacement for my beloved Classics Jetfire. Plus, as a Leader Class figure, he really fits nicely into my Classics shelves. Well, he doesn’t actually fit on any of those shelves, but I mean he scales well with the likes of Classics Prime and all those Deluxes. That’s a claim that Classics Jetfire couldn’t really boast. To think that I almost passed this guy up is absolutely insane to me, although I can’t fault the outcome because I did manage to get him at the very appealing price of $35. I’d still easily recommend the Takara version over this one in a heartbeat, and if Transformers were all I collected, I probably would have gone for that one myself. It would have been a worthy investment, because everything else about this figure is so beautifully done. I’ll also be happily revisiting a remold of this figure next month when I look at Leader Class Thundercracker, a figure that I am very excited to get as he will likely wind up being my Masterpiece Scale version of that character.

It’s New Year’s Day and a lot of y’all probably have hangovers. Well, welcome to what I like to call… “every single morning, ever!” It just so happens that the first day of 2015 lands on a Thursday and, unlike Thanksgiving and Christmas, this time I’m not bumping Transformers Thursday. Instead, let’s look at something else I got for Christmas… Roadbuster! This is a momentous occasion for me, as I have been collecting Transformers since 1984 and yet this is my very first Roadbuster figure [No it isn’t, you idiot, you got the one from Dark of the Moon!]. In fairness, I can’t recall there being too many of them since the original. And that original figure, paired with Whirl, was one of them weird Transformers that didn’t seem to quite fit with the others so as a kid I stayed away from it. This is also a bit of a sad occasion too, as 2015 will see the end of the excellent 30th Anniversary “Thrilling Thirty” releases and move on to that whole Combiners Wars thing, a line that I will be really selective about buying.

Sigh… There it is, the 30th Anniversary packaging. Aside from that nonsensical angled corner on the bottom, I really liked this stuff. Granted, these Voyagers didn’t come with a free comic book like the Deluxe packs, but I’m still going to be sad to see this line go. The box features that familiar G1-style grid pattern and some rather nice character art along with a window to show off the figure and some of his goodies.

The back of the package shows off the toy in both modes and has a little bio blurb about how Roadbuster loves murdering Decepticons more than anything else, including eating chocolate ice cream. OK, I made up that last part, but I bet it’s true! Theoretically this box is collector friendly, but between the tray and the twisty ties and all the other nonsense, I haven’t gotten one of these Voyager Class figures out without shredding the packaging to all hell. That’s alright, though, because I gave up keeping Transformers boxes back when I opened one of my closets and got buried in an avalanche of empty Transformers Armada packages. That, I didn’t make up! Let’s start with Roadbuster’s alt mode.

The official name for Roadbuster’s alt mode is a Combat 4×4 and that’s a pretty apt discription. It’s also a pretty good homage to the original G1 toy. Stripped down to its basest form, Roadbuster looks like an armored off-road vehicle bristling with connection ports just begging to be customized with his inventory of weapons. Load him up with his ordinance and he looks like something that should be patroling the deserts in a Mad Max film. The green, brown, and orange paintjob is ugly as sin, which matches the design of the vehicle as well. But, what Roadbuster lacks in aesthetics he does make up for with playability and swapping around the weapons can be rather fun.

It’s also worth noting at this point that Roadbuster comes with a sticker sheet. They’re totally optional, but if you want to get a look approximating what’s shown on the box, you’ll have to have a little patience and slap some of these things onto the toy. Actually, better make that, carefully place them onto the toy. It is indeed an odd thing to get stickers with Transformers these days, although Metroplex came with them and as I understand it so does Whirl. Overall, I think the stickers are value added, although I was a bit choosey over which ones I put on and which I left off. Some just don’t fit in the proscribed area. I also got a good chuckle out of the “Do Not Paint” stickers and the irony about how few paint apps appear to be on the 2015 figures. It looks like someone at Hasbro is taking that idea rather literally. Anyway, the point here is that even if you aren’t into stickers, you might want to consider applying at least a few of these, because he looks rather barren without them.

Transforming Roadbuster is relatively simple and satisfying, but it’s here where I really felt that the odd quality of this figure starts to show itself. It feels a little cheap and hollow and a lot of the moving parts, thankfully the ones that aren’t the robot’s joints, feel rather loose and floppy. It’s hard to explain but this just doesn’t feel like a Generations figure to me. In fact, it kind of feels like a knock off. Once in robot mode things are on the upturn. I absolutely love Roadbuster’s robot design. It takes everything about the original G1 design and makes it modern and better proportioned and actually articulated. Like his alt mode, he’s ugly and raw and clearly built for one thing… battle. Even when he’s just standing on the shelf at attention, this guy looks still looks like badass personified.

Yeah, look at that mug. It’s cold and completely void of emotion. Take a good look, Decepticons, it’s the last thing you’re going to see before he rips your energon pump from your chest and drinks from it. Yeah, I realize he doesn’t have a mouth, but it still sounded cool. He has a clear plate on the back of his noggin for light piping, but it seems like they painted over the visor, because I can’t really get any light out of it.

Roadbuster features some solid articulation and thankfully lots of ratchet joints to keep his general floppiness from effecting the important joints. The shoulders have swivel hinges, the elbow had double hinges and there are swivels in the biceps. The legs have universal movement in the hips, double hinges in the knees and hinges in the ankles. The ankles also feature rockers as a side effect of the transformation and the neck is on a ball joint. My one complaint here is that the lateral movement in the hips is not ratcheting and my Roadbuster has a habit of doing the splits if you make his stance too wide.

As with his vehicle mode, you can go crazy customizing the weapons on Roadbuster’s robot mode. He has pegs on the tops of his shoulders, sides of the shoulders and he can hold them in his hands. It all makes for some good fun… except for that little rocket pack piece. That piece can go to hell, as it doesn’t seem to want to fit anywhere without excessive force. Best I could do was get it into one of his shoulders.

I seem to recall a lot of fans losing it when this guy was announced and when you add that to the fact that Fansproject’s version before this sold quite briskly and for a lot of money, I come to the conclusion that this is a character that is really popular with the fans. I’ve already indicated, however, I’m not a huge Roadbuster fan, but I’ve got nothing against him, nor do I have a lot against this figure. Like the original G1 toy, it’s rather odd, it feels different, and the stickers and customizable weapons make him a bit of an anomaly. On the other hand, he looks great and he is rather fun to play around with, so I will happily find him a place on my Wreckers shelf. I’ll also add that he was a great gift, because I probably would have never bought him myself and I would have been missing out on a rather cool figure like I probably did with the original toy back when I was a kid.