Red Alert’s alt mode is an Ambulance and it’s a bit of a mess. I like the styling on the hood and the front grill, and the red, white and gray color scheme is appropriate, but the bits of brown here and there are really out of place and ugly. You may recall me saying how much I like clear plastic windows on my Transformers cars. You know what I don’t like? When Hasbro mixes that with painted windows. Red Alert’s windshield is translucent red, but the side windows are painted. It looks bad.

Red Alert has two live Minicon Ports on his alt mode. One is on the light bar, which flips out a huge, firing cannon and also activates his electronics. His lightbar flashes red and he says “Red Alert” which is followed by a siren. The siren doesn’t sound so much like a siren as it does a guy going “Wooooo Wooooo Wooooo.” The other live Minicon Port is on his hood, which springs the grill open to reveal a giant disc shooter. Hasbro, disc shooters went out with the 80’s and early 90’s, please stop putting them on my Transformers.

Transforming Red Alert into robot mode is fairly easy and what you get is a design that in theory is pretty much classic Autobot, but in execution has some problems. His chest is made up from the front of the Ambulance, and compared to his little head and arms, it looks way too big. Red Alert also has no abdomin, just the big boxy chest that terminates into his legs. A little redesign could have made this figure amazing, but as he is, he just looks badly misproportioned. And then there’s the head. I find it hard to believe that Hasbro wasn’t intentionally going for a Robocop look, because it looks so obvious that it’s just weird to see it on a Transformer. I could be the only one that sees that, but it really bugs me for some reason. I do like his colors in robot mode, though. The added blue on his arms and legs look good against the red and white of his ambulance parts.

Red Alert still has access to both of his Minicon powered weapons. You can flip his missile launcher onto his shoulder, which looks pretty good, and you can still activate the disc launcher.
Red Alert does have pretty good articulation for an Armada toy. He has universal movement in his shoulders and hips, double-hinged elbows and hinges in his knees and ankles, and his head swivels 360 degrees. He also has a number of different attachments that can be socketed into his left arm. Cleverly, these can be stored in a compartment in his leg, but that didn’t stop me from losing most of them.

Long Arm is a pretty cool little Minicon, although he really doesn’t look like he belongs with Red Alert. Besides being a crane, the black and brown color scheme doesn’t match his big bot buddy at all. Nonetheless, Long Arm’s robot mode is solid enough and his crane is actually articulated.

For a figure that I’m so ambivalent over, it’s kind of odd to think that I own three different versions of this same toy, but I do. In fairness, one of these was a Sam’s Club exclusive that came bundled with a real bitchin’ repaint of Armada Starscream. As for why I bought the Powerlinx version, well it just goes to show you how tightly the irrational grip of Armada completist fever had me back in the day. In my defense, there was a fourth version released that I did not buy, which was, ridiculously enough, released as Inferno in the 2008 movie line. Yeah, this mold looks right at home among the Bayformers, doesn’t it? My God, what were they thinking?

To start with, Tidal Wave actually has three separate alt modes, all of which are ocean going vessels and that right there puts him in the TF minority. Sure we’ve seen a Transformer boat from time to time, but they sure haven’t been plentiful and I can’t remember the last time I saw a Transformer made up of three separate alt modes. Reflector? No, he was one alt mode and three robots. Anyway, Tidal Wave consists of an Aircraft Carrier, a Hovercraft and a Battleship.

None of these individual ships are all that great, but I’m willing to forgive that because of what they become. All three of these craft merge together to form Tidal Wave’s giant battle cruiser mode, which not only looks right at home in the ocean, but works well as a Battleship-Yamato-style spaceship. I seem to recall him being depicted flying in this mode quite a bit in the cartoon, but then I spent a lot of time watching the cartoon while burning my arms with a cigarette lighter to help improve the experience, so I could be remembering that wrong.

In his alt modes, Tidal Wave has a few worthwhile and well thought out gimmicks. The hovercraft portion has seats that fold down so that some Minicons can sit there and these also work while he’s in his larger battleship mode. Placing Ramjet in the active Minicon port and pressing down makes all of Tidal Wave’s turrets shift back and forth. But best of all, his Minicon, Ramjet, fits nicely into a little elevator in the Aircraft Carrier section and can be stored in there until ready to launch.

Transforming Tidal Wave is pretty easy, and what you end up with is one really big and really cool looking bot. The head sculpt is pretty classical and foreboding looking, his hands are powerful claws, and he has gun turrets for nipples. Not too shabby. Since his arms are made out of his Aircraft Carrier mode, he can actually launch Ramjet while he’s in robot mode, which is a pretty cool design element. His color scheme is somewhat of a hodgepodge, but there’s a ton of great sculpted detail all over the figure. His articulation is surprisingly good for anArmada figure, as he has universal movement in the shoulders and hips, and hinges in his elbows. Alas, his head does not turn.

Ramjet is tiny, even for a Minicon he’s really, really small. He looks nice in jet mode, but he’s not the best in robot mode. This may be partially because of his smaller size, and also because he needs to fold up a bit in jet mode in order to fit through the elevator. Ramjet’s legs are just one solid piece and they aren’t really broad enough to look like separate legs, so he winds up looking like he might have to hop everywhere.

As with most of the molds in Armada, Tidal Wave was repainted and re-released, but in his case it wasn’t until the subsequent Energon line. Instead of becoming Powerlinx Tidal Wave, he became Energon Tidal Wave. I owned that one for a long while, but ultimately wound up pawning it on Ebay, probably for booze money because I needed the space. Either one are great toys, but the Energon version was a little more out there in that he had lighting bolts all over him, making the original release my preferred keeper. If you don’t have this guy in your collection, he’s definitely worth checking out even if you aren’t a huge collector of the Armada figures.

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.

A lot of Transformers continuity has come and gone, but man was it strange back in 2003 to get a brand new Transformer named Wheeljack and have him be an Autobot turncoat to boot. Like most of the figures featured this week, I don’t have a packaged shot, but Wheeljack came in his vehicle mode on a horizontal card and included a rolled up instruction sheet, a collectible card, and his Minicon buddy Wind Sheer. I actually had a MOC example of this figure for quite a while, but after searching through a bunch of totes to no avail, I later found that I sold it off on Ebay a few years back while doing some Spring cleaning.

The first thing to notice about Wheeljack is that while there is defintely an homage at work here, it sure as heck ain’t based off his G1namesake Wheeljack. Nope, with his Lamborguini style auto mode, this guy defintely looks more like G1 Sideswipe than anything else, and even more so when we get to the transformation. The next thing I tend to notice is the fact that his Autobot insignia has been violently scarred off of his hood and replaced with a smaller Decepticon logo. I could go on about how this played out in the cartoon, but the cartoon was crap, so, let’s focus on the figure. It looks pretty bad ass on the figure.

I’m not usually a big fan of painted windows on my Transformers cars. I like the use of transparent plastic, but Armada was big on painted windows and honestly, it sort of works with this figure. As with all Armada figures, Wheeljack has Minicon ports, and in this case three of them. Two of these are the dead ones on the spoiler, that don’t activate anything but still let you pile Minicons on board. Unfortunately, these ports are too close together to be much use with a lot of the Minicons. The live port on his roof activates his attack mode, which raises his gullwing doors and exposes his concealed missile launchers.

Wheeljack’s transformation is very simple, and very reminiscent of that G1 Sideswipe homage I mentioned earlier. He wears his hood as his chest, which places the scarred Autobot symbol in another position of prominance, and his trunk folds out to become his legs. Even his head sculpt is pretty similar to G1 Sideswipe, complete with the little horns too, although he does have an uncharacteristic gold face. [Certainly no surprises why he was repainted as Shattered Glass Sideswipe for Botcon 2008. -FF] He’s a pretty well proportioned figure, although he’s got some major hollow legs going on down there, and he’s pretty back heavy. We’ve also come to expect a lot more articulation in our Transformers since ball joints have become commonplace. Actually, I guess they were pretty commonplace in Beast Wars and Robots in Disguise, so in a lot of ways Armada was a step backwards in that respect, and Wheeljack here certainly proves it. The only really useful points of articulation are in his shoulders and elbows. He can also hold his missiles as swords or clubs.

Wind Sheer is a cool little stealth bomber that mounts nicely on top of Wheeljack’s car mode and thanks to the matching color scheme looks pretty good there. I really dig his transformation, partly because bits don’t fall off of him as with some other Minicons, and because he really does have a pretty solid robot mode.

There’s no doubt that Wheeljack here is a throwback to G1 in terms of sculpt, transformation and articulation. But then I make no bones about the fact that that’s why I like him. He’s a simple, sturdy toy with a nice classical look to him and his Minicon and gimmick are well designed and don’t do anything to ruin the aesthetics of the toy, unless you count making him backheavy. Granted, when it comes to defending my fondness of this figure, I usually find myself up against some overwhelming odds, so there’s a good bet your mileage may vary.

The real point of telling my little story was to explain why I actually have an in-package shot of this older figure. I really liked the Armada cards. The horizontal orientation was pretty cool, the package had the ingenius gimmick of using a collector card to customize the package artwork. The instructions were balled up under the figure and the back panel showed off the toy in both forms and the other figures available in that wave. The only thing I didn’t like about these packages was the tri-lingual text.

Cyclonus’ vehicular mode is an attack chopper and his Minicon, Crumplezone, is a tank. Cyclonus is a bit too chunky to be based on a real helicopter, but I still love this mode. There’s a ton of sculpted detail all throughout the figure and the color scheme works really well. With giant guns underneath and wing mounted missile launchers, he’s pretty well armed too. The chopper mode also has a cool action feature with a trigger placed under the tail boom that spins the rotors when you pull it. The front of the chopper looks a little stubby, but we can fix that by flipping up the cockpit and plugging his Minicon into the front to form a much better looking extended cockpit.

Naturally, all the Minicons could combine with the bigger robots in vehicle mode, but Cyclonus is one of the few Armada figures that had such a cool and beneficial union like this, which actually enhanced his alt form.

Transforming Cyclonus is pretty easy and obvious, but I like the results. In fact, the only thing I don’t like about this figure is his oompa-loompa face. The head sculpt, like a lot of Armada Decepticon figures, is kind of strange and the orange paint doesn’t help. Still, Cyclonus’ robot form is very unique and works well. You can choose to leave his rotors on his back or, as I prefer, you can plug them onto his arm as a weapon. He has Minicon ports on each of his arms, which fire his missiles when activated. And speaking of his Minicon, Crumplezone transforms into a cool little robot too.

Cyclonus’ articulation is pretty decent for an Armada figure, although it is pretty lacking by contemporary standards. His head can only bob up and down, which is part of his transformation. The arms rotate at the shoulders and have hinged elbows. You can get a little lateral movement at the shoulders too. The legs will rotate back a bit and bend back at the knees, but both of these points of articulation are part of his transformation.  Ah, but this look at Armada Cyclonus wouldn’t be complete without taking a peek at the two repaints of the toy.

First, he was repainted as Powerlinx Cyclonus with a green paint job. Were they going for a Springer homage here? Maybe. It looks mighty nice, though, and Hasbro even gave him a wash over the paint that really enhances the appearance in my eyes. Cyclonus was again available as a KayBee Toys Exclusive with a black and grey camo deco, which was also a pretty cool look for the figure. Naturally, both figures got repaints of the Minicon, Crumplezone, as well. Too bad all of these Cyclonus repaints shared the same orange Oompa Loompa face.

But Hasbro still wasn’t done with the mold, as they re-released it yet again, this time with a bit of retooling, as Buzzsaw in the Cybertron lineup. Buzzsaw featured a new cockpit and worked with a Cyberkey instead of a Minicon. He also had a crazy yellow, white and purple paint job. Buzzsaw also got a brand new headsculpt, which was a big improvement over Cyclonus’ mug.

Like many Armada toys, Cyclonus goes for a more toyish and less realistic approach. Some newer fans who are used to the likes of Classicsand the Bayformers may not take to it all that well, but I still love these guys. Cyclonus is a really well designed and very fun figure. I think the Powerlinx version remains my favorite of the re-decos, but they’re all still pretty cool.