So, way back in January I first dipped my toes into the third-party Transformers pool. Actually, I dove right in by buying TFC’s Phantom and committing myself to their five figure set called Uranos. I went for these because I absolutely love the Aerialbots and I was tired of waiting for Hasbro to do them properly. Much like the Constructicons, for me the Aerialbots were always more about the team of individual robots rather than their gestalt form, and the individual figures TFC showed off looked mighty good. As we saw yesterday, the final figure arrived and I am extremely pleased with the way this team turned out. Just to give you an idea of how much the combined mode was an afterthought to me, I had the last figure for over a week before finally combining these guys for the purpose of today’s feature.

So, each of the individual figures transform into their component parts quite easily. It’s so intuitive that I was able to do each one just by looking at the picture on the package. The only extra parts needed are the hands and feet. Once I got each figure in the combiner mode, it was just a matter of plugging in the arms and lower legs to the connector ports. Here’s where I was worried things might go awry and I was right on target. Plugging the connecting ports into the sockets requires a lot more force than I’m comfortable applying to these figures. Keep in mind, I was totally happy with the quality of plastic on the individual figures and very few things about them made me nervous when transforming them up until now. The arms go in just fine, but getting them apart again was nerve racking. Connecting the leg ports was the major problem. They fall out a lot, so I’m thinking that I was probably not clicking them in all the way. At the same time, I’m not willing to apply any more force to get them in further. I just had to be super careful handling him to watch for the legs coming out. Finally, using Ray as a chest piece was a cool idea, but since he only pegs in at one spot, he flops around a bit. You can even see in one picture, two of his diagonal panels are misaligned because of this.

I do like the look of this guy a lot. His head sculpt is rather derpy, yes, but as a whole, he looks ridiculously cool and complex and it’s a design that I think could easily work for as a movie-style combiner done right. If you’re looking for a G1 Sunbow accurate Superion, this sure ain’t him, but if you’re looking for what a real life Superion might look like, this is your guy. However, all that complexity comes with a price. There are all sorts of wings and things pegged into him and trying to pose him causes a lot of these to drop out. There’s also nowhere that I really feel comfortable holding him because of this very point. Just handling him became an exercise in frustration. I suppose if I were interested in keeping him displayed as Uranos, I could get a 1:6 scale figure stand to rest his robo-crotch on and that would do the trick, but thankfully it’s not the Uranos mode I bought him for, so that’s not an issue for me.

If I could apply a single phrase to sum up Uranos it would be “look but don’t touch.” I really dig the way he displays, but he’s so darn fragile in combined mode that I was anxious to get him separated back into his individual bots. So much so, that I snapped some quick pictures and was done with it. Granted, I’m rarely ever satisfied with the results of my poor photographic skills mixed with my ancient camera, but in this case the photo shoot was just a disaster. I really wanted to get some shots that made this guy look as great as he does on the shelf, but between him falling over and me not wanting to break him, I just decided to go with what quick snaps I had and be done with it. I think that tells more about the combined mode than any picture could.

I should note that I did pre-order TFC’s accessory pack. I mainly bought it for the guns for the individual figures, but it does come with a G1 style chest plate. In all honesty, the next time I bother combining these figures will be when that pack arrives. I love these guys to death when displayed as a team, and if I had to do it all over, I’d still buy each and every one of them, but I’m in no hurry to mess with combining them again. I’m just too afraid that it’ll result in damaging one of the figures.

With so many figures sitting on my receivings pile waiting to be opened, I almost let this momentous release slip by. Yes, folks, here we are at the final figure in TFC’s Project Uranos. He’s the F-16 Falcon, possibly known to some as Not-Skydive. I’m really excited to open this guy up and check him out, so let’s jump right in. I’ve done most of these figures in two parters, but now that we’ve been through four figures in the series, I’m going to try to knock him all out in one day.

Ah, this is the last time we will see the Uranos packaging. It’s worth taking a moment to once again point out that TFC did a wonderful job with the presentation. The boxes are high quality and the front window displays the figure in his robot mode very well. Falcon is positioned in his tray beside his weapons and his combiner part and everything is held in with strong twist ties. Behind the tray there’s a printed cardboard insert with a beautiful line drawing of the figure. Taped inside you get a pouch with a folded color poster of the character art and a folded instruction sheet. The character artwork on the front and side panels of the box is fantastic and the matte finish contrasts beautifully with the foil “URANOS” lettering.

Flip the box over and you get shots of the toy in all three modes. The package is totally collector friendly and the character art on the side means that if I keep the figures boxed, I can line them all up in a bookshelf and they still make a wonderful display. When you’re dropping $100+ on a figure, you want a little something nice in the presentation and TFC certainly delivered here. As always, let’s start with Falcon’s jet mode. As always, let’s start with his jet mode…

Falcon’s roots in the G1 Skydive toy are immediately apparent, but TFC did a great job taking the sculpt to the next level. It should, however, be noted that because it uses the same base body as Eagle, there were some sacrifices made. A Falcon should have a rounder body on top, whereas this version is more flat on top, similar to Eagle. It’s easy to see which aircraft was designed first and it’s bound to irk aircraft enthusiasts. Another point worth mentioning is that the tailfin on Falcon splits down the middle as part of the transformation. In jet mode it never goes completely flush together, so there’s a seam or gap running down it and that’s a little unsightly. It’s easy to overlook it on a Transformer, but this is basically a $100 Voyager Class, so I’m compelled to point it out. These kinds of little things probably make Falcon the weakest of all this team’s jet modes, but that doesn’t mean he’s bad. Quite the contrary, he’s still a great looking jet and I’m pretty impressed at how TFC was able to share so much engineering between the two aircraft.

Just like Phantom and Harrier shared a red and white deco in their alt modes, Falcon is aligned with Eagle with a darker color scheme. In this case, Eagle was entirely black and Falcon mixes it up a little more with a black and grey deco that does a fine job mimicking that old toy that inspired him. The biggest difference are the wing markings. Gone are Skydive’s garish lightning bolts and in their place are some more tasteful diagonal stripes.  A couple of repro Autobot symbols on the wings, and this guy looks the part nicely.

Falcon includes an opening cockpit and he comes with a pair of missiles, which can be pegged into two different positions on his wings and he has three folding landing gear to help him display in jet mode. But if you really want to display this guy with style, Falcon can make use of his combiner parts (ie. Uranos’ foot) to create a stand for his alt mode. It’s the exact same thing included with Eagle and this gimmick works so well, it really makes me wish I had similar stands for the other three figures.

Since Falcon uses the same basic engineering as Eagle, his transformation is quite similar. While the jet mode lost some points against the others, the robot mode is probably my favorite of the entire team. He’s also the most distinctive looking. For starters, he has a squared off transparent yellow piece dead center in his chest. It may be intended as a faked out cockpit or it may just be a coincidence. He also has two curved pieces of the aircraft running down the two sides of his chest. These contoured pieces give him a little less boxy of a chest than his teammates. The rest of the figure more or less falls in line with Eagle. The bulk of the pieces are re-sculpted to make him unique, but he still wears his nosecone and cockpit section on his back. As with Eagle, Falcon can wear his missiles on his arms, he can wield them in his fists like guns, or they can be stored on his wings.

I absolutely love Falcon’s head sculpt. He has a mouth plate and a yellow translucent visor. His helmet is black with some silver accents and the light piping effect for the visor is excellent. It’s not Sunbow accurate, but apart from the color of the visor, it comes pretty close to the original Skydive toy.

What really sets Falcon apart is his deco. He’s got a striking black, red and grey color scheme with a little yellow fringe thrown in for good measure. When you line up the team, he stands out as the black sheepicon of the gang, since even Eagle, who is all black in his jet mode, sports a largely white and red deco in robot mode. It may not be uniform, but he matches that character that appeared on a certain Sunbow cartoon quite nicely, so I approve.

And there we go… I absolutely love this figure! I didn’t bother mentioning anything about the quality of the plastic because it’s been consistently high quality in all the previously releases. Suffice it to say Falcon is no different and there’s nothing about him that makes me nervous when transforming him or afraid to handle him. The engineering on this guy is great and I’ll say again how impressed I am that TFC was able to start with two core figures and make them so different in both robot and vehicle modes. It’s a great feeling to finally have all the figures in hand and know that they all panned out so well. Displayed as a team, either in jet modes or robot modes, they are everything I dreamed they would be and more. But wait… don’t these guys combine or something? That they do… and I’ll be back tomorrow to take a look at Uranos, the big guy himself.