Dave's Titanium Series Rant: 6" Wave 2 War Within Thundercracker War Within Jetfire Update October 25: I've gotten a few notes from readers about Jetfire (backpack adjustment, left hand stowage in vehicle mode), added as Late Notes. Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Artifacts/6Titanium2 - check here for updates if you see this file on Usenet before emailing any corrections. :) CAPSULES Thundercracker: Somewhat chunky robot mode, transformation tweaked from Cyberton Starscream, nice vehicle mode (although it looks bad from behind or below). No problems caused by the metal. Recommended. Was $14.99 before promo code at HasbroToyShop.com. Jetfire: Okay robot mode, although the backpack falls off easily and blocks poses. Decent transformation, fairly good vehicle mode. Mildly recommended. $17.99 at K-Mart. RANTS Packaging: Same design as wave 1, including use of the robot mode's design elements on the sides, top and front of the box. Each has the "bust" shot of the other in its "Also Available!" panel on the back. DECEPTICON: THUNDERCRACKER Unique Feature: Frequency modulated sonic booms THUNDERCRACKER was so named because of his unique sonic abilities. Even at low altitudes and speeds, he is able to force super-compressed air pulses through his engine intakes, giving him a burst of acceleration and generating a focused sonic boom that can shatter reinforced glass and deafen unprotected audio receptors. He is further able to modulate his sonic booms to affect the sensory response processors of enemy targets, causing panic and fear. Recruited to the DECEPTICON cause by MEGATRON himself and assigned to the elite Seeker squadron under STARSCREAM, THUNDERCRACKER proved himself to be a deadly and effective warrior, both on CYBERTRON and Earth. Working alongside fellow Seeker SKYWARP, he attacked and destroyed the AUTOBOT stronghold at Altihex, and nearly succeeded in destroying Protihex as well. STR 7 INT 7 SPD 9 END 7 RNK 5 COUR 5 FRB 8 SKL 7 Avg 6.875 And thus, the groundwork is laid for recolors as Starscream and Skywarp should they desire (although I hear Sunstorm is planned instead). He's packaged in a fairly static stance, and has no accessory. He does come with a new catalog, with WWI Prime on the front, the first four 6" Ti's on the inside, some of the 3" Ti's on the back and a few small pictures of Star Wars Ti's. Three twist-ties go all the way through to the cardboard tray and secure the plastic tray, which is also taped down as per wave 1. Five more hold the toy just to the plastic tray. Two rubberbands hold the shoulders together. Mistransformed a little in the package. The shoulders are "shrugged" up too high, and need to be lowered so that the shoulder joints will work. The nametag holds onto the base much better than on Prime and Megatron. Firmly pegged in. Weight: 9.125oz (258g) Main Weakness: The heel spurs are too short, making it hard to stand the figure up without leaning it forward a little. Robot Mode: 5" (12.5cm) at the head, 6" (15cm) at the nosecone sticking up behind his head. The torso, upper arms (minus the wingtips), lower legs and the nosecone piece on the back are metal, mostly painted a medium blue (a little lighter than 0066FF) with accents in silver, dark gray (333333) and some red (FF0000) bits. The shoulder chunks and cockpit window bits are a slightly orangey yellow (FFCC33). The wingtips on the shoulders and the tail halves also connected to the shoulders are a softish blue plastic that matches the metal's painted bits okay and doesn't glow much under UV. The tip of the nose is a rubbery blue that's a tiny bit darker and also doesn't glow. The back, the underside of the nose and the panels that hold the tail halves are a more rigid blue plastic that matches well and glows fiercely under UV. The toes are a medium gray (666666) that doesn't seem to be anywhere else on the toy. The thighs and forearms are a lighter gray (999999) semi-soft plastic, and the head and fists are a rubbery plastic of the same gray. There's also black plastic on the elbows, hip joints, forearm wheels and some of the harder to see connection pieces, including the peg and hole setup for snapping the feet onto the sides of the nose in tetrajet mode. There's a purple Decepticon symbol printed on the center of the chest. Poseability is okay, given the mold it's patterned after. The head turns, but the waist does not. The shoulders are swivels with a little up and down play on the transformation joint. The elbows are double hinges with a few ratchet points on the lower hinge, and the wrists are restricted ball joints like on a Gundam action figure. The hands are closed fists with no pegholes, so he can't borrow any guns. The hips are ratcheting universal joints, there's stiffly ratcheting mid-thigh swivels, and the knees are ratcheting hinges. The ankles are hinged mainly for transformation, and are sort of halfway between stiff hinges and loose ratcheting hinges. Transformation: Very similar to Cybertron Starscream, but with two major differences (and numerous minor ones). The nose section folds down from the backpack and the feet clip onto the sides of it, rather than clipping together to make the nose themselves. And there's panels on the fronts of the shoulders that fold together to cover the head and form the tailfin. Otherwise, the arms and legs transform pretty much like Cybertron Starscream, although the shoulders swing upwards on struts (and lose their swivel joints in the process) so that the overall shape of the seeker jet is more swept-back than Starscream. The fists don't retract, they just sort of hide a little. The feet don't clip onto the nose as solidly as I'd like. Vehicle Mode: 6" (15cm) long. The fuselage itself is a sort of lifting body, widening to 3" (8cm) all on its own at the rear. Adding in the winglets gives a rear width of 5.5" (14cm). The top of the tailfin sticks up 2.5" (6cm) above the table when the toy rests on landing gear. The rear wheels are part of the robot forearms, but the nose gear folds down. Reasonably stable, and a rock compared to the first two 6" Titaniums. The rear section is a little wobbly, as the shoulders don't peg to ther knees or anything else, relying on the tailfin section to keep things together. The pegs that hold the toes to the sides of the nose are a bit too small and weak, a problem continuing from wave 1, but they aren't particularly load- bearing, so it's not a huge problem. You can toss the toy lightly from hand to hand without anything falling off or popping open. From the front, top and sides it looks good. A sleek delta dart in blue and silver and charcoal. There's even little missiles molded into the wingtip bits that were largely concealed in robot mode. But from the rear or bottom, there's this huge obvious gap at the back with the robot head just sort of looking around, plus obvious robot fists. Still, most altmodes (other than Alternators) don't look good from every angle, and I'm willing to forgive this flaw. Overall: A little on the chunky side, the pegging and stability could be better, but if this were the first 6" Titanium figure I think people (myself included) would have felt a lot less let down. The metal doesn't cause problems with posing or stability in either mode, and is generally well balanced in how it's distributed. The rubber head is a bit weird, though. AUTOBOT: JETFIRE Unique Feature: Frozen in stasis lock in Earth's arctic circle Before the Great War between the AUTOBOTS and DECEPTICONS broke out, JETFIRE was a partner and friend to STARSCREAM. The two were as close as brothers, the one as calm, rational and slow to anger as the other was jealous, erratic, and arrogant. When STARSCREAM joined the DECEPTICONS in attacking the AUTOBOT held cities of CYBERTRON, JETFIRE was slow to chose [sic] sides. He was hesitant to join in the slaughter of largely defenseless AUTOBOTS, but did not want to take up arms against someone he'd considered a friend. When the full extent of the treachery of the DECEPTICONS became clear however, JETFIRE joined the AUTOBOTS without reservation. The anger he felt at his betrayal by STARSCREAM never waned. He fought his former friend at every turn. The sky over many a battlefield filled with fire as the two master fliers engaged in dog fight [sic] after dog fight, neither completely destroying the other. STR 6 INT 10 SPD 10 END 5 RNK 10 COUR 9 FRB 7 SKL 9 Avg 8.25 Okay, he got the suckiest Unique Feature ever. "I got frequency modulated sonic booms!" "I inherited the Matrix from Sentinel Prime!" "Ha! I *defeated* Sentinel Prime! What about you, Jetfire?" "I got frozen in the arctic circle." "Ooooh, bummer." Right up there with, "I got a rock." "Dogfight" is usually one word, hence my second [sic]. As with Thundercracker, three twist-ties go all the way through to the cardboard, securing the plastic tray along with the taped tabs. Four more connect the toy to just the plastic tray (oddly, the right leg gets an extra tie, while the left is just held by the one that goes all the way through). One rubber band keeps the wingtips folded back. Weight: 7.75oz (220g). Lightweight. :) Main Weakness: The backpack doesn't stay on very well. The peg is just too weak and loose. I've heard some say they don't have this problem, but my impression has been that more have it than don't. At least mine doesn't fall apart when you simply look at it too intently. And even leaving the peg's strength aside, attempting to raise the right arm at the shoulder tends to knock the backpack off. [Later note: several readers sent me the following tip. Rotate the red thruster parts of the backpack one click forward, so that the intake vents are more or less vertical. Then rotate the wingtips back one click. This gets the thrusters just enough out of the way to allow a more secure connection and also lets the shoulders move without knocking the backpack off.] Robot Mode: 5.25" (13.5cm) tall at the head, 6" (15cm) at the top of the over-the-shoulder guns. The following parts are metal: center of backpack, vent side (top in vehicle mode) of the pieces flanking the center, most of the chest (leaving out the center top chunk), abdomen/pelvis, both shoulderpads, armor on right forearm (nose of jet) and boots. Most of the metal is painted a very light gray (lighter than 333333) with silver airbrushing and some red and black details. The chest has a red and silver Autobot symbol painted on the right side, and a 12-pack missile pod molded on the left and painted black with yellow tips. The feet and wheels are made of black plastic, including the thruster nozzle inside each foot. The landing gear struts (more on them in vehicle mode) are red (FF0000) plastic. The guns are some rubbery plastic painted silver. Everything else is very light gray plastic with red and black paint. There's scorchy airbrushing around the five jet intakes (four on backpack, one on the tail section attached to the left arm). The faceplate is silver, the visor red, and there's some little black details on the head (which is in "faceplate down" mode, with no option to flip it up). There's also Autobot symbols printed on the wingtip pieces that face forward in this mode. The head turns smoothly, the waist turns in an eight point ratchet. However, turning the waist tends to knock the backpack off. The left shoulder soft-ratchets through eight positions of swivel, plus has a "lift to the side" hinge. The right shoulder is similar, but no ratcheting and there's a little up and down play to the swivel attachment (needed for transformation). Both elbows are hinges, both wrists are swivels. There are no upper arm swivels. Each forearm has a large piece of vehicle kibble on it which can wiggle a little for alignment, but not more. The hips are universal joints that ratchet on both axes. The knees are weird, though... they're restricted ball joints. So they can bend only a little, and in any direction. I suppose it helps keep the figure from falling over. The ankle hinges can wiggle a few degrees back and forth. The guns detach from the backpack and can either be dual-wielded, or pegged together as a double-barrel weapon (kinda awkward fit, though, since there's two handles right next to each other). The double-barrel mode is not in the instructions. Once the initial paintlock is broken, the guns don't stay on the backpack too well. Is that a landing gear, or are you happy to see me? Yeah, he has a landing gear on his pelvis that can fold down. Jinchokon? Or not. What with it falling off all the time, I think the backpack makes a better glider for the robot to stand on. Needs a little poster putty to keep from sliding off, though, depending on whether you put the flat sides up or the good-looking sides up. A final note on the robot mode. While almost all of this design is a departure from the G1 Robotech-with-tweaks toy, below the knees it's very Veritech. Thruster sections opening up into feet, little winglets below the calves, etc. Transformation: the left arm becomes the nose, the right arm the tail, as was obvious from their kibble in robot mode. The head folds down and the chunk it's in rotates up so that the peghole moves from back to top. The backpack comes off during this. Not "must come off", "does". :) The pelvis rotates and folds to become the front landing gear, with the legs pegging on to either side in "classic" Jetfire/Valkyrie style. Then rotate the wings a bit to get them in the right shape and plug them back on. [Late note: An undocumented feature reported to me by JediTricks - The left fist can be folded into the tail chunk in vehicle mode, hiding it. It looks best if you swing it around so that the back of the hand is facing out when the fist is stowed. Note, however, you will need a pry tool to get it back out, which may be why they omitted it in the instructions. Actually, the instructions imply that the fist can go into the forearm, and just have it vanish.] [Even later note: Huh. The tail piece actually pops off, making it a lot easier to get the fist out. But it took me a LOT of force to get it off the first time. A side benefit of popping it off is that you can put it back on in reverse in robot mode, which looks a bit better. The nose piece on the right arm also pops off, although it can't be remounted in a different position on the right arm.] Vehicle Mode: 6.75" (17cm) long, 6.25" (16cm) wingspan. While not as solidly connected as Thundercracker, it's not bad, and the backpack unit gets a second peg to lock it down in this mode. If you haven't seen the War Within comics with Jetfire, this mode bears a resemblance to the B-1 bomber, although it has a V-shaped tail rather than the usual inverted T. And with the Veritech's "Hey, those are legs hanging under the fuselage" kibble. You can sort of do a "gerwalk" or "guardian" mode, but the arms can't be deployed and the knees don't bend enough for a proper pose. The landing gear is definitely bomber in nature, with two pairs of wheels folding out from the rear, and a "nosewheel" almost at the midpoint. The rear wheels fold out by pushing up on those little winglets on the robot calves, really nifty design element. Oddly, the Autobot symbols are on the bottom of the wings in official configuration with wingtips swept back. Of course, you can always rotate them to be swept-forward, giving it a slightly more fighterly look. Overall: Has more stability issues than I'd like, but it's not the fall-apart-fest that Prime is. A few more pegs, and better pegs where there are some, would have gone a long way. Dave Van Domelen, now to find a place to put 'em...doesn't feel like doing a major "put Cybertron away" session yet. Might just stow Prime and Megatron and give their places to TC and Jetfire.