Dave's Beast Machines Rant: Ultra Jetstorm This arrived in the mail for me from Amazon.com on Thursday, but I wanted more time to mess with it before reviewing, and then I went offline for three days. Well, at least it gave me a while to evaluate the toy. CAPSULE Pretty good vehicle mode, decent transformation, okay robot mode, nice gimmicks, kinda unstable in both modes, some kibble trouble. Great colors. Recommended. $19.99 + S&H at Amazon.com. RANT VEHICON: Jetstorm Function: Aerodrone General Altmode: Electronic Ultra Jet Motto: "Cruelty is, perhaps, the most enjoyable sin." A high-flying Vehicon, Jetstorm is a fast-talking hotshot with a mean attitude and a twisted sense of humor. He spends as much time taunting his opponents as blasting them. Jetstorm loves his job as General of the aerodrones and is fiercely competitive with his fellow Vehicon Generals. His glowing eyes contain powerful radar emitters for tracking Maximals. His pulse missile system is thought-guided and deadly to the core, and his Skyshark drone scouts act as a potent force multiplier. Quickest of the Vehicons, Jetstorm is also quick to make enemies, and is despised by all who know him. STR 9.4 INT 8.8 SPD 9.9 END 9.3 RNK 9.5 COUR 9.2 FRP 9.7 SKL 9.6 Avg 9.4 I only added a little to the techspec note this time, pronouns and a few bits at the end (like the Skysharks). Jetstorm is secured in his box by seven twist-ties and a lot of cardboard. Unfortunately, his head fins are pressed up against the box, which permanently warps them, making them look like floppy ears. And, since I know people will be wondering which Jetstorm I think they should get, here's the scoop: if you prefer gimmicks or size, go for Ultra. If you prefer solid modes and durability, go Deluxe. Jet Mode: 12" (31cm) long with a 10.5" (27cm) wingspan, from the top this blue, grey, yellow, chrome blue and transparent red jet looks very much like the Jetstorm of the cartoons. From the side, though, he bears a striking resemblance to a Veritech fighter or original Jetfire. The jet is somewhat gappy looking near the back, with lots of triggers and joints and stuff visible. The shinguards tend to be kinda floppy, reducing the stability of this mode (it's also relatively easy to dislodge the legs entirely. Still, the overall look appeals to me (it'd look a little better if the head fins were straight, of course). Jetstorm has three landing gear struts, one under each wing and one in the middle behind the "neck." They're just long enough that the jet rests on the gear, not on the shinguards. The nose section has three hinge joints. The front two are up/down joints, while the rear one is side-to-side and geared in to one of the gimmicks. Jetstorm sort of has swing wings, but they don't really look good in any position but forward. A small grey panel swings up to reveal an orangey spark crystal. If you trigger a lever in back, the tail section springs up and becomes a missile turret. While the turret is up, LEDs in the turret and in the cockpit light up red. Under very low light conditions, this is pretty impressive. In a well-lit room, about all you can really tell is that the cockpit lights up. The turret is geared to the nose so that as you turn one, the other moves in synch with it. Usually. There's some gear slippage unless you're really careful. To either side of the turret is a small ramp designed to push up the trigger for the missile on that side. If you turn the turret too far, one of the missiles automatically fires. The missiles can also be fired normally, unlike Supreme Cheetor's "gimmick trigger only" problem. The missiles will not fire unless the turret is up, they'll just come out a little bit before being blocked by the jet body. Hopefully. }-> Finally, Jetstorm has two little flying sharklike drones that peg under his wings in jet mode (and on his legs in robot mode). These don't launch or anything, but each has a side-to-side jointed neck and the lightpipe glowing eyes trick. A nice little add-on. It'd be nicer if he could hold them like guns in robot mode, but ah well. Transformation: As with the Deluxe, you can transform to a standing mode or a hover mode. If you lock the legs in hover mode position before transforming anything else, you get a sort of bonus mode, a ramming jet of sorts (or one with two huge cannons that can be deployed, by renaming the thrusters). This mode is a few inches longer and somewhat less bulky, losing its resemblance to a Valkyrie. Transforming the upper body is kinda tricky, in part because the turret spring action keeps wanting to go off. It also doesn't help that the pegs that hold the shoulders and chest together don't do a great job, so things keep falling apart while you try to move stiffer joints. The little grey panels that move up to cover a gap in the chest are very floppy, lacking any sort of locking mechanism. Finally, the hand covers really just don't get all the way out of the way. Hover Mode: 11" (28cm) tall and fairly impressive-looking, although I haven't really found a good way to stand him up the way I did with the Deluxe. Otherwise, pretty much the same as Robot Mode below. Robot Mode: 10" (26cm) tall, this is a BIG Ultra. Other Ultras tend to be more like 7-8" tall. Jetstorm is actually taller than Optimal Optimus, and while he's slimmer than the big ape, he looks better for it. Arms and legs are full of joints, although you have to be careful with the arms or you'll dislocate the shoulders (pop the tab out of the torso). The chest is very wobbly, and I have yet to find a good way to stabilize it. The toy is a bit top-heavy, but the leg joints are stiff enough and the feet long enough that he can be posed fairly dynamically and still stand. His hands are three-clawed, with the claws sort of rotating around a common axle so they can either bunch up like a thumbless hand or spread out to look like the Deluxe's. The whole affair is mounted on a ball joint wrist. The big problem with his hands is that there's two big triangular covers just sort of hanging off his forearms and cluttering things up. If the insides were painted to look like beam emitters or reflectors or something, or if the halves could mount the Skysharks, it might be another matter. But they look kinda dumb. If you leave the covers closed, you can mount the Skysharks on the arms, for what it's worth. Unfortunately, every time the shoulder joints ratchet, there's a strong chance that the tabs will pop out that keep the upper body together, making it a pain to try and find good arm poses. There's some playing around you can do with his robot mode aside from the arms. By bending the toes back and opening up the shinguards, you can get a sort of four-footed mode going. While the turret gimmick doesn't work in this mode (except by accident, and then it blows the upper body apart), there's a button behind the head you can use to turn on the LEDs. The robot's eyes light up as well, the LED that feeds them is covered up in jet mode. And, of course, the missiles can be fired in robot mode, from either side of his head in an OpOp-ish way. Overall: Nice and big, good colors and gimmicks, and there's some potential for home-grown alternate modes. But the chest in robot mode is a glaring flaw which keeps me from being too enthusiastic in recommending this. More interesting than the Deluxe, but not as well-engineered. Dave Van Domelen, wishes there'd been a couple extra pegs....