Dave's Universe Classics Rant: Ultra Wave 2 Silverbolt (jet bomber) Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Classic/UUltra2 Ships with more of Powerglide and Onslaught. CAPSULES Silverbolt: Plane with a block strapped under it turns into a robot with a plane strapped to the back. Solid, looks like the G1 version, but rather disappointing from a "Transformer" standpoint. Mildly recommended. $24.99 at Target. RANTS Packaging: Same as Wave 1. The co-sell on the left side shows both Powerglide and Onslaught. As in previous Classics 2.0, I make up the function and motto, since they're not present on the package. AUTOBOT: SILVERBOLT Altmode: Fighter Jet (so says the box, but see review body) Function: Air Commander Previous Name Use: G1, G2, BW, BMac, Universe, Go-Bots Previous Mold Use: None Call-Outs: "Firing 'electrostatic bolt!'" "Electronic Lights and Conversion Sounds!" "Thruster and battle sounds!" Motto: "Never fly so high you lose sight of your purpose." As the leader of an elite group of AUTOBOT warriors known as the Aerialbots, SILVERBOLT shoulders a great deal of responsibility. He is a careful planner who never risks the lives of any of his men, unless it is absolutely necessary. All his care, however, hides a deeply insecure nature. OPTIMUS PRIME actually put SILVERBOLT in such a stressful position largely to distract him from his paralyzing fear of heights; a weakness he hopes the other Aerialbots never discover. He is a capable leader nonetheless, and has honed the Aerialbots into one of the finest AUTOBOT units in the universe. STR 6 INT 8 SPD 9 END 8 RNK 8 COUR 8 FRB 8 SKL 5 Avg 7.5 Packaging: The artwork has a snarling expression, breaking the "zombie face" trend. Still just instructions, no catalog. Three twist-ties hold the jet onto the blister, but you only have to undo the one around the nose and you can slide the toy out of the other two. To compensate for that part being easy, the gun and missile are separately twist-tied to just the blister, but both can be pulled out without undoing the ties. Vehicle Mode: Silverbolt is mostly an XB-70 bomber (not a fighter, as the box calls it) with visual elements of the B-2 Spirit at the rear and F-22 stylings at the front. It's full of zigzag radar-dispersing panel lines and intake edges, including around the guns that flank the cockpit, and the entire rear section looks like they took a B-2 and smooshed it to fit on as a skin. The canards are shaped more like F-22 wings than the wider canards of the XB-70. 10.25" (26cm) long with a wingspan of 6.25" (16cm), it's about 1:220 scale if he turns into a properly sized XB-70. Pegging the gun into place under the cockpit and loading the missile increases the total length to 11" (28cm). Unfortunately, it's a modified XB-70 with a big robot chunk strapped to the bottom. Granted, this is in keeping with how G1 Silverbolt was an SST with a robot chunk strapped to the bottom, but it's no less ugly. You expect this sort of thing from a Basic/Scout/Cyberjet toy, but it's kinda disappointing from an Ultra. Granted, they used a number of tricks to make the robot chunk a bit more streamlined and less ugly, but it's still pretty obvious. The actual airplane part is mostly made of a light ghost gray plastic. The cockpit windows and jet engine rear sections are made from a clear light blue plastic, and the sound and light button between the engines on top is a trio of linked hexagons (more of that stealth angling stuff) made of dark red plastic. A second loose hexagonal button is located between the flanking LED guns, also dark red plastic, but it does nothing in this mode (it's there to push through to the main sound and light button in robot mode). The gun pegged to the underside of the nose is black plastic, with a little B-2 shape molded into it as a secondary canard. The missile and the landing gear are bright red plastic. The sharp tip of the nose is made of rubbery light gray plastic, a pretty good but not exact match for the rigid light gray plastic. I'll discuss the robot chunk plastics when I talk about the robot mode. There's silver paint on the leading edges of the wings, the gun's false canard and the plane's ailerons, extensively around the rear of the plane, and on the "firing lane" channels ahead of the flank guns. Dark gray paint is on the leading edges of the jet intakes and the flank gun cowlings. Bright red paint is on the trailing edge of the jet engines, airbrushed to fade towards the front. The same winged "not quite Autobot symbol" seen on Powerglide's wings is printed in silver and dark gray on Silverbolt's wings, with a black 25 printed in the center. "BOLT-25" is printed on the sides of the fuselage around the midpoint. I presume 25 is a reference to the upcoming 25th Anniversary. Pressing the sound and light button cycles through the same three sounds as on Powerglide, but in a different order: swoosh overhead, then powerup, then cannon. The swoosh has no accompanying lights. The powerup comes with four slow flashes of amber LEDs inside the clear parts of the egines. The cannon sound has two green LEDs in cowlings flanking the fuselage where the wing roots meet up with the fuselage. Just tapping in the cannon part of the cycle gets five shots and five flashes of the green lights, but they're not synched up. Holding it down keeps it firing and flashing until after you let go. The last shot is followed by a faint echoing. The speaker is just ahead of the button, and the slits are v-shaped for radar stealth...they're definitely sticking to concept there. The gun, as mentioned earlier, is black plastic with a splash of silver paint on the fake little B-2 molded onto it. The barrel is reminiscent of those black barrel pieces used on Exo-Force sets. A peg and a tab make sure that the gun stays put and doesn't turn off the centerline. The trigger button is red plastic. There's no place to store the missile other than in the gun, although it can be held in the robot hand. The firing spring is pretty weak. Transformation: Really simple. The jet folds in half and becomes a backpack, held together by a hook (that looks pretty good in vehicle mode, like a secondary aileron in the event Silverbolt has to jettison the rear three quarters of, um, himself). The undercarriage junk becomes a robot. About the only interesting bit is that you fold the legs down and then ram the spine up through the body, making the head pop out and triggering a transformation sound along with four flashes of all the LEDs (the four vehicle mode LEDs plus a green LED inside the robot head...this is the only way to make the eyes flash). This is a Scout-class transformation. Robot Mode: 8" (20cm) tall at the head, 9.5" (24cm) at the cockpit sticking up behind his head. Basically a robot with a jet folded in half and stuck on his back. While he has tail section details on his shoulders to look like his G1 version, it's kinda like the fake windows molded onto the chest of Laser Optimus Prime. The head molding is very close to the G1 animation model, although they downplay the freaky lips. Most of the torso is made of dark red plastic, with the rear part of the upper torso being light gray plastic. The boots and forearms are also light gray plastic. The toes, collar area and fists (including a bit of the forearm, due to the way the fists fold out) are black plastic. The shoulders, thighs and head are medium gray plastic. The eyes are clear light blue plastic. The upper arms, heel spurs and panels on the chest (which are the landing gear) are bright red plastic. Silver paint is used for the face, the center of the chest, most of the abdomen, the crotchplate and the leading edge and wingtip details of the false shoulder wings. The helmet band is gold, as are the top halves of the boots, the upper part of each forearm, and some bits along the flanks. There's gunmetal details on the gold part of the boots, and a red Autobot symbol printed on the center of the chest. The head turns, the waist does not. The shoulders are universal joints that ratchet in both dimensions. There's smooth but stiff upper arm swivels and ratcheting elbows. No wrist articulation, and the transformation joint doesn't do much good there. Fully ratcheting universal joint hips, smooth mid-thigh swivels, ratcheting knees, no practical ankle articulation. The lower legs are twice as long as the upper legs, making some poses awkward, although it's not quite at Road Rocket levels. The arms do have enough articulation to let him use his missile (which fits snugly in his hand) as a karaoke microphone, though. Pushing the secondary button on the back of the jet-backpack only triggers the cannon sound, same as with Powerglide. The green cannon LEDs flash more or less invisibly, but the robot eyes do not light up. I'm not sure if this is a bug in all toys, just a problem with mine, or intentional. They missed a beat on the landing gear. They should have molded some missile heads inside the chest so that flipping up the landing gear would look like something else in this mode. Instead there's just molded hydraulic lines. Overall: Well, it's big, and looks like G1 Silverbolt. But it also looks like him in bad ways (plane strapped to a block in vehicle mode, robot with a folded up plane stuck to his back in robot mode). It's solid, an advantage over the other two Classics 2.0 Ultras so far, but also kinda dull. Dave Van Domelen, notes that the fact he was able to review this the day he got it, AFTER reviewing Powerglide and Onslaught the same night, is further proof that there's not a lot to discuss about it.