Dave's Transformers Legacy Rant: Voyager Wave 3

Armada Universe Starscream (Jet)

Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Legacy/VStarscream

Wave 3 was weird, in that sometimes it was just Inferno and reships,
sometimes just Starscream and reships. I'm not sure it actually shipped as a
unified wave at any point.

CAPSULE

$30 at Target.

Armada Universe Starscream: I think the designers relied too much on
tabs that don't always hold well, leading to instability in both modes. It
looks on-model, although that's not necessarily a good thing for an Armada
Universe toy. Mildly recommended.

RANT

Packaing: Same as previous Legacy Voyagers. Note, he's Armada Universe
Starscream on the box, but the QR code info doesn't mention Armada at all,
and just calls him Starscream.

DECEPTICON: ARMADA UNIVERSE STARSCREAM
Assortment: F3056
Altmode: Jet
Transformation Difficulty: 18 steps
Previous Name Use: None with the qualifier
Previous Mold Use: None
Function: Second-in-Command
Special Unit: Seeker
Origin Universe: Armada
Signature Weapon: Star Saber - One of the most powerful weapons that ever
existed. A weapon with legendary origins that can be deadly in the
wrong hands. [No mention of Mini-Cons]

Starscream demands respect and he's willing to do whatever it takes to
prove he's worthy of it

STR 6 INT 8 SPD 10 FRB 7

These are his Armada stats.

Packaging: Four regular ties and a double tie around the shins hold the
robot into the inner tray, while each weapon gets one tie.
While the box renders match the colors of the toy, the webpage has his
wing sword painted almost entirely red except for pegs.

Robot Mode: The original Armada Starscream had two distinctive
gimmicks. One, his Mini-Con-triggered missile launchers. Two, the fact one
wing came off and unfolded into a sword. Well, the launchers can be manually
swung up but don't fire anything, and the wings stay on while he uses a sword
that's vaguely based on the one from the original toy, just all one piece
with no paint. Otherwise, the designers did a pretty good job of capturing
the look with the mold, and a lot of the bulk and hindrance of the original's
launcher gimmick is gone (parts can fold out of the way if you want). Of
course, as has happened a lot in recent Generations toys, the paint apps fail
to match the original as well as they could. (The chest vents are probably
the biggest difference, although one could argue that the lack of black on
the trailing edges of the wings is more obvious.)
I think mine has an assembly error, turning the right thigh swivel made
the joint pop apart, but the left thigh doesn't have that problem. It's
possible that a little nub or something that's supposed to snap it in place
got damaged or just plain flattened. Transforming it to jet mode and back
seems to have fixed the issue, so it's possible I just lacked the leverage to
force it all the way into place before.
There's two basic configurations you can use, both of which are stable.
The simplest is to have the back-mounted launchers pointed vertically.
However, if you lift up the launchers and the back panel, then fold the red
back panel back down until it locks in place, you get an Armada-accurate set
of horizontal launchers flanking the head and they won't fold back down
unless you lift up the back panel to free them up. Nice design touch.
6" (15.5cm) tall at the head, a little taller to the tops of the
launchers if you have them vertical, or a LOT taller if you swing the booms
up for a sort of SDF-1 mode. Mostly red, black, and light gray with some
yellow and blue accents. Bright red plastic is used for the top of the
torso, the shoulderpads, the backplate, the kneecap jet tail parts, and the
toes. A slightly darker red plastic (that glows almost orange under UV) is
used for the the collar area, the wing roots, the canards on the sides of the
abdomen, the shoulder joints, the biceps, the elbows, the fists, the inner
torso core, the hips, the thighs, the backs of the calves, the ankle joints,
and the heel spurs. Black plastic is used for the head, the center torso
(nose end of the jet), panels on the undersides of the forearms, and the rest
of each boot. Light gray plastic forms both weapons, the wings, the
forearms, and the back cannons other than some painted over panels on the
inner faces of the cannons which *might* be black plastic.
There's light gray paint on the face, the forehead tablet, the leading
edges of the shin winglets, the tops of the shoulders, most of the underside
of each forearm (those black plastic panels), and the (probably black
plastic) inner panels on the launchers. It's a decent match, if a little
more gloss than the plastic of that color. The borders of the vents on the
shoulder fronts are painted black, as are the lower pair of chest vents, the
outer surfaces of the launcher intake scoop things, the canards on the
abdomen, and the outer surfaces of the fists. A slightly golden yellow is
used on the centers of the shoulder vents, the upper pair of the chest vents,
and the insides of the shoulder launcher scoops. Bright red paint is on much
of the center torso (fuselage), the leading edges of the wings, and the cuffs
of the forearms (all the way around). The eyes are orange-yellow, the
cockpit on the abdomen is metallic blue, the Decepticon symbols on the wings
are violet, and the blade part of the Star Saber (the two jets, but not Sonar
the shuttle) is painted Energon Blue.
The neck is a ball joint at the back bottom edge of the head, so while
it can look up the result makes it look like his head is in the process of
being cut off. The waist is a very loose swivel that's restricted by the jet
nose end hanging down in front. The shoulders are swivel-and-hinge joints at
the upper edge of the shoulderpads, although there's a little block inside to
fill in the gap up to a point. There's swivels where the upper arms meet the
shoulderpads, double hinge elbows that can bend double. The wrists aren't
supposed to move in this mode, but the transformation hinge has a little
wiggle room. The hips are universal joints, there's snap-in (and sometimes
snap-out) upper thigh swivels, hinge knees, and double hinges on the ankles
(side to side and limited forwards-backwards mostly for transformation). The
hinges are separately hinged. The wings are on hinge and swivel joints for
transformation, but it also lets you stow the wings entirely and change the
silhouette of the figure. The non-launching missile launchers on the back
are on soft-ratcheting hinges for deployment.
The fists can hold 5mm pegs, there's 5mm sockets on the outer faces of
the elbows, the outer faces of the boots, under each heel spur, on the back
of each wing, and at the muzzle of each launcher pod. There's a 3mm socket
in the back of the pelvis, easier to get at if you lift up the backplate.
The wing-blade is molded to look more or less like the unfolded wing of
the original Armada toy, but it's cast in a single unpainted piece of light
gray plastic, so it loses some of the resemblance. 3.25" (8cm) long
including the short 5mm grip that ends in a conical pommel (that keeps it
from going into shallower sockets). It has a wingtip hook at the end, and
near the grip end there's 5mm pegs on either side for storage on a wing. The
non-edge part is somewhat hollow, but they didn't bother making the slots the
right width to attach to anything.
The Star Saber is somewhat stretched out, but it's still possible to
recognize the two jets and one space shuttle that go into it, it even has the
tails and canards and so forth. Also 3.25" (8cm) long, with a slightly
longer 5mm peg grip (and the same sort of conical pommel), and short 5mm pegs
on either side of the Sonar crosspiece.

Transformation: Okay, the front end is pretty obvious, although the
shoulders can be a little tricky to get into the slots in the wings, and the
biceps are on slider rods and need to slide outwards so that tabs on the
backs of the biceps can go into slots on the wings. The legs are also
visually obvious except for the gap-fillers in the backs of the calves.
Those need to be folded out, and I needed to use one of the swords to do it.
The two gap-fillers snap together between the boots, and it's tricky to get
the toes tucked into the back of the chest piece. The robot head just sort
of ducks down, with the top of the helmet visible between the boosters. Of
course, "top of head is still visible in altmode" was kinda a thing in
Armada.
One weird thing when going back to robot mode is that the canards fold
down, and there's slots in the abdomen where they'll fit, but...that's a
trap. They're not supposed to fold at all for robot mode, and putting them
into those slots will keep the actual tab and slot from touching, leaving you
a super floppy robot mode.

Altmode: Okay, it's a faithful reproduction of the Armada vehicle mode,
which is a jet that lacks vertical tail surfaces because of the missile
launcher gimmick. I mean, there's tiny little nubs on top of the launchers
that I suppose could be seen as vestigal tail surfaces, but...eh. "Jet" is
as much as the website is willing to commit to, and that's about as far as
I'll go as well. Stability isn't great, the whole rear end depends on some
tabs that don't really stay well in their slots.
6.75" (17cm) long with a wingspan of 5.5" (14cm) in the same colors as
robot mode, if perhaps a little less red proportionally? The difference
between the red paint on the forward fuselage and the wing leading edges and
the red plastic is a bit more obvious now that the pieces are adjacent, plus
the light gray paint on top of the shoulders is darker than the light gray
plastic. There's no plastic or paint visible in this mode that wasn't
already visible in robot mode.
The boot side 5mm sockets are now on the underside. The elbow 5mm
sockets are pretty close to the under-wing sockets, so while both sets are
accessible it'd be difficult to use both at once. There's a newly available
5mm socket under the nose end, as well as a newly revealed 3mm socket on the
center of the underside that's appropriate for flight bases. The launcher
muzzle sockets are still available, but the hands and feet are folded away.
Other than the launcher booms, there's really no intentional
articulation. The canards can fold down, if you want, I guess. There's no
landing gear or even an attempt at it.
While the two swords officially store under the wings, if you put them
into the faux launcher muzzles they can fold forwards for ram spikes. I
suppose you can also put the Star Saber under the nose of the jet and just
set the wing-blade aside. The hollow side of the wing-blade isn't quite the
right width to fit securely on the tab on the underside of the jet, although
a little poster putty can fix that. Jet with a sharp keel for ice landings?