On Monday, July 19, 2021 at 12:38:22 AM UTC-4, Dave Van Domelen wrote:
> Dave's Transformers Studio Series Rant: Voyager Wave 12
>
> #72 Starscream (Cybertronian Jet)
>
> Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Studio/VStarscream
>
> Wave 12 is just this, with Studio '86 Hot Rod filling out the case. Far
> from the first Voyager Starscream in Studio Series, but it's the first one
> that's not based on the 2007-9 design, and therefore the first one I bought.
> :)
> It's worth noting that while reasonably faithful to Starscream's brief
> appearance in 2018's Bumblebee, poor lighting and rapid motion tended to
> obscure just how questionable the design was for vehicle mode, leading many
> (myself included) to think that early pictures of this toy were badly
> mistransformed. Sadly, they were not mistransformed. An unreasonable amount
> of robot mode stuff is just crammed in behind the weapon strut.
>
> Why did I buy this? Because Studio Series Voyagers have generally been
> good, and this is the first toy of a totally new Starscream design (even if
> it reuses significant engineering from Blitzwing), so I figured I'd take the
> risk. To be honest, I lost almost all of my enthusiasm for reviewing this
> after transforming it once, and barely powered through the rest of the
> review.
>
> https://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Studio/VBlitzwing - Blitzwing mold,
> but note that none of the pieces are exactly the same between the two. Just
> a lot of pieces that are kinda similar and some engineering that's the same
> (such as how the arms are connected, the way the torso is structured, some
> common motifs). As such, it's a new mold and will be reviewed as such.
>
>
> CAPSULE
>
> $30 price point.
>
> #72 Starscream: It's pretty bad. The robot mode is okay (about as good
> as the Blitzwing robot mode), transformation is super fiddly and the vehicle
> mode a hot mess...and that's assuming you get a good one that doesn't fall
> apart in several places like mine does. While Blitzwing was mildly
> recommended, this one is a mild recommendation to avoid.
>
>
> RANT
>
> Packaging: Standard Studio Series Voyager box, with the Bumblebee movie
> logo in various places.
>
>
> DECEPTICON: STARSCREAM
> Assortment: #72
> Altmode: Cybertronian Jet
> Transformation Difficulty: 31 steps
> Previous Name Use: Yes
> Previous Mold Use: None
> Movie: Bumblebee
> Scene: Cybertron Falls
>
> STARSCREAM and the SEEKERS destroy the AUTOBOT launchpad on CYBERTRON in
> an effort to prevent their escape.
>
> Packaging: Seven ties on the robot, one on the main gun. A plastic
> shield is held over the chest by one of the ties. The wings are a bit folded
> forwards to fit in the tray, and need to go one notch back for proper robot
> mode (the instructions do have a short bit pointing this out). The wingtips
> are not held on very strongly, and while they didn't pop off during
> extraction from the package, one did so very soon after.
> The backdrop is the same Cybertronian cityscape used for B-127's box,
> with an elevated roadway overhead and a sky full of stars.
>
> Robot Mode: The head and torso most obviously resemble the Blitzwing
> mold, but a lot of the rest is very different, from little things like the
> hands not being hinged (since Starscream doesn't need to be able to strangle
> Bumblebee) to big ones like the new thrusters on the legs. Ultimately, if
> there's any parts exactly like Blitzwing's, they're little stuff like struts
> (and even the ones that flank the cockpit in this mode are not quite the same
> as the ones on Blitzwing). They do definitely share a design philosophy,
> though, making Blitzwing more of a Seeker than a Triple-Changer. A lot of
> the general shapes are the same, such as the (fake) intake vents as
> shoulderpads, the (fake) landing gear wheels on the toes, the (real) cockpit
> on the abdomen, and so forth. The thrusters on the boots give it a vaguely
> Mobile Suit feel (Rick Doms and the like).
> 6.75" (17cm) tall at the head, but the upturned wingtips rise to a
> height of 8" (20cm). Other than some dark silver bits on the forearms and
> thighs, it's pretty much the standard Starscream G1 colors. Darkish blue
> plastic is used for the forearms, shins, and main rifle. Black-ish plastic
> is used for the null ray cannons, the neck area, struts on the abdomen, hip
> joints, hands, and ankle joints. Bright red plastic is used on the torso
> sides (including the fake intakes flanking the head), pelvis front, and
> thighs. The canopy on the torso front is rubbery clear amber plastic. The
> rest of the toy is light ghost gray plastic, including the head (which is
> entirely painted over).
> The head is painted gloss black with silver face (still pretty
> Bayformery) and red eyes. There's also black paint in the intake shapes on
> the pecs and shoulder fronts, and on the boot thrusters. Dark silver on the
> inner forearms, thigh fronts, and the shoulder scoops. The wingtips have the
> classic red and white stripes, while the leading edge of the main wing is
> just red. There's purple Decepticon symbols on the backs of the wings (tops
> in vehicle mode). The collar area has a fake cockpit front painted in yellow
> with medium-light gray borders, while the actual cockpit window has the same
> medium-like gray borders. There's some blue paint (good match to the
> plastic) on the toes, and red stripes just above the elbows.
> The head and waist are swivels, although the waist is limited by the
> fact that the pelvis front is attached to the abdomen. The shoulderpads turn
> on swivels, and the upper arms are hinged to the shoulderpads to lift up to
> the sides. Upper bicep swivels, hinge elbows, and the wrists are hinged to
> fold down for transformation. Universal joint hips, "internal bones" thigh
> swivels, hinge knees, and sideways hinges on the ankles. The ankles also
> have forwards-backwards hinges, but the boot kibble blocks these for the most
> part, they're really just for transformation. The wings have soft-ratcheting
> hinges at the roots, so there's really only a couple of stable positions, and
> only one of them looks good. The wingtips are on snap-in swivels.
> (Poor molding on my copy has resulted in a wingtip piece that simply
> won't stay on. Even after removing some mold flash, it didn't really snap
> into place. A little carving and warping helped a little, but it still
> doesn't snap all the way.)
> The hands hold 5mm pegs, there's 5mm sockets in the wings, and while
> there's no 3mm socket on the pelvis there's one on each wing near the front
> of the wing root. Since there's no 3mm peg weapons in Studio Series these
> are probably a substitute location for flight stands (although Kingdom
> Megatron tank's pistol could go in one). Note, the hands are partially open,
> so they look like he's really only holding things with his thumbs, probably
> best that his own main gun covers the relevant hand entirely. (There's
> already 3P kits that include replacement hands, they're held in with screws
> rather than rivets so they're swappable.)
> The null ray cannons are mirror images of each other, 2.5" (6cm) long
> and made of black plastic. The muzzle tips are not only not 3mm studs,
> they're weird irregular quadrilateral prisms. They have very short 5mm pegs
> that can be held a little awkwardly in the hands, plus rectangular tabs (2mm
> by 6.5mm) used in vehicle mode. They do not go anywhere on the arms or
> shoulders, though. So just wings, one way or another.
> The main gun is a sort of pod with a main barrel and a pair of rockets
> flanking it, in blue plastic with black paint on the business end. 3.25"
> (8cm) long total. It seems intended as an "arm turns into cannon" deal, but
> doesn't hold very well in that role. If they'd put a 5mm socket on the inner
> face of the forearm so that you could fold the hand away and cover the silver
> part of the forearm with the gun, that might look better. There's a 5mm peg
> inside the cowling, a 3mm socket on the outside of the cowling, and two other
> connections purely for vehicle mode: a square hole roughly at the middle, and
> two shallow rectangular slots that go onto tabs on the elbows to help
> stabilize things. Thing is, near as I can tell, those elbow tabs don't
> really lock in place or even really FIT, they're just guide points.
>
> Undocumented features: The strut that holds the main gun in vehicle mode
> can be pulled out through the back and the gun attached to it for storage..
> When the wingtips pop off, you can have the figure hold them in its hands
> along the lines of Armada Starscream, if a bit shorter (twin shortswords
> rather than a longsword, I guess).
>
> Transformation: Well, I was able to figure it out without the
> instructions, just from looking at the back of the box, but it's not what I'd
> call intuitive. A HUGE amount of robot kibble just sort of sits under the
> fuselage. The only clever bit is how the tail fin is folded up behind one
> boot, everything else ranges from simple and boring to frustrating and
> boring.
> One odd bit is that the fake landing gear on the torso don't actualy
> fold out as landing gear. Rather, for jet mode they tuck away mostly out of
> sight, and have to be pulled back out for robot mode (the package renders
> show it tucked away in robot mode, but they are sticking out in the packaged
> toy). It looks like they took the functional struts on Blitzwing and just
> tweaked them slightly, rather than removing them entirely.
>
> Vehicle Mode: It's...different? Also, it's crap. Even if all the parts
> stayed snapped together properly, there's just way too much robot stuff
> tucked on the underside. It feels like they just gave up. "Well, it's
> supposed to have a cannon on a strut on the underside, just hide all the
> extra bits behind the strut." The main thrusters point about 20 degrees up,
> the pointy nose has the top half removed to show a small gun that can't
> actually fire over the top of the nose. Blitzwing's not-F4 was decent, it's
> as if every piece of engineering they changed for this toy made it worse, to
> the point that they'd have been far better off starting from scratch. You'd
> need to remove about a quarter of the mass of the toy to give it the proper
> lines of the movie's model.
> Value judgements aside for the moment, if you ignore the huge chunk of
> robot hanging under the fuselage, it's a decent adaptation of the BB movie's
> take on the Tetrajet concept. Main wings angled downward to the point that
> they're about level with the main gun (so it can rest on a sort of tripod
> arrangement), a shorter vertical tail in back, a very pointy nose and a
> cloudy cockpit. If you ignore the robot heels sticking out the back (a
> problem Blitzwing had too), it's 7.5" (19cm) long, the heels add about
> another inch. The wingspan is about 7.25" (18cm) although you can straighten
> out the wings to be more horizontal and get closer to 8" (20cm). The needle
> nose is rubbery plastic painted dark blue (okay match to the plastic) with a
> light gray core that has a gun molded on it. The tail is all dark blue
> plastic with a white stripe near the leading edge. Pretty much everything
> else is visible in robot mode.
> The null ray cannons connect via tabs and slots in this mode rather than
> using the 5mm sockets, which gets them pointed a bit better. The main gun is
> connected (not well enough given that the gun is one of the tripod legs) via
> a nonstandard rectangular peg. The 5mm sockets under the wings are still
> accessible, though. The 3mm socket on the main gun seems intended for use
> with flight bases, but there's no way the jet won't just fall off if you try
> that, the connection between the main gun and the strut is not very firm
> (even with the elbow tabs, it just doesn't stay in place well). No flight
> base sockets on the main toy, although the robot hands are exposed and could
> potentially be used for a base with 5mm pegs. There's 3mm sockets on the
> wing roots. The wings have hinged roots, and the strut that holds the main
> gun technically has a hinge as well, although it's not too useful. The
> cockpit doesn't really open, but it's soft plastic only secured by a shaft at
> its center, so you can peel up the edges if you want.
> Aside from the wing that falls off on mine and the fact the main gun is
> a bit loose, it's reasonably solid considering how many compromises were made
> in this retool. The elaborate panels that cover the top of the fuselage
> don't really stay together, but they're not structurally important.
>
> Overall: Even if I'd gotten a one with better quality control, I don't
> think I'd be too enthused by this mold, and I'm definitely not picking up the
> Thrust redeco. The robot mode is okay, but transformation is a massive
> hassle for a highly questionable outcome.
>
>
> Dave Van Domelen, finished this review on his 51st birthday.

I wonder what this portends for the forthcoming Studio Series toys allegedly based on that introductory fanservice scene in "Bumblebee" - so far their SS38 Optimus, while popular, suffered from design and tolerance issues, while Cliffjumper and B127 had issues with their backpacks, etc, and now this..

Also, happy birthday to you!