Universe2.0/Generations Review Thread

[BWprowl]

And about that guy, am I the only one that finds the flames on his hood to be just godawful? I'm seriously considering the reprolabel thing for him. It'd effectively double the price of the toy, but it'd immeasurably improve the vehicle mode's look.

You're not alone. I think they look a bit cheap and tacky and whatnot. I guess they're supposed to look more 'modern' or whatever, but there's just not enough to them to really sell me on them, they're not sharp, bold, or defined as flames so much as they're just red and yellow squiggly lines on his hood. Is Reprolabels coming out with a set for him? Because I might be joining that club with you.

[138 Scourge]

Is Reprolabels coming out with a set for him? Because I might be joining that club with you.

Check it out: http://reprolabels.com/Classics/

The best part is that the hood stickers appear to cover the "flames" entirely, so there's no repainting or paint removal to do. The lazy man's custom job!

[Shockwave]

I put a repro Autobot logo on Jazz's hood. Makes all the difference.

[Dominic]

You do realize how little I have customized since this summer, right?

My last custom was a few weeks ago, and involved painting Acid Storm's head to match Dirge's body....


Dom
-needs to post a new customizing thread....

[Shockwave]

I can top that, you do realize how little customizing I've done ALL YEAR right?

Last thing I customized was the Diaclone blue Bluestreak that I took to Botcon 09.

[JediTricks]

I ended up getting Thunderwing for $9.04 at Target. It's a fun figure, but holy hell is it lazy too. The arms just sitting out under the wings is shameful, even with the clever transformation it feels like just a robot standing up because those arms are so lazy. The alt mode has good whooshability, adding the removable drone is icing. It is odd tho that the missile launcher triggers are on the undersides. Bot mode is ok, the shoulder guns get in the way of posing more because someone locked off their ability to go past the chest, but the part I don't like is the head sculpt, it's small and not impressive and has its range of motion limited. The sculpting overall has this sloppy, fat-line thing going on that I don't generally care for - there's actually lots of detail and some is tight, but the off-white plastic highlights only the soft-sculpted elements - in that way, and the arms, Thunderwing reminds me of Classics Jetfire. Ultimately, when I read his bio on the wiki, this figure doesn't really do a great job representing him, and I blame the head sculpt for dropping the ball most of all there. But it's an ok figure for fun-factor.

[andersonh1]

Time for back to back Thunderwing reviews.

While I agree with a lot of JT's comments, I love this figure. It's probably my favorite Transformer since Sunstreaker and Sideswipe. And it's primarily because I've wanted a complete G1 Thunderwing for a long time, and getting this version is the next best thing. I have fond memories of reading the old Marvel G1 comics, and Thunderwing showed up about the same time that the writing and art took a turn for the better. So the character made an impression.

Vehicle mode: a futuristic airplane, which has a similar silhouette to the original combined shell + small plane mode of the original figure, if not the same color scheme. The colors and their arrangement are closer to the small vehicle, which happens to be the only portion of the original Thunderwing that I own. Generations Thunderwing has a detachable drone plane as a call back to the way the original vehicle could combine with the transforming shell, and I think it's a great extra touch. There are guns on either side under the air intake vents, and the feet form thrusters. The twin missile launchers attach under the wings, and not only do the colors match the feet/thrusters, the guns are molded in such a way that they have upward facing struts that line up with downward struts on the wings, giving a greater than usual illusion that they are a part of the vehicle.

However, flip the plane over, and the usual "undercarriage junk syndrome" that most aircraft Transformers suffer from makes an appearance. The head is covered by a chest piece, and the legs blend in reasonably well, but the arms just sit there for all to see. Still, the small size explains some of this, and so does the fact that the designers were trying to recreate the look of the original figure. When it came down to "hide the robots parts" or "make it look like Thunderwing", they went the latter route. Maybe a larger figure would have given them more to work with in terms of solving that problem, but given how prevalent undercarriage junk is on just about all Transformer planes, I have my doubts.

Transformation: pretty simple, though order matter somewhat when it comes to pulling the legs out. Most of the plane ends up as a backpack or "cape", while the arms are already in place. The chest piece comes down to reveal the head, and the chest opens to let the legs fold down and extend to the proper length.

Robot mode: Takes a lot of visual cues and details from the original figure's Pretender shell robot mode. The face seems to be based off the more recent IDW comic version rather than the original. There's a hefty packpack, but balance is very good, allowing for some stable posing, if nothing too dramatic. There is orange light-piping in the eyes, and the firsts are fully sculpted, not blocks of plastic with a hole in them.

Overall: Thunderwing doesn't suffer as much from the smaller size class as Universe Galvatron did, and the robot mode is pretty faithful to the original's appearance. The "robot stuck on the bottom of a plane" is the only real flaw, but for me, it's easy enough to overlook because it's Thunderwing! Simon Furman took a blank slate of a character and made something of him way back in the Marvel G1 days, and now I can finally have an affordable version of that character. That counts for a lot, in my view. Way to go, Hasbro!

[BWprowl]

Tracks and Jazz

You’d do well to check just about anywhere for these toys, most sightings have them showing up in weird places like Walgreen’s or Kohl’s as opposed to the more expected locations like Target and Wal-Mart. My guess is that this is some sort of early leakage issue with places that don’t order as much getting ‘fresher’ cases as opposed to just putting out boxes from the back like regular department stores do, and that Reveal the Shield will show up at our usual places soon enough.

Jazz
Jazz is the Martian Manhunter of Transformers Classics, as in, there’s really no good reason this toy wasn’t released six years ago. Prime’s other second-in-command has been a long time coming, so let’s see if he lives up to the expectations fans had for him after all this time.

Vehicle Mode
Lots of places I see are saying this is a Pontiac Solstice, like Movie Jazz, but I am really not seeing it. The headlights are kinda similar, but that’s all I can think of. While I don’t have a G1 Jazz for comparison, I *do* have Stepper. The front half of the thing is pretty close, but RTS Jazz’s back half is shorter and bulkier, with a much less prominent spoiler (which is adjustable). Overall, it emulates just enough Porche lines to look like Jazz.

Unfortunately, there are some problems with the vehicle mode. The roof/windows piece is molded in clear blue plastic then painted over in white. And we all know the pitfalls of working with white paint, right? The matching issue with the white plastic of Jazz’s vehicle mode is very noticeable, especially where the roof meets up with the back end of the car. The fact that the stripes don’t continue in any way and just *stop* only exacerbates this problem. Color matching problems don’t end there. The panels that his front wheels attach to are apparently made of a different type of white plastic, and it is a noticeable different- they’re slightly darker, more off-white. On top of that, because of the way his transformation works, these panels can’t rotate all the way up to become flush with the rest of the hood, so Jazz ends up with these unfortunate, square, dent shapes on top of him. It really hurts the overall aesthetic of a car mode that’s supposed look all exotic and sexy.

There’s a mild saving grace in the speakers. Jazz’s doors open in a completely normal way (which is nice after a lot of the ball-joint and weird-hinge craziness we’ve seen in some car TFs recently) and his clip-on speaker accessories deploy out from them, emulating the ‘Sound and Light Show’ attack Jazz used a few times in the G1 cartoon. The speakers deploying was a nice surprise for me, I was unaware that they actually stored in the doors on their clips, as opposed to just stashing somewhere else and clipping on once the doors were open. The way they made it work is rather elegant. It’s just too bad the same can’t be said for the aesthetics of the vehicle mode.

Transformation
Pretty straightforward Autobot Car transformation, going to Robot Mode. The way the ‘4’ on the hood splits into panels and folds down with the arms to mimic the cartoon’s chest detail is especially clever. The legs are more of an issue. They’re folded and compacted like crazy, and you’ve got to be careful of the order you move things out in. Try to bring the shins up to early, and their spring-down portions will get in the way of the feet. But be careful how you do the feet, or the heel sections will move up *past* the feet, and block the spring-shins. It’s a headache. The flimsy plastic that the feet are made out of doesn’t help, it makes it way too easy for the toe and heel sections to move out of line with each other. Folding the hood down to become the chest Automorphs the head into place, but the chest itself doesn’t lock into place at all.

Going back to Vehicle Mode introduces new issues. Order of Operations on the feet returns with a vengeance, but now you’ve got the arms to contend with as well. Remember that cool ‘4’ panel I mentioned? Well getting it lined with to go flush through the hood is a bitch and a half, especially when you’re also trying to align the arms under the car. Overall, there are some clever concepts to this transformation, but in practice they just turn out to be no fun at all.

As a side effect of its Vehicle Mode storage, the folded-up gun can also be stored under the hood in Robot Mode, if you like, which is nice.

Robot Mode
The design for this toy has Jazz wind up with door wings, which is a big black mark from me already. While on the G1 Jazz toy you could fold the doors flat against his back to hide them, the roof piece makes that impossible on this version; the most you can do is point the doors straight back. This sucks because Jazz Does Not Have Door Wings, dammit. Anyway, there are issues with the rest of the robot mode as well. The unlocked chest flops around a lot while you’re handling it, and the way the shins stick up from the car-shell pieces looks weird and unfinished, like they should be filled out more. His face sculpt also has him looking a lot more pissed-off than I imagine Jazz being, and the fold-up panel it’s on doesn’t come all the way up into his chest. Fortunately his head is on a ball joint that can look up, otherwise he’d have Universe Ironhide Syndrome. The biggest problem, in my eyes though, is the forearms. They’re molded in black plastic and then completely painted over in white. What. The Flying. Fuck? There is NO reason for this beyond ‘some engineer fucked up and put the arm molds on the black tray instead of the white tray’ and it really should have been caught and fixed if they had enough time to decide to just paint the things over in white. The difference is painfully obvious and looks generally horrible, and seriously hampers what was already a problematic robot mode.

It’s not a total loss though. It’s certainly a well-articulated Jazz toy, with double-hinge elbows AND knees, and the aforementioned universal ball-joint head. The feet can move up and down well too, but you have to fiddle with those spring-shins to get the full range of motion out of them. He’s also got a swivel waist and ball-jointed wrists, which are nice bonuses. He’s quite expressive, and his feet are molded to stand angled apart, which means he’s dynamic as well. The gun is pretty cool looking, and not stupidly puny like some transforming guns end up being. He can also still deploy his speakers in this mode, letting you at least make use of those damnable door wings, and the speakers can also clip around the gun if you want it to look really stupid.

So, how do I evaluate this toy? I mean, it’s Jazz. We’ve wanted Jazz forever, and now we’ve finally got him, and he’s a wholly mediocre, below-average toy. Oh don’t get me wrong, he’s not the worst toy in the world, but there’s so many little issues all together (roof paint and hood panels in vehicle mode, transformation troubles in the legs and hood, those damn arms and door wings) that they become really hard to ignore than if they were alone. Maybe my expectations were just too high after waiting this long for Jazz, but there’s no excuse for things being *this* bad, especially when Universe has turned out some truly awesome stuff.

Look, it’s Jazz. You ARE going to buy it, no matter what reviews say. Just try not to get your hopes up, and when you do get this toy in hand, prepare to be under whelmed.

Tracks
Tracks is in the same assortment as Jazz, and was widely publicized as getting a retool into Wheeljack. These two characters were a lot more anticipated than Tracks, so he kind of got overshadowed. Does he deserve to be ignored to this degree? Let’s find out.

Vehicle Mode
Well it’s not a Corvette, that’s for sure. The middle is slightly ‘pinched’ but that’s about the only resemblance I can see. It’s a bit more ‘retro’ looking than I’ve come to expect from Classics vehicles, with lots of sharp angles on the sides going to the back of the car. Tracks’s vehicle mode has it’s own share of aesthetic problems. The back section really does not want to lock into the rest of the car properly, usually popping up a bit on one side or the other. I also take issue with the flame deco on the hood- it shoots for a more abstract pattern than Track’s old deco, and instead just winds up looking like a bunch of squiggly red and yellow lines. It’s just not bold or striking enough. Tracks’s blue looks pretty good though, and the dark coloration helps mitigate some of the panel line issues, not to mention the fact that the roof is smoky clear plastic painted blue. There are problems with this vehicle mode, but I can kind of ignore them.

The missiles store under the sides of the car, if you can find where to clip the damn things. The instructions are no help at all here. Those little circle bits connected to the sliding hinges for his ‘wings’? Those are hiding 3mm rod bits, you clip the missiles onto those. Then just finangle them around and voila, Tracks has missile running boards! Wait, what?

In homage to his G1 toy, this Tracks does sport a ‘flying care’ mode. Popping the doors out requires dislodging the front of the car a bit, and then you have to put it back. And pull the wings all the way out so that the wheels don’t get in their way. Then fold the back panel all the way open so you can rotate the panel with the pegs for his missiles, and replace it. It’s a bit more involved than I’d like for something that’s supposed to be a quick little Attack Mode, but at least they thought of doing *something* with the missiles for this mode. And you have to transform the wings and open the back panel on the way to robot mode anyway, so.

Transformation
There’s actually less going on here than I thought the first time through. The feet/heels certainly *look* like a big mess waiting to be disassembled and rotated and God knows what else, but you just pop the heels loose and rotate down the whole foot assembly. The wings also messed with me. They can actually rotate up a ‘click’ once they’re pulled out, to give the backpack room to fold in. But it’s a stiff movement, and it felt like it was gonna break. I was actually worried for a second that it was misassembled and that I’d gotten a defective Tracks. But no, it works just fine. Also, be sure to rotate the front wheels around on the shoulders, then pull the arms down, THEN push the roof up to Automorph the head and shoulders. And when you go to fold the backpack up, be sure to fold up that grey panel, clicking the back together more solidly and giving the missiles a place to clip to.

Going back to vehicle mode is largely without issues, save for getting the back panel into place. You have to put the arms in position, bent ninety degrees, then have the panel meet up with them on the way to folding around the back of the car. You’ll be in for a headache otherwise.

Robot Mode
He’s a rather wide looking robot, with the big roof-chest and the wings sticking out. The head really looks like it should have more paint on it, but as is, it’s at least G1-accurate. The arms continue the sizing oddities, looking a bit smaller than they should, especially overshadowed by the big wheels on his shoulders. At least the legs fit with his bulk. The feet are a bit tiny and flat, but his big bumper heels mean that stability isn’t really a problem. He really sport a lot of mass, with the wings rising up above his head, and the back jutting out a bit with the missile launchers clipped to it. He’s a smallish toy, but he looks imposing.

Articulation’s mostly good. He’s got double-hinged elbows, bicep swivels (which should always be standard), swivel wrists, and what can only be described as double-jointed *shoulders* making his top half rather expressive. Goes well with his ball-jointed (though restricted) head. Legs are a bit rougher. He’s technically got universal knees, but the back-and-forth joints have almost no range of motion, being restricted by parts that slide out for transformation. His waist is also messed with a bit by the roof-chest, which extends past his chest to his crotch. His feet and bumper-heels are on separate ball joints, which gives them a great range of motion, though they feel a little looser than I’d like. I haven’t really had any stability problems yet, though.

I’ll confess that I’m not a big fan of Hasbro’s current open-handed policy on Transformers. Fists generally make for ‘cooler’ poses in my opinion, and the open hands can look silly sometimes. Tracks especially does not look so great ‘holding’ his gun.

Overall, I was much more impressed with Tracks than I was with Jazz. Tracks has problems, to be sure, but they’re not that glaring, and there’s a lot of neat stuff going on here otherwise. He feels more polished than Jazz does, and his transformation and robot mode are just more interesting in general. He’s a genuinely good toy, and a solid entry in our current iteration of the Classics line. A lot of people are going to be looking mainly for Jazz, but don’t overlook Tracks, as he’s the real winner here, and you’ll be doing yourself a favor by adding him to your collection.

[Shockwave]

Prowl, it sounds like you really went out of your way to hate Jazz. Honestly between Jazz and Tracks, I really was under impressed with Tracks far more than Jazz. I wonder if maybe you just got a bad copy or you just have a lot more personal preferrences for Jazz that weren't there but some of the things you mention just seem nitpicky. Like the door wings. Jazz did have them in G1. That is he had them until that cartoon decided he didn't. And the paint on the roof. Really? NO TF figure EVER has been able to match that. Tracks certainly doesn't (his roof is actually darker blue than the rest of the car) nor do any of the others with windshields. I dunno, between the two I really think we got hosed on Tracks more than Jazz by a long shot. Jazz I can at least transform easily. Tracks is STILL a pain in the ass to transform.

Shockwave
-Is not looking forward to Wheeljack for this very reason.

[Dominic]

I might try to transform Tracks tonight.....if I am awake enough.

Dom
-still needs to review Jazz.