The repaint of his brother Skyquake, will this leader-class figure blow your collection away? This will be a shorter review, because the answer’s no, this figure’s a pain in the neck, but read on for why.
Used a couple Target coupons and my redcard discount to bring Dreadwing’s price down to $27, and I cannot believe that they want $55 for this thing with all its issues.
The size and weight together are a little underwhelming, he’s pretty hollow and gappy from a few off angles, half his joints are too tight which causes him to pull himself apart when posing, the backpack is poorly integrated to the torso, he’s got small heels so he’s constantly fighting center of gravity, his shoulderpads are in the way the deco is nice but the paint isn’t exceptional in number of hits or complications, the transformation is a clunky mess and the instructions are incredibly confusing even when they’re not wrong, there’s a well-documented engineering failure that makes it impossible to actually transform, his main weapon is kinda dinky, his sword is limited to one hand for no apparent reason, there’s numerous tolerance problems in general, his light-piped eyes don’t work off ambient light, there’s a part that absolutely 100% cannot transform the way the instructions show even if you do the mod to make the part it’s connected to transform properly, you’re paying for the complicated assembly because of the numerous parts but a third of them feel like they’re complicated for no reason, yet despite ALL of this and probably more, there is a fun figure in here once you solve the nose cone transformation problem.
Strangely, the heel jets are hinged and for some poses the figure seems to stand better with them moved out just a few degrees, not sure why the flat jet wouldn’t be as stable as the tiny point, maybe that little shift of CoG.
The gun looks less dinky when slung under the forearm so it’s not as long. It seems like there was the idea that the sword would work as the gun’s bayonet and the idea got dropped along the way, as well as the removable barrel leading to a 3mm blast effect peg on a 5mm mounting peg, that seemed like it was leading somewhere that never landed. I do like that the barrel is transparent at the tip, but it would have been nice if they hadn’t painted the barrel vents as well, taking that paint off those will look nice.
I can’t believe how the landing gear doesn’t work with the gun mounted to the belly of the jet, or how the barrel doesn’t make for another jet thruster when it’s sculpted just like those.
I think the canopy is meant to hang out through the backpack as there’s no clearance under the panels so it deforms out of place which will eventually lead to failure, and the part over it on the backpack hinges up to allow a little play.
Overall, there’s a fun figure in this mess, lots of issues that I’d have at this pricepoint, but that nosecone defect makes this toy impossible to enjoy out of the box, AGAIN!