Titans Return Windblade & Scorchfire

(Femme-Bot Friday #52)

It was basically inevitable that Windblade would get a remake for Titans Return. Having been introduced in the comics as a Cityspeaker, and playing a significant part in Combiner Wars (both in the comics and the terrible CG animated web series), the Generations/Legends toy from 2014/15 was no longer sufficient, and no longer fitted the ongoing aesthetic of the toyline.

The big question, if course, is how much of an improvement the new toy is, and how badly Hasbro's version lets down the new mold... So let's take a look...

Vehicle Mode:
As before, Windblade is a red and black jet, with red being predominant. It's an entirely new design of jet with a few familiar points but, as with just about every Hasbro version of Windblade, it looks unfinished due to the lack of paintwork - not just that some of the parts that should have been painted black are bare red plastic, but the finer details, such as the white on the nose, the yellow 'eye' details by the cockpit, and the unpainted black plastic fans on the wings.

The main body is very bulky, with a deeply unconvicing back end that exhibits no obvious means of propulation - in fact, the afterburner-like details sculpted into her legs for robot mode are actually pointed into the body of the jet. I'm a little surprised - and very disappointed - that the insides of the knees don't feature any afterburner-like details... but I suspect the whole upper leg section is unchanged from its usage on TR Scourge. Like the Thrilling 30th version, the legs remain essentially separate units on the back end, with tiny vertical fins and slightly larger horizontal stabilisers sticking out either side.

Windblade's cockpit opens up to reveal a few little bits of tech detailing, including instrument panels on either side, by the feet, and what seems to be foot pedals right at the front of the space. It can comfortably accommodate Scorchfire, or any other Titan Master, though they don't clip into place as they tend to on other figures. There are also two Titan Master foot pegs on the central section of the fuselage, if you feel like having the figures stand on the back of a jet... One rather surprising aspect of the paint job is that the canopy features three patches of black paint - one over the hinge, one on either side of the canopy - on parts which are theoretically part of the fuselage rather than the canopy, but molded as part of the canopy to ensure sufficient width of access to the cockpit - but the sculpted framework of the canopy is left unpainted. This may have made a little more sense if the nose of the jet was properly painted, per Windblade's appearance in the comics, but it's not...

The wings are an interesting variation on the usual theme. While they feature the prerequisite directable turbines, these wings are broadly forward-swept - the widest part, closest to the fuselage, sweeps backward as usual, but then they angle sharply forward from a point roughly in line with the centre of the fans. The black paint on the wings very nearly meets up with the black paint running back from either side of the cockpit, but it stops abruptly at the transformation seams.

Where this jet mode really disappoints is that the robot's chest is molded on the underside, and her arms just hang by the sides, pegged into the undersides of the wings. Worse still, the fins molded onto the forearms are used as the rear landing gear, with a single, fold-out skid at the back of the nose section for the front. I get that this toy needed to accommodate all the usual Titans Return gimmicks, like a place for the Titan Master to ride inside the vehicle, and a means of attaching the Titan Master as the robot's head, but this really does look like utterly lazy design. It almost makes me wish that one of the Third Parties would tackle Windblade at Deluxe- or Voyager-equivalent size, just to see what sort of engineering marvels they could pull off... This thing is basically an enlarged version of Iron Factory's take on Windblade.

Of course, it wouldn't be a Titans Return toy without a bizarre, awkwardly-sized weapon designed to somehow accommodate the Titan Master figures, and Windblade doesn't disappoint... Or does, depending on your point of view over this particular 'play feature'. Since Windblade is known for wielding a sword, she comes packaged with two long, translucent yellow swords which can plug together to form either a weird hybrid sword or a skateboard/surfboard/toboggan for the Scorchfire. The way the swords are painted almost makes it look as though the handles are afterburners on the 'vehicle', and it features several protrusions from the underside to make it look as though it's levitating, but it really doesn't look that good as a separate vehicle.

Sadly, it doesn't fare much better when attached to Windblade, either combined and mounted over the cockpit, or separated and mounted under each wing, because mounting swords on a jet is just stupid... and the weapon reminds me rather the two-part gun/sword of Energon/Superlink Starscream... I guess they could be attached the other way round, so the handles face forward, looking a bit more like guns or missiles but, honestly, they just don't suit a jet.


Robot Mode:
Windblade is, again, instantly recognisable in robot mode... the very first thing that strikes you about this figure is that she has all the quintessential features. Unfortunately, soon after, you'll notice that her legs look extremely weird, and the vast majority of her vehicle mode is just hanging off her back. The entire nose section hangs down below her knee level and protrudes almost two inches from her Titan Master neck port! Even taking into account the Titan Master cockpit requirement, this seems like a lot of wasted mass.

The chunkiness of her body and lack of colour variety also hurt her robot mode appearance - she's sculpted with a fairly narrow waist, but the red of her chestplate and groin blend in so well with the bare red plastic behind her waist that she looks like a rectangle with some sort-of curvy protrusions. On the subject of 'curvy protrusions' this Windblade's chest is possibly the worst Femme-Bot chest I've yet to see - the robo-boobs seem OK, by and large, but are placed slightly too high up her chest, and separated too extensively by the central armour chunk leading down to her belly. I like the overall design of the chest, it just looks like it comes from a slightly larger 'bot.

Where this version of Windblade starts to go seriously adrift is in the limbs. The bulky shoulder armour is par for the course with this character, but the biceps are reused from TR Scourge, as are the hips and thighs, so they just don't fit a character as traditionally lithe as Windblade. Worse still, while the biceps lead to reasonably-sized forearms, thanks to a cheaty block of an elbow joint, the chunky, squared-off thighs lead to weirdly distorted lower legs that don't really look right from any angle. Both the forearms and the knees have little wings sticking out the sides, but they seem to add more bulk to the lower legs as the knee area is pretty wide even without the wings.

Colour-wise, she remains a figure made up of black and red plastic, with some parts of each colour painted the other to maintain the usual distribution of colour. Where red paint is applied, such as on the shoulder armour and the groin, it has a subtly metallic sheen, and it looks as though they were aiming for the same effect with the black paint, but it's not very effective. The upper part of the chest features a metallic blue section, coming out each side of the central armour chunk and sweeping back over her shoulders, but this is the only instance of that colour on the body. What she's missing is any kind of paintwork on her kneecaps, and something to differentiate the sculpted afterburner-like detail on her calves from the surrounding plastic. The other thing about this detail is that it seems too low down on the calves, almost down to her ankles... had there been some way of raising the afterburners slightly, within the back of the leg, that would have improved the look of her legs slightly... though it'd still look as if her lower legs had originally been intended for a larger robot.

Since Windblade is known for wielding a sword, the two weapons included make a little more sense in robot mode, though they're a little too long, and not as visually striking as the Stormfall Sword normally given to a Windblade figure. I like that the upper part of the hilt and the blunt parts of the sword are painted silver, but they're just not particularly interesting... and I find the particular shade of yellow is a little unpleasant, to be honest. She can wield one in each hand, or plug them together into a single, larger sword with two handles, and when not in use, the can be plugged into her back via small pegs on the back of the hilt, or tabbed into the front of the wings, just like in vehicle mode.

The head sculpt and the paint job on it are surprisingly good, for a Hasbro figure. That metallic blue that's used on her collar is also used on her headdress, with the 'hairpins' and fan painted gold. The gold paint is a little untidy on mine, and seems to follow the lines of her 'hairpins' rather than her fringe on the inside edges. Naturally, unlike other versions of Windblade, the fan cannot be removed and used as an additional weapon because it's part of the HeadMaster faceplate. The face, much like Takara Tomy's take on the Generations/TF Legends Windblade, is painted a stark white, with the lips and simplistic under-eye designs in red. The latter details don't quite line up with the eye sockets on mine, so it looks as though her eyes are lined in black, then white, before the red linework. The eyes themselves are picked out in a very pale cyan, and the end result is a very neutral face, with Kabuki-style makeup that does little to enhance her appearance... but she does at least more closely resemble her comic book appearance than the original Windblade figure did.


Titan Master Scorchfire:
I figured that, being a Hasbro release, Scorchfire was going it be all black, so I was pleasantly surprised to find its head features white paint on the visor and face. The rest is unpainted, black plastic and appears to use the same body and thighs as Fracas, with new arms, lower legs and head.

Scorchfire fits nicely into Windblade's cockpit in jet mode, though he literally just sits there rather than securely attaching, and so will rattle about. He pegs in securely to Windblade's combined weapon/toboggan, but that looks a bit crappy, to say the least.


TR Windblade is one of those figures that can barely be described as having a transformation - getting her into jet mode involves simply pulling the hips down, out of the body, wrapping the legs back over the body of the jet, pulling the arms down slightly at the shoulder and rotating the bicep so the elbows can plug into the underside of the wings, removing the Titan Master, then swinging the nose section back into place. Honestly, there are smaller figures with more complex transformations, and it would be forgivable if the jet mode was any less chunky. Windblade is based on the TR Scourge transformation scheme, but flipped round so the legs are at the back of the vehicle mode, and with even fewer steps.

On the upside, she's pretty well articulated - ball-jointed shoulders, then just about everything else is either pinned or mushroom pegs - and the bulky legs have great range thanks to the way they transform. Curiously, the right leg on mine appear to have soft racheting for outward movement at the hip - and it's fairly stiff - while the left leg moves far more readily and only feels like it has any kind of ratcheting on the way out. The wings are able to swing not quite 45° backward but, since the joint is right behind Windblade's shoulders, it does nothing to improve her arms' range of movement. The fronts of her feet are articulated for transformation purposes but, with the heels being a fixed protrusion, this isn't especially useful for posing.

I'm not sure why I kept buying Hasbro's inferior versions of Windblade, particularly having skipped on their version of the Thrilling 30th figure - the official, inaugural 'Fan-Built Bot' - but it's kind of a moot point now that Takara Tomy are required to release their TransFormers toys in exactly the same state as Hasbro's. Whether the 'Unification of World Brands' is truly the effective end of TF Legends, or whether it'll be kept as more of a niche subline, I don't know... What I do know is that, much as I was impressed by the paint job on the Titan Master, the TF Legends version of Windblade is a significant improvement over this one.