Since a brand new, boxed Armada Jetfire turned out to be pretty expensive at that time (prices in excess of £100 - far more than this toy is worth!), I decided to go for a second hand one, as complete as possible. Many of those available unboxed on eBay were missing parts, partially broken (the accompanying Mini-Con in particular) or both. The most likely one I found was without its missiles/bombs, but I was later able to obtain these separately.
I already know the mold and its shortcomings thanks to Timelines Astrotrain, but let's have a closer look at the original version of the mold...
Vehicle Mode:
I'm a huge fan of NASA's space shuttle - the very idea of a reuseable spacecraft seemed to me to bring us that much closer to proper space exporation. Its first flight was preceded by two years by the Bond film Moonraker, which featured a craft based on NASA's design (albeit conveniently equipped with a laser gun), and whetted my young appetite for the real thing, so I was glued to the TV coverage of the real thing when it lauched in 1981. I was actually in Florida around the time of a launch, a little over 20 years ago, visited the Kennedy Space Centre only a day or two before launch, and was in Key West (and, sadly, fast asleep) when the launch happened. Now it's retired, I hope one day to be able to pay a visit to at least one of the four currently on display in museums in the States.
Jetfire is certainly not an accurate representation of the shuttle, but it's clearly derived from it and pays great homage to it so, in retrospect, I'm a little surprised that I didn't buy it at the time... Only a little surprised, though, because I didn't really have a high opinion of Armada at the time, and so only bought a handful of figures. Then, since I bought Timelines Astrotrain back in 2007, I didn't initially see any need to buy Jetfire... Strange how things change over time!
It's quite a large model, with a massive wingspan and a fair amount of sculpted surface detail. One of my favourite features is the pattern sculpted on the underside of the wings, designed to resemble the insulation tiles on the underside of the real shuttle. It also has the three main engines and two rear manoeuvering engines of the real thing, as well as indentations on the nose representing the three forward control thrusters. Beyond that, though, it's covered with embellishments. The nose is more angular, with a wraparound window for the cockpit, the fuselage is stockier, the wings have extended, articulated tips and feature some sort of gun mounted toward the front, where it meets the fuselage, and sockets for up to four missiles/bombs on the underside (though only two missiles are supplied, and only two of the sockets are controlled by the Mini-Con ports on the tops). All it's really missing is landing gear, but his Mini-Con partner, Comettor, takes care of the front, plugging in under the nose, while a shield accessory takes care of the rear by attaching to the robot's feet. With all the wheels in line, down the centre of the shuttle, he does tend to wobble from side to side, but I can't imagine many people - kids in particular - would be rolling a shuttle along the floor.
The paintwork is mostly simple, bold red and black linework on the wings and cargo bay doors, with only a handful of spot applications, such as the cockpit windows, the manoeuvering thrusters and the tip of the nose. This simplicity, coupled with the predominance of white and grey plastic, almost convinced me to buy the repainted 'Powerlinx' version of Jetfire instead... Weirdly, what sold this version to me was the simulated 're-entry burn' glow airbrushed onto the nose. It's a silly effect, and was removed from the Japanese version, but it amused me nevertheless, and that counts for a lot in my collections. The downside is that Jetfire constantly looks as though his nose is on fire... but the upside is that it's a very well-done and quite effective bit of paintwork as far as vehicle mode is concerned. It's a shame that the rear manoeuvering boosters aren't painted on the insides - bare grey plastic where there's a certain amount of inner detail sculpted in looks more than a little unfinished) and the grey rear end, being a shade roughly halfway between the white of the front two thirds of the vehicle and the darker grey of the wings, looks a little out of place, particularly as the only paintwork on these parts is the black paint on the outside of the manoeuvering boosters.
One of the coolest features of this shuttle - one which, in my opinion, should be a prerequisite on any shuttle-based toy - is the simple fact that the cargo bay doors open. By default, all this actually achieves is showing off the robot's arms (which sort of resemble cargo containers or some other kind of payload, I guess), but they can be partially transformed out the bottom of the vehicle and plugged together to free up the cargo bay. The inside of one of the bay doors feature sculpted astrogation charts and tech detailing, emphasised with a dark wash.
Aside from the attachment of Comettor under the nose, all the Mini-Con features of this model are in at the rear. An active port on the top each wing causes the raised missile/bomb mountings on the underside to drop their payload, while another on the front of the main booster releases a pair of forward-angled additional fins from either side of the manoeuvering engines. This seems like a strange - and unnecessary - cosmetic detail, but it probably indicates some kind of Mini-Con induced upgrade to his engines. As with Timelines Astrotrain, the electronic features are activated by tipping the rear fin forward or backward, and I was more than a little surprised to fine Jetfire's sounds are unique. Tipping the fin backward activates a gunfire sound accomanied by a flickering of the main booster, while tipping it forward plays a very loud, barely intelligible countdown from five (which actually sounds more like "hive" on mine) to one, followed by a launch sound effect, followed by six beeps, roughly four seconds apart, all accompanied by flashing and flickering of the main booster. With a Mini-Con attached ahead of the fin, there's no difference to the effect of tipping the fin forward, but tipping it back elicits a slightly different gunfire sound.
Robot Mode:
Well, if vehicle mode is stocky, this this is positively chunky. The proportions of robot mode are all over the place, almost TransFormers Animated-style, with it's super-wide upper torso (thanks to a pair of flaps by each shoulder), huge forearms, massive lower legs and giant, clodhopper feet - in and of himself, he almost looks like a much smaller 'bot wearing a power suit. Admittedly, a good part of his apparent size does come from the wings sticking up over his back, which also make it a bit tricky to find display space for him. For all his bulk, he does have a decent amount of detail sculpted in - nothing excessive, just enough to ensure the arms and legs look interesting and suitably robotic, with bold panel lines and raised/sunken details dotted about.
Jetfire doesn't have anything like the level of paintwork of Timelines Astrotrain, but that's not to say it isn't impressive. In some respects, the restraint shown here is an improvement over the Collectors' Club's first exclusive figure, in that the massive wings sticking out behind and over his shoulders are less of a distraction, and the robot generally looks a bit more sober. His sculpted Autobot insignia - front and centre on his chest - is a little lost in a large blob of red paint framed with yellow, while the cargo bay door sections in front of his shoulders have a blanket coverage of yellow paint with three of the sculpted panels picked out in red. Just inside them on each side of the torso, some circular details on the grey parts of his chest are highlighted with gold paint, while a pair of screw holes just above his hips have been painted grey - a strange move, at first glance, but it does go some way toward disguising the screws and their holes. His cuffs each feature a gold panel, and his shins appear to have been painted gold with a coat of red applied on top - either that, or there's a thin line of gold paint applied near the central seams.
Since the electronics are wholly contained in the part which becomes Jetfire's handgun, there's no surprise that it's massive - albeit proportionally similar to some of the more recent gimmick accessories like Mechtech weapons. As as independent accessory, the electronic lights and sounds are identical to those from vehicle mode, but attaching a Mini-Con to the active port at the back of the gun at least makes a little more sense in this mode, even if it does bulk up the weapon even more. The only shame is that there's no unique sound effect for gun mode, to replace the launch countdown.
The lack of any useful Mini-Con attachments on the robot is a little disappointing - while he has ports on his arms, these are mainly for attaching his shield, or possibly the Skyboom shield if the appropriate set of three Mini-Cons is available. Jetfire's additional fins can still be deployed in robot mode simply by nudging the button on the inner face of his legs, but they serve no real purpose other than increasing the amount of space he'd need on a shelf.
The head sculpt is a little basic - where a lot of Armada figures had quite weird, blobby, distorted-humanoid faces, Jetfire just has a mouthplate and a visor, though the latter features two individually painted eyes on a black background. It's my understanding that the fact that the paintwork is on top of the (translucent red) visor is a factory error which was corrected on the later Powerlinx version of Armada Jetfire. It certainly looks a little wrong, though it's such a basic design - reminiscent of a G1 toy's sticker - I can't imagine it would look significantly better had it been applied behind the visor. In fact, since it'd then be behind translucent red plastic, it might get a little lost. The entire top of the head, being that same translucent red, looks very unusual, and what little sculpted detail there is gets lost or confused due to the way light passes through. The use of translucent plastic became far more common with the Energon/Superlink line, where it represented weapons - or even parts of a robot - which were supposedly made out of Energon. Granted, Armada precedes Energon, but the only other usage of translucent plastic around this time had been for windows, visors or light-piped eyes, so for a good part of a robot's helmet to be translucent seems very weird. The white chunks on the sides of his face feature screw head-like details on the insides, but these are a little lost due to the blobs of red paint applied to the whole recess.
Superpants Mode:
Believe it or not, the Jet Prime combination was another contributing factor to my lack of interest in Jetfire back when I first re-started collecting TransFormers. Sure, Prime becomes slightly taller, and has two legs that almost look like legs, but the giant, flared-out wings look a bit daft just hanging off him. There doesn't seem to be any particular consensus on whether the wings should be at the back or the front of the legs, but they are mounted on a (very tight) double hinge which would allow them to shift into either position, though they don't look particularly good in either position. While the legs are mostly grey, that doesn't help them look like coherent limbs because the thighs don't look as though they fully connect with the lower legs at the 'knee', and the black 'underpants' are flanked by sections of the nosecone with the fiery paintwork on display.
The only articulation on the legs is a small amount of sideways spread at the hips, and ankle tilt that compensates and gives him a firm, flat-footed stance. Because the upper half of this gestalt contains electronics, he has a tendency to lean forward, but the ankle ratchets are strong enough to keep him standing.
While I had no problem attaching Timelines Astrotrain's shield to Prime's chest, Jetfire's seems to be slightly warped and has a tendency to pop off if I so much as look in his direction. Additionally, the same issue with Jetfire's weapon is present here: arming Jet Prime with the bulky, electronic weapon means losing out on Prime's built-in lighting effect for his own gun.
Mini-Con Partner Comettor:
Unlike Timelines Astrotrain, Jetfire came packaged with only one Mini-Con, Comettor (unless you were lucky enough to find the 'Bonus Pack', which included the Space Mini-Con team of Astroscope, Payload and Skyblast). Comettor's primary function may be as Jetfire's front landing gear, but he also has his own independent six-wheeled, Curiosity-style rover mode. Naturally, with two such unusual vehicle modes, his robot mode suffers - he ends up looking like an early prototype of one of the robots from Short Circuit.
He has a decent amount of sculpted detail, but it doesn't really help his appearance - he's basically a box on wheels with one arm that's probably a gun, and the other which could be a solar collector. Both arms are articulated via ball joints in the shoulder, and it could be argued that there's waist articulation (which, due to the way it's arranged, also gives the impression of neck articulation) but Comettor is otherwise pretty static, as he moves around on four of his vehicle mode's six wheels. Paintwork, meanwhile, is minimal - there's a line of silver highlighting his visor, but the rest of it is bare plastic.
I wouldn't tend to expect much from one of the 'built for purpose' Mini-Cons, and Comettor is nowhere near as interesting as any of those sold in three-packs, but he's not bad for what he needs to do... He just could have done with a bit more decoration.
The more I lark about with Armada toys, the more I find I actually enjoy them... They were certainly created with fun in mind, rather than slavish adherence to the G1 continuity, which was already 20 years old at that point. By today's standards, the engineering - certainly as far as transformation goes - seems very basic... but a good portions of that is due to the engineering required to make the Mini-Con features work, and the volume of the toy set aside for all the electronic features. Nevertheless, Jetfire's transformation is pretty fluid, though the only things holding robot mode together are the clips on the cargo bay doors. The fact that transformation can be fudged to create an empty cargo bay is also something of a bonus. One thing that strikes me as interesting is the sheer size of the transformation pegs and sockets, and how loosely they connect, compared to more contemporary figures.
Jetfire is one of those unusual toys that I enjoy more for its vehicle mode than anything else. Not to say the robot or the combination gimmick are without merit, they're just not highlights for me. That said, having bought Jetfire and put him on display in Superpants mode with Optimus Prime, I did start thinking about getting Overload (or Energon Ultra Magnus) to complete the Armada combiner set... and eventually bought him second hand (minus missiles) from The Space-Bridge at this year's TFNation.
Maligned as the Unicron Trilogy was, I have to respect the bold new direction Hasbro took with the three toylines. Creating a whole new set of characters - and whole new looks for those with familiar names - was pretty daring considering how divisive Beast Wars had been only a few years before. Sure, they're all back to being mechanical, Optimus Prime had a very familiar head sculpt, and the three Seekers were represented, but it was different enough to be a risk. Adding the Pokemon-style Mini-Cons into the mix, with all the accompanying gimmicks, each being unique to the larger robot's mold, showed a far greater commitment to innovation than anything Hasbro have done more recently... and I almost wish the upcoming War for Cybertron trilogy was taking more stylistic cues from Armada than G1.
It's worth mentioning that, when I first received this figure, one of his ankle transformation joints was very loose, to the point where he could barely stand, particularly in Superpants mode. When I opened up the leg, I found the plastic part that holds the ratchet wheel in place was broken and barely made contact with the wheel. I tried gluing it, wedging it with pieces of card and plastic, but it always just collapsed. Thankfully, another copy of the same part is used in the ratchet for the sideways tilt in his ankles, but mounted in such a way that the breakage wouldn't matter, so I was able to switch the two parts round. Given that this figure is now 15 years old, I could hardly expect it to be in perfect condition and, given that one of these parts broke under its previous ownership, I've no way of knowing how likely it is to break again - either on the same ankle or the other one. That said, my experience of other Armada toys suggests they're pretty resilient - my only other breakage has been due to the crappy kind of gold plastic Hasbro used to use.
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