I was reasonably impressed with Dreadwind on his own, but acquiring this figure made both seem more disappointing than either in isolation... so let's find out why...
Vehicle Mode:
Based on the Combiner Wars Air Raid mold, this new Darkwing actually looks tidier than the G1 original, albeit rather chunkier on the undercarriange simply due to the way the CW jets were designed. Keeping very close to the G1 toy's colourscheme, the jet's body is largely grey with the wings and rear stabilisers painted purple, the former additionally decorated by a silver and yellow lightning design featuring the Decepticon insignia. The rear fins, molded in a weirdly soft rubbery turquoise plastic, have silver linework on the outsides. Both of these paint designs are styled after stickers on the G1 toy. The cockpit canopy is painted with a well-matched turquoise, and there's another dash of it on a small detail on the rubber nose section just in front. The use of turquoise is probably the biggest deviation from the G1 toy, which used more of a cyan colour - the plastic and paintwork used here borders very closely on green. In comparison, the Universe version from 2009 is more accurately coloured. Surprisingly, there's also silver and red paint over the sculpted details on the top surface of the intakes either side of the cockpit, both of which are further references to sticker detail on the original toy. There's a surprising amount of paintwork on this toy versus the Combiner Wars figure it's based on.
As with Dreadwing, there are a handful of remolded jet parts, most notably the cockpit section, with a new style of canopy and entirely different jet intakes on either side. The wing mountings and - surprisingly - the wings themselves are also new. The former lose the fixed missile details while the latter feature entirely unique panel lines on both sides. The middle section of the fuselage is also all new, and now features an additional hinged section for transformation as well as a couple of Titan/Prime Master foot pegs. All of these remolded parts appear to be closely styled after the G1 toy in terms of panel lines, etc. but, of course, the G1 toy - being modelled on a Tornado - had only one single upright fin at the back and its afterburners, while only half-sculpted, were vastly more convincing that those on show here. The rubber nose section and the entire back end of the jet appears to be common to Air Raid.
One strange choice on the resculpting/remolding front is that Darkwing's wings lack Air Raid's 5mm sockets, so his twin pistols have to be mounted in the sockets on the robot's exposed forearms. This places them neatly below the wings anyway, so it works just as well as sockets on the wings themselves, just without the need to reorient them when swinging the wings forward. The guns are small and nondescript, with exceedingly tight 5mm sockets on each side, so they can be combined and mounted on the top of the jet, though I found stress marks around the socket the first time I connected the guns. Also, really, that upper socket is intended for the Prime Armour. The sculpt is exactly the same as the part supplied with Dreadwind, but molded entirely in the same light blue plastic as the robot's body and forearms.
Robot Mode:
Again, just like PotP Dreadwind, Hasbro have been pretty clever about the way they've created Darkwing. The entire torso (above the waist joint) is newly sculpted with a plate in the centre of the chest covering over the 5mm Prime Armour attachment port. The bicep and shoulder sections are unique to Darkwing and, while the combiner peg is the same as Dreadwind's (somehow I've managed to have the unmarked face showing on all photos of both figures - there's supposed to be a trapezoid indentation visible at the bottom of the peg!), the barrel is unique due to the way his head deploys in robot mode. Additionally, while the wings on CW Air Raid (and G1 Darkwing) fold back 90°, the wings on this version are on ball joints so they can display the lightning designs in robot mode. The downside to this decision is that the wings cannot fold back, so they're more in the way of the arms.
The sculpt of the torso follows the design of the G1 toy fairly closely, while broadly keeping within the shape of Air Raid's torso, and the applications of silver paint to either side of his waist and the central part of his chest mimmick the larger stickers on the G1 toy. The upper arms are split between turquoise (painted) and grey plastic, when they should all be the same colour. I don't mind this so much because the contrast between the blue of his forearms and the turquoise on his shoulders isn't that great, so the grey biceps break it up nicely. Also, both the shoulder and bicep parts - as mentioned, the only newly sculpted parts on the arms - have a lot more detail to them than the G1 toy. The bottom half is all recycled from Air Raid, with large applications of silver paint on the kneecaps (larger than is necessary, looking at the G1 toy, but it does further differentiate him from the Aerialbot) and turquoise on the squashed toes. It's a shame his feet - such as they are - don't look more like the G1 toy's claws/cloven hooves, but it's not a terrible loss. A few more detail paint applications would have been welcome but, equally, it would be unlike Hasbro to deny Reprolabels the opportunity to create the necessary stickers.
PotP Darkwing's weapons are pretty puny compared to those packaged with the G1 toy - simple, miniscule pistols barely longer than his forearms - but actually that works in their favour and, compared to the enormous weapons supplied with most other Combiner Wars, Titans Return and Power of the Primes weapons, not least the one wielded by Dreadwing, they look to be a suitable size for the character. The last time I saw weapons that were of this sort of proportion compared to the figure was back in the early days of Classics/Generations.
The head sculpt is... interesting. The G1 figure seemed to be wearing an oversized helmet with bat-like 'ears' and a small, angular visor. This one seems to be aiming in that direction, but the 'ears' come across more cat-like and the visor is larger and looks more rounded or bulbous while still being angular - rather than being a shallow 'V', it's shaped more like a sleep mask, but set inside the 'helmet'. What little face there is on show - just a tiny portion around his mouth - is very deeply inset within the 'helmet' and doesn't look especially robotic, though this is in common with the original G1 toy, which was peculiarly pouty. Also like the G1 figure, the top of the head features indented chevrons. It's not a bad sculpt by any means, it just looks a bit too cute for a Decepticon like Darkwing.
For the most part, Darkwing's transformation is functionally identical to Air Raid's, with a couple of small changes. Rather than bending out and back on two separate hinges, to peg in facing upward on his back, Darkwing's nosecone bends right back and hangs downward. The midsection of the jet opens up to allow the wings to swing round 180° on their ball joints, but the sockets for these joints are on a separately hinged part made of softer - and rather bendy - plastic. One might think this would allow for the wings to be rotated without opening the entire back section, but the two parts are joined by a hinge on the inside that won't move unless the back section has already been opened. Finally, the head is attached to the inside of the nosecone, but on a small, articulated arm of its own that allows it to stow well away in jet mode and gets it out of the way of the combiner peg's barrel in either limb mode.
I've briefly mentioned already that there's one small difference in Darkwing's articulation compared to Air Raid, and that's down to the way the wings are handled. The only drawback to having his wings sticking out to the sides behind his arms, rather than folded back at a right angle to his body, is that it means his arms can't rotate a full 360° on their ball joint but, frankly, that's been true of so many TransFormers toys over the years, for a variety of reasons, that it's just not a significant problem. Everything else is exactly as per Air Raid, even factoring in the way the head deploys. Of course, moving the head does tend to dislodge its arm from the small peg on the combiner joint's barrel, and it never seems to want to sit back down properly, but the head itself has an excellent range of movement on the joint, being able to tilt right back so he's looking straight up.
Combined 'Dreadwing' Superjet:
Er... Yeah... So... While the two jets can be combined into something resembling G1 Dreadwing, it's a much less involved - not to mention much less secure - connection, being simply a 5mm peg that folds out from the back of Darkwing's combiner peg and plugs into the 5mm socket on Dreadwind's rear end. In and of itself, its pretty useless both in that it's a little on the loose side and, being a circular peg in a circular socket, it's very prone to rotating. I have found that this can be improved substantially by folding Darkwing's head out of his nosecone section so the squared off 'neck' piece rests on a rectangular indentation between Dreadwind's afterburners, but this leaves the combined jet with a severe case of Visible Head Syndrome, mitigated only by the fact that Darkwing's head is between Dreadwind's tailfins and facing backward.
The wings on both figures are a little on the wobbly side - Dreadwind's never seem to peg in securely to the rear of the jet, while Darkwing's are hinged and on ball joints - and don't peg together in any way. Darkwing's appear to have small indentations on the back that sort-of match the position of the blocks on the ends of Dreadwind's, and the former does have pegs sticking out, but the wings just rest against each other rather than making any meaningful connection.
Weapons from both individual toys can be connected in this form - Dreadwind's single, large gun can plug into the underside of one of his wings, while Darkwing's two small guns can be pegged together and attached to the underside of the other - but the combined jet can only usefully accommodate one of the two sets of Prime Armour since Darkwing's socket is covered over by his inverted nose section. Granted, the spare could peg into the rear of the combined jet, but there's no real advantage to that and either one looks pretty terrible.
Though it may not be entirely apparent, I do really like both Dreadwind and Darkwing, and don't mind overly that they were created using slightly adjusted Combiner Wars molds that are only just appropriate to the characters. Nevertheless, I understand the need for taking the shortcut, and am happy to see such minor characters revisted, however it's accomplished. It's a shame they didn't get the same treatment as Punch-Counterpunch, but even he exhibited signs of being developed from Combiner Wars-style engineering. Considering the limitations, Darkwing and Dreadwind work well individually and as a pair and, while they've lost a lot of what made the G1 figures unique, the individual robots are both pretty interesting and - at least in terms of articulation - better than the originals.
It's nice that Hasbro decided to include the Dreadwing jet combination feature, but the fudged attempt does highlight how much better these two could have been had they not been shoehorned into the Combiner Wars body type to make use of the hideous Voyager class/gestalt torso Starscream... who didn't even get a gestalt name of his own.
Then again, the only other Deluxe class Decepticons released in the Power of the Primes toyline are the Terrorcons - a complete team in and of themselves - so the Starscream gestalt has to follow CW Galvatronus' example and enthrall a couple of PotP Autobots (per many of the publicity shots) or commandeer some convenient CW Decepticons to become complete. I'm digressing now, but it's baffling that, having released Starscream as a Voyager and two new jet-based G1-homage Deluxes, neither Hasbro nor Takara Tomy considered releasing Skywarp and Thundercracker as Deluxe class limbs, either as straight repaints of one of the Combiner Wars jets or as F-15-based retoolings. Releasing any figure that turns into a gestalt's torso without sufficient available limbs makes for a huge missed opportunity.
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