Alternity A-04 Thundercracker (Sonic Blue)

The last of my Alternity purchases was actually in my collection not long after Starscream and Skywarp, and I really don't know why I didn't get to him back then (a little over eight years ago!), not least because Skywarp lacked the immediate, punchy impact of Starscream's stark, pearly white paint job and Thundercrackers icy blue.

There were further entries in the Alternity line after this, but they seemed to be nothing but repaints of a retooled Convoy under the 'Mission GT-R' banner, so I think I've got at least one of all the unique molds and won't be looking to get any more of these... Which means I'm actually closing off one part of my collection right at the start of the year!

Vehicle Mode:
I'd have to say that, based on vehicle mode alone, Thundercracker is the most striking Alternity Seeker in the set. The metallic blue paint is absolutely gorgeous, and suits the sinuous curves of the Mitsuoka Orochi perfectly. It may be lacking Thundercracker's traditional red and black highlights but, like the other two, it has silver paint on the grille and the vents in the bonnet and rear wings, just behind the doors on each side. The hubcaps and exhaust pipes are also painted so, to the untrained eye or at first glance, Thundercracker could pass for a model car rather than a robot in disguise. He certainly hides his seams better then Starscream.

One flaw in the decoration of mine is that the Mitsuoka banner on the rear bumper is slightly misaligned on the lefthand side, but the error doesn't stand out too much. Another flaw I've noticed since seeing images of the real car, is that the rear indicator lights on all three versions of this figure are colourless translucent plastic, when they should have a red tint. The shape of the headlights, the position of the lamps (particularly the indicators) and the black stripe over the main lights also appears to be a little adrift, but easily forgivable on such a small model car.

The Orochi is a truly beautiful car, if a little sinister-looking, and I'd rather like to see it in a live action movie one of these days... though that seems unlikely given that they went out of production a few years back. The strangest aspect of this mold is the car's half-hearted flight mode, which is so terrible I didn't bother photographing it for either of the variants after Starscream.


Robot Mode:
The sparkly blue colourscheme is the clear winner in robot mode, easily trouncing Starscream's pearescent white and Skywarp's weird purple, though I gather all three were as close as possible to the colours the car was actually available in. The robot itself is still bizarrely gangly and the series of car panels masquerading as his wings is just as unsightly from the rear, but surprisingly effective from the front. He follows the pattern of the other two Orochi Seekers in having stripes on his 'wings' though, where Starscream only had single red stripes, Skywarp and Thundercracker have a lighter, flat shade of their primary colour (in Thundercracker's case, a bright shade of cyan not too far off the notorious AllSpark Blue which turned up on loads of movie figures) as an additional stripe alongside the silver - and I can't help but think that basing their colourschemes a little more closely on the G1 toys would have improved them. Red stripes on Thundercracker's wings would certainly have broken things up a little and wouldn't have affected his vehicle mode in the least... And Skywarp would have looked far better in black...

Other than this, on balance, Thundercracker's colourscheme is most like his G1 counterpart - largely metallic blue, silver and black - though the blue is much lighter and more vibrant than the G1 toy's plastic, closer to the animation model, but brighter. Like Skywarp, his tertiary colour also appears on his knee spikes and his 'spats', and a Decepticon insignia is emblazoned on his crotch.

Given that Starscream had a unique - albeit pretty hideous - head sculpt, it's disappointing to see that Thundercracker uses exactly the same sculpt as Skywarp, and even the same paint layout. Still, it's a fairly nice one... and I almost wish they'd used it for Starscream as well. Then again, I'd rather they'd all had black helmets for another touch of G1 continuity.


The Mitsuoka Orochi Seekers were perhaps overambitious for their size, as all of them feel incredibly fiddly and have the same problem with loose joints, parts not pegging together securely and awkward articulation. The painted die-cast elements on his knees make transforming his legs quite scary, as the sliding part feels dangerously tight, so I'm never quite sure if I've moved it all the way, and would rather not risk damaging the paint. The doors hanging off his hips are just as floppy and awkward as the other two Seekers, but they don't interfere with the movement of his legs - or, at least, can be moved out of the way for most purposes - so it's not a big deal.

In a lot of ways, I'm rather sad that the Alternity line ended so abruptly. I was a huge fan of Binaltech, and Alternity, by comparison, barely scratched the surface of what it could have been. Then again, based on the few figures I own, the materials used weren't quite up to the task for figures of this scale, and the geared/spring-loaded aspects of the figures are a bit dodgy in just about all of them... Plus, the instructions were so abstruse for most of them, I wouldn't be surprised if they've been damaged from the very first transformation, due to one ambiguous image or another.

The real shame is that the line ended up as a brief exercise in repaints, with only about 5 cars becoming something like 20 characters, but with only a handful of unique head sculpts, including the 'Mission GT-R' set. I can forgive the multiple Convoy repaints, the Seekers, and even Bumblebee and Cliffjumper sharing the Suzuki Swift vehicle mode made a kind of sense... but the four versions of Megatron (including the one marketed as Galvatron) and a fourth Orochi repainted as Banzai-Tron really devalued the line.