Series 4 was largely a disappointment generally... but this - the supposed bonus figure, packaged with Impactor - feels to me like the Club's worst output in all their 12 years. So, as something of a compare-and-contrast with the previous post, about the Binaltech version of the character, let's have a closer look to see what rubbed me up the wrong way...
Vehicle Mode:
Straight away, we have a problem in that the mold used was that of Streetwise, which had already been reused as CW Prowl and Smokescreen. Bluestreak should have been the Dead End mold, without the bullbars, extra lights and the lightbar. Then there's the colour, which references the paint job of the Diaclone which had been given its first and, until this thing came along, only appearance under the TransFormers brand as Masterpiece Bluestreak back in 2015. Then there's the shortcomings of the mold, which leaves a stark white block on each side, in the middle of the passenger doors, and has the side windows artificially extended over the roof in a vain attempt to simulate the sunroof panels of the original toy's Datsun/Nissan Fairlady... this wouldn't have been so bad had the frame of the roof - not the mention the redundant lightbar - not been so prominent in the sculpted detail. Then there's the back end... where it looks like a mainstream Hasbro release because there's absolutely no bloody paintwork.
But let's try to find some positives...
While I was a little bummed out at receiving an 'exclusive' repaint of a mold I already have, there's nothing intrinsically wrong with the vehicle mode - it's really well-designed and looks like a car built for speed. The paint job is certainly more extensive than that of Streetwise, and is a reasonable attempt at approximating a Diaclone-style Bluestreak within the details of the mold, with a vast wash of silver over the entire bonnet and parts of the wing mirrors. His hubcaps are painted silver, and the cap for the petrol tank has become a large silver dot by the leftside rear wheel. The not-lightbar on the roof is painted silver, the windows are all painted with a lovely, super-dark gunmetal, the front bumper and bullbars are coated in a glossy black paint and the four small, circular lights set within the bullbars are picked out in yellow. He has a large Autobot insignia stamped onto his bonnet and, for no readily apparent reason, the word 'TURBO' tampographed on each door, just behind the white panel.
Overall, the first two thirds of the vehicle look OK, though the design choices are a little puzzling... but the back end of the car is a huge let-down, particularly on the much-hyped, secret bonus figure for subscribers only. They would have done far better to use the Dead End mold, and cast it all in grey plastic, then put a nice dark gunmetal on the middle section of the bonnet, and use whatever was left in the paint budget for windows, headlights and - most important - tail lights and other details on the rear end.
Naturally, Bluestreak comes with the same weapons as Streetwise - the triple-barrelled shotgun and the strange, multi-barrelled cannon thing. While the shotgun is silver, much like the original, the hand/foot gun is molded in a pale grey which would show off the sculpted detail very well... if it weren't for the fact that most of the actual weapon detail is on the underside.
Robot Mode:
Of course, Bluestreak (along with Prowl and Smokescreen) having been derived from the Diaclone cars where the bonnet becomes the chest, there's an immediate need for a certain amount of fakery on the Combiner Wars interpretation. Thankfully, Streetwise was clearly made with a variety of reuses in mind, as his black-painted chest plate just needs a different style of decoration to become a wide range of Diaclone-derived G1 characters. Here it's painted up as a compressed faux-bonnet, complete with angular, white-painted headlight details and a section of silver panel in the middle. This is a prime example of what a different paint job can do for a figure, and it's consequently quite surprising that Streetwise's chest was just given blanket coverage in black rather than a few spots of detail like this figure. The sculpted detail present is very impressive, so it's nice to finally be able to see it clearly. I'm not sure what the two blobs of red near the collar area are supposed to represent - possibly the indicator light stickers from the Diaclone toy? - and they seem a little out of place considering the only other instances of red on the entire figure - aside from his Autobot insignias - are the fake tail light details on his toes.
Below the chest flap are more curious choices in the paint job - four small blocks of green on either side of his combiner peg belly, the upper pair having been lined with silver paint. I'm guessing this is intended to reference the stickers on the Diaclone toy... but, if that's the case, it would have been better placed on his unpainted black plastic groin. The forearms feature black paint applied using the same pattern as the red on Streetwise, but the most intricate paintwork has been applied to his shins and toes. The former have received blanket coverage with glossy black paint, with blocks of purple and yellow, framed with silver, stamped over the top of the ridged details running down the centre of the shin, all seemingly in homage to the Diaclone toy's stickers. The latter, as mentioned above, have painted detail designed to resemble the tail light details reflected on Masterpiece Bluestreak.
The paintwork is certainly more extensive in robot mode, and probably approaches what one would tend to expect from an exclusive figure produced by the TransFormers Collectors' Club... but it feels a bit scattershot. I guess the idea was to create something as close as possible to the Diaclone figure that became the Autobot known as Bluestreak... but I personally would have preferred a colourscheme more like the actual G1 Bluestreak toy, or - as with the Classics version - something more like e-Hobby's cartoon-styled Collector's Edition release. Actual blue Bluestreaks are a relatively new phenomenon, and I'm not sure it has a great deal of merit.
As mentioned under vehicle mode, Bluestreak comes with the same shotgun as Streetwise (and Prowl, and Smokescreen) which still looks pretty terrible upon close examination and, due to the vaguaries of plastic tolerances, fits incredibly loosely in Bluestreak's hands. The hand/foot weapon, now molded in pale grey plastic, not only looks oversized but, with its details more easily discernible, also just looks like a folded up hand. Honestly, I do applaud Hasbro for trying... but these pieces were never really going to work... And it's a real shame the Club didn't add any unique paintwork to either weapon, just to distract the eye from the overall poor quality of the accessories.
The head sculpt is as close to a redeeming feature as this figure gets. It's the same mold as Prowl and Smokescreen, but cast in blue plastic and given a Diaclone-style paint job, with a silver face and yellow paint for the eyes and horns of his crest. Sadly, the yellow paint on the horns isn't especially dense, so there's a greenish tinge to them due to the underlying blue plastic. The sculpt is excellent - seemingly derived from Masterpiece Prowl in its overall shape and styling, but with a level of detail more in keeping with the Combiner Wars line. The face features the sort of dour expression one would expect of Prowl, so it's not exactly suited to Bluestreak's usual characterisation, but that's perfectly in keeping with mold reuse within G1.
Combiner Wars Bluestreak's bio reads like a flashback sequence one might visualise while reading the infinitely superior - and simpler - bio written by Bob Budiansky, one Thanksgiving weekend, back in the early 1980s. It's not bad - I've certainly read far worse, from the Club - but it has the characteristically poor grasp of grammar, particularly noticeable at the start, where several commas seem to have become full stops. Also, as is often the case with the Club's bios, this version of Bluestreak comes across like a half-arsed US Television-style 'gritty reboot' of his G1 personality. Where the original was "Often inhibited by his disdain for combat", this one seems to have become a combination of a ninja and a sniper, not unlike the Predator:
"Using experimental 'Stealth Tech' developed in a joint effort with Wheeljack, Medix and Mirage, Bluestreak is able to go nearly unseen by the Decepticons, even with their vastly superior radar and detection technology. Bluestreak emits a fair blue shimmer when in Stealth Mode. Decepticons that have survived encounters with Bluestreak speak of an angelic specter in the distance, before a hail of blaster fire rains down upon them."
Other than this, there's literally nothing mentioned about his armaments, other than a throwaway comment to the effect that it's inferior to Impactor's... which should come as no surprise to anyone. His motto is given as "Disliking Decepticons is easy when they destroy everything they touch.", which reads like an angsty teen's attempt to understand the original's "I never met a Decepticon I didn't dislike." in the context of both versions of the character having witnessed the Decepticons' razing of his home-city.
Gone, too, is any mention of his talking "incessantly and inanely" which, according to the Marvel G1 comics (also written by Budiansky) actually gave rise to his name - "to talk a blue streak" is to speak with great rapidity, volume, and/or intensity.
Ultimately, Combiner Wars Bluestreak feels like he was included as the penultimate 'Subscribers Only Bonus Figure' because they couldn't figure out what else to do with him. He would have been reasonable as a mainline Combiner Wars figure but, as a Club exclusive - even one thrown in free as part of the Subscription Service - there's nothing remotely exciting about him. Other than the Aerialbots and Protectobots, I didn't buy any Combiner Wars Autobots and, as you may have seen in a (much) older post, cobbled together a custom Sky Reign using some other leftover Combiner Wars figures from the Club (specifically Impactor, Shattered Glass Starscream and Bluestreak here) along with the superfluous Protectobot, Rook (coincidentally the same mold as Impactor), simply because I couldn't be bothered with Hasbro's dull reimaginings of G1 characters shoehorned into Combiner Wars body types.
I can understand why the Club didn't put a great deal of effort into it, as they must surely have known, even in 2016, that Hasbro were pulling the plug on them, and Combiner Wars generally just sort of petered out to make room for Titans Return, and without ever really making much of an impact on Generations beyond the reintroduction of gestalts.
It's really sad to say that there's nothing remarkable about one of the Club's final figures, and that this such a sorry example of an exclusive. In a lot of ways, the Club might have been better off releasing a Diaclone-inspired repaint of the Classics Streak mold from eight years prior to this version.
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