Dreadwing had the screentime to display generally more character than his brother, and turned out to be one of the more ambiguous Decepticons - loyal to his leader, but willing to fight alongside the Autobots if the situation demanded it. For me, though, the most outstanding thing about him was that he was voiced by the awesome and unmistakable Tony Todd, whose gravelly tones lent the character a sense of power and authority.
Skyquake's toy turned out to be the sort of ambitious yet flawed figure that characterised the TFPrime line, so let's have a look at his repaint...
Vehicle Mode:
Sad to say, but it's fairly obvious at a glance that Dreadwing was the earlier release of the two Voyager class heavy jets - there are many corners cut with the paint job, not least on the cockpit canopy. Skyquake's paintwork wasn't exactly comprehensive, with the same odd panels of grey plastic evident on the top surface of the jet, but the trade-off here appears to be intended to favour robot mode, with black and silver paint on either side of the nose section, while the frame of the canopy is left as bare translucent yellow plastic. He has both silver and coppery/gold-ish paint on his wings - CGI accurate, but I'd have thought reducing the palette here might have been a better way to reduce the paint budget. Certainly, the panel of black paint just behind the 5mm socket in the translucent yellow block just behind the canopy is a complete waste as it's barely noticeable against the dark blue plastic. Still, what's there is crisp and densely applied so, canopy aside, jet mode looks pretty good, despite the obvious robot parts on the overly bulky undercarriage, including his hands poking out at the back.
Dreadwing is packaged with another typical example of the line's gimmicky, flimsily-geared, LED-lit 'Poweriser' weapons - a folded up version of the huge cannon he wields in the TV show which opens and lights up when the brick at the back - featuring what is ostensibly the weapon's main grip as a curved protrusion. As with Skyquake, it can only really be pegged into the socket behind the cockpit, but he has an additional 5mm socket on the underside of each wing. He comes with a sword accessory, identical to Skyquake's, with no particularly effective way to attach it, and no way to combine it with his gun once it's deployed.
Compared to his brother, Dreadwing looks incomplete, as if he was considered 'ready for production' only part way through testing his paint applications... he's really only saved by the well-sculpted details and panel lines, and the fact that his main plastic colour is dark enough that some of the omissions aren't particularly noticeable.
Robot Mode:
Sadly, even with the additional paintwork on his nosecone, the overall dearth of paintwork is painfully apparent on Dreadwing's robot mode. The torso would have looked miles better if only the canopy frame had been painted in, as it later was with Skyquake. Much of what paint is there from the nose of the jet actually gets covered over by the panels that fold out from below to become the sides of the chest and waist. I suppose it's equally weird that Skyquake's robot mode doesn't feature any significant additional paint applications versus this version but, on the upside, that does make Dreadwing look better by the comparison, as the most significant difference is the canopy. He features more of the gold-ish paint around the inner faces of his ankles, matching the applications of brown paint on his brother.
As mentioned above, Dreadwing comes packaged with the same sword as his twin, which is at least appropriate to this character. His Poweriser weapon is essentially the same bar its colouring and the design of the moving barrel section, but it's rather disappointing that the sword cannot be plugged into the gun to lock it into its deployed state. Considering how frequently Dreadwing combined his weapons in the TV show - in fact, it appeared in the CGI that the sword could only really be stored as a functionally useless bayonet on top of his cannon, a feature thankfully replicated in the SXS Toys upgrade sets - it's disappointing (and more than a little ridiculous) that the feature wasn't included in this version of the toy even if it had to remain absent on Skyquake's weapon set. The geared mechanism works well enough, but the light piping effect is just as weak as on any other figure's weapon. The fact that it cannot be locked into its deployed position hinders its usefulness, just like all the others, and the single 5mm peg on the underside limits its application to being plugged into his forearms or balanced precariously in his open-gripped hands. Neither suits the weapon, as it's so large and unwieldy... let alone the fact that it was always portrayed in the TV show as being carried two-handed, and with handles sticking out from the top.
Naturally the head sculpt is the same as Skyquake's, and features the same painted rubber helmet over a translucent plastic cap on the ball joint. However, compared to Skyquake, the paintwork is severely lacking - his 'eyebrow' piece, let alone its tips, isn't painted differently to the rest of the helmet. The gold-painted face has exactly the same sculpt as his twin - no surprise there - and kind of serves to highlight the absence of paint elsewhere on the head, rather than distracting from it.
The real shame here is that Hasbro's release schedule got these two the wrong way round. Given his ridiculously brief appearance and early demise in the TV show, it would almost have made sense to skimp on Skyquake's paint job rather than Dreadwing's... Yet the more important character was released first with a lacklustre paint job, and followed by the repaint who only appeared in a couple of episodes right near the start of the series. I understand that Hasbro likes to repaint its molds where possible, but there are smarter ways of doing so.
Somewhat scarily, while larking about with this toy as I was writing this, I discovered the panel featuring his afterburner and the rubber tail fins had broken at its hinge - the plastic surrounding the metal pin was inexplicably absent on one side, and barely holding together on the other. I've no idea when or how it broke, but it is now completely wrecked. This doesn't present much of a problem in either vehicle or robot mode - it pegs in securely in the former and holds its place well enough in the latter - but it will always pop off during transformation. Not sure if this is a widespread problem, and I'm reluctant to even check Skyquake again in case he's also broken. There must have been a weakness in the materials or some fault in the assembly, as I can't see any obvious reason for the breakage... But, considering the issue I had with Skyquake and Dreadwing's feet, it's fairly clear there were serious QC issues with this line.
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