Jazz really must be the unluckiest character from the live action movie series. Fans expectations (mine included) were rocked by his choice of alternate mode - the Pontiac Solstic being a far cry from the Martini Racing-sponsored Porsche 935/76 of Generation 1, albeit for obvious legal reasons... He was introduced as a super-cool robot whose transformation looked like breakdancing, his movements were showy yet precise... but he barely had any dialogue, amassed just five minutes of screentime in a movie that exceeded two hours runtime, and was unceremoniously ripped in half during the final battle - a fact which received only a perfunctory acknowledgement from Optimus Prime.
Making matters worse for Jazz, all his toys - up until the 2010 Human Alliance figure - were basically shit. The original Deluxe class toy was poorly proportioned, yet it got about a billion reuses - including an insipid G1 repaint - alongside its battle-damaged variant, while the Legends class toy had the vehicle's front duplicated on its roof. The head sculpt of every single one of them seemed to have been either based on early, pre-production artwork, or just plain wrong, with the HA figure - which, let us not forget, was released as part of the second movie's toyline - being the first to get the details right.
But even that wasn't entirely right - just for starters, the arms were essentially reversed, while the legs were too long and very awkward-looking compared to the elegant CGI. So when a Masterpiece interpretation of Jazz was revealed, I hoped to finally add a decent representation of the on-screen character to my collection. Photos, videos and reviews from other collectors seemed roundly positive, so I ordered him late last year.
Let's find out what a twelve year wait yields for one on the more forgettable characters from the first movie.
Vehicle Mode:
I've said basically every time I've written about movie Jazz that the Pontiac Solstice was a really bland car to use for Jazz. It's one of those cars that should be more impressive than it actually is, but somehow fluffs it. Personally, I think that cars have been becoming far too homogenous for decades - even at the higher end - and the Solstice is just another victim of this trend. It's smooth and curvy, but lacks any real character... the design seems to lack any real commitment to being a sports car, and silver is just such a dull colour for a car.
One thing I will say is that, when I look at any toy of Jazz, then look at photos of the real-life Pontiac Solstice used in the movies, I somehow fail to see the toys as accurate representations of the car... and I wonder if it's down to the few completely egregious seams that occur due to the need to transform it. Jazz has only a handful of these, thanks to some of them being placed in line with surface detail, but the real-life Solstice disguises even its bonnet seam remarkably well, and so ends up looking exceptionally smooth and quite featureless. Here, the seams at the front aren't great, but the door seams are easily the worst - on mine, at least, the silver paint doesn't extend to the edges of the underlying grey plastic, emphasizing what would otherwise have been a slender gap. Also, with a vertical seam through each door, you know at a glance that the doors won't open so, in some respects, this 'Masterpiece' starts to look like a step backward from the Human Alliance version made almost ten years before.
Silver paint accounts for about 99% of the surface area of paint, with black added to the front grille, the bumper, and the two small vents on either side, as well as red paint for the Pontiac arrowhead on the nose and two of the rear lights. Looking back at the first movie, I can't help but think he should have been a darker, glossier gunmetal. Silver works well enough, but there's a discernible lack of contrast between the car body and the headlights... Sadly, not even the Masterpiece line has perfectly matched the movie paint jobs so far. Probably most strange on this version of movie Jazz's vehicle mode paint job is the fact that one small section of black panel lining has been painted in on the central part of the car's nose, highlighting the edge of the bonnet... yet none of other sculpted panel lines have been highlighted in this way. With that one section of the nose becoming the centrepiece of the robot mode's chest, it hardly needs the edge of the bonnet highlighted, so I can't tell whether painted panel lines were omitted everywhere else, or if that one section of panel lining is the error.
The lights are curiously handled - at the back, the small, circular, embedded pair are just painted red, but the two just below the outer edges of the spoiler are separate pieces of translucent red plastic, while the central brake light, just above where the numberplate should be, was left unpainted. Additionally, the smaller, circular headlights on the front of the car are split between standard white lights and the orange indicators on the real Solstice, but that split isn't represented here, either with separate pieces of coloured plastic or translucent orange paint for the indicators. The real car also has side indicators embedded in the front wheel wells, and these are neither specifically sculpted nor picked out with paint.
The absence of a numberplate is disappointing, and more than a little strange considering it appears as part of his robot mode paint job. Even the wheels have rings of silver on the edges of the hubcaps... though, to me, that just highlights the fact that the 'tyres' are solid plastic parts of the wheels. Personally, I really miss the days when a Masterpiece figure had separate rubber tyres, but that sadly hasn't been the case since MP10 and its many repaints.
I was somewhat surprised by the uncoloured, untinted transparent plastic windows, like MPM-5 Barricade, which act to the detriment of Jazz's overall look because of all the visible robot parts on the interior. One has to assume it was part of the licensing agreement, but it's disappointing nonetheless. MPM-7 Bumblebee's windows were tinted blue, while the Camaro version, MPM-3 and MPM-6 Ironhide all at least appeared to have smoky windows, MPM-4 had silver backing to his windscreen and MPM-11 Ratchet has only lightly-tinted windows... I feel that a bit more consistency would have helped the line, even in something as trivial as the windows, as they end up looking mismatched.
Jazz's accessories can be 'stored' in vehicle mode but, much like the original Deluxe class toy, it's just a case of tagging them onto the spoiler... at which point he has a large, sort of crescent-shaped shield/gun and a section of robot spine hanging off this back end, which isn't exactly elegant. The compact vehicle is so densely packed with robot parts, there wasn't really any internal storage option available... but I can't help thinking that, if it can't be done cleanly, it shouldn't be done at all.
Aside from the issues with the paint on the door panels, there are a couple of flaws with my copy of Jazz. Where the front grille is split into two parts, some of the silver paint is scuffed on the central bridge, directly below the Pontiac arrowhead, and the panel below the left headlight doesn't clip into place properly because of a molding defect (there's literally no socket for the peg that's supposed to tab into it inside). I'm not too fussed about the former, and reasonably confident that the latter can be fixed...
Robot Mode:
Given that the new Studio Series toy is, in its own way, as much of an abomination as the 2007 Deluxe, I was hoping that the Masterpiece figure would be the definitive version... And, to a degree, it really is - where even the HA version messed up the arms, had missing details from the feet, didn't even try to get the backpack right and ended up a bit too lanky, a lot of effort has gone into making this version of Jazz look more like the movie CGI. The chest is broadly faithful, the lower torso and legs are as good as any of the Masterpiece Movie figures in terms of sculpt accuracy and, through engineering sorcery, the car's headlights end up correctly located on the robot's cuffs rather than his shoulders. On the downside, the shoulders end up overburdened with two layers of car shell, and the backpack, while accurate in terms of its sculpted detail, sticks out much too far because the car's roof section doesn't collapse down any closer to the body.
Where thing start to go a little wrong is - quelle surprise - the paintwork. Ever since Hasbro and Takara Tomy agreed their 'Unification of World Brands', every one of their products has had to settle for a sub-par Hasbro-style paint job. While the Masterpiece lines fare a little better than the main toylines in that respect, it's very apparent on Jazz that cuts have been made. It's not that he's generally lacking paintwork, exactly - there's plenty more silver on his lower torso, hips, thighs and shins - more that the detail applications have been absolutely minimised in quantity, size and variety. Copper and gold paint has been used not so much 'strategically' as 'in a miserly fashion', with much bare grey plastic - two shades thereof - in evidence all over the figure. Small applications of the three metallic paints are dotted around the torso - silver, by and large, being reserved for the armour panels, while the others are dabbed almost alternately on the smaller details of the waist and groin/hips. The largest invidual applications of gold and copper are the front faces of the hip joints (where they are partially obscured by the hinged armour parts) and on the shins. Strangely the main groinal lump and two of the four foot parts are unpainted die-cast metal, which has an appreciably different appearance to the silver painted parts, let alone the unpainted grey plastics.
While this underdecoration isn't as conspicuous on the lower torso, thanks to the distractingly silver chest and the few spot paint applications, its very apparent across the shoulders and, strangely, on the sliver of exposed inner workings on the side of each thigh. The grey plastic isn't utterly dull in and of itself - the darker grey may even have a fine shimmer component - but this, coupled with reduced sculpt depth due to the complex transformation of the upper body, does make him look a touch unfinished. That said, the ball-jointed collarbones go some way toward making that area look more three-dimensional and distracting from the plainer plastic between them.
All this said, whatever complaints I may have about the paint job here, it's infinitely better than that original Deluxe class toy, where Hasbro used matte black paint instead of metallic. Plus, as mentioned above, while the vehicle mode has no numberplate, the one that appears on the CGI robot's belly is reproduced on the toy with a white background and blue frame
One of Jazz's accessories - the spine piece - feels a little macabre, but I can't deny that it's effective. Push a button on Jazz's back and the upper body can split away from the groin/hips, revealing an attachment point for the painted, rubbery part. It plugs in securely and, aside from the actual spine part seeming overly long, looks quite convincing... should one wish to display Jazz in his dismembered state for some twisted reason of one's own. It's mostly coated in silver, but a couple of the smaller trailing cables have been painted gold for a bit of variety. The whole thing could have used a bit of weathering or Energon-staining but, for what it is, it's probably a better accessory than the Sam Whitwicky figurine. When not in use, it can be plugged into a pair of sockets on the bottom of his backpack, though this ends up looking as though his spine has popped out and turned itself into a grisly tail.
The gun is... reasonably screen accurate, but that just emphasises how weird it was and is. Folding the fingers of either hand together allows the gun to be slipped over them, but the hands don't feel like they're set at quite the right angle, meaning the shield attached to the gun is similarly at an angle to the forearm, and the wrists can't rotate to compensate. It works well enough, but just doesn't seem 'right' to my eyes, no matter how I pose him. Only the front of the gun is painted, the array of barrels on the tip being gold - suitably washed out, but rather too bright - while the surrounding ring and the shield are painted silver. The rear face of the shield is unpainted grey plastic, while the back end of the gun is bare black plastic. Had the front been painted with some weathering or scorching effects, the unpainted back end wouldn't stand out so much. As it is, it looks bulky and, like the rest of the robot, a touch unfinished. Even so, on balance, it's more accurate than the transforming motorbike weapon of the Human Alliance toy, but I have to admit that I still kind of prefer that one simply because it's a better all-round accessory, interacting both with the robot and the human partner. At this point, the less said about the oversized, overengineered attempt packaged with Final Battle Jazz, the better.
The head sculpt is, without a doubt, the best version of Jazz we've had so far - Human Alliance included - and even retains the retractable visor gimmick, albeit in clear, colourless plastic without even the slightest tint or a silver frame. The face sculpt is detailed, and reveals just how weird and ugly Jazz was (considering we didn't really get a good look at his mug in the movie), and the helmet is an excellent rendition of the multi-layered, winged-looking thing that didn't so much reference the G1 original as completely reinvent it. It honestly looks like someone might have created a sci-fi version of the helmet worn by the Greek god Hermes, and just chucked it into the TransFormers movie purely to get it onto the big screen. Not that I don't like it - it's a very dynamic and stylish look for Jazz - but I do feel that the aesthetic choices of the Bumblebee solo movie are more promising than even the original 'Bayformers'. The paintwork on the face is disappointing. Molded in dark grey plastic, only the central part of the face - equivalent to the area of the sinuses down to the mouth - has been picked out in silver, with a couple of spots of gold on the sides of the mouth. The robot's eyes are slightly bluish, but I can't tell if it's super-dark paint over the grey plastic or if there are tiny translucent parts in there, because they're just so small and beady. Additionally, it looks to me as if the visor doesn't fit properly, as it only just covers the eyes with its frame. One very impressive feature is that, despite its small size and the intricate sculpt, there's a small Autobot insignia stamped in black on his forehead, just like on the CGI model.
Sam Witwicky Mini-Figure:
I'm not sure I can adequately express how much mini-figures like this disturb me. The Human Alliance figures made sense because they were miniature action figures that could interact with their partner robots in both vehicle and robot modes. This is a fixed-pose statuette, effectively. It's Sam, caught mid-run, holding the AllSpark, with a built-in base... and it accompanies a figure with whom he cannot interact in either mode... even assuming Sam had much interaction with Jazz in the movie, which he didn't.
The sculpt is... OK, I guess - the fabric crease detail is excellent - but it's difficult to discern whether it's an accurate representation of Shia LeBeouf because, like the figures accompanying G1 Masterpiece figures, there's no painted detail on the face, so he looks like one of the Autons from Doctor Who. The hair is painted in with very harsh edges, and the total absence of painted eyes, eyebrows, etc. just looks bizarre... So, as 'value added' inclusions go, this is pretty terrible. The AllSpark cube looks OK, and features reasonable levels of sculpted detail, but I'm not even sure it's the right size, based on its appearance in the movie - it looks a little bit too big...
Being a Masterpiece figure - particularly at a time when the Third Party companies were already producing their own Masterpiece-level figures, including some in the movie style - there is an expectation of a somewhat more intricate and involved transformation. To be honest, though, most of it feels surprisingly straightforward, albeit with a few flourishes, extra joints and hitches here and there. There's a pair of all-but-unnecessary hinged spikes on Jazz's backside which need to be folded back on themselves then folded together so that both tips are pointed down. After this, everything becomes a lot more involved and a lot more precise. The backpack needs to be unclipped at the spoiler, and then pretty much everything from the windscreen back can be straightened out ready for vehicle mode. The lower legs have to be taken apart piece by piece such that the inward-facing 'toes' folds back over the fronts of the feet, which then fold down, in line with the shins. The inner and outer faces of the lower legs unpeg and pull out slightly to give clearance for the rear fenders to start folding round, the wheels to swing up toward the knee, and the entire shin/foot section to swing round to the back of the thigh, at which point the each side's rear fenders and bumper sections can be pegged together ready for the final steps. That seems convoluted enough, but everything from the waist up is just crazy.
Separating the chest from the torso allows the bonnet to be moved away from the chest. Once the head is stowed inside the chest and the collarbones angled back and flattened against the shoulders, this section has to rotate 180° - arms and all - while the front of the car either stays still, or must be rotated back 180° afterward, such that the bonnet is back in the right place relative to the front of the car. This part reminds me a little of part of Sidearm Sideswipe's transformation, but far less elegant as more moving parts are involved. At this point, the bumper/grille section can be pushed up and compressed back to sit between the headlight panels again.
The arms are about as complex in and of themselves, as the headlight/front fender section has to unpeg from the upper part of the forearm and perform gymnastics on a multi-jointed rod - which somehow has to be made to clear the forearm, the bulky upper arm and the chest - while the hands fold back in against a section of window that unfolds from the lower part of the forearm. Swinging the side panels away from the front wheels may leave you feeling like you're in the home straight, but the shoulders are arranged such that they only collapse back into the body when the part that connects each arm to the body is oriented in a particular way... and it's jointed both on the body and inside the front wheels. Add to that, two separate hinges so that the connecting part can collapse back into the body while the completed front wings angle back the opposite way so they can peg onto several different tabs on the inside of the vehicle... Finally, the rear of the car pegs into and around the straightened-out windscreen/roof/boot panels to complete the car. It sounds complicated... and it is, but it's quite fluid once you know what you're doing. I wouldn't call it 'fun', but it's certainly not the worst transformation I've had to suffer. Getting him back into robot mode is probably easier (apart from the forearms), though I originally found that the clips intended to hold his chest to his lower torso weren't very effective, and he had a tendency to come apart (just above the waist's 'body split' feature) when handled. Looking at it a bit more closely as I was writing this, I think I hadn't connected it quite right: push the chest back slightly once the clips are around the bonnet, and it seems to click into place and hold perfectly.
Considering how many small moving parts are involved in transformation, I'd started to worry that the robot's articulation might suffer, but it works out quite well. The arms can rotate a full 360° around the shoulder, albeit with some interference from the bulky backpack, and can raise to almost 90° if the collarbones are moved out of the way of the wheels on his shoulders. He technically has a double-jointed elbow, but even this struggles to bend to 90° due to the armour panels on his upper arms, which have a protrusion right in front of the elbow. Since it's designed to separate, the waist can rotate a full 360° (though it has some very loose travel between eight soft stopping points due to its octagonal peg), and the range of the hips is adequate for reproducing most of his poses from the promotional artwork. Their range of swing in all directions is hindered by the articulated hip skirts, which actually wrap around the hip joint. Some cheating may be required to make the most of the hip joints, and the transformation joints that collapse the legs together for vehicle mode, used in conjunction with the upper thigh rotation, prove very useful in gaining a little more clearance from the hip skirts. Jazz also has double-jointed knees, which dramatically improve their range, though the legs generally are rather let down by the awkwardly-shaped feet with their strange, sideward protrusions and negligible ankle tilt. It almost feels as if the arms - or perhaps just the hands - got most of the attention, as Jazz has two wrist joints (though sadly no wrist rotation) and each of his four fingers has two joints. They are probably the most poseable part of him (and also the most frustrating, as it's so easy to nudge them out of the position they've just been posed in), but really didn't need to be, considering he doesn't need to 'hold' a weapon in the traditional sense. I've actually seen photos of Jazz balanced on one hand, legs and other arm outstretched, but can't for the life of me get mine to do the same...
One thing common to Hasbro/Takara Tomy transformers which is less common among the Third Parties is the reliance on collapsing large panels of vehicle shell into a backpack for the robot. When one looks at a figure like Unique Toys' Peru Kill, where the majority of the car shell basically inverts itself to form the torso, one can't help but be disappointed at even the Studio Series version of Lockdown, where most of it gets folded up onto his back. At its core, Peru Kill is not a complex figure, it's just more efficient... To me, it's really unfortunate the Masterpiece Movie Jazz followed so much of the tried-and-tested backpack strategy because, aside from that, it's an amazingly efficient figure. The intricate reconfiguration of the arms, the double-roll of the chest to get all the parts in the right place and at the right orientation, and the explosion of the lower legs are all very impressive. While I can live with the bulked-up shoulders, I can't help but feel disappointed by that huge, protruding backpack. It's actually a similar feeling to the one I got when I first saw Masterpiece Movie Megatron: sure, it's a quantum leap of improvement over the original Leader class toy, but then the Studio Series toy came out, with a more efficient transformation (and, arguably, a better paint job) at a much smaller scale and at a fraction of the cost.
The bottom line is that MPM Jazz is a great figure - probably the best we're ever going to get, all things considered, unless one of the Third Parties decides to give him a try... This seems unlikely given that, not only was Jazz killed off in the first movie, the Solstice - and the Pontiac brand - were killed off by GM in 2009 due to an economic recession. At about £60-70 when I bought him, he's probably better value for money than some of the more recent Masterpiece figures, either in the main line or the Movie subset... Though his price has crept up (almost double in some places!), so it's best to shop around for him. This may not be "the ultimate movie Jazz figure" in the sense of being the best achievable, but it almost certainly is in the sense of being the last... Honestly, I'm essentially satisfied with him and, while I'll be disposing of my Deluxe class toys, I'll hang on to the Human Alliance version.
There's also a knockoff available for much the same price and, while it could be considered slightly improved - the transformation seams are slightly less apparent in vehicle mode, the windows are all tinted and the spot applications of metallic paint are a little darker and extend to his feet - it uses a darker grey plastic for many parts, giving it a harsher contrast against the silver paint, and appears to suffer from some engineering/assembly defects.
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