Then, in a baffling albeit welcome move, Hasbro announced a new, unique, G1-style Cliffjumper toy in the Earthrise chunk of the War for Cybertron toyline - without even a hint of a Bumblebee, despite him supposedly having a major role in the IDW comics series, according to their plans. What's more, it looked almost like a simplified version of the MP21 Bumblebee figure. It seemed perfect... but then it became apparent that Cliffjumper would be another of Hasbro's recent pricepoint cheaters - effectly a large Legends class toy with accessories included to bump him up to the new, inflated Deluxe class bracket.
What trickery is this? Let's take a look!
(Worth noting here that my photography will be a bit inconsistent between posts for a while, as I've been experimenting again with the white background for my light tent - newly taken photos will have a white(-ish) background, older drafts will feature the more usual 'black' background)
Vehicle Mode:
I was all set to describe this as a fundamentally made up car mode, designed exclusively to be Earthrise Cliffjumper, but with a strong enough resemblance to the original super-deformed Porsche 944, until a video popped up on my YouTube feed from The Lazy Eyebrow, confirming that it's actually a fairly accurate (but different enough to avoid potential legal action) representation of the Mitsubishi Starion.
All of which means nothing to me, because all I want out of a Cliffjumper is a vaguely sporty, red vehicle mode that's distinct enought that it isn't easily repaintable into yet another flippin' Bumblebee toy. What most intrigued me about this toy was that the vehicle mode looked pretty normal (maybe a bit too narrow, for its height, but it's certainly not a Penny Racer), yet somehow retained the robot mode look of his G1 self, albeit skewing toward the cartoon more than the original toy. This version of Cliffjumper is definitely a red, vaguely sportly-looking car so, for the moment, we can call the Earthrise toy a success...
He has sculpted seams for doors, bonnet and retractable headlights, additional - silver-painted - lights on ths bumper, as well as unpainted, recessed lights just below, and a wide silver strip where one might normally find a numberplate. The grille is painted black and - it's almost sad to admit I found this surprising - the hubcaps are painted silver. While the windscreen and side windows are translucent blue plastic (meaning the red paint on the roof and window frames accounts for a not inconsiderably chunk of the paint budget), the rear window is painted black.
The tail lights are nicely sculpted, but unpainted, while the rear bumper has been painted black, and the area below - featuring what I take to be the ends of four exhaust pipes as slightly raised circular details - is fully painted in silver. Sure, the paint job feels incomplete... but, equally, it also looks better than many other recent figures, where the rear end got no attention at all. If anything, here, it feels as though the bonnet could have used more attention - if not painted panel-lining to improve its definition, then perhaps something for the raised scoop detail in the middle, or the slightly recessed 'funnel' detail on the righthand side - the car's main direct reference to the original Porsche design.
While his accessories are primarily designed for his robot mode, one major difference between Cliffjumper and just about every other Earthrise figure I've seen thusfar is that the components of his weapons are designed to also properly integrate/interact with vehicle mode, rather than just plugging in as guns. Specifically, there's an episode of the TV series where Cliffjumper, bizarrely, turns into a sort of jetski to travel over water (this, from a toyline that actually had a character among the Mini Autobots who transformed into a hovercraft). What are ostensibly large hand-cannons plug into little tabs on the underside of the car to become rocket engines, while the two 'stabiliser' panels for his bazooka tab in underneath the front wheels, and the remaining part (of no discernible purpose in and of itself) unfolds and plugs into the underside via a 5mm socket in the middle of the car and two smaller slots cut into the pegs of the car's rear, to form the single rear ski. This mode actually looks surprisingly good, and is the main indication in vehicle mode that a lot of care and thought has gone into this toy - not just referencing an ability used in one episode and never seen again, but actually doing it well. The front skis don't always hold their place firmly, while the rear ski can be quite difficult to remove, but all of that is just down to plastic tolerances... and ill-fitting pegs seems to be something of a theme with Earthrise, if what I've read about Grapple is anything to go by.
The alternative configuration is a bit more predictable and obvious - far more like the weapon interaction in the average TransFormers toy - plug everything together into a variation of Cliffjumper's bazooka, and attach it via the 5mm socket in the roof of the car, over the rear window. This option... is not so good. While I like weapons storage as a concept, when the solution presented is just to stick a massive gun onto the top of a car, it starts looking a bit silly.
It's probably a measure of my resignation towards contemporary TransFormers toys that I'm not even particularly bothered by the crappy, flat shade of red used for the plastic. The effect is even exacerbated by the weird, matte texture which runs contrary to the appearance of just about every sports car ever made. Ultimately, Cliffjumper is a red car... just not as vibrant as he might have been just ten years ago. While vehicle mode is certainly marred by some very obvious seams, these feel secondary to the weird choice of plastic colour and texture.
Robot Mode:
On first impressions of robot mode, there are many signs that Cliffjumper's engineering must have been partially derived from the original Masterpiece (G1) Bumblebee (MP21). They share a similarly truncated car roof as the front of their torsos, functionally identical boxy arms, and clown-like clodhopper feet, formed out of the very front of the car, with the sides wrapping around the heels. Both even have enormous backpacks made out of a large chunk of the vehicle mode. However, where they differ is that Cliffjumper doesn't have a faked rear windscreen on his torso and, if anything, his backpack is more compact and coherent, albeit only because it's a single, removeable chunk.
Earthrise definitely seems to have taken a step back from the hyperdetail of Siege, with Cliffjumper's arms and legs featuring only a moderate amount of sculpted detail, perhaps somewhat below that of earlier, Classics-styled lines. His shoulders feature recessed circular details on the outsides, with just panel lining on the fronts and backs, the bicep-to-elbow section is basically a banded rod, and the forearms are rectangular chunks with little more than panel lining and 5mm ports to accommodate weapons and such. The legs are similarly quite boxy, though the thighs have a subtle curve down the front. There's sufficient panel lining to suggest armour plating and, again, 5mm ports on the outsides of the lower legs for upgrading. As well as the port on his back which would normally accommodate the car's rear section and the port on the rear section itself - still available in robot mode, just at a strange angle - Cliffjumper features the typical ports on the soles of his feet.
At first glance, it looks like there's no robot mode specific paintwork at all, until you take a closer look at his shoulder blocks. Turns out they're molded in black plastic and painted red, which is a bit of a miscalculation for two reasons. First and foremost, G1 Cliffjumper is most usually depicted as having grey arms with black shoulders. I get the reasoning behind giving him red forearms - they only had three plastic colours to play with, and they wanted to ensure he had translucent windows - but if his shoulders were molded in black plastic anyway, why paint them? Secondly, the paint quickly starts to wear off the tabs on the lower/inner corner on each shoulder, since they fasten the shoulders in place in vehicle mode. Far be it for me to argue in favour of reducing the paint applications, but Cliffjumper would have looked just as good with black shoulders rather than red, saving the wear and tear on the red paint, since the shoulder blocks evidently couldn't be molded in red plastic.
One little curiosity is that the forearms appear to have been molded in a different type or consistency of red plastic to the vehicle shell parts - it looks very slightly richer, brighter, and is certainly glossier than the dull, matte finish of both the car mode's red plastic and the red paint used for the car roof and the robot's shoulders. Perhaps it is just the finish that's different... but that just makes me wonder all the more why they went with a matte finish for the vehicle shell.
Considering Cliffjumper's biggest contribution to the G1 TV show was to flub a pot-shot at Megatron with a bazooka, it's pleasing to see that this toy's accessories can be connected up to form just such a weapon, and that it looks reasonably convincing in his hands. The front wheels' attachable skids form the legs for propping up the barrel, while the rear/central skid folds up to form a nondescript rear chunk with silver paint on the sides. Being plugged into the back of the weapon doesn't hinder it from opening, so perhaps that's how the bazooka is loaded? Taking the bazooka apart yields two fat pistols, onto which the bazooka's legs can be attached as ammo clips, should you so desire. The rear section appears to serve little purpose in and of itself, as the instructions depict it simply plugged into the shoulder via an unobtrusive tab on the top. It can also be opened out and - just about - plugged into the car roof, then folded over the rear bumper if you'd prefer to keep it attached, but mostly out of sight. The instructions also depict the car's rear end being used as a hand-held shield, but I find it looks far too cumbersome, even if pegged into the forearms instead.
The head sculpt is possibly the most perfect update to the G1 toy yet produced - I've kept an eye on the Third Party attempts at Cliffjumper (the main ones being from Ocular Max and X-Transbots' 'Toro' with realistic vehicle modes, while iGear's Mini Warriors line and Mech Planet's Hot Soldiers both included an upsized SD-style vehicle) but none of them got the head quite right, in terms of size versus the body, proportions of face versus the head, or even the overall shape in terms of its curves and angles. Some were pretty dismal and ugly, and even the 'upgrade' kit produced years ago for the Classics repaint looked pretty bad. This is kind of cartoon-styled, in that the entire helmet is basically dome-shaped, and the horns are curved upward rather than irregular trapezoid, but it's better than any of the Third Party interpretations. I might have preferred the raised section that wraps around the back from one side to the other to be raised a little further, and for his central crest to end a little higher on the forehead, more like the G1 toy, but those are minor nit-picks. The face is a very character-appropriate scowl, albeit softer and less angular than the original.
I can't help but think that the bulk of Earthrise Cliffjumper's transformation is over-engineered. The legs flip from one end to the other via a spinal hinge, while the arms swing round from the back to the front, all to accommodate having the car's windscreen at the top of the torso. It seems to me that he would have looked just as good if it was at the bottom instead, allowing a transformation more akin to either Classics or Masterpiece Bumblebee. I get that they wanted to clearly differentiate between the official TransFormers War for Cybertron: Earthrise toy and the myriad Third Party offerings which took that route, but they engineered themselves into a position where they pretty much had to make the rear end of the car a separate piece which has to be removed from its vehicle position and reattached elsewhere for robot mode. Sure, it could be argued as intentional, to give him a shield that can be attached to either forearm, freeing up the port on his back for Weaponiser parts (though the mid-spine transformation hinge on mine is a little weak, so heavy backpacks cause him to lean backward), but it feels more like a compromise here. Enterprising fans have already determined that a couple of small, 3D-printed parts can eliminate the need for partsforming, so one has to wonder - particularly on so small a Deluxe class figure as this - why there wasn't the budget to build a similar thing into the toy. Nevertheless it's a fairly simple, fun transformation, and I really like the way the front wheels hinge down onto the undersides of his feet. My only real complaints, partsforming aside, are that there's so little clearance between the car side panels that form the backs of his feet and those that swing his arms into place - which can make getting him back into vehicle mode a bit of a chore - and that his waist doesn't tab into its robot mode position, though this wouldn't be a problem had the transformation hinge been a little tighter, or if it had featured some kind of soft ratchet. It looks as though a tab could have been included along with a semicircular channel on the inside of the belly, so as not to restrict his movement, and rotating his waist by more than 90° in either direction would then facilitate transformation.
As with all his Siege and Earthrise contemporaries, Cliffjumper's articulation is excellent - none of the joints have been skipped, despite his comparatively small size. The head is on a ball joint with unrestricted rotation and even a small amount of expressive tilt, despite the wide, flat base to his helmet. The shoulders are pinned for both 360° rotation and a little over 90° swing out to the sides, with the standard mushroom peg for bicep rotation. The elbows can bend through 180° because the arms can either be bent back on themselves at the elbow or rotated 180° at the bicep during transformation, and he even has unrestricted wrist rotation. The mid-spine transformation hinge allows him to bend over backward, with the car rear slipping out of the way thanks to its own hinged connection, and his waist can rotate a full 360° thanks to transformation. The hips allow for his legs to swing forward, backward and out to the sides by 90°, the left leg being hindered very slightly in its forward movement by its blast effect peg. The hips can rotate out to the sides by about 70°, the knees have the standard 90° bend, while his ankles tilt inward something like 120°. The downside is that, much like the other figures in the line, his feet do not tilt forward/backward except during transformation. Of course, the big drawback is that, while Cliffjumper comes with his G1 cartoon cannon, the jointing of his neck means that he can't lay down while using it - all the more disappointing since Classics Bumblebee's ball joint was right at the back of his head, and allowed him to look straight up.
The big point of contention with this toy is clearly his size - appreciably smaller than any of the other Deluxe class figures in the line, yet very much out of scale with the most recent Legends class toys. He's actually closest in scale to the now 10-year-old Scout class Windcharger mold, with an almost identical wheelbase between the two cars. The packed-in accessories - two guns, two skis/ammo clips, and a weird block that hinges open at one end - are, in Hasbro's estimation, sufficient to bump this up to the contemporary Deluxe class. Are they, though?
Not really, in my opinion... I mean, I definitely find them adaptable and fun for both modes, and the jetski reference to that one episode of the G1 cartoon series (which, surely, just proves what a pile of crap that really was, with writers inventing new abilities for the transforming alien robots just to shoehorn them into whatever crazy plot they'd sneezed out after a noseful of cocaine) combined with Cliffjumper being able to wield his humungous bazooka or two 'Glass Gas Guns' certainly makes for good play value in and of itself. However, let's not forget that Classics Bumblebee was considered to be a slightly undersized Deluxe at the time, and he came packaged with an entire jetski-on-a-trailer accessory, which transformed into a sort of jetpack. Perhaps that doesn't present quite the same level of play value as Cliffjumper's modular, multi-purpose weapon parts, but it's rather more substantial in making up the price point, and fairly intricately engineered in and of itself.
Probably the only reasons I don't feel ripped off by this figure are that I currently have no plans to buy any other figures in the current wave, and that I have that nostalgic connection to Cliffjumper as a toy... And it's really nice to have a new, dedicated and (currently) unique version of the first TransFormers toy I ever bought.
Just like Earthrise Optimus Prime, Cliffjumper doesn't have a bio, but he does have a full G1-style Tech Specs chart printed in his instruction leaflet, which is surely better than nothing. As with Prime, it's obfuscated by the use of the 'Cybertronian' font, but the running order remains as Strength, Intelligence, Speed, Endurance, Courage (Cliffjumper rates his only 10 here!), Firepower and Skill. The Siege-holdover military insignia makes him a Private in the Autobot Ground Infantry... which makes sense. Disappointingly, none of his weapons have been annotated with their names, so one just has to imagine that the two pistols are his G1-style Glass Gas guns, which can then combine into a sort of laser bazooka... I know I complained about the pointless naming of weapons in the Siege line, but that was because they seemed overblown and jargon-y, while I wanted more detail about their capabilities... Omitting them entirely for Earthrise feels like yet another corner being cut.
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