Making matters all the more interesting, it followed the example of Galaxy Force/Cybertron Thundercracker by largely ignoring the traditional Skywarp colourscheme. When I wrote about the original, I noted that I was sufficiently impressed by it that I picked this one up... but, having the repaint in hand, is it still impressive enough to forstall any buyers' remorse?
Vehicle Mode:
While Thundercracker's colourscheme was largely quite real-world, Skywarp throws that completely out of the window to become a primarily purple Sukhoi SU-34. The leading edges and tips of his wings and fins are painted white, despite the latter still being molded in rubber (explaining why the fins on mine are bent out of true). There are additional dashes of white on either side of the cockpit, though these look a little out of place as they don't connect to anything, and end suddenly at a transformation seam. That said, it does keep within sculpted panel lines on that specific part, and it's a different pattern to Thundercracker's. This alone makes Skywarp's paint job the more extensive of the two iterations of this mold but, on top of that, he has a strange pattern on his wings, painted in red... though it's darker and rather more translucent in person than it appears in my photos. It's one of those patterns that catches the eye and makes you try to figure out if it's part of something bigger (like the Autobot insignias on movie Strafe) but, no matter how I try, I can't make any sense of it. Perhaps it's just a half-hearted attempt at a digitial camouflage (though what he's able to blend into with puple and red camouflage is anyone's guess), or perhaps it's just a sort of angular blood splatter effect. Whatever it is, I kind of prefer it to Thundercracker's orange-highlighted panel lining, I just wish its purpose was clearer.
Disappointingly, the key slot has received no paint applications - not even the minimal touches Thundercracker got, yet the tips of the rubber missiles attached to the wings have been painted. In a line like Cybertron, where the key slot is the focal gimmick, that seems like a strange choice.
Robot Mode:
Skywarp's brighter colourscheme makes him more striking than Thundercracker. Additionally, the white paint on either side of the nose section, behind the cockpit, makes a bit more sense in this mode, since it sort-of connects with the plastic colour of his shoulders. While the pattern of plastic colours is naturally the same as Thundercracker's, the minimal paint applications for robot mode are different - rather than having silver on his shins, he has red on his shoulders. Much like the G1 Seekers, it hasn't taken much to clearly differentiate Skywarp from Thundercracker... though I can't help but thing a colorscheme closer to the G1 character's black, purple and silver would have looked classier.
Aside from the lack of paintwork, the only difference between the built-in weapon on Skywarp and on Thundercracker is the darker, redder translucent plastic used for the missile - it all functions exactly the same way, and looks every bit as strange and oversized. I can't help but think it works better in vehicle mode, where it pops up like an oversized airbrake, while it looks like a weird, flappy claw in robot mode.
Unsurprisingly, Skywarp also uses the same head sculpt as Thundercracker, and the whole thing - bar the light piping - is painted mid-grey to match the plastic of the arms, with the face and the indented parts of the two rectangular crests painted white. Going by Thundercracker's colour breakdown, I'd imagine the head was molded in the white plastic, it seems strange that so much of the paint budget went on covering almost the entire head, then overpainting that with what is effectively the same colour paint as the base plastic...
There are some assembly/plastic tolerance issues on this one, such that part of one foot is misaligned, and the bulk of the jet, hanging off his back, is loose to the point where it actually swings back unless Skywarp is somehow tilted forwards (angling the heel spurs down, for example), so he's more prone to falling over backwards. There was supposedly a correction made to this mold for its third (and final) usage, as movie Divebomb, such that the left arm, on its long, hinged transformation joint, could peg in properly at the shoulder. This is all well and good, making the whole thing a bit more stable, but also means that he would look even more lopsided, with the longer left arm sitting closer to the body than the right.
Fun as Thundercracker was, buying a second version of him - remade predominantly in a lush purple and named 'Skywarp' - feels like a huge mistake in retrospect. I am inclined to put my purchase of this figure down to my Seeker OCD but, in many ways, this is a terrible Skywarp and shouldn't have even caused a twinge in that OCD. I was kind of willing to accept a non-traditional Thundercracker simply because it was something new and unusual... but I think this thing - released the year after the original, and which so easily could have made a decent Skywarp with the right colourscheme - was a bit of a misstep, which I could easily have ignored.
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