Given the small cast of robot characters in the movie, it's no surprise that they'd all be added to the Studio Series roster, with Bumblebee, Dropkick and Shatter each receiving two releases within the line (and even more for Bumblebee, if you include the special boxed sets). Blitzwing is the last of these, and only the second Voyager class figure from the film, the first (naturally) having been Optimus Prime - another character who probably only had about five minutes of total screen time.
With such a small role in the movie, one could be forgiven for having low expectations of the Blitzwing toy, but just being a Voyager - considering the more prominent Decepticons each became a pair of Deluxes - was a strong positive in my books... So let's take a look.
Vehicle Mode:
While the character in the movie disguised himself as a McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II, Blitzwing's Studio Series toy is of no specific, real-world design - the wings are over the body, rather than below it, there's a pair of shorter tail fins rather than a single, longer fin, and the stabiliser wings seem to want to angle slightly upward, based on the sculpted stopping points on the tail. The wings are generally the wrong shape, and lack the F-4's distinctive upward-angled wingtips. What they do appear to have is additional weapon mounts, albeit seemingly facing the wrong way. Additionally, the jet used in the movie has two afterburners, whereas
this has a feature at the back that - if you're feeling generous - might
be intended to represent a single afterburner. The tail end is where this jet mode really falls apart, generally, as the upper surface ends abruptly just as the tail section begins, in line with the robot's feet, which are just hanging off the sides, not even remotely disguised by their sculpted landing gear details. The whole tail section looks almost like parts of a separate vehicle, docked into the rear of the main jet, as the stabiliser wings are on an incongruously curved section which sticks out of the back, somewhat below the level of the main wings.
And when so many other vehicles in the Studio Series line have been licensed, it's disappointing that Blitzwing isn't... Perhaps this has something to do with the fact that the jet was retired from military service in the US back in the 1990s, after almost 40 years of activity, or perhaps whatever's left of McDonnel Douglas didn't want to grant the license. What's all the more disappointing is that this wouldn't have been the first time the F-4 Phantom II was used for a TransFormers toy - that would be G1 Fireflight - but, since then, the only figure to use a (reasonably faithful) version of that jet was the Third Party Fireflight analogue, Phantom, from the Uranos team. Hasbro's own Combiner Wars Fireflight reused the Harrier mold intended for Slingshot.
Still, what we have here is a surprisingly decent-looking jet. Largely molded in an off-white plastic, with grey plastic tailfins and stabiliser wings, and grey paint sprayed heavily over the nose and part of the body, but miraculously avoiding two strips on the back, either side of the area behind the cockpit. The jet's intakes have been painted grey and red, and there's bit of red linework on the wings... so, as far as the colourscheme goes, Blitzwing really could have been Starscream - all he's missing is the pale blue that has been inconsistently applied to various parts of the G1 character over the years.
There is that grand tradition of TransFormers jets where a large portion of the robot simply hangs off the bottom of the jet rather than properly integrating and forming any real part of it and, thankfully, Blitzwing isn't that bad. He has quite a bit of robot junk under the wings - an entire arm below each one - and the faux parts that make up the robot's chest are stuck to the underside of the body. While this section ends up quite bulky, it's also surprisingly clean, and provides the first option for stowing his gun accessory, in the space behind the faux cockpit canopy frontage. The robot's legs form the rear two thirds of the jet's body, with a strange protrusion from the rear featuring what could be intended as a single afterburner (the F-4 has two), as well as the second option for storing the gun. Either of these options covers over a large, ugly space on the underside, but I prefer the former option as it seems slightly tidier: the latter leaves the gun sticking out behind and below the afterburner and there's a gaping hole visible from the sides. Still, even that is preferable to the afterthought that is the alternate hand storage - sockets on the underside of the stabiliser wings are designed to accommodate the small peg at the base of the hand's palm. This is all the more strange because, with a bit of fiddling, the storage port used in robot mode would be accessible - and that sits between the robot's legs on the inside of the jet.
Easily the most jarring extraneous robot parts are the arms, which simply fold up below the wings, not disguised in any way, shape or form... however, even these don't look as bad as they might. The robot's shoulders feature a certain amount of vent-like detail on the front and back, so they look like additional engine parts tagged on to the outside of the jet. Plugging the two extra fuel tanks in under the wings does nothing to disguise the arms, as such, but it provides sufficient distraction from most angles. In the end, this ends up looking like an alien aircraft/spacecraft unsuccessfully disguised as a terrestrial military jet... Which is better than a lot of TransFormers jets manage, and on a par with Nitro, I'd say.
The biggest disappointments with Blitzwing's jet mode is that his main accessories aren't a functional part of it, he wasn't packaged with any missile attachments, and the two fuel tanks have their hollowed-out side exposed, poking out in front of the wings. There was evidently a bit of a no-win situation with these, as the hollow sections couldn't have simply been put onto another side, as they'd be at least partially visible in robot mode. The better option would have been to mold them in two parts, but I'd guess Blitzwing's parts count could not accommodate this.
Plus, this is another TransFormers toy which, in the grand tradition of the G1 Seekers, has an opening cockpit canopy. Aside from TLK Nitro, there haven't been many TransFormers jets to feature such extravagance, but it is part of his transformation rather than purely a cosmetic feature designed to enhance the vehicle mode. On the downside, the cockpit interior features no sculpted detail, and exists only to accommodate the robot's head, so I guess Blitzwing suffers from a mild case of Visible Head Syndrome, since it is only the back of his head that's visible inside the cockpit.
The one important thing that isn't visible is a Decepticon insignia... and, while they only seemed to appear on Blitzwing's missiles in the movie, the fact that this isn't a movie accurate jet mode surely gave Hasbro the opportunity to stamp one on somewhere... Another puzzling aspect of the toy is why he has two separate tail fins so close together. Given that most jets with dual fins would have them a little further apart, and that the F-4 has only one tail fin, they might have done better to have a single tail fin that split into two halves for transformation.
Robot Mode:
I liked the robot mode designs in the Bumblebee solo movie far more than most of those from the Michael Bay movies - just the fact that the Decepticon antagonists were easily discernible at a glance meant that action scenes were far easier to follow, but the move away from insectoid robo-creatures made out of needles to robots with clearly visible vehicle parts - like the Autobots in the first three movies - meant they were more in line with my expections from the start. Blitzwing in particular was an obvious homage to the G1 Seekers in terms of his overall look: Full wings sprouting from his back, cockpit canopy down the middle of his torso, intakes on the sides of his chest, protrusions from the back on either side of the head... it's almost a shame that his colourscheme was so clearly designed to evoke G1 Starscream, because that set up many fans for a disappointment. Nevertheless, I feel it's a very welcome bit of homage, even as someone who actually liked Starscream's appearance in the Michael Bay movies and, more than anything else, that first glimpse of Blitzwing transforming in the trailer was a sign that, finally, the robots could get a proper and effective neo-G1 aesthetic in future movies.
This toy does a surprisingly good job of adapting the CGI, though it's far from perfect. He ends up lankier than the robot in the movies, with his long, slender legs being the main culprit. While the lower legs do still flare out toward the foot, it's nowhere near enough to properly evoke the bell-bottomed look of Blitzwing's legs. At the other end, the hip skirts are simplified and flatter than they needed to be so that they fit properly into the wings in jet mode. Even the torso is slightly taller than it should have been, thanks to the size of the cockpit canopy and the arms needed to swing the faux shoulder section into place over it. The arms seem a little spindly, but that's true enough to the movie - the only significant differences on the arms are that the fins on his shoulders are substantially smaller than they should have been, and he has large, rectangular sections of wing hanging off his forearms for no discernible reason. Every robot surface is covered with sculpted detail, with the arms and feet being the most intricate - layers of armour and inner workings on the former, and a decent representation of his landing gear 'toes' on the latter. There aren't too many hollow parts in evidence, as the transformation of his legs was cleverly designed to leave them completely enclosed, and the voids in his arms are placed such that they're generally concealed. I was surprised to see mechanical detail sculpted into the open soles of his feet, making for a fair attempt at compensating for their hollowness.
Of course, like every other Studio Series figure, this one falls down due to its paint job. To be fair, I think that Blitzwing is one of the better examples the Studio Series has to offer, and it's really only the finer details, like the intake warning chevrons on the sides of the faux chest, the exposed mechanical details of his limbs, and the tyres on his feet that are the glaring omissions. The section of cockpit in front of his head is a bit of a sore point, since it's painted a nice, bright orange - over the off-white plastic - rather than being translucent, like the actual cockpit canopy. Since the upper torso is one large shell piece, they'd have had to mold the whole thing in potentially brittle translucent plastic to properly match the CGI and the toy's cockpit canopy, but a darker orange paint would have worked just as well. Other issues in the paint job are down to the fact that he really could have used some weathering, or a black wash on some of the off-white parts, and just the odd mismatching of plastic colours on some parts - like the knees and the fins folded into his shins, which are molded in the dark grey plastic, but surrounded by off-white. Even so, with the bulk of robot mode's paintwork focused on the upper torso shell - red on the faux-intakes, grey and orange paint on the faux canopy parts - he ends up looking just about good enough, considering this is a Studio Series toy, rather than a Masterpiece. As with his jet mode, though, Hasbro decided against giving him a Decepticon insignia
While Blitzwing's extra fuel tanks add very little to his robot mode - simply switching from his arms to the fronts of his wings - the two weapon accessories really come into their own. The gun is very nicely sculpted, though not necessarily very screen-accurate. The main gun barrel is flanked by a pair of protrusions which, by rights, should be missiles... but the sculpt seems a little indecisive and the blanket silver paintwork suggests the designers were hedging their bets as to what they actually represent. The part that covers the hand looks more like a car engine than a weapon of any kind. Part of this is because it was sculpted symetrically, so it could attach to either arm, where the weapon seen sprouting from his left arm in the movie developed extra bulk and armour on the outward-facing side, and only showed the internal 'engine' parts on the other. The gun attaches via a rectangular tab on the inside of the unpainted off-white plate, which goes into a slot in the forearm, with the 5mm peg slotting into either hand. The left hand is in a fixed 5mm grip pose, but the right hand features hinged fingers for additional expressiveness (or, for example, posing him with his hand around Bumblebee's neck, which likely requires additional support), so it doesn't necessarily grip the peg. The spike hand will also attach to either wrist, as both are simple 5mm sockets. This does make me wonder why the gun wasn't designed with a 5mm post at the back, to plug directly into the wrist, as the existing configuration leaves gaps between the weapon and the forearm.
Storage for the weapon and accessory, to be honest, isn't much better in robot mode than it was in vehicle mode. The spike hand can be plugged into the 3mm port on his back, but whichever standard hand was unplugged then has to be pegged into one of the 5mm sockets on the backs of his wings... using the wrist peg. Having a hand sprouting out of the back of one wing is not an elegant look. It's arguably slightly better to store the spike hand using the sockets on his stabiliser wings, as the impact on the sides of his lower legs is pretty negligible, and this then leaves the 3mm socket on his back available for some sort of flight stand. No such alternate storage options for the gun attachment, unfortunately, as this has to be plugged into the wings when not in use.
One of the many things I liked about Blitzwing's design in the movie was the head, which combined G1 Seeker cues with a jet pilot's helmet and oxygen mask. His face ended up looking not entirely dissimilar to Starscream's face in the Michael Bay movies, but with more traditional framing, in an angular, largely black 'helmet' with vent-like details on the sides. This is faithfully reproduced for the toy, with lots of intricate detail on the face. Curiously, it looks to be assembled in three parts - the front and back of the helmet (accommodating the ball joint for the neck), and the face, with the latter seemingly molded in the same translucent orange plastic as the cockpit canopy, as the ends of the two protrusions from the sides of his chin have unpainted tips. Not sure why, but it does make for a nice effect. For the most part, the paintwork is excellent, with a charcoal paint for the majority of the helmet, red panels on each side of the back, and a complete coverage in silver over the face. The eyes are painted either a dark orange or red (difficult to tell in most lighting, but I'm leaning toward orange), but there's a QC glitch on mine and, while the left eye is fully painted, the right eye only has a blob on the inner corner of the eye. One thing I've always felt was strange about TransFormers toys was that the heads are, by and large, proportionally too small for the body they're mounted on - at least versus human proportions. Blitzwing's head looks similarly dinky atop his large body, but this is actually true to the CGI.
Blitzwing's transformation is interesting and quite innovative, even if it does end up cheating a lot and not really doing anything with the robot's arms. The bulk of the jet's body is made up by unfolding the rear section from Blitzwing's lower legs, rotating them 180° above the knee, then pegging them together. The wing sections then get straightened out and swung down to meet the legs (the 'toes' can be used to keep the wing section in place until the faux chest pegs everything together securely). The faux chest swings up, allowing the head to be stashed back in the cockpit, then the arms bend as far as the double-jointed elbow can take them, and swing up in front of the chest shell, with the hands rotated as if he's gripping the faux intakes and the small sections of wing rotated 180°. With this complete, the entire faux chest section can swing round on its pair of arms and peg in to the underside of the wings, with the arms then swinging up at the shoulder to clip the small wing sections back into place. In theory, the forearms should connect to the undersides of the wing tip joints via large circular holes, but it's neither a firm connection nor a necessary one - the angle of the arms at the shoulder generally keeps the wrist-mounted wing sections in place well enough. The final steps are simply folding the toes down into the opens soles of his feet, swinging the jet's nose into place, then rotating the whole nose section 180°. Interestingly, this last point only seems to want to work one way - clockwise, when viewed from the front - but I can't see why that would be, as it has to rotate a full 360° to transform back and forth. It's a pretty smooth transformation and, apart from the fiddliness of the small wing sections attached to the forearms (which feel a little redundant apart from changing the look of the wings in robot mode), the only sticking point seems to be getting the head back into the cockpit without pushing the front landing wheel out of its stowed position. The trick seems to be angling the head down, but not all the way down, so that the chin slips into just the right position in front of the wheel.
By and large, Blitzwing's articulation is excellent - he even has inward ankle tilt due to transformation... though this does come at the expense of any forward/backward movement. The toes can be tilted forward, though this requires them to be unpegged from their intended position, and the lack of movement in the heel spur means they're no longer stable enough for easy posing. The knees bend to the stock 90°, the transformation joint just above offers unrestricted rotation, but the hip joints aren't so lucky. They swing forward to 90°, but can't swing back very far before the backs of the thighs clash with the waist. The hip skirts also clash with the waist when raising out to the sides, stopping the legs at about 50-60°. Given that part of Blitzwing's transformation involves rotating the jet's nose section at what ends up being the robot's waist, I was surprised to find that he doesn't really have waist articulation - the part where the hips join the body can move a little, but something (perhaps the same thing that prevents the nose rotating in both directions) stops it after only a few degrees' movement. The arms are well-handled for the most part, with unrestricted wrist rotation (thanks to removeable hands), double-jointed elbows used in transformation, and two separate shoulder joints. One allows the arms to rotate a full 360° around the shoulder, the other lets the arms raise out to the sides just beyond 90°, with an unrestricted bicep rotation joint just below. The only downside is that the shoulder rotation joints are rather tight, so attempting to move them will often dislodge the entire upper torso shell, since the wing plate is the only thing securing it into place. From what I've seen in other reviews, this is the main complaint just about everyone has had with this figure and, given the way jet mode pegs together very securely (apart from the wings, perhaps), it's a shame for such an obvious problem to occur with robot mode, though I can't see any obvious ways it could have been improved without adding hooks to the ends to the tabs on the wing section.
It really shouldn't have taken almost a month for me to write about Blitzwing, as he's quickly become one of my favourite Studio Series figures. For a character who had so little screentime to get such a brilliant figure is one of the oddities of the Studio Series line, but it's a quirk I'm very thankful for. Sure, he loses a lot of points by having a fabricated jet mode that isn't remotely movie accurate, and I'm pretty sure there were better ways of handling his arms in jet mode, but transforming him back and forth is immensely enjoyable, and robot mode is very dynamic. With a bit more paintwork, this would have been one of the best TransFormers toys from any of the movie lines, and I'm sorely tempted to break out my paintbrushes and add a few details myself. Even so, had he been available earlier in the year, he would have ended up very high on my top ten for this year's blog anniversary post... but I stand by my decision to keep him in the Honourable Mentions as I only received him a day or two before the anniversary date.
The accessories are decent, though their storage options aren't great, and I'd have liked to have some missile attachments as well - something which could, ideally, attach to the wings in jet mode and to the forearms in robot mode. There's a set of Third Party accessories which accomplish the former, but they're the wrong size for the latter and, for some reason, get stored on the backs of his legs in robot mode. If nothing else, I'm hoping that Hasbro decide to re-release him in at least one alternate paint job, the way they turned Nitro into Thundercracker... Something tells me we're due a Studio Series Skywarp, and it'd be neat to have the three original Seekers in unique, movie-inspired molds... Though that would require me to buy a Studio Series Starscream...
As a side-note, if she sees my light box set up for taking pictures of toys, my girlfriend will sometimes ask which particular figures I've been photographing. When I show her the figures, just for fun, I'll often ask if she can name them... Two interesting things came out of showing her Blitzwing:
- His official name is now Tummy McLightpiping, due to the translucent orange cockpit canopy that makes up the robot's belly
- Courtney doesn't consider the Bumblebee solo movie to be one of the TransFormers movies... "because it's good"
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