Showing posts with label G1. Show all posts
Showing posts with label G1. Show all posts

Wednesday, 22 April 2026

Classics/Masterpiece Starscream

Back when I wrote about Takara's MP03 Starscream, a whole fifteen years ago, I said I'd gladly acquire every iteration of this mold if I had the money and the space. While space is still something of an issue (I am in the process of thinning down my collection, but it's a slow process due to real life concerns), I happened to find this guy on eBay for a surprisingly reasonable price... When I later received a discounted offer from the seller, I just had to buy... Especially as I'd been having a rather trying time at home (due to redecoration work) and in the office, while Courtney was away travelling across Europe, and basically needed something cool to cheer me up.

Since MP03 emerged, I have to confess I've had a love/hate relationship with this iteration. Part of me feels the whole G1 colourscheme does the mold a disservice... but part of me thinks the mold transcends the ridiculously bright paint job, resulting in a truer interpretation of G1 Starscream.

So, let's take another look at this now 20-year-old mold, and see how it stands up to scrutiny in the year that is the 40th Anniversary of the original animated movie...

Saturday, 28 February 2026

Retro G1 Brawn

After struggling through my write-up to Retro G1 Gears toward the end of last year, I intended to fast-track this one, to get it out of the way and - with any luck - prevent any ruminating. Thing being, Brawn was always one of my favourites, partly because of the early Marvel UK strip, The Enemy Within, in which he basically gets a blow to the head and goes nuts, then has to prove his loyalty in a battle to the death with Starscream, who's on Megatron's naughty list due to his scheming. The fact that his G1 toy was, let's face it, a little on the goofy side - lanky, with short arms featuring tool-like claws rather than hands, and little 'wings' on his shoulders - just added to his appeal.

The one glimmer of hope I've had for my continued collection of Hasbro's output was kicked off by the last two War for Cybertron chapters, Earthrise and Kingdom, which brought back some of the original, first year Mini Autobots in Deluxe class form. It hasn't all been great - Cliffjumper was a partsformer, and Huffer had the animation-style head - but the most recent bone Hasbro have thrown their GenX audience has been the Retro G1 line as an alternative (and presumably the eventual Retro G1 Huffer will use the toy-accurate sculpt which made its debut as the Go-Bot Road Ranger in a Generations Selects 2-pack).

Their failure to create a new toy-accurate head for Bumblebee meant I had no reason to acquire that one, but Gears got a decent update to the G1 toy's head sculpt, though the toy as a whole was somewhat disappointing (leading Courtney to name him "Gears Starmer"). I've been keeping my eye out for new Retro G1 releases since then, and the second pair came out in the late Autumn/early Winter of 2025, coupling Brawn with... Seaspray, a wholly new take on a figure from 1985, just as we're getting a new Deluxe class Windcharger, the last of the 1984 Mini Autobot set, as part of Studio Series '86.

Brawn is, for better or worse, a retooling of the Studio Series '86 toy which, despite being leagues better than the Titans Return toy, didn't interest me in the slightest due to it having another ugly, animation-style head sculpt. Once again, the question here is whether or not the new, toy-inspired head sculpt is enough of an improvement on this mold... so, let's find out.

Sunday, 14 December 2025

Retro G1 Gears

Given that Hasbro have been recycling G1 now for almost five times longer than G1 actually existed, back in the day, it became increasingly baffling to me that each new iteration - particularly from the Prime Wars trilogy onward - that the focus has been wholly on the G1 cartoon rather than the G1 toys. Sure, the argument rages on, that the cartoon is the main reason TransFormers exists as a brand, but that's a particularly American point of view, and has me questioning whether some of these people are actually TransFormers fans, or simply fans of a TV show they view through nostalgia goggles, and afflicted with a compulsion to buy branded merchandise.

However, about 20 years after the Classics reboot, which brought a fresh new look and contemporary engineering to the old-favourite characters, Hasbro seem finally to be acknowledging that some TransFormers fans actually want familiar-looking, contemporary remakes of their old G1 toys... and so we have the Retro G1 line.

Essentially, it's a mix of latecomers in the grey area of an ongoing line that is War for Cybertron, Legacy and Age of the Primes, and including toys which, for whatever reason, are popping up first in the Studio Series '86 line. Their plastic colours and head sculpts are more toy-accurate, but it's like something the TransFormers Collectors' Club would do: a repaint with a new head, packaged under its own brand... only this is specifically targeted at the 40- to 50-something nostalgia hounds rather than the Premium Collector bracket. The inaugural pair were - to no-one's surprise - a repack of the War for Cybertron: Earthrise Bumblebee (which, having been a Netflix exclusive to being with, has since been repainted about a billion times already) that kept the animation-style head, and Legacy Gears.

Much as I might have wanted a new G1-style Gears, it wasn't just the ugly, animation-style head that put me off buying the Legacy toy... So let's see if this cynically-marketed re-release is enough to make me change my mind about an entire mold.

Wednesday, 2 October 2024

Hybrid Style THS-02 Convoy

This probably should have been posted a little closer to the 40th Anniversary date, or at least to my write-up of Earthrise Optimus Prime - the most recent G1-style Prime toy in my collection to be packaged with a trailer... Then again, I should probably have got to this oddity - and its two mass-released contemporaries - far sooner than I have, since I bought it eighteen years ago. 

Hybrid Style was a very short-lived, utterly Convoy-centric line which aimed to be 'Miniature Masterpiece', but ultimately failed to find much favour among fans. Only two molds were created - a remake of Galaxy Convoy (because Galaxy Force was in full swing at the time) and this G1 version, because there always has to be a G1 version. Subsequent to this 'vanilla' version, two black repaints were released, one of which was only made available in China.

Given that I own G1 Optimus Prime, Takara's MP01 (and, later, the Hasbro version of MP10), it was pretty much a foregone conclusion that I'd acquire the Hybrid Style version of the original Autobot leader... Though I confess that I had some reservations from the start, due to its small size and some rather tepid reviews online at the time.

Thursday, 25 July 2024

Studio Series Core class Concept Art Rumble

Core class looks, for all the world, like it should be a line of pocket-money toys. They're small, they're basic... Similar to the Mini Autobots from Generation 1, but with better articulation. Unfortunately, the £13/£14 UK RRP means they're too expensive to be considered true pocket-money toys... quite apart from being far too expensive for what you're actually getting.

The figure chosen to debut Core class in the Studio Series line was Bumblebee movie Shockwave - a truly baffling choice - which came out four years after the Bumblebee movie, and two years before the Voyager class toy. In some respects, it was also better articulated than the larger version. Some might say that alone made him worth the price - perhaps even better value-for-money than the Voyager - but his 'vehicle' mode was almost identical in structure to the TransFormers Prime version of Shockwave, which wasn't exactly inspiring. There had been no concept art for Shockwave's vehicle mode, theoretically giving the designers carte blanche to create something unique. The other figure in the first wave was Ravage which, arguably, should have been included with SS #83 Soundwave, so it's no surprise that Hasbro would later decide to create more minions for Soundwave, given they're now mining the archives for concept art.

Rumble is an obvious choice, considering his popularity and the frequency of his appearances in the G1 cartoon, and the fact that both he and Frenzy have come along in almost every recent toyline, including War For Cybertron, Studio Series '86 and Legacy, essentially all being Core class, or the closest equivalent in that line... These have all been rather lacklustre, though, so let's find out if the Core class Studio Series Concept Art Rumble breaks this pattern.

Monday, 25 March 2024

TransFormers Collectors' Club 2014 (Timelines) Rewind

Since I was not a follower of the IDW comics, this was a semi-reluctant purchase for me. I'd picked up the Club's Chromedome from the 2014 Subscription Service selection because the head sculpt was cool and it was made using the TF Prime Wheeljack mold, which had been one of my favourites from that toyline.

But, in the back of my mind, I was dimly aware that an IDW-style Chromedome was somehow incomplete without a corresponding Rewind and, since that was one of the other figures from the same year's selection, I tracked one down just to complete the couple.

I can't remember now whether I bought this before or after I picked up the TransFormers United Rumble & Frenzy set at TFNation in 2016, but one would surely have contributed to my purchase of the other. Thing being, on the surface and aside from the obvious physical similarities in their G1 selves, this is a particularly curious choice for one of Blaster's cassettes... Let's find out why.

Tuesday, 28 February 2023

Buzzworthy Bumblebee: Creatures Collide 4-pack

By and large, the Buzzworthy Bumblebee line has been filled with products I have been perfectly content to live without: regardless of which line the toys are derived from, they have been mostly superfluous repaints. When it comes to the boxed sets, there have been far more misses than hits. When the Worlds Collide set came along, I ended up buying the Blackarachnia figure purely because she's a Femme-Bot and it was a decent reference to the original Beast Wars toy's box art, while the other figures were reportedly a mess of loose joints.

This second 'Collides' set was, at first, marginally more interesting. I wasn't overly fussed by the scarcity of the Netflix-branded Earthrise Bumblebee toy because, having already bought Cliffjumper, I knew it wouldn't be a patch on the Classics toy from 2006... But Goldbug was another matter, because I'm quite fond of the G1 Throttlebot, and he's sufficiently distinct from Bumblebee. Similarly, I'd passed on the TV show-inspired Kingdom Scorponok figure because I was disappointed by the look of it but, now I own a reissue of the original toy in show-accurate colours, a toy-coloured repaint of the Kingdom figure was potentially a fun comparison. Skywasp was a stupid/amazing pun, and so instantly interesting, in spite of the new mold's obvious inferiority to Generations Waspinator... Which left Ransack: a repaint of the Legacy Kickback figure that's barely an improvement on the G1 original, representing one of the 'Deluxe Insecticons' which, back in the day, had a wholly unique mold that was never made available in the UK.

So, when presented with this set at a RRP of £93, I turned my nose up and avoided it, even though that breaks down as four figures for slightly less than the price of four individual Deluxes. However, seeing it cut down to £45 at GAME, it seemed like a sweeter deal... But let's see how I feel about it with the figures in-hand...

Saturday, 28 January 2023

War for Cybertron Trilogy Covert Agent Ravage/Decepticons Forever Ravage

Every so often, even now, a set of TransFormers toys comes along that has the potential to get me excited. Whether it's something new and unique, or simply a repaint into a favourite character, Hasbro sometimes manages transcend the current mediocrity of their products... and this was once such set.

It excited me because I was interested in the Beast Wars Metals Jaguar - the 1999 Japan-only retooling of Transmetals Cheetor into the Tripredacus Agent seen in the three-part Season 2 finale of Mainframe's seminal Beast Wars television series - but the toy, frankly, looks a bit crappy and, these days, tends to be very expensive on the secondary market, with some sellers asking over £350 for the boxed figure.

Hasbro's new version, released in 2021, didn't quite hit all the right notes for me and, at its full asking price of £49, was an easy pass. However, during their Advent Calendar sale, they dropped the price by 50%, and I felt almost obliged to order, just to have a version of such a fantastic reimagining of G1 Ravage, even though the accompanying part of the set would be possibly the fourth copy of the actual G1 Ravage toy that I've owned.

But was it a worthwhile investment, even at half price? Read on, and find out!

Friday, 16 September 2022

Studio Series #85 Arcee

(Femme-Bot Friday #79)
Arcee doesn't have the greatest of histories in the live action movie series. Unceremoniously pulled from the first movie, she was pushed back in for the second - albeit in such a way that it wasn't clear whether she was a single consciousness split across three bodies or one of a team of three independent robots with superficially similar designs - only to be (presumably) killed off in the final battle. Fans seem to have been reasonably positive toward the original, unused movie design, but overwhelmingly unfavourable toward the so-called 'wheelsnakes' of Revenge of the Fallen.

She was then absent from subsequent movies, only turning up in the tentative reboot that was the Bumblebee movie, in the all-too-brief opening scene set on Cybertron. Even here, the reception to her design was not consistently positive, with many feeling that, while the overall design looked good enough, the uncanny appearance of her face was off-putting... And, of course, that brief CGI sequence only featured the movie protagonist's vehicle mode, so many were inclined to feel pessimistic about any toys that might come along.

But, when the toy was finally revealed, it looked surprisingly good... from most angles, at least. Let's give it the once-over, and see what we make of it.

Wednesday, 14 September 2022

Studio Series #84 Ironhide

The funny thing about Ratchet and Ironhide, these days, is that development of one will always lead to the appearance of the other, even if only one of them is actually present in whatever media might be associated with a given toyline.

The less funny thing is that, like the Seekers, it's becoming increasingly common for the pair to be released according to different strategies - witness the US release of both War for Cybertron Ratchet figures as Walgreens exclusives.

Thankfully, no such problems with the Studio Series interpretations of Cybertronian Ratchet and Ironhide from the 2018 Bumblebee solo movie. Not only did both appear on screen (if only for a couple of seconds apiece), but both have received distributions seemingly unrestrained by any retailer-exclusivity marketing deals. As mentioned in my write-up of Ratchet, my expectations were low, but the toy turned out to be both technically impressive and a more satisfying Cybertronian form than those offered by the War for Cybertron line... So let's take a look at Ironhide and see how much of that carries over to the mold's inevitable second use.

Monday, 12 September 2022

Studio Series #83 Soundwave (& Ravage)

The arrival of a Cybertronian Starscream in the Studio Series toyline, based on the brief appearance of the Seekers and Coneheads in the Bumblebee movie, certainly got people excited for the prospect of more toys based on the robots seen in that short CGI sequence.

From my point of view, while Starscream himself was a huge disappointment - firmly putting me off buying the Thundercracker repaint, even if they do subsequently produce a Skywarp repaint as well - the next round of Cybertronian toys made for a very refreshing change from the ugly, blocky simplicity of the War for Cybertron: Siege line... But that's not to say the Studio Series figures weren't without their controversies.

Because, while a certain amount of suspension of disbelief is pretty much prerequisite when it comes to the concept of alien robots transforming into vehicles - even alien vehicles - some folks felt that Soundwave stretched credulity. But could he truly be the straw that broke the donkey's back?

Thursday, 1 September 2022

Studio Series #82 Ratchet

Of all the figures to come from the Bumblebee movie section of the Studio Series toyline, the one for which my expectations were lowest was the Ratchet/Ironhide mold. This was largely because of the absolute travesty of simplistic and outdated engineering that was the Siege version and its hopelessly lazy Earthrise retool.

Because, let's fact it, if Hasbro were going to get lazy about an established vehicle mode, and leave the robot's blocky Cybertronian feet hanging off the back of an ostensibly terrestrial van, what hope was there for a transforming toy of a character that never had a vehicle mode designed for him, as he only appears very briefly in the movie, and then only in his robot mode?

And yet, sometimes, just sometimes, Hasbro can surprise a jaded old fan like me, and make me believe that perhaps there is some hope for originality of thinking within the brand. Could it be that the Studio Series figure of Ratchet from the Bumblebee movie is one such surprise? Let's take a look...

Friday, 12 August 2022

Studio Series #81 Wheeljack

It is my strongly-held conviction that the War for Cybertron Trilogy was a poorly-conceived, poorly-executed mess of a toyline that nevertheless produced a handful of great toys. Part of its problem was that it didn't keep to its own brief - Siege was supposed to represent the early days of the war, yet each figure came with extensive battle-damage paint apps. The most egregious problems, though, were that there were some critical omissions from the Siege portion, the Earthrise toyline was rendered pointless by it's own Netflix tie-in show, and the best toys in Kingdom were Hasbro's perfunctory acknowledgements that Beast Wars was a popular thing back in the 1990s, though clearly not popular enough to warrant its own, specific branch of the franchise rather than insertion into yet another of their interminable attempts to perpetuate their golden age of G1.

The omissions, while not obvious, became clearly problematic in the opening moments of the Netflix show, which paralleled the pilot of the G1 cartoon, showing Bumblebee and Wheeljack on an Energon scavenger hunt. This would have been a great idea, but for the fact that Bumblebee's Siege toy only got released under the Buzzworthy banner, while Wheeljack did not get a Siege toy at all. That said, neither of them actually transformed in the TV show, so perhaps their absence from the Siege line is not important to some people.

Surprisingly, it fell to the Studio Series line to present a Cybertronian Wheeljack figure - based on the CGI sequence at the start of the Bumblebee movie - and, based on the average quality of War for Cybertron toys, I'd have to concede that this was probably for the best. So, let's take a look at what is - in my opinion - one of the best War for Cybertron toys not to appear in the War for Cybertron lines, and try to get to the bottom of what makes it so good.

Wednesday, 20 July 2022

Studio Series #80 Brawn

I have to confess a certain favouritism when it comes to Brawn. The original G1 toy was likely my fourth purchase in the TransFormers line, and I've always loved its blocky awkwardness, long legs, short arms, and utilitarian claw/hook 'hands'. To this day, one of my favourite stories in the 1980s Marvel Comics series is The Enemy Within, in which Brawn goes bonkers after an electric shock, and ends up in a trial by combat with Starscream.

To say that I dislike his animation model from the cartoon would be an understatement, since he became too generic among the other blocky, poorly drawn robots. While the approximate shape of his head remained, its simplistic, almost featureless mask was replaced by a more expressive, humanoid face, even though he was never a particularly prominent character in the show.

I wasn't at all surprised that he didn't appear in any of the first five live action movies - if anything, I was surprised that he did appear - albeit briefly - in the Cybertron sequence in the Bumblebee solo movie... There was a toy named Brawn in the extended Revenge of the Fallen toyline (and which was repainted into a rather more mold-appropriate Outback analogue) but, much as I liked it, it wasn't quite the update to the G1 character I was hoping for. I quite liked what I saw in the Bumblebee movie, though, and so was excited when he was announced as being part of the first wave of Hasbro's 2022 selection in the Studio Series line. Was this excitement justified..?

Thursday, 24 February 2022

War for Cybertron: Kingdom Slammer

While I didn't buy Generations Metroplex - essentially the centrepiece of the Thrilling 30 portion, celebrating that anniversary of this toyline - I do own the original, and have always been sufficiently intrigued by his companions that I would sit up and take notice if they ever got independent toys of their own. When Sixgun was given the Weaponiser treatment in the Siege toyline, I somewhat expected Slammer to follow a little sooner than two years later... but, let's face it, much of this War for Cybertron line has been long-delayed supplementary Generations/30th Anniversary material...

As with his Siege comrade, Slammer has been updated into Weaponiser form, though this feature appears to be a less significant part of Kingdom's 'play pattern' due to the introduction of the 'Fossilisers'. Let's see how this affects him, both as an individual toy and as accessories to the others!

Thursday, 18 November 2021

TransFormers Collectors' Club 2017/Combiner Wars Shattered Glass Starscream

It was quite rare for the TransFormers Collectors' club to release exactly the same character twice, in two different molds (Kreo figures not included). The only other one I can think of was Toxitron, who appeared in TransFormers Animated form at BotCon 2011, then in Combiner Wars form in the final set of the Club's Subscription Service in 2017. Technically, though, even they are from different continuities... While this is simply a Combiner Wars version of Shattered Glass Starscream... and, unless Shattered Glass has its own multiverse (which, admittedly, is not inconceivable) this thing is a development of the BotCon version rather than a whole new character.

I never picked up the original Shattered Glass Starscream, since I already have a couple of iterations of the Galaxy Force Starscream mold, and I didn't really think the G1 Jetfire homage paint job suited it that well. This one had the advantage of being both smaller and - at the time - substantially cheaper, since the BotCon figure rarely appears outside of the BotCon 2008 boxed set.

Of course, this being a Combiner Wars mold, it was intended as part of one of the Club's swan-song gestalts but, by this point, it seems as though the Club didn't really care: Starscream was never officially assigned to any particular combiner beyond the vague suggestion that he could be use to create something called "Modulus", which was described as being formed with two other BotCon figures (Medix and Ratchet from the 2016 show's customisation class) and two mainline Combiner Wars figures (Protectobot Rook and Technobot leader Scattershot). Personally, I've had him as part of a custom Sky Reign along with other, similarly teamless 'bots.

Friday, 17 September 2021

War for Cybertron: Kingdom Huffer

Most of my earliest TransFormers toys, back when the toyline first launched in the mid-1980s, were Mini Autobots bought with pocket money. I have a clear recollection of buying Cliffjumper first, then Windcharger, and then I'm pretty certain my third Autobot purchase was Huffer, because I found his Budiansky-authored character bio utterly delightful (what can I say, I was a weird and occasionally somewhat grumpy kid!).

So when Huffer was revealed as one of the new Mini Autobot recreations coming out in the Kingdom line, I was initially very much on board. After all, while WfC's new Deluxes tended to be on the small size, and Earthrise Cliffjumper is almost a perfect match for Scout class Reveal the Shield/TF United Windcharger, even if he does compare less favourably with the Legends class Mini Autobots from RtS or the Prime Wars Trilogy.

When the toy was actually revealed, however, I initially decided not to bother after all. Hasbro had essentially taken the engineering from an existing Third Party figure and cut it down to the bare bones, leaving the lower legs hollow and awkward flaps of plastic for feet, then sought to achieve the desired pricepoint by throwing in unnecessary accessories - specifically a riot shield and a shotgun. These were better suited to the concept of Siege than Earthrise and, even then, more appropriate to one of the few Autobot warriors than to a character who was - in the original G1, at least - a Construction Engineer. All of this turned Kingdom Huffer into an easy pass...

...Until I found myself with a £10 voucher which could be used at The Entertainer, amongst other stores. Lacking any other, more constructive use for such a voucher for the time being, I reluctantly spent it on acquiring what had appeared to be a fairly lacklustre figure. Could Kingdom Huffer turn out to be a pleasant surprise..?

Monday, 28 June 2021

Perfect Effect PE-DX10 Jetforce Revive Commander

You have to hand it to Perfect Effect: when they know they have a winning figure, they really make the most of it. Last year, I picked up their upgrade set for Super Ginrai and their Powermaster Optimus Prime/Ginrai figure to spruce up an already excellent Takara Tomy Legends Super Ginrai figure which only suffered by relying too much on the engineering of the older Combiner Wars/Legends Ultra Magnus figure. PE's Jinrai Prime figure was quickly repainted into PC-17 Core Magnus - designed to replace CW/Legends Ultra Magnus' integrated truck - and PC-20 - designed for the Primitive Skateboarding exclusive black repaint, which could then comfortably function as both a Nucleon Quest Super Convoy and a Powermaster Nemesis Prime, considering the exclusive toy's colourscheme didn't match either.

But what happened next was perhaps the most interesting development of the mold: a strange hybrid which paid equal homage to God Ginrai/Apex Armour Powermaster Optimus Prime and the deus ex machina/MacGuffin-powered combination of Optimus Prime with parts pillaged from the corpse of Jetfire at the end of Revenge of the Fallen.

Needless to say, that is very much my jam.

However, given my prior history with Perfect Effect, I'd been a little reluctant to buy the PC upgrades, let alone another complete figure... And, with my finances being less than ideal over the last year or so, I'd put off buying this set even though there were no reports of horrific QC problems like those of Leonidas. It eventually got to the point where he was no longer available via my usual channels. However, just as my birthday rolled around this year, and around the time my folks made polite enquiries as to whether there were items not on my Amazon wish list that I might like to be treated to, I found JapanWorld House of Robots - another website based on the Continent (in Rome, Italy, specifically), who had a limited stock of him remaining, and ordered him forthwith. Fortunate for me, considering they now no longer have him in stock!

So, let's take a look at Jetforce Revive Commander and see if he was worth seeking out...

Friday, 21 May 2021

Wonder Festival 2007 Binaltech BT17 Black Convoy

I had to think long and hard about posting about this figure because, while Perfect Effect's Leonidas is undoubtedly the most disastrous purchase I've made in all my years of collecting, Binaltech Black Convoy comes a very close second. Made available at the winter 2007 Wonder Festival in Tokyo for the very reasonable price of ¥6,500 (a mere £42 in today's money), I acquired this on eBay at some point after the event. Once out of its packaging (a bubble pack, much like contemporary Alternators toys, rather than the traditional Binaltech box), it quickly became apparent that I'd bought a bit of a lemon: one of the joints connecting the bonnet to the car had been subject to a glue spillage and was immobile at an awkward midpoint, useful neither for robot mode nor vehicle mode.

At the time, it felt kind of like the universe's response to my avarice, considering I'd already acquired the Alternators versions of both Optimus and Nemesis Prime, and this figure basically went straight back into its packaging. There it remained until a few months ago, when it fell off the shelf it was on. Naturally, since the packaging was open, the figure slipped out on the way down, leading to one of the wing mirrors breaking off.

Since the box is clearly no longer a safe storage place, and I've been debating what to do about the wing mirror (temporarily on hold, having discovered that every tube of superglue I own has dried up), he's been sat on one of my main display shelves just to keep him reasonably safe and out of the way... Earlier in the week, I had to do a bit of hoovering, and so cleared the space in front of that cabinet, I figured I might as well pull him out and snap a few photos...

Monday, 17 May 2021

Studio Series #72 Starscream

Given that the Cybertron sequence in Travis Knight's Bumblebee-centric live action movie was comparatively short, it's spawned an awful lot of products... from the high-spec action figures created by 3A to the Studio Series toy made for the Cybertronian form of Cliffjumper, based on the briefly-glimpsed vehicle mode of B-127 himself, even though he was on screen for only about a minute. There have even been hints of Third Party offerings of some of the character seen in this sequence, so it clearly fired the imagination of many in the movie's audience.

Probably the highlight of this new take on the TransFormers' homeworld was the striking appearance of the Seekers. Taking its cue from the cartoon, there was a veritable rainbow legion of them, almost all of whom were nameless cannon-fodder. Even so, they were exceptionally well-designed: instantly recogniseable, even when in motion, and given an excellent new take on what has been an absolute millstone since the cartoon's pilot episode first aired, the Tetrajet.

And, of course, Hasbro are canny enough to know that making a toy of this design would be a worthwhile endeavour, not least because of its repaint potential. Since Starscream is the only named Seeker to have appeared in any of the movies, it seems only natural that he should be released as the first iteration of the Knightverse Tetrajet.