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...

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.

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.

TransFormers: Prime Dark Energon Starscream

The whole 'Dark Energon' phenomenon rather passed me by, to be honest. As far as I can tell, the toys never made it to UK shelves, and by the time I discovered them in specialist TransFormers webshops, they were pretty much all sold out. My one encounter with them 'in the wild' was at a London Expo, where they had only Bumblebee and Knockout and, while the former was an interesting homage to G1 Goldbug in its colourscheme, the latter basically worked out as a weird intermediate stage between the original red Knock Out and the Beast Hunters remix.

The one toy that interested me out of the few that got the Dark Energon treatment was Starscream, because his colourscheme was pure Skywarp, only translucent. Facing the fact that Hasbro seemingly had no plans to repaint either the FE Starscream mold or the Voyager version as either Thundercracker or Skywarp (leaving it to Takara Tomy to do the decent thing), getting my hands on Dark Energon Sky-Star-Warp-Scream seemed like a cool way of halving the expensive import costs, and giving me a more interesting take on Skywarp to go along with an eventual Thundercracker.

Of course, you already know how that turned out, because I bought both of the Arms Micron repaints... but let's take a look at the toy that almost became my TFPrime Skywarp...

Cybertron Twin-Pack Starscream

There are times when the stranger aspects of my collector mentality completely trump any and all logical thought, and this toy represents one such occasion for me. By the time this appeared on shelves at Toys'R'Us in the UK, I already owned the Galaxy Force versions of both Starscream and Vector Prime. The version of Vector Prime included with this figure is vastly inferior to the Takara Tomy version (fewer paint applications, the shade of brown used - both paint and plastic - is too dark, sword and wings are made out of bendy plastic that develops a weird, powdery coating after a while), while the colourscheme of this so-called Starscream doesn't represent anything shown in the TV show...

...But I liked it, and I guess my Seeker OCD took a new turn (Thundercracker and Skywarp being made from a different mold in Cybertron/Galaxy Force) because I felt compelled to shell out for a boxed set of two figures when I was only interested in one. Vector Prime is still in the box to this day while this - the only UK release of this version of Starscream at his intended size - stands among his Cybertron/Galaxy Force contemporaries... representing a different character...

Unite Warriors UW-06 Combiner Haunt Leader Grand Galvatron

Combiner Wars and Unite Warriors have both had a very strange approach to some of their characters. One of the earliest releases was a very G1-styled standalone Leader class Megatron, followed by a Voyager class Optimus Prime who could combine with four other Autobots to become 'Ultra Prime'. We later got a standalone Leader class Ultra Magnus and 'Galvatronus', a gestalt whose limbs could be whichever mind-controlled Autobots or Decepticons he cared to subjugate... neatly removing any need for Hasbro to provide Cyclonus with his armada, or even a ramshackle team of his own. Hurrah for Hasbro and their amazing talent for never releasing enough Decepticons!

As a result, while I had high hopes for Takara Tomy's take on Bruticus, I had been all set to get through Combiner Wars with no other Decepticon gestalts aside from this year's Collectors' Club Subscription Service combiner, Thunder Mayhem. Then Takara Tomy announced their Unite Warriors Grand Galvatron set, with a positively opulent repaint of CW Cyclonus as its centrepiece, and a rag-tag team of cross-continuity limb-bots of his very own, which combined to form a version of Galvatron based heavily on the G1 toy and, as is my wont, I put through a preorder almost immediately because my hypocrisy knows no bounds.

TF Prime 'Ultimate Opponents' Starscream

I'm going to have to confess to being a little obsessed with the First Edition Starscream mold at some point... Having picked up the original as a result of the awesome TFCC Subscription Service figure Slipstream, I went on to buy the Dark Energon version (which I considered calling 'Skywarp'), then Arms Micron Thundercracker then, as required by my OCD, the 'actual' Skywarp. More recently, while trawling through eBay, I found a TransFormers Prime 'value pack' featuring two First Edition repaints - Starscream and Bumblebee - along with 'companion' figures - Mech commander Silas and one of his nameless, faceless mooks, much like the Jack and Raf figures from the NYCC2011 Arcee and Bumblebee set.

Needless to say, the compulsion came over me...

Superlink Nightscream Reverse/Rebirth

When Nightscream/Starscream first turned up in the Superlink/Energon TV series, he was a ghost, Starscream having been apparently killed off at the end of Armada. While the original take on the toy - from both Hasbro and Takara - didn't interest me much due to both having uniquely drab colourschemes, the repaint, in more G1-like colours, was just as different between the two toymakers but, while Hasbro went straight G1, to the extent of ignoring much of the molded damage detail, Takara Tomy kept the basic idea of the original, but brightened the palette considerably.

iGear Con Air Raptor Squadron IG-C01 Star-Burst

IGear don't have the best reputation among the third parties (and, at the moment, seem to be entirely out of action) with some truly awful products in their back-catalogue, as well as some blatant rip-offs (specifically the customised Masterpiece Seekers which were 'acquired' by iGear for not-quite-mass production, and their 'Faith Leader', a downscaled MP01). As well as their (as far as I know) wholly original mini-bot remakes, they released a set of larger-scaled Seekers and Coneheads (designed by Cassy Sark, after Guido Guidi's updated Seeker design for the IDW comics) which were just as divisive as their other products.

Now I have a set of the Seekers, I honestly can't understand why...

Mastermind Creations Cyber Engine Knight Morpher KM-05 Screecher

IDW's Hearts of Steel is on the list of comics series that I'm vaguely interested in investigating. Its central conceit is that the Cybertronians who crash landed on Earth were awoken not in the 1980s or 2000s, but instead at the time of the American Industrial Revolution. Designed by the implausibly talented Guido Guidi, the giant alien robots took on a unique and original appearance. The Autobots appear to have been largely locomotives, but the Decepticons were, as usual, rather more varied - Shockwave became an ironclad paddle-steamer battleship, for example.

When I first saw images of a model based on Hearts of Steel Optimus Prime, it was an independent fan project... but after a while, it seems Mastermind Creations picked it up and turned it into the first of their 'Cyber Engine Knight Morpher' series, following up with an interpretation of Shockwave and, eventually, the anachronistic HoS Seekers.

TransFormers: Prime First Edition Starscream

When I decide I like a mold - particularly if it's made to create some contemporary variation on one of the G1 Seekers, and especially if it makes all three - I tend to make it a mission in life to get as many iterations of the mold as possible. Since the Voyager class version of TF Prime Starscream hasn't - as yet - been reused for anything, I've only got the one instance of that mold. However, the Collectors' Club created a TF Prime-style Timelines Slipstream based on the First Edition mold, and that was pretty spiffy.

Thus hooked, I'm now fairly well on my way to getting all variants of this mold, but the first one I had to get was the original, rather hard to find, Deluxe-sized Starscream... 

TransFormers: Prime Starscream

One thing you can say for the ever-changin' line of toys that is TransFormers is that it's come a hell of a long way since the G1 days, where everything was fairly brick-like and chunky. Whether it's by design in terms of 'refining the look of the robots' or in just in terms of 'reducing the quantity of plastic used to save money', they've been becoming slimmer (in their use of materials, at least) and more refined over the years. The movies, with their truly alien designs, and TF Animated have also had an effect on the look of the robots, and TF Prime effectively merges the two otherwise disparate styles into something unique.

While I was originally hoping to hold out for a First Edition, Deluxe-sized Starscream, when I finally found this one on the shelves at Toys'R'Us (at least a couple of months after its wave was supposedly released in the UK), it seemed appealing enough in person to give it a chance... Bulkhead was there, too... but I was definitely holding out for his First Edition, as the main line version just didn't look as good.

As the Decepticons' prideful Air Commander, Starscream has coveted true leadership of the Decepticons since he was first introduced, and has schemed against Megatron with varying degrees of skill and subtlety, and to varying degrees of success, so how does the latest incarnation shape up.

Micron Legend Starscream

The TransFormers toyline has always taken artistic license with its depictions of aeroplanes. From those models with the whole robot folded up into a block on the underside of an otherwise immobile plane, to the strange, bulky craft that could never become airborne. In more recent years, the designers and engineers have taken a few more risks with the way a plane could turn into a robot, such as Reveal the Shield Lugnut, but Micron Legend/Armada was known for its bulky and simplistic models... How could such clunky engineering tackle the requirement for svelte, elegant lines required for aircraft?

Galaxy Force Starscream

One character who's had a bit of a raw deal over the history of the TransFormers toyline is Starscream. The scheming Decepticon Air Commander/Second-in-Command has always been a popular character due to his many and persistent plots to usurp Megatron, and yet the toys tend to lack a certain something. The Unicron Trilogy presented three (mostly) new forms for Starscream but, while Armada's was bulky and unwieldy, and Energon's was little more than a G2 Cyberjet on a slightly larger scale, Galaxy Force brought us a Starscream that was both worth of the name, and a brilliant homage to the G1 character's Cybertronian 'tetra-jet' form.

TransFormers (Movie) Deep Space Starscream (Target Exclusive)

There's something about Movie Starscream that seems to attract colourschemes in the beige range. Both the original Voyager and the Revenge of the Fallen version were very beige, despite the character in the movie being very clearly grey or silver, for the most part. Bad enough that Starscream had such a controversial design ('monkey-chicken' being one rather unflattering description), with a wide, heavy torso somehow supported on comparatively spindly, bird-like legs, he had to have such a drab colour as well? But was that the only problem with the original Starcream toy..?

Masterpiece MP03 Starscream

After repainting MP01 Convoy into MP02 'Ultra' Magnus, cheapening the 'Masterpiece' branding, and thereby disappointing legions of fans with yet another straight white repaint, Takara Tomy really had to create something stunning for MP03. It wasn't long before the first sketches made their way onto the internet, and Masterpiece Starscream was the centre of much speculation. How big would it be? Would it have the same extent of die-cast metal parts? How would Takara Tomy create a convincing F-15 and a cartoon-accurate robot?

TransFormers Animated Starscream

Aside from Optimus Prime and Megatron, one character has appeared in almost every TransFormers continuity, frequently with multiple appearances in each. The one constant in this Decepticon's character seems to be a complete absence of loyalty to Megatron, and the desire to supplant him as leader. I refer, of course, to Starscream

Even his form hasn't been completely constant - while he didn't appear in the Binaltech/Alternators line, he does appear in the very short-lived Alternity line, as one of the most interesting cars in the selection, the Mitsuoka Orochi.

One of the earliest TF Animated designs I remember actually liking (without seeing how they could possibly turn it into a toy) was Starscream. Something about the broad-shouldered yet skinny, perpetually smirking look captured the scheming, cocksure Decepticon Air Commander. It was also quite amusing that the character model appears to give him high heels... In many ways, it seemed to be the distillation of the personality presented in the G1 Tech Specs, far better than the seeker clone from the G1 cartoon.

I'm not quite sure when I finally saw his cartoon vehicle mode - whether it was before or after picking up the toy - but, for a plane which I'm sure was described as a Harrier, he looks remarkably like something out of the Macross series, particularly at the rear... and his transformation even has some common factors. Absolutely nothing like the little British VTOL jet.

Alternity A-04 Starscream (White Pearl)

If the Binaltech/Alternators line had a significant flaw, it was that all of the cars were fairly normal, everyday cars (OK, the Ford GT isn't something you'd typically see on the streets, but even the Dodge Viper was actually quite pedestrian, and certainly not in the same league as the Lamborghini Countach that appeared way back in Generation 1). At first, it seemed that Alternity might be heading down the same motorway, with the Nissan GT-R and Fairlady Z followed by the Suzuki Swift... but then A-04 was announced... Starscream and Skywarp (soon to be followed by Thundercracker, to complete the original G1 Seeker trinity) disguised as the incredible Mitsuoka Orochi

Leader Class Starscream Stop Press #2 - Masterpiece Comparison

It's only natural that RotF Leader Class Starscream should be compared to Masterpiece Starscream, in light of the fact that it will be released as part of the Masterpiece line in Japan, with a far superior paint job...

So how do they compare?

Leader Class Starscream Stop Press #1 - GERWALK mode

Saw a couple of photos of this fan mode for Leader Class Starscream turn up in the forums, and thought I'd give it a go...

The term 'GERWALK' comes from the Macross, and is possibly the most awkward acronym in the history of anime: Ground Effective Reinforcement of Winged Armament with Locomotive Knee-joint. I mean, come on... there's acronyms and there's trying to shoehorn an explanation onto a cool-sounding name.