TransFormers Cloud Starscream

I don't know a great deal about TransFormers Cloud, not least because the toys - by and large - didn't interest me. Most were pretty dull repaints, with the occasional new head sculpt, but only two tickled my fancy: Hellwarp - a repaint of the Generations Sky-Byte mold in Skywarp colours - and this one, Starscream.

Neither were priority figures when they first appeared, but when the Bumblebee movie turned up, featuring a character named Blitzwing, who transformed into a jet coloured suspiciously like Starscream, the latter figure got bumped up the list since it occurred to me - thanks to my weird way of thinking - that he could function both as Cloud Starscream and a Generations version of Bumblebee movie Blitzwing (even though he never transformed into a tank, or gave any indication of being a triple-changer in his brief appearance).

Of course, I already own both Generations Blitzwing and Generations Doubledealer - the latter's head sculpt being reused here - so let's see what makes Cloud Starcream unique...

Generations (30th Anniversary) Crosscut

The Generations/30th Anniversary toy of Skids was a surprise on many levels - not least that it happened at all. Along with Generations Springer, it seemed to show, at the time, that Hasbro were paying attention to IDW's output and tailoring their output (to a degree) toward those who appreciated the ongoing comic book narrative. While I hadn't intended to buy Skids for various reasons, he ended up being an impulse buy while on holiday a few years ago and I really liked what Hasbro had done to update and improve what had been a fairly poor G1 toy.

G1 Crosscut, meanwhile, was an e-HOBBY exclusive with a 'new' (that is, derived from one of the alternative Diaclone versions of the mold) head sculpt so, when Hasbro announced a Generations version, with a head styled after the original figure applied to the new Skids mold, the fact that I'd enjoyed Generations Skids so much put Crosscut straight onto my want list.

Masterpiece MP26 Road Rage

(Femme-Bot Friday #58)

I've more or less given up on the Masterpiece line, as it slips ever further down the slipperly slope of 'animation accuracy', but I'm still a huge fan of Generation 1 because of the range of cars it turned into awesome alien robots. While I only had a handful of the Diaclone-derived G1 Autobots at the time, I've filled in a few of the blanks over the years with both Hasbro and Takara/Takara Tomy's reissues, even managing to grab some of the e-HOBBY specials along the way.

One of my particular favourites was the Corvette Stingray and, while I own the Hasbro Commemorative Series version of Tracks, the Femme-Bot repaint released by e-HOBBY was never available at a price I was happy with... The Masterpiece version was available at TFNation this year, and, after much consideration, ended up being my final purchase of the show...