Jetfire With Commentor - Armada - Figure

Having not seen the episode where he ius introduced in the Cartoon Series, i can't say muchb about his character (Hasbro have not as yet put his tech specs up on the website), but I can go into a fair bit of detail on the toy, which is after all why you are reading this review.

Jetfire is advertised as having a "Future Shuttle" vehicle mode, well OK its much more like the current space shuttle than any of the successor designs that have been released (the Wave One Minicon Sonar's vehicle mode is much closer to a proposed shuttle successor, but I digress) and the form is generally fairly nice: about 10 Inches long, mostly in shades of grey with some red and black and clear red engines.

In this mode there are minicon powerlinks on the spine (which cause auxilery fins to pop out of the engine cowlings) and on the wings (wich cause missiles on the wings to be droped), Jetfires main cargo bay can be opened, which reveals some diagrams on the inside of one cargo door and a fourth (dead) powerlink.

I won't go into the transformation, except to note that it is reasonably simple, and not too fiddly, echept you will probably have to remeber to properly close the cargo bay doors when everything is in the right place, though not part of the process, they do tend to open during it.

In robot Mode Jetfire is pretty big, taller than red Alert, though much of that is lost if you discout the wings, and signifcantly chunkier, he had a sheild formed from his rear undercarrage and a riffle from his top engine.

His Posablity is fairly good for an Armada figure, not up to Supercon Optimus Prime, but nowhere near as limited as Hotshot or Cyclonus: he has full shoulder movement (360 by 90+ degrees) a rotaiting joint under the shoulder and a decent elbo that does abouyt 45 degree movement,though essentailly in only two positions: up and srtaight. the posabilty is slightly, but only slightly, impared by the bulk of Jetfires weapons and the two fins on his chest

In the legs he is more limited there is a joint at the hip but it only allows rotatiion, no lateral or foward movement, though he does have knee joints that go back about 45 degrees and fowrard about 10 degrees.

Features

appart from the vehicle mode addtions mentioned above Jetfires Rifle/top engine also electonic lights and sounds, push the fin foward and you get a countdown followed by a launching sound and a periodic electonic "satalite" beeping forward has a high pitch laser firing sound which, and this is a cool bit, is much deeper,"chunkier" and powerfulk sounding if a minicon is attached to the rifle.

He can apprently be cobined with the Cab of the full sized Optimus prime fidure, but and I only own the Supercon figure, I can't comment of is mode, although it lookjs to be a straight replacment for Primes Trailer in coimbined mode.

Minicon

Commentor is, well, OK, his vehicle mode is a moon buggy,and he forms the foward landing gear of Jefires shuttle mode, the robot mode has decent, but again not outstanding, articultion for a mini-con, however the arms are a bit to vehicle-oriented with no recoginisable hands, but he works reasoably well as the landing gear and does fit quite well in his vehicle mode

Overall

Jetfire is a good addition the the Armada range, he gains points for good apearance, good arm articulation and good features, but he looses a few points for numbers of powerlinks points (4 on a figure this size is a bit low) poor hip articulation and Commentors not great robot mode. Generally one of the better Armada figures so far.

Reviewer	Andy McCruden
Date	February 11th 2003
Score	(9 out of 10)
Reads	6345

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