From Newsgroup: alt.toys.transformers

Dave's Transformers Age of the Primes Rant: Commander wave 1

Aerialbot Silverbolt (SST plus combiner kibble)

Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/AoP/Commander1

Following Legacy's Menasor, we're now getting the Aerialbots using the same "limb bots are really just decoration" scheme that lets Superion be more animation-accurate. Unfortunately, unlike Motormaster who could turn all of that kibble into a trailer, they just sort of...added a big chunk to Silverbolt's butt in jet mode. Ah well, it's a toy they expect will only
ever be displayed in Superion mode anyway.


CAPSULE

$90 price point, although GameStop reportedly wants $120.

Aerialbot Silverbolt: Decent Silverbolt, the add-on stuff makes about as good a vehicle-extension as you're gonna get, and it's a competent execution
of the 3P-style animation-accurate Superion. If you like that aesthetic, definitely recommended.


RANT

Packaging: Big Commander box as usual, 11.75" (30cm) wide, 11.5" (29cm) tall, and 3.75" (9.5cm) deep, with no window. The front has knees-up art of robot mode on the right, while on the left there's a "flying over Cybertron" scene with Silverbolt's jet mode (no kibble-butt) accompanied by Air Raid and Slingshot...yeah, just the two that are in wave 1. They didn't even put the other two in as distant hard-to-see blobs. It does seem to be the same art
as on the Deluxe boxes, just mirror-flipped and with a different gloss layer
on it, so I guess they other two weren't ready yet. The current-style "cartouche" in the upper right proclaims this to be component 3 of 5 for Superion, and that there's 44 steps between robot and jet. Based on the box back, I suspect that's 44 steps from "jet with trailer" to "robot with
defense wall" rather than just jet to robot. And yes, it's not really a trailer, but since it doesn't turn into its own robot it isn't a "Beta Unit"
a la Robotech either.
The box top has the entire Prime gallery, the left side has the same
slice of Superion art that is visible on the Deluxes but bigger, and the
right side has the center three of the Prime gallery. On the back, Superion with no attached jets is on the upper right, with ghostly-blue versions of Slingshot and Air Raid in insets showing how they're attached. Upper right
is just Silverbolt in robot and jet modes, lower left is the full jet-with-trailer mode, lower right is the robot hiding behind his battle station that has a conspicuous gap that lets enemies shoot him in the groin.
Inside, the usual large-set brown cardboard tray holds the vehicle mode (nosecone stored inside the fuselage to reduce chances of damage, probably a good idea because the fuselage popped its two ties and came loose on mine) in the top half, an almost sealed box in the lower left with the jet trailer,
and then the big and small rifles are strapped down on the lower right.
Six ties hold the jet into the tray, plus a rubber band to keep the Superiom head and its antennae attached. One tie on the small gun and two on the big one. Cutting tape around two tabs lets the box open up, and the trailer is just sitting inside, no other ties. The instructions are, as
usual, loose behind the tray, and they do have all the combiner mode instructions for the Deluxes. The instructions have five steps for getting
the jet into solo vehicle mode, then nine more for attaching the trailer.
They only show combiner mode instructions for Slingshot and Air Raid, but one presumes the other two (as heavy retools) will have the same basic transformation (particularly the arms, which are just "put the jet mode on
the arm and then separate the parts so the elbow can bend").
Not only do the package renders not quite match the toy (most notably, they use metallic gold paint while the toy has more of a mustard yellow),
they don't even match each other. The battle wall mode of the trailer is
shown on the box with unpainted thigh sections.


AUTOBOT: AERIALBOT SILVERBOLT
Assortment: G0752
Superion Component: 3 of 5
Altmode: Supersonic Jet, Superbig Jet, Combiner
Transformation Difficulty: 44 steps (superbig jet to robot and battle
station)
Previous Name Use: a lot, but not with "Aerialbot" appended
Previous Mold Use: None
Origin Universe: G1

Robot Mode: This is a figure with a LOT of backpack, and it has the heel spurs to match. Technically the wings are supposed to be left flat in plane mode, but they really do need to be folded back at least a bit if you want to move the shoulders or store the gun. The backpack is reasonably folded up,
at least, but the figure can't really sit down because the airplane tail reaches down to about the level of Silverbolt's knees. In aesthetic news, he does have the disturbingly thick lips of the animation model, and the fake
wing bits on the shoulder fronts (these are a vestige of how the G1 toy had
the winglets of Superion's chestplate on front of the robot shoulders, they were never part of Silverbolt's vehicle mode, although the chestplate did
sort of act as a drone jet in Silverbolt's base mode in G1). As noted above, while the render had metallic gold paint in some of the places G1 Silverbolt had gold chrome, they went to mustard yellow here, probably an attempt to do the animation yellow-for-gold thing). There's big gaps in the calves, but that's necessary for transformation, as the forearms end up going inside the boots.
6.75" (17cm) tall in mostly light gray with some red, black, and mustard yellow. Red plastic is used for the right and left torso fronts and panels
on the backs of the boots. Black plastic is found on the shoulders and upper arms, fists, inner part of each hip joint, ankles, most of each foot, a backpack hinge, and the pistol. Mustard yellow plastic is used in the
biceps, elbows, outer hips, thighs, knee joints, and the interiors of the
heel spurs. The rest is light gray plastic, including the fake winglets on
the shoulder fronts.
Not a whole lot of paint in this mode, as the color runs seem to have prioritized it. Silver face, bright blue eyes. A red with white outline Autobot symbol is printed on the right upper chest (the red printing is not quite the same color as the red plastic). The rest of the paint in this mode is specific to the vehicle mode and is on the back.
Ball joint neck with a decent amount of tilting play, smooth if stiff swivel waist that can only turn a little bit each way before hitting the backpack. (If you don't fold the tail up, it can't really move at all.)
Pinned hinge and swivel shoulder joints, bicep swivels, hinge elbows that can bend a little past 90 degrees as well as bending backwards 90 degrees for transformation. The wrists fold down on transformation hinges. The hips ratchet forwards/backwards but swing smoothly out to the sides. The armor skirt bits in front of the hips are hinged to swing out of the way (and
become landing gear), but they snap into the down position so a bit of the
old excessive force can be required to get the legs lifted. Upper thigh swivels, double-hinged knees. The usual instep hinges, and the toes can
point up on transformation hinges while the heel spurs can fold down. The wings can fold back, but there's a soft click that makes them only stable between 0 and about 30 degrees, then all the way back to straight back. The rest of the backpack is tabbed together and not supposed to move.
The hands can hold 5mm pegs...and that's basically it. There's lots of thin rectangular tabs and slots all over the place, and the gun can be stored in one of those in each wing, but that's it. They really seem to have been allergic to standard 5mm pegs in this design.
The pistol is a smaller and squatter version of the animation version of his gun, which in turn was made much bigger for Combiner Wars. 2" (5cm)
long, a single piece of black plastic with little winglets on it. It's held using a short 5mm peg, it has a 5mm peg at the back with a tab on one side (which goes into the big gun's muzzle), and a 5mm diameter muzzle. There's more standard connectors in the gun than in the robot. It also has a rectangular tab that goes into a slot on the front of either wing for
storage.

Battle Wall: So, this is basically the trailer with the abdomen/pelvis/ thighs piece unpegged from the back, folded a bit, and then tabbed (with difficulty) onto the front end of the top of the trailer. The main rifle unfolds from being the tail fin and goes on top, clipping in place rather
than using a peg, so it can't be rotated. It really does just look like the boots and arms of Superion stuck together as a wall with the a/p/t section stuck in front to do something with it.
5" (12.5cm) tall including the gun, 8.75" (22cm) wide (which ends up
being the super jet's width), and not counting the gun it's 4.25" (11cm)
deep. The gun itself is 6.25" (16cm) long in this configuration. I'll go
into more detail about the gun in the Superion mode entry later on. From the front it's mostly light gray with a little red and mustard yellow, the back side has more red and black. The pelvis and some arm bits visible on the
back are red plastic, there's some black hinges and tabs, otherwise the wall itself is light gray plastic.
Unless you move the fists, there are no standard connectors accessible except for a couple in front that point forwards (and could be used for some squib Fire Blasts), which makes for a pretty bad battle station accessory. There aren't even 5mm pegs, because those 5mm square-ish sockets I found on Slingshot's shins go on truncated square 5mm pegs that can't attach to
regular sockets. I'm not going to spend any more time on this. I might see
if I can find a better fan mode, but the lack of 5mm sockets is going to make that difficult.
I did find a relatively simple alternative mode for this. All you do is fold the chestplate piece back, and at the least Slingshot can be attached to the arm bits, maybe Fireflight as well. This makes it a sort of mini-flattop VTOL aircraft carrier with a spinal mount gun:
http://www.dvandom.com/images/AoPbabyflattop.JPG
The fold-out clips in the soles of the combiner feet (which I missed the first few times I transformed this) look like they might grab the limb bot heads to allow for something like the combined base mode of G1, but the heads are a little loose in the clips, so it's likely just a coincidence.

Transformation: Pull the torso front down and lift Superion's head out. Then the fists fold in, the elbows bend backwards, and the sides fold in ro fill two thirds of the gap inside the torso. Fold Silverbolt's head in, and then fold the torso front back up and fiddle with it until all the tabs go
into the slots. Fold the heels under the toes, then the feet up against the shins, and bend the knees at the upper joint (not the lower one that's the
main knee) and wrap the boots around the forearms to snap into place. The
red plates from the boots match up with the red chest pieces. Then it's
just a matter of unfolding the backpack to make the rest of the airplane, and folding the wingtips out. Before folding the tail halves back together, note that the pattern inside is basically an Autobot symbol stretched out like a Mercator projection of itself. Make sure Superion's head is backwards, so
the face is hidden inside the fuselage. The landing gear folds out from the back of Superion's head, so with Slingshot also doing it that's clearly a design riff they like now. There's a 5mm socket under the fuselage (inaccessible in robot mode) for placing the gun.
Going back to robot mode, getting Superion's antennae to go into the
exact right little holes for them on the backside of the chestplate takes a
lot of effort and chasing popped antennae down when you get it wrong. This
is definitely one of those "it worked fine in the renders" design elements.
It would've been nice if there were ANY 5mm sockets in robot mode other than the fists, so you could just store the antennae that way.
Transforming the battle wall to trailer mode isn't too hard, it mostly involves mucking about with the thighs a bit so that the front piece can snap onto and around the back of the main part, then fold up the big gun to fit in the gap down the center and fake being a tail fin. Several rectangular tabs need to go just right into slots to make this stable.

Altmode: As is traditional, it looks kind of like a Concorde Super-Sonic Transport (SST) carrying a bunch of cargo containers on the underside. Superion's helmet antennae are now front-facing beam weapon barrels, so it's armed even if you leave the pistol off. And because it seems like Hasbro insists on putting some metallic paint these days on every toy that otherwise uses animation cel colors, there's metallic gold paint on all the windows in this mode. A tiny bit sloppy in places, but easily fixed with some careful scraping. While there's no rubbery plastic, the nosecone is deliberately
blunt for safety reasons, as is the tail (the real Concorde is super pointy
at both ends).
9.5" (20cm) long with a wingspan of 6.5" (16.5cm), it's about 1:300
scale, way off from the other four Aerialbots. Other than the nosecone and some hinges midway, the jet parts are all light gray plastic. Okay, technically the front landing gear is also black plastic. The windows, both cockpit and along the sides, are all painted metallic gold. There's red on white Autobot symbols on the tops of both wings.
There's the one 5mm socket on the underside of the "neck" for holding
the gun, and the landing gear can all fold up and down. While this is
probably unintentional, the nose can droop on its transformation joint in a
way mimicking the Concorde's nose droop (to let pilots see the runway).

Jet with Trailer Mode: I look at this, and I can't help but think of the old "Flying Flapjack" Vought XF5U-1, but backwards with a pointy nose tacked on. It also gives a sort of "flying aircraft carrier" vibe, thanks to all
the Slingshot/Fireflight connection points.
To connect the trailer, fold open the jet's tail and stow all the
landing gear. Fold the wings up a little, then cram the slots on the
underside of the robot's pelvis onto tabs in front of the trailer, then fold the wings down onto tiny tabs on the top front of the trailer. As alluded to earlier, it's not unlike docking an Alpha and Beta Veritech in Robotech: New Generation (aka Mospeada), although the trailer end not only doesn't have its own robot mode, it lacks its own cockpit. Once everything is properly tabbed in place, it's surprisingly stable. That said, if you pick it up by the wing of the main jet it WILL fall apart. Hmmm, maybe it'd have been more stable
if I'd found the fold-out clips in the soles of the feet first.
The whole thing is 14" (35.5cm) long with a wingspan of 8.75" (22cm).
From the top, almost all the plastic is light gray, even the gun bits visible as the tail are light gray plastic painted gloss black. The nosecone, mid-fuselage hinge from solo jet mode, robot feet, and jet-splitting tabs for the arms are visible black plastic from above. The chestplate piece that
sort of sits on the back end has black paint on the air intake detailing. No other new paints or colors, really.
https://www.dvandom.com/kitbash/AoPSilverbolt.JPG is a quick touch-up where I painted in that warped Autobot symbol in the split tail.

Overall: The main jet is a decent small Leader or large Voyager figure
on its own, even if it's outmassed by the combiner kibble chunk (196g for the main figure, 466g for the trailer). The "combiner kibble is part of the vehicle mode" thing doesn't work nearly as well here as it did with Menasor/ Motormaster, but I suppose once they'd committed to the bit this wasn't a horrible execution.


AUTOBOT: SUPERION

Transformation to Super Robot: For the jet, it's simply taking the jet mode, then making the robot mode backpack and folding the wings all the way back, finishing by turning the Superion head around. Then remove the abdomen/pelvis/thighs bit from the trailer and twist the thighs around until they face the correct way, realize it's necessary to undo the backpack to get one of the panels pegged onto Silverbolt's butt. Then redo the backpack,
this gets Superion with no arms and with legs stopping above the knees, very solid. The outer parts of the trailer unpeg and become the arms, which snap
on pretty firmly as I found out after discovering I had them on the wrong sides. They have box-like connectors that snap down over Silverbolt's folded up feet, with the gold bits inside them acting as latches. The arms start
out kinda short, but they're made to extend once you attach Slingshot or Fireflight and separate the fronts from the backs of the jets. Or...another error on my part (no, I'm not looking at the instructions, why do you ask?), extend the forearms FIRST and then attach the jet to the upper arm, then
extend the upper arms. If you try attaching it to the unextended arm there's not enough wiggle room to get the tab out, and the fully extended arm has a
bit blocking the tabs in the first place. The remaining chunks of the
trailer pull apart, with knees folding out from the top and toes from the bottom. They use Menasor's trick of putting the jet on back, which pushes little doors closed in front to fill in the gap. There's little push-in tabs by the knees to keep the transformation hinge from bending.
Getting the grip peg out of the big gun is difficult, one of those "I
had to use a knife" things.
A notable way in which Superion is better than Menasor is that there are no leftover parts here. Menasor needed a pretty big chunk to hold the
trailer together, and it's just sort of a laser turret tower thing that sits off to the side (although I did figure out a way to make it into some awkward wings).

Super Robot Mode (Bare): Okay, as with naked Menasor, the arms are kinda spindly and the shins are deliberately hollow. Like, they do that thing with the doors that only close when you put a jet on the back of the boot, taking
up extra parts and springs and stuff to make sure that an empty boot looks really empty. If you think of the chestplate from the trailer chunk as a deep-necked shirt, Silverbolt's own chest and the painted part of the chestplate are the exposed red "skin" above the collar. One thing that's
more obvious in this mode is that there's actually two shades of red plastic, which often end up next to each other. Because of how the boot pieces peg together, they are not perfect mirror images, both have square pegs on the right side of the boot front top, and square sockets on the left. There's
also square pegs on top of the forearms, which are meant to go into the underside of the gun to secure it better than a single peg can manage.
Almost exactly 12" (30.5cm) tall, just a shade shorter than Menasor. A lot more red is added to the mix, and slightly less black than Silverbolt's robot mode. The head is mostly black plastic, with the roots of the antennae also being black, with the rest of each antenna being mustard yellow plastic. The antennae plug in using 3.5mm pegs, mainly a safety feature so that they
pop off intact rather than cracking into smaller pieces. Black is also used for the base of the beck, the shoulder struts and caps, wrist sockets, inside parts of the hip and knee joints, hinges holding the toes, and the floors of the hollow boots (including the bit that gets pushed in to close the doors). Mustard yellow plastic is also used for the outer parts of the hips, and the little bits of Silverbolt's legs visible on the sides of the abdomen. Dark
red plastic is used for the non-gray parts of the upper arms (the gray part being what you plug the nose of a jet onto), a bit inside each forearm
between the elbow and the rest of the forearm, the armor skirt flaps in front of the hips, the doors on the shins, and those clips under the feet that I missed the first time I assembled the super jet. Bright red plastic the same shade as Silverbolt's chest bits is used for the elbow parts of the forearms and the rest of the pelvis. The rest is light gray plastic.
The faceplate is painted silver, with a gloss red visor, the same shade used on the sternum part of the chestplate. Light gray paint with a pretty good match to the plastic is used on the upper half of the pelvis front.
Gloss black paint on the shin door hinges, plus the vents on what's now the
top edges of the chestplate. Mustard yellow paint on the thighs.
Silverbolt's right torso Autobot symbol is visible in this mode.
The neck is a ball joint with some wiggle room, the waist is a smooth if stiff swivel that is blocked by Silverbolt's tail from turning more than
about 45 degrees either way. Leaving out Silverbolt's ankle joints which can act as shrugging joints, the shoulders lift via a ratcheting hinge at the top (7 clicks for 90 degrees) and swing on ratcheting swivels a centimeter or so below that (15 degrees per click). There's smooth swivels just above the ratcheting hinge elbows (8 clicks for 90 degrees), and the wrists are smooth swivels. The hips are hinge and swivel joints, 10 clicks lifting 90 degrees
to the sides and 8 clicks to lift 90 degrees (these clicks are very soft,
mine might have issues). Smooth mid-thigh swivels, 15 degrees per click
knees that bend 90 degrees. The ankles have smooth instep hinges, and the pelvis skirt armor panels are smooth-hinged to get out of the ways of the
legs.
The fists can hold 5mm pegs, there's 5mm sockets on the fronts of the shoulders, one on the outer face of each boot, and one under each toe.
That's basically it. I wonder why there's only four non-fist sockets, since each plane comes with two guns so it's not like they're viable alternate storage other than the wings of the planes.
The gun is made of four pieces: barrel, body, stock, and grip. The
barrel and grip are black plastic, while the rest is light gray plastic with
a lot of gloss paint covering all but the sockets and joints. Fully
stretched out it is 6.25" (16cm) long with the grip about a third of the way from the back. There's an angled 5mm socket at the front of the stock, which goes onto the trailer when the rifle is folded up to store there. There's rectangular tabs on the sides about midway down the rifle which don't seem to be used for anything (they don't actually go into slots in the trailer). The instructions offer no guidance, but I think they're for storing on
Silverbolt's wings the same way Silverbolt's own gun stores. One on each
side. The instructions DO show how to fold the peg away and attach the rifle just to the forearm using the square sockets on the underside. Normally one goes on the forearm to stabilize things. The barrel muzzle is a 5mm socket with a notch, and Silverbolt's gun goes into it with the tab lined up so it can't turn. Adding this to the end makes the whole weapon a little over 8" (20.5cm) long.

Super Robot Mode (Decorated): At the time of initially writing this
review I only have two of the limb decorations, but since the missing two are both retools of the ones I have, I can tentatively rate this as well.
Slingshot is easy enough to secure one you do it the right way, although the tail sticks out past the fist a little. Air Raid is difficult to get fully pegged in place and keep it that way (not just the 5mm sockets I mentioned in its own review, but also rectangular slots on the fronts of the shoulders).
If Air Raid isn't all the way seated, the little red doors on the shin don't close all the way. The folding up of all the jet bits makes the Air Raid
calf a lot more bulky than Menasor's calves.
Note that unlike Menasor, either arm jet can be on either side. The instructions have Slingshot as the right arm and Fireflight as the left, Air Raid as the right calf and Skydive as the left. Stock photos of the combined Superion disagree with the instructions, though.
I'll update this review if Fireflight and/or Skydive change things significantly.

Overall: I noted in my review of Menasor that I'm not exactly a fan of this style of "match the simplified animation design" combiner, but that
aside it does a good job of executing the concept. Unlike Menasor, there's
no leftover pieces, which makes me wonder if Menasor could've pulled that off with a few more rounds of design refinement. If you want a cartoon-accurate Superion and don't want to spend $400-500 on a third party toy, about $200 including tax will get you an official one now.

Set Overall: If all you want is Silverbolt (yeah, right), this is overpriced and a lot of the money goes to combiner kibble. On the plus side, aesthetics aside this style does let you have the full size of Superion even
if you don't get any of the other Aerialbots, which is worthwhile on its
own. Nothing about this really wowed me, but it's competent and doesn't seem prone to any design shortfalls other than getting Superion's head into Silverbolt's chest...which is not a big deal if this is going to spend all
its display time as Superion anyway.


Dave Van Domelen, running out of summer break pretty quickly....


--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2