From Newsgroup: alt.toys.transformers

Dave's Transformers Age of the Primes Rant: Deluxe wave 3

Aerialbot Fireflight (retool of Slingshot)
Micronus Prime (Mini-Con/Disk and exo-suit/monowheel)
Venin (robot cicada)
Aerialbot Skydive (retool of Air Raid)

Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/AoP/Deluxe3

https://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/AoP/Deluxe1 - previous Aerialbot molds


CAPSULES

$25 price point...for now.

Aerialbot Fireflight: Original mold mildly recommended. This isn't
really a Phantom II, but as an animated homage it wouldn't be anyway. Mildly recommended.

Micronus Prime: The sort of "Mini-Con with an exosuit" idea that they teased in Armada but then never really did anything with, and I appreciate that. This even manages to split the difference between Armada and RiD15 styles of Minicon. A few of the usual paint issues, and some of the joints
and sockets are unpleasantly tight, but some of the latter problem could just be QC roulette. Recommended.

Venin: Very accurate to the original toy design, sometimes to its detriment. Transformation can be physically difficult at times. Otherwise a good update of a classic if underused toy. Recommended.

Aerialbot Skydive: Original mold was recommended. This doesn't quite manage to be an F-16 due to the inevitable double thruster, but it looks
pretty good in both modes otherwise. Recommended.


RANTS

Packaging: Same as previous Deluxe waves. As normal by now, the
Superion components have Superion art on the right side of the box. Poor planning on the left sides, I guess, because there's two copies of the Solus/Miconus/Alchemist segment and none of the Amalgamous etc one. The transformation cartouche in the upper right is dull gold for Micronus Prime
and white for the others, while the Aerialbots also add their component
number in a silhouette of Superion's head.


AUTOBOT: AERIALBOT FIREFLIGHT
Assortment: G1024
SUPERION COMPONENT: 4 of 5 (arm)
Altmode: Jet (like an F-4 Phantom)
Transformation Difficulty: 17 steps
Previous Name Use: Technically none with the "Aerialbot" part. A lot
without.
Previous Mold Use: AotP
Origin Universe: G1

Packaging: Five ties hold the robot into the inner tray, a small tissue bundle in the lower right holds the double-barrelled pistols.
The legs are significantly mistransformed to fit into the package, the instructions include a three step process to get it from packaging mode into robot mode.
The package render and instructions show the pistols held in the hands
in robot mode, but they look better covering up the hollow outer forearms.

Shared Parts: Fewer actual identical parts than it appears at first glance, as many pieces are similar but not quite the same, such as the pelvis front. The actual shared parts are all the hinge/joint pieces (not the
hinges holding the nosecone, those are both new), arms, pelvis back half,
hips, thighs, shins, toes, heels but not the vertical tail piece, and guns. Otherwise, pieces might be very dissimilar (like the head or wings) or nearly identical (like the pelvis front), but most of the mass of the toy is new.
Note, the core backplate is identical, but there's a pegged on piece covering the small of the back that is different. The piece is also
removable on Slingshot.

Robot Mode: While it can't make all the vehicle kibble vanish like in
the cartoon, they otherwise tried to go with the animation deco here where possible (the black feet would require a lot of paint or being on a different sprue to be cartoon-white). The cartoon-style torso front deco is even
molded into place rather than just tampoed, so a toy-accurate version would require some retooling. As seems to happen a LOT in Geewunny animation
decos, sometimes light gray is done as silver and sometimes as light gray, which leads to the oddity of the top of the head being silver but the face being light gray. Speaking of color issues, the red paint on white plastic parts is much lighter and brighter than the red plastic (which is more cartoon-accurate darker red).
5.25" (13cm) tall at the head, 6" (15cm) to the top of the nosecone sticking up behind the back, in a mix of red, white, and black. White
plastic is used for the head, the torso front, the upper arms, the elbow hinges, the thighs, the shins, and the wings sticking out the backs of the boots. The toes, shoulder struts, hips, and guns are black plastic. The
rest is a somewhat dark red plastic.
There's bright red paint on the borders of the torso front, a poor match for the red plastic. The white on the upper and outer faces of the forearms does match the white plastic pretty well, though. Details on the torso front are painted bright red and bright blue. Details on the pelvis front are in bright blue and white. The fists and the top of the head are silver, the
face is light gray with bright blye eyes. There's no Autobot symbol on the front of robot mode, although there's room for a small one on the top of the sternum. I'll cover vehicle-specific paints below.
Ball joint neck with the socket in the head and some wiggle room, smooth waist swivel. The shoulders have hinges in the struts to lift to the sides
and swivels where the black struts meet the white shoulders. Bicep swivels, double hinge elbows, no wrist articulation. Pinned hinge and swivel hips, upper thigh swivels, hinge knees, instep hinges on the feet. The toes and heels can point down on transformation hinges, and the sheer length of the
feet at 2.5" (6.5cm) gives good front to back stability, but they're too
narrow to make for easy "stand on one foot" poses (but you can kinda fake
some by having just the toe of the lifted foot touching down).
5mm sockets in the fists, on the outer faces of the forearms, the fronts of the lower shins, and the outer faces of the boot wings. A single 3mm
socket on the back of the pelvis. There's short 5mm sockets on the sides of the backpack for the forearms to grip in vehicle mode, and if you remove the small of the back there's another 5mm peg there, not really useful for much.
If the peg was on the removable piece it could at least be put on the forearm as a shield or something.
The guns are identical to Slingshot's.

Transformation: Identical to Slingshot.

Vehicle Mode: When I was a little kid, around 5 years old, I had a set
of die-cast fighter planes. My favorites were the F4U Corsair and the F-4 Phantom...I guess I had a thing for designs that avoided right angles.
Sadly, due to how the tail sections become heels in robot mode, they couldn't give Fireflight an accurate Phantom tail, although they could've given the wings that slight upward bend near the tip and didn't. That's a little
weird, since this line tries to be as Geewun as possible, and the original Fireflight toy did have the slight bend in the wings in addition to the accurate tail. Unlike robot mode, they seem to have gone mostly with the toy design here, although it'd be hard for a real toy to make the white of the upper arms turn red. Oddly, there's a tapering gray stripe along the top blending into the cockpit borders that doesn't seem to be a toy or animation feature, but might be based on a single episode that doesn't have screenshots on TFWiki, I guess.
A little over 6" (15.5cm) long with a wingspan of 4.25" (11cm), it's now dominated by red with just the wings and the robot shoulders on the sides
being white, plus some bits of black and accent colors. The vertical part of the tail is entirely painted over, probably white plastic, to match the white plastic of the wings. The black toes are under the tail as with Slingshot.
The tail is painted entirely red with significant silver on the sides, plus thin blue and yellow stripes on the front and bottom edges of the silver
part. There's bright blue and yellow stripes near the leading edges of the wings, the blue is much lighter but that might be a result of being on top of white plastic rather than red paint. There's that medium gray along the top and the cockpit frae, silver cockpit windows, black nosecone. There's red Autobot symbols on each wing in place of the usual rondels.
There's a 5mm socket under each wing for the guns, and the same
connector sockets on the underside as on Slingshot. The nose wheel folds out of the back of the head and you can slightly fiddle with the angle of the wings, no other articulation.

Combiner Mode: Identical transformation to Slingshot, and they can swap arms if you want. Since the guns are identical, you can use them for
symmetric decoration on Superion.

Overall: Really, no better or worse than Slingshot, to be honest. I suppose the vehicle mode is a little more off-model for the original toy, but it's closer to the animation model (which tended to be more of a generic jet than the Phantom in particular).


THE THIRTEEN: MICRONUS PRIME
Assortment: G1029
Altmode: Main robot becomes a disk, exosuit becomes a monowheel cycle Transformation Difficulty: 22 steps
Previous Name Use: PotP (sort of)
Previous Mold Use: None

Packaging: Five ties hold the exosuit to the tray, with Micronus in his disk mode inside. The little clear turbine thing that goes on the exosuit's chest (Micronus's Relic) is wrapped up in tissue and taped to the lower right of the tray.
The right side art has Micronus emerging from the chest of his exosuit. The inset on the back names the relic in Cybertronian glyphs as "Chimera
Stone" which feels more like something that Amalgamous Prime would have. The box back render of the vehicle mode has the exosuit finger painted silver
(it's not just reflecting light effects), but the robot mode does not. Given that the fingers do become exhaust pipes, they probably should be silver.

So, naturally Micronus Prime is going to be a Minicon/Mini-Con (I
promise to be inconsistent on that) of some sort, but since the Core Class
has been abandoned they couldn't just sell him on his own. Thus, he got an exosuit that can become a monowheel cycle for him to drive around...probably the closest we got to this idea back in the Unicron Trilogy was Overload, mostly because he didn't get any real development so might just be a suit for Rollout. (Sideways got perhaps too much lore and is very much his own
thing.) The idea of exosuits for Mini-cons wasn't really developed
otherwise, which is a pity. Maybe this is a way they can bring back
Core-sized figures without needing them to be accessories for another character.

Robot Mode (Minicon): While the shallow belly button design is meant to evoke the Armada-style Mini-Con connector, Micronus is otherwise very much a RiD15-style Minicon, with a face design straight out of that line's
aesthetic. Sure, none of them turned into a disk that I can recall (mostly balls and torpedo shapes), this robot mode looks like the sort of thing we'd have gotten a decade ago had they done "hard to swallow pill" Mini-Cons. The backpack includes Seeker-like scoops which evoke some of the pointy add-ons most RiD15 Minicons had, although otherwise there's no accessories to snap
on.
2" (5cm) tall in shades of clear and metallic blue, a little silver, and
a sort of dull teal. Dull teal plastic of the texture generally used for joints and parts that need some flex is used for the backplate (which
includes the butt), shoulder roots, upper arms, hip joints, and thighs.
Clear light blue plastic is used for the head, torso front, forearms, and boots.
It's hard to be sure how many paint colors there are, in part because I think some of the differences are a matter of thickness rather than actual color distinction. There's silver on the face, dots on the outer faces of
the forearms, the belly button, and the toes. I think the tops of the fists (the thumb side, not the back of the hand) might also be a thin layer of silver, because otherwise it's a metallic light blue not used elsewhere. A distinct metallic light blue is used for most of the chest details, most of each forearm (leaving an unpainted path down the middle that widens around
the silver dots), most of the helmet and some of the details on the boots. There's also a more greenish metallic aquamarine used on the sternum, pelvis front, the back of the head, and some of the details on the boots.
The neck, shoulders, elbows, and knees are all ball joints, while the
hips are riveted hinge and swivel joints. It's hard to tell because the package renders obscure the tops of the thighs and the instructions are
mostly grayscale, but I think the rivet head part is supposed to be in front
on the hips, rather than in back.
The fists can hold 5mm pegs and there's a 5mm socket in the small of the back. The belly button is just a very shallow relief, it can't actually
attach to a hardpoint.
The Chimera Stone is a 14mm diameter disk molded as a sort of turbine in front but with cog teeth inside on the back, made of clear blue plastic. The rim in front is painted the light metallic teal, the hub is silver with a teeeeeny little black Micronus Prime sigil printed on it. There's a 5mm peg
on back, and fair warning it is very tight on both the exosuit's chest and Micronus's back.

Transformation (Minicon): Turn the head around, lift the arms over the head then pull the shoulders down on transformation struts so that the arms form the upper half of the disk curve. The boots rotate around at the knees
to form the bottom part.
I can't reliably get the boots to stay together, leaving the "home
plate" part of the Minicon symbol with a gap in it. Neither orientation for the thighs (rivet head in front or in back) improves matters, although Dremeling off some of the sides of the pelvis piece might help.
Heh, if you leave the face pointing backwards when transforming back to robot mode, it looks like a Functionist head.

Altmode (Minicon): This is a slightly convex disk 1.5" (4cm) across and aboug 15mm thick. The front face has the Minicon symbol molded onto it and mostly painted, although the bits of robot shoulder that show through at the edges are unpainted. The hole in the back of the head is a proper hole in
the "second base" part of the border, although some of the robot torso
details (like the fake socket) interrupt the design a bit, as do the silver toes sticking out to the sides at the 4 o'clock and 8 o'clock positions. The 5mm socket on the robot's back is above the center on back, just enough off-center that it can't rest flat, with or without the Chimera Stone
attached.
Other than the shoulder bits, everything front-facing is the clear blue plastic. The border parts of the lower half of the Minicon symbol are all
the same metallic teal as the sternum and pelvis paint on the torso front.
The central M-like thing, the fake socket, the upper border parts, and the outside areas are metallic light blue, although the hollow forearms do
somewhat mar the effect. I think I'll see if I can match the metallic teal
so I can unify the colors, which look okay under low light but get a bit jarring under strong light. (FolkArt's metallic Aquamarine was as close as I could get, I ended up repainting all the greenish parts to match while fixing the parts that should've been greenish.) Silver is only present on the relevant previously described robot bits, which are now along the outside edges, along with more of the metallic light blue. The back side of the disk has no paint other than what's visible on the robot face.
In this mode, Micronus goes inside the chest of the exosuit's robot
mode. The border around the 5mm socket in back becomes an 8mm peg that goes into a socket inside the exosuit. Since this peg is off-center, it is impossible to put Micronus in sideways or otherwise askew. (And I doubt he
can go in Sideways, but that toy's not arriving until middle of 2026. Maybe I'll even remember this excuse for a joke when I review the Voyager Sideways toy.)

Robot Mode (Exosuit): Because price point is as much about part count as actual size, this guy is a bit short...if they'd wanted the exosuit to be as tall as a standard Deluxe, the set would probably have to be a Voyager. However, being a shorty plays into the theme. Stockier than MiniBots done at this size, since a bit disc needs to fit in the chest. The legs are particularly stumpy, and the head has a featureless face that manages to slightly evoke the RiD15 aesthetic that Micronus himself clearly has.
There's a sort of drone-propeller wingpack that sticks out on struts from the small of the back, closer to a Micronaut flight pack than the Motoroid style seen on the Legacy Arcee/Road Rocket/G2 Laser Cycle mold. (You can fold them up to make a sort of short tail that doesn't get in the way as much if you like, see the "MicronusMods" picture URL below.) The hands have three long exhaust pipe fingers each, the lack of paint on the pipes makes me suspect
the hands are made of "unpaintable" plastic (a variety that doesn't take durable factory paint well, so it tends to be left unpainted, often used for joints). Note, it still works fine as a robot without Micronus installed in the chest, but you can see right through openings in the chest and back. There's a recessed socket with a 5mm hole in it in the center of the chest
for the Chimera Stone, which I couldn't get back out without using a tool (I recommend a rod to push through from the back rather than trying to pry it
out with a knife).
4.5" (11cm) tall, same as Legacy Gears or Kingdom Huffer/Pipes, if
somehat broader at the shoulder. The colors are a mix of very dark green,
that verdigris color that was the non-clear parts of Micronis, black, and silver. The torso is very dark green plastic. Black plastic is used for almost everything from the hips on down, plus the biceps, shoudler struts,
neck root, and the panel in the small of the back that holds the wheel
struts. The forearms and the "wing" struts are a more greenish and glossier shade of verdigris than on Micronus, while the duller verdigris plastic is
used for the head, shoulderpads, hands, wheel-holder "propellors" and a fold out 5mm peg on the back of the left boot.
Most of the paint is silver, used on the front of the pelvis plate, the visor, circle details on the shoulder fronts, and headlights on the top of
the backpack. The more teal-ish metallic blue paint from Micronus is on the pseudo-windshield of the backpack.
The neck is a very restricted and pretty stiff ball joint, and with the vehicle mode windshield sticking up behind it the head can be difficult to turn. There is no waist articulation. The arms are pegged on, so the
"swivel" part of the shoulder joints are just peg rotation, but there's
lift-up pinned hinges a bit above the rotational axis. Bicep swivels, hinge elbows, wrist swivels. Pinned hinge and swivel hips, mid-thigh swivels,
hinge knees, instep hinges. The struts on the back have a number of transformation hinges, which allow for the alternate pose I discussed above.
The hands can hold short 5mm pegs, there's 5mm sockets on the outer
faces of the elbows and shoulders, one on the center of the chest (meant for the Chimera Stone), two on the back near the roots of the wheel struts, one each on the outer and inner faces of each boot and the outer and inner faces
of each foot (used for connecting the wheel in vehicle mode). There's also
one 5mm socket under each toe. There's 5mm peg grips on the upper back, so Micronus can hold on like a backpack if you don't want him inside, another
5mm peg on the butt, and the "propellers" have four short 5mm pegs on each.
The fingertips are NOT 3mm studs. There's a fold-out peg on the left boot
that isn't particularly useful in this mode (and needs to be tucked inside
for vehicle mode), it's for turning the wheel into a shield for Armorizer
mode.
There isn't an official mode for Micronus in robot mode riding in the chest of the exosuit, but with proper folding of the chest panels it's
possible to seat him reasonably securely. With the shoulders up, the back sorta-peg won't reach the hole in the exosuit's spine, so it's just hinge friction holding it in. It is not possible to close the chest all the way around the robot mode, though.
http://www.dvandom.com/images/MicronusMods.JPG shows both Micronus in robot mode in the chest, and the alternate pose I mentioned for the wheel struts.

Transformation (Exosuit): This is a partformer, although you could get a decent result without removing the arms, it would just look different and balance differently. The main thing is removing the legs and folding them up into a big wheel, which gets clamped between the cross-shaped "propellors".
The head tucks into the back, the chest folds open and the pelvis front folds into it to make a framework around the wheel, and it can be a little fiddly getting the wheel struts inside of the chest panels. The arms go onto those sockets on the wheel struts.

Altmode (Exosuit): So, this is a sort of monowheel cycle with really big exhaust pipes, sightly evocative of Spiral Zone. In "parked" mode the robot arms bend down at the elbows so that the finger exhaust pipes provide extra support points. In active mode, the arms stick straight out to the back. Of course, the arms still have all their range of motion, so you can also have
the arms bent up and over to have the fingers pointing forwards as blasters (this looks a little better if you swap arms, to avoid hollow bits on the outside). You do need to position Micronus in more of a "Superman" riding
pose to do much with the arms that way, though. There is a minimal control panel molded between the handlebars, but it has no paint on it. If you're already painting the fingers silver, maybe paint this panel silver too and
then add some accent colors on the details.
4.75" (12cm) long in active mode, 3.75" (9cm) long in parked mode, and
the wheel diameter is a little over 2" (5cm), with a thickness of 2cm.
Colors are basically the same as robot mode, but the backpack paint is now
the nose end of the vehicle and therefore more prominent. The wheel spins fairly freely as long as the robot head is fully out of the way, and the arms retain all their articulation.
All of the arm-based connectors remain useable, and the sockets where
the arms plugged in for robot mode are now open for adding borrowed weapons. The handlebars and back-of-seat 5mm pegs are accessible, but all of the
sockets from the legs are occupied by the pegs from the "propellers." The chest socket is also still accessible, if you'd rather just leave the Chimera Stone there and not mess with moving it to Micronus.
Micronus in robot mode holds onto the handlebars and straddles the body, with the Chimera Stone on his back. The curved forearms give him a sort of gorilla look when holding onto the handlebars. The peg sticking up at the
back of the seat seems to be intended for Armorizer mode, but you can have Micronus's disk mode "ride" the vehicle using it, I guess. Or have another robot hold on and get dragged behind? Speaking of dragging, if you don't
mind a little scraping, the vehicle can roll along in parked mode using the fingertips as skids.

Armorizer Mode: Part of being a partsformer these days is being an Armorizer, or whatever they decided the term is these days. The wheel
becomes a big thick shield via that teal fold-out peg, the arms become
cannons, and the rest becomes a backpack with Motoroid/Motoslave vibes.

Overall: The usual criticism of paint applications applies here, and
some of the connections are a little TOO tight for once. Still, a clever
idea, and a nice way around the dilemma of trying to have the Prime of Minicons/Micromasters when there's no longer a Core Class.


DECEPTICON: VENIN
Assortment: G1030
Altmode: Robot cicada
Transformation Difficulty: 17 steps
Previous Name Use: None
Previous Mold Use: None
Origin Universe: G1

Okay, so it isn't attached to Eddie Brock, so it can't be called Venom anymore. But they finally got the last of the Insecticons PROPERLY updated, the one that couldn't be done as a tweak on one of the original trio. (Thrilling 30 Venin was a sorta-Minicon Waspinator redeco, pretty much
nothing like the G1 character, not even in colors.) The original Venom
(which was a toy from a line other than Diaclone or Microman, called Armored Insect Corps Beetras) was notable for having pretty good articulation for a
G1 toy, due to some of the joints required for transformation.

Packaging: Two single ties and a double-tie across the chest hold the slightly mistransformed robot into the tray, with the wings in front of the legs like an apron. A tissue bundle on the lower right side panel has the
axe and gun.
The instructions include three steps for putting the wings in their
proper robot mode position, which is a bit overkill, but better than being unclear, I guess.

Robot Mode: They really did a good job of getting it to look like the original toy, with the forearms being the only significant weak spot.
There's more clear plastic tha in the original, and it's a more reddish shade of orange so that the eyes could be done in it as well. They deliberately added silver-backed clear plastic on the abdomen to continue that design
motif from the other recent Insecticons. The rifle is deliberately
different, missing a stock, so that it can combine with the axe blade into
more of a proper axe weapon. It's worth noting that as with the other
"Deluxe Insecticons, there wasn't really a G1 animation model to copy (Hasbro got rights to the toys, but the animation rights were more dubious), so any departure from the toy design is either due to increased articulation or aesthetic choices (like the clear belly). One casualty of this faithfulness
is the range of motion for the arms, since tucking the wings under the arms (which was just fine in the less-articulated G1 toy) blocks the arms from hanging straight down. About the only way to free up the arms entirely is to pose the wings in packaging mode, hanging down in front like an apron.
5.75" (14.5cm) tall at the top of the single antenna in a mix of bright green, orangey-yellow, light gray, and clear orange-red. Bright green
plastic is used for the antenna, the torso shell, the wing roots, the pelvis, the kneepads, the insect legs on the back, and the rifle. Slightly orange-
ish yellow plastic is used for most of the head, the forearms, the outer
shells of the boots, and the soles of the feet. The toes, instep hinges, little flaps covering part of the calves, thighs, fists, upper arms, torso sides, and axe blade are light gray plastic. Clear orange-ish red plastic
runs through the inside of the head and is exposed for the insect eye spheres on the sides and the visor in front, it's also used for the wings and the abdomen front. There isn't technically much in the way of actual
lightpiping, but if you shine a strong enough light in through one of the bug eyes it will light up the visor (a laser pointer works well for this).
There's light gray paint details on the chest and abdomen, silver behind the abdomen, little black rectangles on the shins, printed details on the kneecaps in red, silver, and yellow, and a purple Decepticon symbol on the
left side (his right) of the chest. All the paint seems to be tampographed rather than regular painting save for the silver backing of the abdomen.
The neck is a bit weird due to the transformation, it's basically a
double hinge on top of a swivel (gray swivel base, green hinge in between),
so it turns from right under the chin, but tilts to look up in the back. It can also do a sort of Rock'em-Sock'em Robot loss condition neck pop. The antenna horn is hinged for transformation and can fold back a little bit.
The waist is a normal swivel, though, not blocked by the insect legs or wing roots. Standard pinned hinge and swivel shoulders, bicep hinges, and technically double-hinged elbows but the second hinge bends backwards, the
arm can only bend 90 degrees in the normal direction. No useful wrist articulation, the transformation hinge snaps in place in or out. Pinned
hinge and swivel hips, upper thigh swivels, double hinged knees (the kneecap can either stay with the the thigh or with the boot, but you get better range of motion if it stays with the boot). The ankles have a minor front to back hinge range and instep hinges. If you don't have the ankles leaning all the way forwards, though, the figure tends to fall over backwards, as there are
no heel spurs. The wings are on pinned swivel and hinge joints, while the insect legs are on restricted ball joints, so you can fiddle around with how you want his insect kibble to look.
The fists can hold 5mm pegs, there's 5mm sockets on the tops of the forearms, one in the center of the back, one on the outer face of each upper boot, and one on the underside of each foot. The foot sockets are both
shallow and recessed, which limits what sort of things can meaningfully plug in. Fortunately, there's also a shallow 5mm socket under each toe. There's
a 3mm socket in the back of the pelvis.
The rifle is similar to the G1 weapon, but ends a few millimeters behind the main grip peg, with a 5mm socket at the butt instead. This is so that
the axe head weapon can plug into it. The barrel tip is a 3mm stud, but then there's about a centimeter of 5mm diameter barrel that can be used as a grip for axe haft mode. On its own, the rifle is 2" (5cm) long, no paint.
The axe head is in keeping with the G1 weapon, looking more like a broad punch dagger than an actual axe since it has a short 5mm peg where a haft
would normally attach. The axe version of short-handled Mjolnir, I suppose. The main blade part is 1.25" (3cm) wide, and front to back it's just a little longer. No connectors other than the 5mm peg grip.
Combined, the axe is 2.75" (7cm) long and held by the end of the haft. There's enough clearance on the back to let the combined axe store on the 5mm socket on back, although the axe blade sticks straight out behind the
figure. The wings stick out farther, though, so it's not a huge problem.

Transformation: Similar to the G1 transformation, but with a number of extra joints and panels and annoyances. For instance, when folding the legs double at the knees, there's a bit of gray plastic inside the boot (it covers
a bit of the hollowness in back) that needs to slide up past an obstruction, you need to flip the tab up before bending the kneecap or it'll lock into the wrong position and keep the leg from bending enough (I had to use a knife to pry it out the first time). The arms use the double elbow to partially collapse into the forearms, but the joints are quite stiff. Note, the shoulders are supposed to slide in and out in channels inside the torso, if
you pull them completely out on the premise that they need to fold upside
down it is rather difficult to get them back into their channels (oops). Finally, while the antenna looks like it's supposed to be a proboscis, it actually tucks under the thorax (just like in G1). Everything did go in its intended place eventually, but it was a lot more hassle than I think it
needed to be. Even on later transformations, when I knew what needed to go where and in what order, getting some things in place was physically
difficult, particularly the arm-collapsing.
Going back, the main issue is getting it started, as once you have it properly transformed it's REALLY solidly connected. You need to get the arms and boots moving about the same time. The fists aren't that solidly
attached, it's easy to pop them off entirely when folding them out of the forearms.

Altmode: It's a 40 year cicada, I guess, since that's how long since the G1 mold came out (and I'm not gonna count black and purple mini-Waspinator redeco as the same character). The top of the robot head is now the bottom
of the insect head, with the visor being more of a mouth. The robot chest is the top of the thorax, and the boots form the abdomen, with the kneepads
being a sort of butt end. Officially the weapons go on the sides, using the forearm 5mm sockets, but the legs have just enough range of motion to let you store the gun on the underside without making any feet lose contact with the tabletop. There is no similarly unobtrustive storage for the axeblade.
4.75" (12cm) long not counting the legs but with the wings back, making this only about 2-4 times bigger than a real cicada (which can get
disturbingly large). The gray is mostly hidden in this mode, the remaining three main colors dominate. No new plastics or paints visible in this mode, it's more about hiding some of the robot bits.
All six legs are connected to the underside of the thorax via restricted ball joints with a little bit of wiggle room besides the rotation axis.
There's molded details that the hind legs snug up against for greater
stability and to keep them from moving too far back. The wings retain their full hinge and swivel articulation, although the direction of the hinge means they can't actually flap up and down. There are tabs on the wings that go
into slots at the back of the abdomen to help keep them in place when not flying.
The boot-side 5mm sockets are on top near the back of the abdomen,
covered by the wings unless you have them spread for flight. The forearm sockets are on the sides of the thorax, and the back socket is on the
underside of the thorax between all the leg joints. All the other connectors are covered up in this mode.

Overall: It suffers a bit from being so G1-toy-accurate, as elements of the transformation hinder articulation that the original simply didn't have, and the transformation itself can be a struggle. A decent update overall, though, and it's possible I just got a particularly hard to transform copy (a little flash inside the relevant joints could cause major problems).


AUTOBOT: AERIALBOT SKYDIVE
Assortment: G1031
SUPERION COMPONENT: 5 of 5 (boot)
Altmode: Jet (F-18-ish)
Transformation Difficulty: 17 steps
Previous Name Use: None with "Aerialbot"
Previous Mold Use: AotP
Origin Universe: G1

Packaging: Two regular ties and a double tie hold the robot mode (with toes pointed down and nosecone not folded back down) into the inner tray.
The tissue bundle with the guns and the vertical tail bit is taped to the
lower right.

Common Parts: As with Fireflight, there's fewer actually reused parts
than there might seem to be at first glance, although they did manage to use the same torso front but make it look retooled by gluing a plate into the
left chest vent. Also the same are the arms, pelvis, hips, thighs, knees, shins, internal boot bits that include the thruster nozzles in vehicle mode, and feet. Most of the parts that become the jet shell are different, though, and unlike Slingshot/Fireflight the guns are new.

Robot Mode: Like the rest, it's decently close to the animation model except for the oversized backpack. There's a full face as in the comics and cartoon, and it's animation orange instead of comics silver. They didn't go quite so far as to mold the "E" pattern on the right pectoral that was consistently used in the comics, but they just left that side unmodified from Air Raid.
5.25" (13cm) tall at the head, 5.5" (13.5cm) tall at the nosecone on the backpack. A mix of red, black, and light gray, generally darker than the
other Aerialbots. Red plastic is used for most of the torso and the pelvis front. The sternum panel (which folds up for the landing gear) is light gray plastic, and I suspect that the new panel over the left pec is also light
gray if only because it's definitely painted and red paint over black plastic rarely looks that good. Also light gray are the forearms, the boots, and
most of the backpack. Black plastic for the head, upper arms, hands,
pistols, butt, thighs, feet, wings, fins on the boots, and the hinge that
holds the nosecone piece.
Gloss black paint on the centerline of the torso and the sides of the boots, plus some of the vehicle bits described below. The face is yellow-orange with squinting blue eyes. The left pec cover is painted bright red in a good match to the plastic, with a white outline Autobot symbol
printed on it.
Identical articulation to Air Raid, and almost identical connectors. Instead of a 5mm socket on the back of each boot for a tail fin, there's a single one on the left boot that has its housing stick out into the middle halfway, to hold the single vertical tailfin. Too bad there's no 5mm sockets on the outer forearms or shoulders, or the tailfin could be put there instead of being left on the back of the boot.
The pistols are identical to each other, not mirror images (down to the item stamps on the left sides). They appear to be based on the pistol he carried in the comics, which itself is a single-barrelled version of the toy design. Each is 1.5" (4cm) long with a 5mm grip near the back and a 3mm stud on the end of the single barrel. They didn't try to make the guns able to
snap together into a double-barrelled weapon.

Transformation: Identical to Air Raid, except there's only a single vertical tail fin that needs to be reoriented. The chest panel still needs a knife or longer/stronger nails than mine to pull out as the front landing wheel.

Vehicle Mode: More or less an F-16 Falcon, although it has two thrusters instead of the Falcon's one as an unavoidable consequence of being a retool
of an F-15. It has the lightning bolt details on the wings and the vertical tail section that helped the original stand out and look like part of an aerobatic team, although the bolts on the wings of the original toy had them appearing to strike out to the sides while the animation model had them striking forwards. This toy follows the animation model, as most recent G1 homages tend to do when there's a conflict (Walmart's Retro line being a notable exception), although both versions have the tail's bolt striking upwards with the point at the top.
6" (15cm) long with a wingspan just under 4.25" (11cm), in mostly black and light gray with blue and yellow deco. The red is all on the underside in the "ignore me" locations. Of the actual jet parts, the wings and horizontal tail parts are black plastic, the rest is light gray. The vertical tail is painted bright blue with the yellow and black-outline lightning bolt, theres yellow lightning bolts on the wings with red and white Autobot symbols
printed on them. Gloss black cockpit windows and nosecone.
As with Air Raid, there's accessible 5mm sockets on the undersides of
the wings (used for the guns) and in the rear underside (used for Superion connection). If you remove the vertical tail, there's a 5mm socket on top
near the back along the centerline. And as with Air Raid, the thruster
nozzles in back have 3mm studs at their centers.

Combiner Mode: Identical transformation to Air Raid, can be placed on either boot but there is a bit of confusion over which is Official. The instructions tht came with Silverbolt put Air Raid on the right boot, but if you look closely at the back of Superion's box, Air Raid is on the left boot
in the inset picture (the hinge on the heel is the tell). The instructions that come with Fireflight itself do not show how to put it in combiner mode
but do clearly place it on the left boot, agreeing that Air Raid should be on the right. The "control art" (which TFWiki stands by) agrees with the Silverbolt box back that Air Raid needs to be left and Fireflight on the
right, but since that's not actually included with the toys and the picture
of Superion on Fireflight's box doesn't even show the feet, it's kinda like putting author interviews over the contents of the book itself. So...put
them on either side, it's not like they're out front and visible, thanks to
the animation-style combination. Hasbro clearly doesn't care enough to make
it obvious to the end consumer.

Overall: None of the changes really made it significantly better or
worse than Air Raid, and it does a good job of depicting the animated version of the character.


Dave Van Domelen, still hasn't seen any confirmation of an Alpha Bravo option, but it seems likely at some point.
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