Astrotrain's packaged vehicle mode is a mainly white space shuttle. And apart from enlarged sides above the wings and some detail round the tail fin it looks like a space shuttle. The enlarged side pieces can be attributed to booster fuel tanks or something similar I think - I'll refer to them as such - although the purple and black paint on them detract a bit from the white on the rest of the shuttle and the detail round the tail fin is sufficiently far back to still give you the impression that the cargo bay doors are there. Looking towards the front of the shuttle his Decepticon rub sign is where the left cargo bay door would be - Armada Jetfire keeps the record of the only TF Shuttle with working cargo bay doors. There's space under the shuttle to mount Astrotrain's robot gun, there's 2 fixed mounted wheels under the wing and a swing down landing gear under the nose. Top marks.
Hasbro's designers haven't wussed out on us - Astrotrain has a train mode !
To TF to train pull back on the engines at the rear of the craft, separate the tail fin in 2 and flatten it. Remove the gun. Pull down on the engines and rotate them 180 degrees along the axis that runs the length of the shuttle so the engines are pointing up. The entire wing section should swing down under the shuttle - exposing the rear train wheels which were recessed in the wings. Fold so the wings are under the nosecone. Fold the sides of the wings up so they peg into the shuttle's nose - there's some recessed slots on the nose which take raised indentations under the wings. Fold engine assembly up so that the engines are pointing away from the shuttle's nose. Turn over. Unpeg the booster tanks and fold to the side. Rotate the folded out booster tanks through 180 degrees at the point they are hinged to the body. Bring the booster tanks together behind what was the shuttle to form the front of the train. Mount gun on top of the train.
Astrotrain's train mode is the biggest liberty taken in the classics line - it's a bullet train. As such it should be making you think Car Robots / Robots in Disguise almost immediately cos he looks like the missing member of the Train brothers ! The front half is distinctly bullet train with molded windows and purple and black stripes. There's less detail further back and at the point where the nosecone starts to be covered by the wings it even looks like there might be a bit of open space where there shouldn't be. I've seen much worse 3rd modes than this though.
To TF to robot mode start with the shuttle mode - unfold the engines from the back and rotate 180 degrees. Flatten the 2 halves of the tail fin onto the chest. Remove the gun. Pull down on the engines and the wings, revealing a panel under the back of the shuttle. Unpeg the booster tanks. Open the panel, flip the robot head up, close the panel, fold the wings back up and bend the engines down so they're pointing out of the shuttle's back. Grasping the shuttle's body in one hand and the nosecone in the other pull exposing the robot's upper legs. Split the lower half of the front of the nose cone in 2, fold to the sides, rotate 180 degrees and lock against the sides of the leg. Fold the cockpit up to form the feet, and the landing gear down to form heel spurs. Separate the legs. Back to the booster tanks folded out to the sides: you'll see these are in 2 pieces on each side. While holding the upper piece in place - the shoulder pad - pull down on the lower piece to fold down the arm. Applying pressure to the side of the upper arm pull on the front of the train nose halves to reveal the hands - this isn't easy as they'll want to fall back into place so you need to immediately bend the elbows back or insert the gun into the fist.
Astrotrain's robot mode has knees - quite high up the leg, then a fore and aft joint just below the waist - after a very short amount of upper leg, joints to swing out to the sides at the hips, a ball jointed head, shruggable shoulders at the body as part of the TF, and ball jointed shoulders and elbows. The elbows are limited by the 2 halves of the rain cab on the outside of the forearms - I can't help but feel something better could have been done there, perhaps spring loading a metal peg and allowing the cab halves to rotate and lock in place ? I popped the ball joints out on my toy the first time I transformed it - be careful when extending various bits of the toy. And the upper legs are just odd - I can't see why they didn't just ball joint the hips.
The sculpting on the robot is superb recalling the original astrotrain but not entirely imitating it. The shoulder pads are new, as are the feet, the chest shield is reduced and the head is much bigger. The gun - with it's sloped back and long barrel is very reminiscent of the original.
I think I was looking forward to Astrotrain the most out of the classics. There's some small issues with the toy I've outlined above but it's still very good and far better overall than many toys in the recent past.
Repaints - Hmmm, a bit limited here as well. I suppose we could go TM2 Prowl/TM2 Dinobot and just stick the toy out again with a different colour scheme this time using his grey cartoon colours.
It's a much darker looking toy than before. Now to me a space shuttle should be white, so I'll be keeping the classics version as my Astrotrain. But this new one gives the Classic Decepticon army an extra trooper. Well worth picking up