Phil's
Legends of Cybertron Starscream & Sunstorm,
Universe Air Rivals Ramjet and Thrust,
Comicon Skywarp, Botcon Ramjet
and
War for Cybertron & Cyberverse Evolutions Starscream
Review
Starscream is a downsized version of the futuristic "War Within" style jet seen in Galaxy Force & Cybertron. Mainly molded in silver grey he uses black plastic for the upper legs and fold out weapons. The lower arms & feet are both painted black here but they're actually cast in the same plastic as the body. He's got a sword under his right arm/wing, and a gun on the left though if you buy 2 I imagine it's a simple matter to swap one on each to mimic the Voyager version which had two swords - the gun being introduced on the a href=http://www.tfu.info/2005/Decepticon/Starscream/starscream.htm>Supreme Cybertron toy. As per the full size version the wings tilt from straight out the sides to pointing down a little.
TF: Separate the front of the plane, pull to the sides & forwards to form the legs. Twist the lower legs round at the knee so the painted side faces up and fold the feet up. Bend the back third of the jet back 90 degrees to reveal the head. Turn the wings so the tips point up. Fold the hands out from under the wings. Turn the tail upside down.
Starscream is a superb miniaturised version of the Voyager toy: Ball jointed hips knees and shoulders form the articulation so all he's really lost from the larger toy is the elbows. If you can shrink the larger toy so successfully, then does that hint that there's not enough to the larger toy ?
Starscream is a Wave 1 Legends of Cybertron toy also appearing in the Galaxy Force EZ Collection and the target Exclusive Legends of Cybertron four pack.
Alongside the standard release of the Legends of Cybertron toys as the first wave of Japan's EZ-Collection were a number of promotions run by Japanese toy magazines. TV Magazine ran a mail away for clear Legends versions of Galaxy Convoy (Optimus Prime) and Master Megatron.
The Starscream in this set swaps the grey plastic of the normal version for clear plastic and looks superb.
Skywarp was a Starscream repaint exclusive to the San Diego Comicon in 2005. The grey is swapped for black and the black for purple with some new paint Ops in silver and purple. He came with a all black Cybertron planet key with a red Autobot symbol on it.
Ramjet was a repaint exclusive to Botcon 2005. This uses the Universe ramjet colour scheme - swapping the grey for white and adding some new blue paint ops.
Sunstrom is a Wave 4 Legends of Cybertron toy and the first repaint in the main legends line to use a colour scheme not found on a larger version of the toy.
As you may have gathered I'm not a subscriber to the cult of Sunstorm - the need to repaint every Starscream in bright yellow after the character that appears in 2 seconds of the cartoon and several issues of the Dreamwave comic. He's been a full size e-hobby exclusive and an Armada Thrust repaint at the point when everyone just wanted a real Armada Thrust. I'm pretty sure he's been a convention exclusive PVC and a statue as well. There was a period a few years back when you couldn't move for Sunstorms (and white Prime repaint Ultra Magnus) But it's been a while since the last Sunstorm repaint and this one only cost me £3.00. And actually it's rather good: The bright yellow is far more effective on the futuristic jet mold with some nice orange detailing. The upper legs and gun/sword are a pearl white, the hands are painted silver and the feet black. I'd rather have had all the original Decepticon jets first but this works on the small toy.
Ramjet is the first of two uses of this mould in the Target/Argos exclusive Air Rivals box.
The grey is swapped for white and some dark burgundy paint ops are added. Looks nice, but I prefer his companion Thrust in this box.
Thrust is the second of two uses of this mould in the Target/Argos exclusive Air Rivals box.
Here grey is swapped for burgundy with silver paint ops. Do this as a Voyager sized toy and I'll buy it !
Broadly similar to the original Legends Starscream, this version of the toy has red weapons & upper legs and blue painted feet & lower arms.
War For Cybertron Starscream, the only toy representation of Starscream connected to the computer game, was given away to people in the UK ordering the game from shopTo.Net and later as an attendees bonus toy at the Animation-Comic-Game Hong Kong fair 2010 if they bought more than HK$400 of Transformers toys at the event.
Cyberverse Evolutions Starscream
To promote Dark of the Moon a Cyberverse Evolutions 4-pack was released at Toys R Us containing older legends versions of Bumblebee & Starscream together with retooled trans-scanning versions of their Revenge of the Fallen legends. While the Bumblebee chosen is a repaint of his Universe Legends version, a small representation of his original form, the Starscream isn't a repaint of the recent Reveal the Shield version but instead is a repaint of the original Legends of Cybertron. The grey of the body & black of the arms is now a darker grey while the black of the weapons & upper legs is now a bronzey colour. The red paint ops are now a dull red.
There are two weapons included in this pack for the remoulded Legends figures to use, both of which are sourced from Robotmasters toy: We have the 2-part gun, previously seen with Wingstun, and before that Machine Wars Thundercracker & Skywarp, Beast Wars II Dirge & Robots in Disguise Skyfire. The other weapon is the original gun, formerly cast in clear green and then chromed silver that came with R-Blade, the Jetfire coloured repaint of Cyberjet Hooligan. Which brings us on to one of the problems with the set: Starscream has existing fist holes and a very small amount of retooling would have enabled him to hold the guns too.
Disappointing: should have been the underused RTS version to match original form of the Bumblebee, the colour scheme isn't that enticing and what we got could really have done with having the hands retooled.
Unreleased Full Size Versions
There are three full size versions of Starscream that haven't been used as Legends repaints: TRU Starscream - an inverse version of the standard Starscream colours mainly in red with minor grey highlights, Shatter Glass Starscream - a white & red versions apeing G1 Jetfire and Universe Dirge - a blue & beige version of the mould using the G1 Dirge colours.
It should be noted that the original colours for this toy have never been released on the Voyager sized mould outside of Japan - in the west we got the absurd giant version of Starscream.
Possible Future Repaints
There hasn't been a dark blue version of this toy similar to G1 Thundercracker yet. Neither has the Universe Acid Storm - another paint scheme used on a G1 jet - been used here. There are also three other versions of the original Starscream - Black, Ghost and G2 - plus the purple G2 version of Ramjet that could lend their colours to a new repaint of this toy.
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