Phil's
Classics Minicon Thunderwing,
Movie Minicon Noise Effect
and
Universe Boltflash
Review


Thunderwing

A Minicon Swing Wing jet. Oh we're onto a winner here to start with as the swing wings on the toy actually swing. There aren't any default positions - unlike the large Classics Jetfire - but turned back they fit snugly along the horizontal tail fins. Most of the jet mode is blue bar the vertical tail fins and the engines which are both yellow.

He has one Minicon socket which form the single rear thruster which is on a hinge. This means his jet mode can be used as a blade weapon and pegged onto an arm. Nice. I just wish I had a toy with an arm port (Armada Megatron) or port on the end of the hand (Armada Hoist) to try him with.

TF - Fold the panels which is between the tail fins and connected to the thruster up via a hinge in the middle of the plane so it's pointing at the sky. Fold the horizontal tail fins down and then - via hinges at the rear of the tail fins - fold the vertical tail fins and their attached pieces out to the sides and back to form the lower legs revealing the upper legs. Slightly separate the nose cone down the middle and then fold the wings down which further separates the nose cone and allows you to fold it to the sides where you can then swing it down to form the arms. The panel with the thruster folds up to become the chest and the front of the Minicon socket on the thruster becomes his head.

Essentially a glorified A frame in the articulation department - if you ignore the sideways knees from the TF - Thunderwing can stand up stably despite having very small feet. His arms are pinned into ball joints at the shoulder giving them a range of movement. The only real distraction in robot mode is his arms are obviously the jet nose cone and don't have any obvious hands.

But not a bad effort at all, especially the jet mode.

Thunderwing was sold in the Clear Skies team set with Nightscream & Steel Wind. This figure was also available exclusively at Wal*Mart Stores as Nightscream with Classics Strongarm , Classics Knockdown , Cybertron Offshoot (Dirt Boss), and Primus in 2006.


Noise Effect

Noise Effect is an exclusive to Ito Yokaido stores, available only on July 20th, 2007. He's sort of a companion to Wedge Shape with a very similar colour scheme - dark blue becomes grey and yellow becomes blue. Really nice repaint and very reminiscent of the G1 Jetfire repaint of Cyberjet Hooligan - itself a small swing wing jet.

Boltflash

Boltflash appears in the Decepticon Ransack Minicon Team in the Universe 12 Pack which was exclusive to K-Mart & Woolworths. He's shortly due to be released individually carded. Boltflash is similar to Noise Effect again swapping blue for grey but this time swapping yellow for black. Looks good. This is another Minicon that if I see the single pack I may pick up !


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