Phil's
Tailwind & Hothouse
Review


Tailwind

Tailwind is a member of the Decepticon Micromaster Air Strike Patrol. He's co-moulded with Nightflight - the two share the same colours of plastic. The patrol also contains Stormcloud and Whisper. The same four toys were available in Japan as the Micro Transformer Jet Patrol Team numbered C-336 where Tailwind becomes Windrim and Stormcloud is named Starcloud while Whisper & Nightflight are named the same. All Four are recast as Cybertron (Autobot) Transformers for the Japanese release - but are identical to the Western versions.

Tailwind is the second Transformer - after Powerglide - to be modelled on an A10 Thunderbolt. This time the jet mode is mainly bright blue bringing it closer to the dark blue colour scheme used for the Cobra Rattler jet in GI Joe.

TF: Pull the tail back straightening out the two joints just in front of the engines to form the legs. Stand on the rear of the plane and fold the wings back to reveal the arms.

Ah the arms.... pieces moulded to the wings, fixed in place with no motion at all. A big let down, nearly every other Micromaster does better than this. The revealed body & upper legs are grey and look fine as does the shape of the lower legs - formed from the jet's tail - but are spoilt by some moulding indentations bellow the knees..

Decent jet, robot articulation is disappointing.


Hothouse

Tailspin and his co-mould Nightflight were recoloured and released as Hot House & Airwave, two of the Micromaster Battlestation Commanders. Hot House is packed with the Fire Station base.

The same colour swaps apply to both toys:

Grey becomes a maroon/red.
Blue becomes white.

Thinking about it if the white was the maroon/red and vice versa you'd have a rather nice Powerglide homage here *and* have got a better colour scheme for Airwave too. Another option is to swap the red/maroon for black and the grey for yellow for a Tigerforce repaint. As it is the white jet - with Fire dept stickers on the wings - looks good as does the red & white combination in robot mode.


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