The Energon Pub

In 2023, we are still celebrating Armada's 20th anniversary. As part of this celebration, what's better than looking back at some figures that never saw the light of the day?

In 2002, as the runaway success of the Armada toyline was catching Hasbro by surprise, a new way of filling shelves was devised - the very first CHUG toyline, Universe.
Eventually, 5/11 minicon teams and 11/16 "partner" molds had a planned Universe repaints, including:

Street Action Team
Race Team (Tiny Tins)
Space Team (unreleased)
Air Military Team (x2)
Emergency Team
Hotshot (unreleased)
Wheeljack (BotCon 2008 Drench)
Smokescreen
Blurr
Side Swipe (x2)
Optimus Prime (Supercon, x2)
Hoist
Thrust
Starscream
Jetfire (unreleased, converted to TFCC Timelines Astrotrain)
Unicron (Universe 2.0)

This review is about one of the three unreleased Universe repaints of Armada molds: Universe Spacewarp.
This straight repaint of Armada Jetfire, Gigacon class, was eventually recovered as TFCC Timelines Astrotrain, with a new head.
While Universe Spacewarp came with a redeco of the Space Team (not pictured), TFCC Timelines swapped that for one of the very few redecos of Cybetron Giant Planet Mini-con Team.

Alt mode
In alt mode, this is a straight redeco of Armada Jetfire, with a paint mask almost identical to TFCC Astrotrain. Several painted straight lines have a different thickness. As you can see, the grey plastic has a lighter tone, and the darker purple of TFCC Astrotrain here comes in a much brighter shade.

Gimmicks work as expected:

- while not pictured, Comettor minicon molds can integrated as front landing gear
- the shield can attach to form rear landing gear
- the cargo section opens up as expected, and arms can be transformed outward to expand the available space, making room for multiple minicons
- wings have dead and live ports for the missiles; the live ports allow using a minicon port on top to unload the missile
- touching the wing on top of the shuttle will activate lights and sounds, in this case a countdown from later versions of Armada Jetfire (tested)
- attaching a minicon to the top of the black (blaster) section will trigger the winglets to pop-up, and also change the chip's sounds (not tested)













Robot mode

On this copy of Universe Spacewarp, the quality of plastics and joints is virtually undistinguishable from TFCC Astrotrain. This chunky Gigacon class 'bot will hold poses as expected, including as Superjetpants for one of the versions of Superbase Optimus Prime.

Especially in robot mode, it's clear some paint applicatons were cut from the TFCC version. I guess some of the budget was eaten by the new Astrotrain head.
The dark grey of the head is not particularly inspiring, and it's hard to understand whether this 'con is alive or not under that visor.

Articulation
Spacewarp is quite articulated for an Armada toy, with plenty of meaningful articulation:

- neck: 360, no vertical movement
- shoulders, 360, up 90 degrees
- bicep: 360
- elbow: 90 degrees
- wrist: 360, a bit stiff as usual
- waist: nope
- hips: 45 degrees out to the side
- thigh: 360, above the knee
- knee: 90 degrees
- ankle: 45 degrees to each side, plus toe-to-shin movement thanks to the transformation
- wings: plenty of poseability because of the transformation

However, the lack of proper hips severely limits poseability. This is possibly because of the stability required by Magna Jet Convoy's jetpants mode.

Robot mode gimmicks:
- some light piping for the head
- it's still possible to manually trigger the pop-up wings on its legs
- the giant blaster can be connected to its right forearm or hand-held
- the shield connects to the left arm.
- attaching a minicon to the blaster changes the sound effect (not tested)
- if you want, it's possible to use the minicon ports on the wings to release the missiles even in this mode



Combined mode

This copy of Universe Spacewarp transforms and combines solidly, able to displace TFCC Astrotrain as Energon CostCo Optimus Prime and Overload's favourite purple pants.










The bottom line
Being an unreleased item, Universe Spacewarp is a bit of a forgotten curiosity for most TFans. This mold and concept has already been largely recovered by TFCC Timelines Astrotrain, which also came with a remolded head. Because of that alternative, it's hard recommending losing sleep over Universe Spacewarp. Personally, I prefer the Giant Planet minicon team as well, so it's an obvious choice. If TFCC Astrotrain didn't exist, we'd be looking at a pretty rare, inspired redeco of Armada Jetfire. The build quality is exceptional, especially after 20 years.
All things considered, I give Universe Spacewarp a 7/10 (3/10 if you already have TFCC Astrotrain).