Thought I'd do a review of Astrotrain, give my thoughts on him. Collectors might want to brace themselves for a failed G1 Astrotrain repaint, just a warning.
Astrotrain comes packaged in the "pentagonalized rectangle" style of box introduced by
War for Cybertron: SIEGE for Deluxe, Voyager, and Leader figures. It's not the wackiest box shape we've had, I think that's a tie between
Cybertron's boxes and some of the early US MP boxes.
A major purpose of this packaging style is to allow the front-of-box art to also be on the side, and thus make the box stand out more when set on the shelf side-out; it also allows boxes of the same size to be set next to each other within a slightly smaller footprint.
As has been the standard since
Armada, the back of the box shows off various modes of the Transformer inside. So with Astrotrain you have his three main modes plus a demonstration of the tender's launchpad configuration. Interestingly, the hinges of the tender seem to have been changed slightly between the version photographed here - and not for the better (I'll get to that).
The other narrow side of the box is dedicated to a painting showing off
War for Cybertron Trilogy characters and action, a bit reminiscent of the back-of-box paintings from G1. Up top we can see Optimus' face in the background, Red Alert supporting Hound, Prowl, Sideswipe, Chromia, and the Ark blasting off. Below that on the left we can see Sunstreaker (below Sideswipe; you can just barely make out his canopy details on the chest, the leg shape is right, and he has the spoiler behind the head), Red Alert again, Hound again, Wheeljack, Ultra Magnus, and what I believe to be Ironhide due to the bulky shapes. Below on the right we have Starscream (the chest seems to be red, and the body color is lighter), Megatron, Optimus Prime, Shockwave (the optic is the tell here), Soundwave (the shapes are right, and there's a shine on the chest that suggests the tape door), and the right arm of a Reflector. Not all of them match the final WFC toy (Sunstreaker is the most notable here), but there you are. It's a nice painting.
The top and bottom of the box have nothing of substance to see. There are no cross-sells anywhere on the package, only in the instructions.
Here's Astrotrain out of the box, entombed in the usual "block of ice" insulation. And here something Astrotrain gets a lot of flak for becomes apparent. Now, I've seen all the SIEGE Leaders get referred to derisively as "Voyagers with extra crap," but Astrotrain and Shockwave get the most heat for it because unlike Ultra Magnus there's no larger, armored form (and it's not something the original had).
Myself, I'm fine with it. G1 didn't have that many characters who would properly fit the price point in terms of body size, after all. And heck, the G1 Optimus Prime and Megatron toys - both of which can be considered pilots for the "Leader" price point concept - were both smaller figures with a lot of accessories rather than single massive robots (And funnily enough,
Earthrise Optimus Prime actually brings this full circle!).
And hey, I'll take a flexible use of the Leader price point over characters getting forcibly swollen to fit (granted, in PotP Rodimus Prime's case there's at least another figure - G1 Galvatron - to justify it, but still).
The backdrops in
SIEGE are printed with a metal floor, and a wall of tiled hexagons in the faction-appropriate color adorned by the character's insignia in white; SIEGE introduced specialized insignia for the characters that indicate division, function, and rank. Astrotrain's marks him as a "Space Transportation Captain".
And moving on to the figure proper...
Front view of Astrotrain and his tender. He has the cartoon head design, as one would expect. That's all well and good. He also has the cartoon chestplate, which I don't think worked out so well for him. As for the tender, you can see the three-posted coupler that connects it to him.
Astrotrain's color layout here is based on the outdated color model used in "Triple Takeover", as can be seen by the wings being gray with only a purple border on the shuttle/robot mode side; the finalized model has them as being purple on both sides. That's a fairly substantial accuracy flaw, even if "Triple Takeover" was one of Astrotrain's biggest episodes. I personally think it works out better for the shuttle mode's color coordination, though, but that's me. Your mileage may very.
Left side view of Astrotrain and the tender. Design-wise, the tender isn't the most realistic; it's like a normal tender crossed with
Armada Optimus Prime's trailer. But it's still good to have it, and it at least looks cool.
Rear view. You can see Astrotrain's shuttle engines on his back as per G1, and that the train wheels are separate pieces rather than solidly molded - and they have detailed connecting rods. You can also get a look at the rear detail on his tender, although I'll be providing a better look later.
Right-side view for good measure.
Dynamic pose to show off the underside of his forearms and the inside of his legs. On the hollow side, but not hideously so, and with the legs it's to be expected because of the demands of his altmodes.
Astrotrain has a good, comprehensive articulation scheme with a fairly full range of motion, as we've come to expect from Generations by this point. Nothing particularly gets in anything's way, his joints are all solid out-of-the-box without having to tighten them. His proportions are good, and he doesn't have too much difficulty balancing. He feels fun to play with in this mode, overall.
Astrotrain comes with five weapons: A small missile pod (named "W-40 Turbo-Core Derailer" by the Cybertronian text in the instructions), a pair of matching left and right lasers ("JF-50 Ionic Displacer Blasters"), a heavier laser rifle ("JF-30 Astro Blaster"), and a minigun ("W-15 Destabilizer Cannon"). They all look rather cool.
Astrotrain can wield the weapons separately, one possible configuration being shown here. Again, they look good.
He can also wield them combined into a big super-gun. The connection between the large laser rifle and the minigun is imperfect, at least on my Astrotrain. So be aware that's a problem that can happen.
Now to discuss some aspects of the tender. The tender is something Astrotrain has gotten a lot of flak for, people decrying it as "unnecessary crap" and the like. There seem to be perceptions of the tender as the cause of all the figure's fault, or as a chunk of plastic that exists solely to jack up the price of a figure people think should have been just a Voyager.
But I think the tender was actually a large part of the impetus for doing another Astrotrain so soon after
Titans Return in the first place. See, the Decepticons don't really have an equivalent as such for Optimus Prime's trailer base mode (a box that unfolds into a flat deck), which becomes a notable disparity with the WFC Trilogy giving us new base platforms - including a new iteration of Optimus Prime's original trailer in Earthrise (which Astrotrain is basically a transitional figure for). Giving Astrotrain a tender is a way to give the Decepticons at least a semi-equivalent box.
So as far as I'm concerned, he has the tender to thank for existing at all.
The tender unfolds into a platform that can act as a base, especially for smaller figures like Micromasters. But an issue is readily apparent here. It doesn't actually unfold flat, like the instructions and the back of the box promise. The change to the hinges between prototype and production version was a change for the worse, and this is a universal defect with Astrotrain. It's rather disappointing, considering the potential here.
This black piece is badly shaped, such that it can't actually fold flat like it should. Nice going, HasTak: you undermined one of the major gimmicks of a $50 toy. That's the kind of thing that should really have been caught during development, especially with the tender being such a major aspect of the toy, and it's easily my biggest gripe. Yeah, Hasbro's getting a complaint with pictures about this one.
Still, it can be played with despite the defect. The base was designed with WFC Micromasters in mind, but I don't have any. So I used a Titan Master, a Battle Master, and an Armada Mini-Con. ...Thinking about it, I suppose
Thrilling 30 Roller is close to being a Micromaster size-wise, so I could have grabbed him. Hindsight is 20/20 (heh).
You know, earlier I compared the tender to
Armada Optimus' trailer. And the way the top and sides are splayed out in this base mode? Yeah.
Astrotrain's tender is equipped with A.I.R.-Lock base connectors, and can link to other figures with the same connectors such as
Earthrise Airwave.
It's important to note that while they might look similar at a passing glance, A.I.R.-Lock connectors are
not the same as the Titans Return base connectors. Kind of annoying that they changed things up like that, especially with the only official bridge between the two types of connector being SIEGE Omega Supreme.
As a WFC Trilogy figure, Astrotrain has compatibility with the C.O.M.B.A.T. system of add-ons. And as a SIEGE Leader, he can use some of his extra parts as armor. In his case that largely amounts to using the top pieces of the tender as foot platforms for extra height and stability. They have 5mm holes to allow other add-ons to still be used, and they also have sculpted thrusters which is a nice touch.
You
can attach the rest of the tender if you want. I chose a bit of a tailcoat configuration here, but others are possible. It's obviously not the main draw though, and can look rather silly.
Of course, he's also fully compatible with Weaponizers. The only downside there is purely due to Brunt's limits in that regard. We could really use a Metroshot redeco of Six-Gun, to give us a more versatile Decepticon Weaponizer (and another Decepticon Weaponizer period).
Now it's time for some comparisons, as well as finally getting to the altmodes.
Astrotrain does come up short next to
Prime Wars Trilogy Voyagers, which includes his fellow Decepticon Triple-changers Blitzwing and Octane (so that's a bit sad).
However, he's about average for a WFC Voyager.
And now.. Please brace yourselves collectors. I got a junk G1 Astrotrain off eBay and tried to paint him up to be better-detailed (and match the cartoon; I also tried modding his head). It actually looked okay at first (not
great quality, but hopefully at least tolerable), but due to bad communication I made the mistake of trying to use Flex-Seal to clear-coat him. Yeeeah. And after I got that scraped off what's left of the paint is a mess... I think I hastily re-did some of it in a half-hearted way, but.. Oof. I need to strip and properly redo him. But he's the only G1 Astrotrain I have, so I have no choice but to use him for comparison purposes. So, you have been warned.
They look fairly similar in many regards, but there are some notable differences. SIEGE Astrotrain has real feet and the cartoon head, the way the shuttle nose/train front stows in the feet is reversed, and he has the cartoon's erroneous chest. One of the beats Floro Dery missed when designing Astrotrain's animation model is that the toy's tailfin splits open to become a chestplate, as seen here (although whether to set it fully high like this or not is iffy, due to clearance issues with his arms). I think going with the cartoon chest kind of cost him, because of how it contributed to the shuttle transformation (although there's more at work, and it might be more symptom than disease).
None of SIEGE Astrotrain's guns is an exacting match for the original toy's Ionic Displacer Rifle. The larger laser rifle comes closest out of the three designs, though.
For reference, here's a view of how G1 Astrotrain transforms to shuttle mode. SIEGE Astrotrain follows a somewhat-similar route, but there are deviations and complications.
First thing you want to do when transforming SIEGE Astrotrain to shuttle mode is fold the hands in and turn the forearms around, and fold up the waist flaps.
Next, you'll want to untab the feet and fold them onto the backs of the legs, then fold up the arms and start to bring them backwards. This is a substantial change from G1 Astrotrain, where the arms tucked into the sides of the torso.
Finish bringing the arms together, Then bring the wings and the engines piece backward, but don't lock the arms fully in with the engines piece yet. After this, collapse the sides of the legs backward. Also, it's advisable to turn the head around (unlike what I showed here).
Untab the sides of the chest and fold them up, and then fold the chest and tailfin back to cover the head and arms. The tailfin slots into grooves in the folded-up arms. After it's slotted in,
then you can lock the arms in with the engines piece.
And you're done. Here's how he looks compared to the G1 toy. Obviously... the aft hull of the shuttle is a mess. Having to unfold the chest like that to cover the arms and get the tailfin in place makes for an uneven top surface with exposed hollows, made worse by the thicker leg sides. It's tolerable for me in-hand, but... it could have been better and a lot of people won't like it (and don't).
It's not
all bad, though. While the engines are rather flat compared to the G1 toy's rocket bells, they're very nicely detailed. And the small upper nozzles are sculpted as such, instead of being plain round pegs.
Some solo shots of the shuttle mode, including attack mode.
The tender also has utility in shuttle mode.
It can form this crawler carrier, which looks neat but is hampered by the hinge issue. Still, it's a nice idea. And it would look even better with the one set of treads actually painted, but such are retail paintjobs. It rolls nicely even with the hinge problem.
There's also a launchpad configuration. No support tower, but it still looks pretty cool in my opinion. But again, the appearance suffers because of the botched hinge.
For those wondering, the connector does not work with SIEGE Tetrajets. It would have been kind of neat, but at the same time that would have made Astrotrain's rocket nozzles smaller and closer together, so... Can't really complain too loudly. Now, one thing I couldn't test was whether this worked with the
Unite Warriors Blast Off mold, since I don't have that.
So, the shuttle mode is pretty fun overall in my opinion. But it does have some obvious issues.
I think it would have been better to have the arms collapse like the SIEGE Seekers' arms (as seen above) and tuck into the sides of the torso as per the G1 toy, and for the engine piece to likewise cover the head (at most this would have required sacrificing one weapon to free up the head). That would negate the need for the chest to flip back to cover them, and the shuttle fin could just slide back into place (also like the G1 toy). It would have made for a much cleaner-looking shuttle mode, and quite possibly prevented another issue.
But of course, that's only one of his altmodes. He's not called Astro
train for nothing.
The G1 toy transforming from shuttle to locomotive, for reference. Transforming the SIEGE version is naturally more involved.
The first thing you'll want to do is temporarily unlock the arms so you can put the shuttle fin away. After re-locking them, split the legs, and spread the outer shell of the legs out temporarily.
With things opened up so you have access, rotate the nosecone halves around to bring out the train front. Pull down the pilot wheels, and flip out the halves of the funnel and headlamp...
And then, close things back up.
Fold the wings in and snap the tips down on his arms.
Then bring the train wheel panels into place and you're done, at least with the main locomotive body. I think it looks pretty good, overall. Although there is one issue.
This comparison with the G1 toy highlights it. The front end is noticeably narrower than the rest of the locomotive and the pilot wheels are consequently out-of-gauge. It doesn't personally bother me all that much, but I know it will bother some people. The need to use the dome as full-length feet for the C.O.M.B.A.T. gimmick might be somewhat to blame, or it might not. The lion's share of the blame definitely resides with how the arm transformation shifted the wing panels back compared to the G1 toy.
Although, for my money the functional wheels the G1 toy has fitted over the molded ones give it the out-of-gauge problem as well (just going the other away).
And now, it's time for the tender to shine. It's always bugged me that G1 Astrotrain didn't come with one, since his locomotive mode is an engine that's supposed to have a tender (and so to me it looks as blatantly incomplete as, say, a G1 Rodimus Prime without the camper shell; the exposed rocket bells don't help). The upper left and upper right nozzles being just plain pegs suggest to me that during development he was intended to have one (since otherwise there's no reason for them to be like that). But anyway...
Left side view of the tender. Obviously not realistic, as covered before. But it does at least have one proper railway bogie/truck at the front (which together with the treads makes me think of a Union Pacific pedestal tender), and a panel shaped like an actual JNR D51 tender.
Rear view of the tender. There is again some nice detail here - a backup light, wiring for it, and even a coupler cut bar. A pity there's not an actual coupler... Cue me scheming on how to add a detachable coupler.
Right side of tender for good measure.
A show that you can plug the weapons in inside the tender, which is always a nice feature. You can actually plug them all in, but I think it wouldn't have photographed as well (because they're all black and so is most of the tender interior). He has complete weapon storage.
Views of the complete locomotive. Personally? I think it looks great and is fun to roll around. The only downside is that the connection between the tender and the cab has no sideways articulation. So, if you wanted to roll him around on a track the curves would need to be gentle. I wonder if someone will make an articulated connector... Hm. Anyway, I think it's an excellent mode, all the better for having the tender to complete it.
Attack mode! You can make him one heavily-armed locomotive, a true menace of the tracks. Amusingly, the missile pod ends up looking kind of like a second dome.
And silly bonus pic.
Overall, I would say Astrotrain is a toy well worth getting. He has his faults, but I don't think they look too bad in hand and he's very fun to play with. The one major downside in my opinion is the dodgy hinge in the tender that inhibits its other molds. Thankfully it's at least easy to knock the pin out to get access to modify it, but you still have to shave and file a lot of excess plastic to get it to work as advertised.
Still, he's a very enjoyable figure and on the whole he looks good. And he's the first proper steam engine Astrotrain we've got since the original, so there's that. I'd say he's worth the full price, although if you can get him for less you'd be an idiot not to (just on general principle). I recommend him.
Man that would be cool 
[ Click to attempt signal recovery... ]
