Rodimus Prime wrote:I'll concede that comparing Siege Jetfire to RoTF Jetfire was a bit harsh. He's not as bad. But close. Looking at the underside, I see arms, shoulders, legs, knees.
You can see all those on the T30 figure even more prominently, plus the robot mode head and the faux-cockpit chest. I think they blend much better on the SIEGE figure and don't look any more out of place than, say, those of
Classics Jetfire or the Classics Seeker mold. And at least on SIEGE Jetfire the arms and legs are actually properly integrated or at least tucked into the altmode (unlike T30 Jetfire), and the altmode cockpit
is actually integrated into the robot mode. That's the sticking point for me, is your dismissing him as "A robot laying down with a plane draped over him" when he has that much integration. If you can write
that off as "A robot lying down with a plane draped over him", then you're writing off
every jet mold ever aside from maybe
Cybertron Jetfire and ROTF Dirge.
To put it another way, I think the label of "A robot laying down with a plane draped over him" should be reserved for extreme cases, those where if you subtracted the plane bits you'd still have most of the robot.
Rodimus Prime wrote:Look at all those gaps. Just as bad from the side view. On an $80 Commander Class figure it is unacceptable to have these errors in engineering. There should have been panels to cover them up, or at least have the transformation fill them in.
Now that remark I take no issue with, because there really are some annoying gaps and no mistake. The altmode leg gap in particular is the absolute stupidest; they should either have had a panel that extended from the backpack, or made the inner faces of the legs more square (at least at the back). I personally don't find the side gaps as bad. I mean, it would have been nice to have them covered, but it does pose the question of where you'd put the panels and what would be sacrificed for them.
Rodimus Prime wrote:Because of the difference in size, the gaps are more prominent in Siege Jetfire than Generations Jetfire. That figure is by no means close to perfect, which is why I haven't bought it yet, but it looks better than this.
Less gappy, certainly, but it has far more painfully visible (and unintegrated or badly-integrated robot bits) so I'd say it's a tradeoff. And he doesn't have the cartoon altmode either... Honestly, I'd say that if SIEGE Jetfire doesn't float your boat then you're better off with either the original toy or the Classics version.
Rodimus Prime wrote:I bought the Siege figure even after watching reviews, because the robot mode looked good on screen. In hand? Not as good. Not bad, but not as good. Too bland.
Honestly, I'd put that more down to his color scheme being "Overall white with minimal red, black, and blue accents" than anything else. A super-detail paintjob would probably mitigate that, but regular release mainstream TFs
never have those (they'd be half again as expensive if they did, if not moreso). Maybe try panel-lining him, even if it's just with a ballpoint pen, see if that helps?
Rodimus Prime wrote:Bottom line for me (and again, this is just my opinion, I'm not stating facts so don't have an aneurysm) this is a disappointment for the money spent and the size and space it occupies.
Alright then, be disappointed. Although I feel I have to reiterate that the money spent is largely
because of the space it occupies
Rodimus Prime wrote:I mean, this is halfway to a Titan-sized figure, and it looks like someone enlarged a deluxe figure.
Eh, leaving aside the simplicity of G1 character designs I think he's too articulated and feature-laden for that. Especially compared to
these bozos:
Those would be $80 too if they were to be sold today.
Wolfman Jake wrote:A lot of us, myself included, don't really pay enough attention to the "play factor" of these figures either. Jetfire has a LOT of that going on for him, with blaster/thruster/damage effect parts, the ability to fit a Titan Master into his cockpit, and hang bars to "fly" Deluxe Class figures into battle. He's even got a ton of extra armor and weapons to play "dress up" with!
Is Commander Class Jetfire worth $80? He's half the price of Omega Surpeme ($160) and just as tall and massive as a Combiner Wars combiner ($80 - $110). If the transformation were more involved, including numerous robot kibble hiding panels, we'd be talking about a Masterpiece level of engineering, and the $80 price point would blow up like no one's business (well, I guess maybe Takara's business). So, $80 seems right to me, but then again, some people would argue that $20 is too much for a Deluxe sized figure now.
This is why he seems a good deal to me and I still want him, even with the stupid altmode leg gap.
Nemesis Primal wrote:Well this is easily the best this mold has ever looked, and I've never had access to the Legends figure, so I'm getting this. Plus once I explained Nightbird to my girlfriend because of this, she's now very excited about her too, so there's that. I am curious what she'll have in terms of accessories though, as Chromia's buildable sniper rifle doesn't really fit for her.
A buildable sniper rifle doesn't suit a ninja? What about a silenced pistol? Or grenades?
Gauntlet101010 wrote:She looks alright, but I like the Legends version I already have.
They need to make another female TF mould. Seriously. Or even just tweak an older one they already have more substantially as the did for the first Chromia. All the female TFs don't need to share a mould.
Well, in Nightbird's case she was never a Transformer to begin with. Just a curvy female ninjabot. And she's technically only sharing a mold with Chromia here. Chromia shares a lot of
engineering with the PotP Moonracer mold, but almost every part is new tooling.
But yes, more female TF molds - including non-curvy oines - is a good thing. I wish that they had done a new one for Firestar or at least made an effort to reshell her into being a truck like she is in the cartoon. I wonder how hard that would be to kitbash...
