TFC Uranos Blackbird "Silverbolt" review

Discussion in 'Transformers 3rd Party Reviews' started by LazyAza, Feb 12, 2013.

  1. LazyAza

    LazyAza MMC color go brrrr

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    I was on the fence with TFC’s Uranos for quite a while until Phantom released and I suddenly took interest in possibly purchasing all five of these combiners down the road. It’s been interesting seeing this set progress and change with some of the reactions TFC has had towards the set via fan feedback clearly being taken in to consideration over its development.

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    We’re officially beyond the point of “new” molds now as the remaining two limbs are going to be retools more or less of their already available counterparts. Overall I’d say I’m quite glad I decided to collect these guys and put Uranos together but certainly these figures could have been done better to which I will now focus on what I’m going to jump the gun and say already is the most flawed of the set; Blackbird, aka Silverbolt.

    Size wise I would regard Blackbird as a “generous” Voyager just as Phantom and Eagle were generous deluxes. He comes in a significantly larger box along with a little guy called Ray who functions as both a mini-con esc bot companion for BB and the chest plate of Uranos.

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    Ray himself is a cute little guy with a decent amount of possibility considering his size. While he doesn’t have any real hands to speak of his legs consist of hip ball joints, knee and ankle swivels and some shoulder swivels and elbow swivels. His head rotates but is not on a ball and he doesn’t have any weapons and his alt mode is a little plain. I’m going to assume TFC ultimately just wanted to be creative with this character instead of just throwing in a hunk of plastic for combined mode.

    Some people find him to be a glaringly incorrect element of Uranos’ design in regards to g1 re-creation (imo should never be the focus of all tfs)but as a tf collector who doesn’t consider G1 design the holy grail of perfection some do I’m more prone to desire new ideas if they seem like cool deviations.

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    While he is a little finicky to plug in to Blackbird initially for chest plate mode once you’ve got his legs and crotch tabbed on you’re good to go. He can also attach to the back of BB in jet mode but eh looks a bit silly. Didn't get around to taking a pic of that function.

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    Blackbird himself is sadly somewhat of a letdown, I wouldn’t quite say he’s flat out “terrible” but a number of elements of his design seem oddly chosen at best. On the one hand I love the jet itself TFC chose to have him transform in to (as apposed to the original Concord), the SR7 is just a cool looking piece of aerial hardware, the thing is though it’s another type of aircraft that apparently is hard to hide robot bits in as taking a look underneath you can clearly see a robot is there.

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    Even from the side Silverbolt might as well have an arm extended and be yelling “heya guys I’m a transformer, shhh don’t tell anyone”

    The colors themselves aren’t really awful so much as feeling a bit lazy. It’s as if he was going to be colored with a wider palette variety but for whatever reason TFC just decided not to for either budget, engineering or perhaps simple compromise reasons we’ll never know but regardless if you wanted him to be more red, white, whatever the fact remains his colors just aren’t very good, too much white, too much red, not enough color break up, he’s a big pastel splodge of very plain colors.

    The lack of details and accents is what really hampers him, a little bit of black in some key areas like the edges of the jet mode and maybe some more metallic highlights would have gone a very long way to just make him look so much nicer. It will be no surprise when a lot of people decide to customize him with some paint or marker coloring of their own and I am definitely considering this myself.

    As for robot mode it's very well articulated, good ratcheted joints at the hips and knees, the legs become Uranos's of course and thankfully they are very sturdy and I can't see them getting loose any time soon. His waist rotates 360 degrees though be careful of BB's armor flaps as they can get caught on his torso and may snap off if you rush the rotation. His shoulders and arms have the standard voyager articulation, up down in out nothing amazing nothing terrible just good. His head is also on a ball joint.

    Now his rifle is pretty impressive; a nifty way they chose to give him a weapon instead of just having the nosecone of the jet hang off his back or like the limbs have yet another boring pair of fuel tanks/missiles that apparently are meant to be “guns”. I’m still confused why they did that.

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    The rifle also has an optional third mode where you can retract the barrel, extend the miniguns out and it becomes an attack drone of sorts, reminds me personally of the enemies from the old Descent video games.

    [​IMG]

    Now for what is arguably the most important aspect of this entire package; torso mode. Folding the arms and legs up, moving BB’s torso plate down and plugging in Ray will give you this:

    [​IMG]

    In this mode is where you can yet again be reminded just how the paint aps don’t quite work. While it is clear TFC wanted to recreate the red chest plate, red waist piece look of the G1 cartoon/toy of Superion for some reason BB’s upper torso was also cast in the same red plastic and thus gives Uranos a red abdomen. The specific color itself is what bothers some but for me it’s the simple fact he just has so much red from the front. I would even prefer some more white in this area just to give it some more visually interesting pop.

    Now the head doesn’t irritate me as much as it has some people but I do agree that the proportions and design yet again just seems like three or four ideas competing for attention and the end result was a mish-mash of different opinions that pleases no one really.

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    I myself think the overall size is fine but the antennae shouldn’t have had the bulb bits on the tips, the mouth would have been better off simple than in it’s eternal teeth-grit expression and the side grills should have been narrowed in favor of widening the face slightly but opinions opinions. The visor however I think is fine, maybe a metallic paint would make it look better but it’s not an element that I’m going to make a big deal about.

    Another point of contention is the large boosters on his back, I think they’re great and when extended they make for a cool looking rocket-pack of sorts but if you don’t like them they’re as easy to detach as any other removable piece of these guys.

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    Now the build quality and QC of the figure is the one thing TFC nailed almost to perfection. Absolutely no flaws in regard to BB or my Ray at all, everything tabs and pegs together fine, no paint smears, no loose joints. Everything is top notch here. The combiner pegs are especially tight and hold both Eagle and Phantom very well, once we have all five jets Uranos will be able to sport some great poses I believe.

    The one qc flaw I did come across was that the handle for my rifle was just too fat to peg correctly in to the hand that came with my Phantom, whether it was too big or my Phantoms hand was molded a few millimeters too small who knows. Luckily it was easy enough to shave it down with a small knife until it stuck to the hand quite nicely. While the extra nub for allowing the gun to be pegged to the left or right hand is neat I think I’d have preferred just one so the hand was that much more snug gripping the gun but I’m getting nitpicky at this point.

    So yes, Blackbird is a mixed bag, for some people he breaks the entire deal, others such as myself will overlook his flaws either because we’re ok with them or we know we can try to fix them ourselves eventually.

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    My final verdict; he’s well worth your money if you can accept his lackluster paint and color scheme, especially if you plan on making Uranos but if they really rub you the wrong way perhaps consider trying to customize him yourself or wait for some other third party replacement pieces or stickers to make him more visually appealing.
     
  2. opt1musaber

    opt1musaber Victory Saber's Recruit

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    Hmm, I'm just not feeling that combined mode. Kind of reminds me of Superion with FP's appendage kit...Good review though.
     
  3. Kraken

    Kraken Is a vegiesaurus, Lex. Veteran

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    If you do remove the engines from the back, can anything be done with them? Could you attach them to Blackbird or Uranos' arms as big ass cannons or do they just sit to the side?

    Good review btw.
     
  4. LazyAza

    LazyAza MMC color go brrrr

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    Thanks, and yes they have the same size pegs as all the other removable parts so you could plug them anywhere there's a plug hole like their hands or forearm peg holes.

    They're so big though I kinda just prefer them on BB's back, they don't make him back heavy or anything as they're quite hollow.
     
  5. Cheem The Rup

    Cheem The Rup Well-Known Member

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    very nice review and pics !!
     
  6. LazyAza

    LazyAza MMC color go brrrr

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    Here's some pics with BB and Phantom wielding all their "weapons" at once XD:
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    [​IMG]
     
  7. Transformed

    Transformed 神戸 Member

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    Nice review!

    Thanks for sharing--oh, you're missing a "1" in your SR-71 up top:p 
     
  8. Autobot78

    Autobot78 G1er

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    great review, i love this guy but i will gundam marker the f^&* out of him, thanks again for pics
     
  9. Scully

    Scully Ham Sandwich

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    Gundam marker?
     
  10. DoubleClouder

    DoubleClouder Prototype / Testshot collector

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    Canceled my preorder. For some reason I just can't get into this one. Thanks for the review.
     
  11. nihilist98

    nihilist98 Well-Known Member

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    Would you be able to take a front shot of combined mode without Ray / minicon attached to the chest? Cheers :) 
     
  12. Sentinel

    Sentinel TF Museum Curator Moderator

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    Excellent review. Really in-depth and informative.

    After reading over everything, you confirmed my worst fears, Blackbird definitely has too many damn flaws. I really want to remain a TFC fanboy, but there is an incredible number of things that should have been done differently with this guy, but most specifically the deco. I truly don't understand how they think the colors work together. They don't seem to work well in any of the three modes and if they had even picked just one and ran with it, I could probably excuse the sacrifice of the other modes in favor of the one, but none of them work as they should. I'm not one to overly repaint my figures (a few highlights here and there, but nothing major) and from the looks of it, this guy will take some serious work to fix. For a figure with only two predominant colors, they somehow over did it. As you said in your review, too much red here, too much white there.

    Plus, for all the paint the threw on this guy, they still somehow missed the paint on canopy for the cockpit. They put paint on Phantom and Eagle's canopy, but not for Blackbird, who really absolutely must have it. The iconic look of the SR-71 is severely hampered by that lack of paint. It's very aggregating.

    I'll still be getting the entire set, but I'm nowhere near as excited for Uranos as I was for Hercules. Very disappointing.
     
    Last edited: Feb 12, 2013
  13. TigerBlade

    TigerBlade Prepare for extermination

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    This was off my shopping list but I think the combined form looks awesome and I'm half tempted again.....looking at the comments it would appear I'm in the minority too so I'm hoping for some good deals when he's finished.
     
  14. anubis20

    anubis20 Well-Known Member

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    Combined mode looks good to me but I lost love for TFC's stuff.
     
  15. LazyAza

    LazyAza MMC color go brrrr

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    [​IMG]

    There ya go, think I know what you're thinking, would indeed be quite easy for someone like say DR-WU or even TFC themselves to engineer a replacement chest piece that is simply a solid chunk of plastic as their are plenty of peg holes and areas to tab in to.
     
  16. Rewind

    Rewind Swoosh!

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    Thanks for the pics! I'm still very excited to get mine. I guess all of the negatives you and other people point out just aren't things that bother me. I love the colors, I love his head and face, and having a folded robot with a jet on top is fine with me as I consider it to be a trademark of Silverbolt. Not arguing anyone's opinion, just luckily for me I dont' share them. :) 

    Now I just need Customs to let me have mine.
     
  17. nihilist98

    nihilist98 Well-Known Member

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    Thank you. And yeah, appreciate TFC's take on their image of Superion. But I prefer the G1 look and hope someone could just make a simple chestpiece for him rather than putting Ray/minicon there, hence eliminating a 6-member Aerialbot. And thanks for all the pics and review. :cool: 
     
  18. Doc Brown

    Doc Brown Well-Known Member

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    I wonder if we could find a way to clip some of these jets to the up and coming Hasbro metroplex figure. :p 
     
  19. Alucard77

    Alucard77 Kaon Gladiator Champion

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    One of my friends that owns the Green Giant said this to me, and I cannot really argue it. He said, "You know why I like the Green Giant? It's because I don't need to buy this add on, or that add on or fix this with that. I open the box, it has everything I need and I am happy." Then he said, "Well, maybe, expect for the head"

    For Hercules, it was all fixes and upgrades. Seems like it's the same for this.

    I understand it's all about how you want to customize it to suit your needs, but it seems like it is a trend with TFCs stuff. I don't see too much talk of that for other figures. But for TFC it is the norm.

    I guess as long as people spend the money on it, they are doing something right.
     
  20. benclark1982

    benclark1982 Well-Known Member

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    Loving this set just like Hercules. I know that some dont like that there are extra parts and upgrades to TFC's products but i think that make each one there own. My Herc will look different than any one elses (unless you mimic some one's) but every green giant looks just like everyone elses. Now i just have to bid my time and save my pennies and get this one.