yep I like this guy a lot too. the colors and head are spot on imo. I study the colors of all new figures I get comparing them to the cartoon colors. only thing that is off on fireflight is the hands should be silver and he shouldn't have a faceplate. also on the arm modes I am going to have mine transformed just like they would be a leg and just rotate the connector 90 degrees. I like the look of the short arms better. there wont be any elbow articulation but o well.

 

Can anyone take a pic of Superion with the individual robot legs extended for leg mode?

I'm hoping that with those extended, it will help the combined mode lose some of the gorilla arms look.

The pic below is what I had in mind.

Thanks in advance!

 

I'm not convinced the hips and knees of the individual robots will take the weight in combined legs mode.

 

Got the limbs today. all are great and have an awesome upgraded g1 feel to them.

 

How the hell do you slide his shoulders down for jet mode? I can't figure out how to move them, and every time I try it feels like I'm about to break him. I know they're supposed to move because the wings are too far forward in jet mode compared to pictures.

 

They almost swing back, and make like a half circle motion

 

I tried it with mine and the individual robot joints simply won't hold the weight.

 

Damn. I was hoping that the top half of the body wasn't going to be that heavy.

 

do you have classics jetfire? the shoulders are like the shoulders on him. they rotate in a half circle back and then down and forward again. then they lock. just push back and then down and then forward.  

 

I would like to see a pic of superion with the bots in leg mode on the arms. make shorter arms. I know you loose the elbow joint but I am still interested to see what it would look like(like the g1 figures transformation).

 

Yup I couldn't agree more it's a very nerve wracking experience doing it. Like the others have said it more like swinging it (in half a circle motion) the part rather than sliding it.

 

So out of the 3 Aerialbots I've got, I think Skydive is my least favorite. It's a toss up between him and Not-Slingshot. I guess there's nothing inherently wrong with him, he just doesn't do it for me. Fireflight on the other hand, is all kinds of cool. See what I mean? Oh well, Superion wouldn't be Superion without him, and I do really dig the shoulder transformation. So thumbs slightly up for this one, just not all the way.

 

I agree with you though I think the issue for me is that Skydive's elbows aren't as clickly as Fireflight's nor are the rest of his joints as tight either. I even picked up a second one (so that I don't have to have Dragstrip as part of Superion) and the second's joints are no better.

 

Here's a weird issue that I'm curious if anyone else has on theirs: The screw that holds the nosecone together is too short and doesn't go all the way into the top half, so the two halves don't stay together. Easy to fix with a proper screw of course.

I like Skydive quite a bit - my second favorite CW limb after Firefly. He looks great loaded down with a handfootgun under each wing and his blaster on top.

 

Anyone having issues with floppy elbows on their Skydive?

 

The elbows are fairly loose on mine but can still hold a pose while holding weapons. Weird that some of these CW Aerialbots have detents on the elbows and others do not.

 

Didn't have a screw issue, but the arms on mine are OK at best. I think something got screwed up because this is the only one that does not have the soft ratchets.

This one is good. I like the jet mode alot, and bot mode is cool. Head sculpt is just incredible I you ask me, and makes a mediocre figure memorable.

Jet mode is sweet. Straightforward, looks good, and the arms and bottom do not bother me in the least bit.

Bot mode, he looks good, instantly recognizable, and oozes articulation for cool poses from a quad changer deluxe.

One thing to note, is the shoulder swivels were glued by paint on mine I had to pop the joint loose from the paint sticking together before they would move. It was very scary, and I was SURE I was going to break them both. If you get one of these, it may be a good idea to get a fine tip flathead to pry a bit and see if the paint glued them together like mine.

 

Skydive

Confession time: I can never remember which Aerialbot is which! Skydive is the grey one with black wings who TFWiki tells me is a F-16 Falcon Jet. He comes packaged in robot mode complete with a trading card. He's an Aerialbot so, like the rest of his team, there's yellow highlights on the card, and he's numbered 2.

The robot mode is nice and chunky, taking the 1986 Scramble City body part design and tweaking it to give Skydive pointer Shoulders and an almost upside down pot shaped head while putting all the colours where they ought to be. You can tell it's meant to be Skydive. His articulation is good: ball jointed head & shoulders, bicep rotation, bending elbows, rotating waist, ball jointed hips and bending knees. He come with a double barrelled gun for him to hold, similar to the weapon with the original toy, and a larger weapon with two warhead mounted on the end. Each can be held in either hand.

Transformation: remove the weapon. Fold down the front of the legs. Lock the legs together, unpeg the back of the knees and fold down the upper legs into the lower legs: the knee is pinned to a bar which is in turn pinned half way up the leg. So the knee is positioned at the top of the leg for robot mode and inside the bottom for vehicle mode. Get used to it, it's on all four Aerialbots and two of the Stunticons. The only thing to be careful of is that the knees tab in right when reversing the transformation. Personally I think it's Overcomplicated solution to a simple problem when a sliding joint, like Dragstrip has, will suffice. Fold the arms straight along the sides of the plane. Pull each wing back and swing them, and the connected shoulder and arm, back down the body: a similar idea to the legs here: the shoulder is mounted on a bar which is in turn attached half way down the body. Peg the inside of the wrist against the sides of the back of the jet. Fold down the tail fins and wings. Fold the nose forward, off the robot's back/top of the plane, and into the correct position for a jet.

I am not a plane man, but TFWiki tells me this new version is "a cross between an F-16 and an F-18". I can see the resemblance, but he now has two tail fins rather than one. Other editions include a pair of gold painted missiles underneath each wing. Also under each wing, and on top of the body of the jet, are 5mm peg holes which you can use to mount his weapons. Since there's three peg holes and just two weapons there's plenty of configurations available to you. Unlike Firefly and Silverbolt, Skydive has no landing gear and relies on the robot parts on the undercarriage to rest on.

Skydive can also function as a limb for Superion or any other Combiner Wars combined robot:

Arm mode: take the robot, fold the head back 90 degrees raising the combiner peg. Fold the arms so the shoulders are above the head, with the arms pointing backwards, folded down his back and the hands hanging onto the tabs there. Peg the legs together to form the lower arm. Bend the barrels of his larger dual cannon down, fold out the fingers and peg into the base of his feet.

Decent arm providing the Combiner wars standard of a turning and raising shoulder, a bicep from the robot hip, double bending elbow and rotating wrist.

Leg Mode: Take the jet mode, fold the nose cone onto his back, as per robot mode, and insert his large dual cannon into the rear of the jet as a foot.

Solid lower leg which provides a thigh swivel, bending knee and rotating ankle.

Skydive's a solid, if unspectacular, toy in all of it's modes. Get used to it because he forms the basis for another Aerialbot too!

Skydive was sold in Combiner Wars Deluxe wave 1 alongside his team mates Alpha Bravo & Firefly and the Stunticon Dragstrip. This wave was first seen in the far east in the middle of December 2014 and shortly afterwards, to much surprise, became the first generally distributed Generations deluxe wave in the UK for many years. The wave was then found in the USA at around the end of the same year.

Air Raid

The original 1986 Air Raid is an F-15 Eagle, the same as the original Decepticon jets and indeed the jet mode bears the same colour, black, as one of those Decepticons, Skywarp. This new version is a quite similar looking F-14 Tomcat. What's interesting is that the official images of the Aerialbots make it quite obvious that Skydive & Air Raid share a great many parts:

Part: Skydive / Air Raid
Leg Front: Grey / White
Upper Legs: Black / White
Waist : Black / White
Connector: Black / White
Gun: Black / White
Tailfins: Black / Black
Nosecone: Black / Black

More comments when the toy is released, but it very much looks like he has functional swing wings.

Air Raid is numbered 1 in the Aerialbot set and sold in the second wave of combiner toys. He is the lone Aerialbot in this wave and comes packed with the three Stunticons who do not feature in wave 1: Breakdown, Deadend and Offroad. This wave is due to be released in mid/late January 2015.

Future Repaints

The obvious candidates for recolouring these two toys are G2 Skydive, in silver, and G2 Air Raid, in blue, coincidentally the colours of another early Decepticon jet, Thundercracker.

It therefore makes sense to me that Starscream, Sunstorm and Acid Storm would make good repaints for Air Raid.

The swing wing F-14 design also automatically lends itself to doing Jetfire

 

I like Skydive well enough, glad to have another true member of Superion, but I don't particularly love him. I like his colors, but I think the torso is strange with the shoulders so extended away from the body, almost like he's trying to copy IDW Metalhawk's shoulders. In alt mode, the Jet doesn't fit the robot kibble nearly as well as Firefly. Firefly manages to blend the majority of his robot legs/arms into something that at least attempts to blend in to the jet. Skydive just looks like a grey block with a tiny Jet plane stuck on top. I don't like how the shoulders/wings don't lock in place for jet mode very securely either.

My left elbow is quite loose, and the overall joints feel a lot looser than Firefly. I think it might be something about the grey plastic used. The loose left elbow seems to be a widespread issue with all Skydives.

 

I think the shoulders were too wide spread on the final toy than the original picture. Other than that, the figure is great