No need to call me Jetfire, mate! Harmony Gold has no say here!
Prelude: Skyfire, often called Jetfire, was a mainstay in many Transformers series, including those comprising the Unicron Trilogy. In those, his most important job was to powerlink with someone (Optimus Prime in many cases), and he would also receive at least one power-up / repaint per series. In the Takara version of Transformers Energon, Superlink, that power-up repaint was called Skyfire Sonic (or possibly Sonic Skyfire) and here he is in all his chunky glory. Let’s say go!

Robot Mode: I did a review of Energon Jetfire, of whom this figure is a repaint, way back in 2005. Man, I’ve been doing this a long time. Given how much time has passed, I think we can give this guy a full view.

Skyfire is a robot from a time when the Mega-Class (today’s Voyager-Class) was still big and bulky as hell. He is a big, hefty guy, almost broader than he is tall thanks to his big shoulder pads, with a rather tiny head and huge lower legs. Skyfire Sonic was released by Hasbro as Energon Overcast (more on that below) and the two figures are nearly identical, though Skyfire foregoes some silvery deco elements and the electronics included in the Hasbro toy. Not a big fan of electronics for the most part, so I don’t mind the absence. Skyfire’s chest looks a bit weird, as it is actually two interlocking clamps he can use in jet mode (more on that below). On his left shoulder you find his Autobot symbol, where he can apply his Energon Star.

As part of his somewhat weird proportions, Skyfire has both rather small arms and a very tiny head. The arms have elbow joints, but those are balljoints and a tad too loose, so sometimes Skyfire has trouble keeping up his gun. The head, on the other hand, is entirely immobile, as it’s a sculpted part of a plate that sits on top of Skyfire’s torso and you always kind of see the gap underneath it, as it hides Skyfire’s powerlinx ports beneath it. Apart from a lack of head movement, though, Skyfire has good articulation for the time, though the Powerlinx gimmick prohibits a hip swivel. He can pull of running and kicking poses with no problems, though.

His main weapon is a missile launcher made from transparent orange plastic, indicating the weapons forged from pure Energon the Energon Transformers used in combat. Apart from his missile launcher, Skyfire Sonic also came with another Energon weapon, the same spear carried by Energon Skyblast, only in clear orange. That’s something Hasbro’s Overcast didn’t have… and I don’t have it, either, to be honest, because I bought this guy second-hand and the spear was missing. Oh well, he can always borrow it from Skyblast.

So bottom line for the robot mode: he looks cool and I really like this paintjob (which resembles Armada Powerlinx Jetfire) a lot more than the original rust-colored one. The robot does have some limitations, though.

Alternate Mode: Unsurprisingly Skyfire transforms into an aircraft, a futuristic, space-shuttle-like vehicle. It doesn’t look half-bad, but like quite a few jet Transformers it has got a pretty big underbelly (basically the entire robot mode except for the arms) and there is a big empty space directly underneath the cockpit. You can somewhat fill it up by mounting the missile launcher there (and the white lever on top of the cockpit connects to it to fire the missile, nicely done), but it still doesn’t look particularly aerodynamic. Which, yes, it technically does not need to as a space shuttle, but still.

Skyfire does have a four-point landing gear, two of the four wheels can fold in, and all four jet nozzles are somewhat articulate, so you can imagine them moving to generate thrust in zero gee. Nice. On the bottom of the jet there is the capture claw I mentioned earlier, which can open up to capture a Minicon, for example. Can’t remember that gimmick ever being used in the cartoon, but it’s there if you want it.

So bottom line for the jet mode. Not bad, but maybe a bit too boxy to really give that whole spaceship feeling it’s going for.

Combiner Mode: Like most Energon Autobots, Skyfire, too, is built around a combiner gimmick. He can become either the upper or the lower body of a two-robot combination.

As a lower body, Skyfire folds back his robot mode arms and head, twists around the cockpit on his back, and lengthens his legs. An upper body slots into the Powerlinx connector previously hidden by his head and you have a pretty gigantic Powerlinx robot. Skyfire works pretty great as a lower body, and the wings and jet engines (from the robot mode arms) on the back give the combined character flight powers.

As an upper body, though, it looks a bit different. You basically turn the lower body around, split the legs apart so they become arms, and fold down the head again, done. It doesn’t look that bad overall, but the closest he actually comes to having hands is some weird sculpting in what used to be his robot mode heels. So he does work as an upper body, too, but not as well as a lower body.

Overall I was never the biggest fan of the Powerlinx gimmick. There are some nice combinations, but the gimmick does hinder the individual robots quite a bit in my mind.

Remarks: During the Unicron Trilogy, it was standard operating procedure that the main characters would get a power-up of some sort at some point mid-series, which meant a new paintjob, which meant a new toy on the shelves. Most of the times these new toys were just that, power-up versions of the same character, but occasionally they would also be marketed as new characters. In Energon (Hasbro), Jetfire (Skyfire’s Western name) would get a repaint called Overcast, a new character, but in Superlink (Takara), it would be a power-up of Skyfire, called Skyfire Sonic. Of course Overcast never appeared in the cartoon, but Jetfire/Skyfire sporting Overcast’s colors did, so… yeah, don’t look for the whole thing to make too much sense.

I gave the original Energon Jetfire toy a C-rating, but looking back, I think that is a tiny bit too harsh. Sure, he definitely could be better in terms of proportions and the Powerlinx-gimmick he is built around causes some issues, too, but he is a big, fun figure and he looks so much better in white and blue than in that rusty red the first one came in. So while he is not an all-time classic figure, certainly not, he is fun. So I guess I need to add a little plus behind the rating at least. Maybe it’s just the nostalgias speaking.

Rating: C+

Source: Transformers-Universe.com