Dave's Transformers Generations Rant: Authentics Alpha Class

Starscream (jet)

Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Gen/AlphaStarscream

After a long delay in which I thought the cruddy Titan Changers (which
were not labeled as such) were the post-blister-packaging Alphas, I finally
found this and a repackaged Bumblebee at Ross. Apparently at least locally
the usual Authentics customers weren't interested in the wave.

CAPSULE

$6 at Ross, claimed to be down from $20, but probably not that expensive
if it ever it a regular store.

Starscream: It looks pretty good in both modes, but is very loose,
especially in robot mode. It also uses 4mm pegs, so you can't really steal
the guns for a different Starscream. Worth $6, but not much more.

RANT

Packaging: Gone are the plastic blister cards that let you see the
entire toy before buying it, now they're using cardboard packaging that lets
you see the top third of the robot mode. The outer box is rather flimsy and
easily torn, the package relies ont he robust corrugated cardboard inner tray
for structural integrity.
The box is 7.5 (19cm) tall, 6.25" (16cm) wide, and 2.5" (6.5cm) deep,
using the same basic color scheme as other current Authentics, simple red on
white for the loco space and grayed out faux blueprint patterns behind the
character art and box back renders. The front has art of robot mode (upper
body only) on the bottom half below the small window, with the rather basic
nameplate in the upper left. The left side of the box repeats a slightly
different slice of the character art and the usual red on white Transformers
logo, while the right side has another cropping of the character art above
the Authentic logo and the plastic-free packaging brag. The back has renders
of both modes, the epithet for the character, and the left side has the
transformation instructions (clip and save, unless your box tore during
opening like mine did).
The inner tray has folded up supports and a block piece taped across the
middle of the robot to keep it secure. The wings are packed separately and
tucked into tray fold-outs in the upper corners, and the null rays are
similarly packed along the top back edge. A single rattan string holds the
robot in place in case the block slips or something. A second string is tied
around just the robot and not connected to the tray. To free the wings and
guns requires pulling open the sides of the tray (tearing them, most
likely...the tray may be made of stronger cardboard than the outer box, but
that's not saying much).
In addition to the wings needing assembly, the figure is packaged with
the legs telescoped down for vehicle mode.

DECEPTICON: STARSCREAM
Assortment: F6759
Altmode: Jet
Transformation Difficulty: 8 steps
Previous Name Use: Yes
Previous Mold Use: None
Epithet: Scheming DECEPTICON second-in-command.

Robot Mode: Wow, this is wobbly. The legs feel like marionette legs,
rattling around loosely and not really offering much support. The shoulders
are super loose too, but once I pulled the legs down to full length the
shoulders seemed rock solid by comparison to the knees.
So, yes, Starscream is literally weak-kneed.
Otherwise, it looks decent, with good molding of details and that more
saturnine face typical of the evergreen designs. His chin has what look like
3D printing terrace lines on it, not sure if that was intentional or the
result of not smoothing everything before sending it to die tooling. Rather
underpainted, but that's normal for Authentics even moreso than it is for the
typical Hasbro output. He has the usual fake vehicle details on his torso,
but the intakes on his shoulders are actually air intakes in vehicle mode.
7" (18cm) tall total, but his shoulder intake scoops rise a little above
the top of his head, in mostly a very light warm gray with some red, blue,
black, and gold. Matte black plastic is used for the head, guns, shoulder
struts, and the wobbly shin "bones". The forearms, feet, and the tail fin
bits folded back on his boots are medium blue plastic. Everything else is a
very light warm gray, practically an "off white" color. There's red paint on
the fake turbine chest sides as well as on the wing stripes. The face is
painted silver with red eyes, and the fake cockpit on the chest is painted
gold.
The neck turns on a swivel, the waist does not move. The shoulders are
ball joints on the ends of transformation struts and are kinda wobbly. The
elbows are hinges that snap in place for straight arms and look like his
forearm is about to fall off if bent even a little. The hips are ball joints
with a tendency to pop out easily. The knees are weird, with ball and socket
joints at the tops of those inner bones, but so much wiggle room where the
bones enter the boots that it's hard to get the figure to stand. The ankles
are restricted ball joints, and there's no heels to speak of so the figure
has to lean forwards slightly or it'll fall over backwards.
The hands hold 4mm pegs, and there's 4mm sockets on the upper arms for
the guns. The guns themselves have rather long 4mm peg grips, longer than
they need to be for either mounting location. They're single pieces of black
plastic 2.75" (7cm) long. And as I discovered, the sockets are slightly
narrower than the pegs, so it not only takes a lot of force to get one all
the way into one of his fists, it takes an unreasonable amount to get it back
out. I ended up having to pull the arm off first to get enough leverage to
work the gun out of the hand.

Transformation: A partsformer that tries to pretend it isn't. Yes, the
toy can technically be transformed without removing the wings, but it's a lot
more hassle to do it that way, and you have to pull them a little bit out of
the sockets no matter how careful you are. There's also no way to really
hide the face, the chin blocks the head from rotating all the way around.
The shoulder and hip ball joints are really prone to popping during
transformation, especially since some of the other transformation joints
require a bit more force to start moving. The shoulder roots fold down to
move the arms back, which does help the appearance but explains why the
shoulders were so wiggly. The collapsing rods in the shins that let the legs
collapse down are very obviously why the knees are wiggly...even if you
tighten the ball joints, the shafts have a lot of side to side play. The jet
mode is reasonably solid once you're finished, other than the arms and toes.

Altmode: Authentic and other cheap-line Starscreams have suffered from
having vehicle modes that are barely jets, often having tiny wings and then
just giant boots hanging out the back. For all the flaws of the robot mode
here, it does provide a decent jet. Oh, the vertical tailfins are a bit
stubby, and the robot arms don't lock in place (and frankly the whole thing
looks better if you leave the arms straight), but I've seen FAR worse from
Authentics Starscreams and their budgetary ilk. Heck, I've seen worse
Warrior Class or even Deluxe once or twice.
Anyway, this is a sort of fuzor of different fighter jets, a bit F-15, a
bit F-23, some canards off a Eurofighter or something, and so forth.
Aggressively not someone else's trademark. 8.5" (21.5cm) long with a
wingspan of 6" (15cm). It's more stable than robot mode, but that's not
saying much.
While the colors are kept pretty simple, it's recognizably a Starscream.
The vast majority of the plastic is the very light gray, with blue for the
horizontal tail bits and the incidental robot bits visible on the underside.
The hinge for the nosecone is the same matte black plastic as the guns,
shoulder struts, and shin struts. There's bright red paint on the forward
wing roots and the stripes parallelling the leading edges of the wings. The
nosecone is painted a slightly darker blue than the plastic color. The real
cockpit is also gold, and a fairly big (almost 2cm tall) Decepticon symbol is
printed in lightish purple on the center of the fuselage top. No paint on
the thrusters.
The guns remain attached to the arms, just rotated 180 degrees, although
the instructions advise removing them at the start and replacing them at the
end. No other connections, if you bend the arms as in the instructions the
fists aren't even that useful should you have extra pegs of the right
diameter, since only the thumb area is a full socket. No articulation, I'm
not counting the wobbly joints.

Overall: I definitely got my money's worth for six bucks. Is it worth
the $11-12 it probably sells for in the places that got it on the shelf at
regular price? Eh, borderline. Its problem is that while it looks good
enough, it's not stable enough to display or even leave standing up for very
long while playing. It's practically a rag doll, but pointy. Still better
than the Titan Changers that have been getting shelf space around here
instead of the Alpha Class, though.

Dave Van Domelen, now to review some hopefully less floppy toys.