I pre-ordered Silverbolt and Gears and Sandstorm only days ago, but I got shipping notifications for Silverbolt and Gears almost immediately afterwards. Gears is still on his way, but he's a bit sluggish. Trucks are clearly slower than flying wolves.

So back in the day, the number of Beast Wars toys that actually made it onto the TV show were vanishingly small. After seeing the way the 1996 pilot episode was incredibly selective about which toys made it into the series, I went into collecting Beast Wars knowing that it was going to largely consist of non-show characters. The Fuzors assortment, which began in 1997, was a great example of this. There were a whole bunch of different Fuzors toys (Torca, Bantor, Sky Shadow, Terragator, etc.) but only two of them were incorporated into the TV series. Silverbolt was one of the lucky ones.

However, the original toy's missile launcher gimmick necessitated that the wings were thick and chunky, and immobile except for a hinge at the base. The toy was also sparsely painted, and while the animation model was mostly faithful to the design of the Kenner toy, the CGI artists still took a few liberties with his appearance.

I've really enjoyed, for the most part, the Beast Wars updates that started with Kingdom in 2021. It's nice that they've moved beyond the first-season characters and are addressing some of the later additions to the show. I've been hoping to see Silverbolt for a while now!

This toy is marketed as "Beast Wars Universe Silverbolt," and no mention is made on the packaging of him being a Fuzor. I suspect the real reason that the Amazon-exclusive Magnaboss Silverbolt was marketed as "Skywarp," using his Beast Wars II name from Japan, was to differentiate him from this toy, which Hasbro surely knew was coming eventually.

As a robot, Silverbolt stands at about 6.25" in height. For the Mainframe Entertainment scale guide for the Beast Wars cartoon, he stands eye-to-eye with Rhinox and Tigatron, but is significantly taller than Blackarachnia, so this tracks nicely. He's made entirely of the same sort of glittery, sparkly grey plastic as he was in 1997, but he's got some silver paint hits to bring out the mechanical parts, some gold on his feet and pelvis and wings, and of course the all-important black mask design. As always, his robot head portrait is exceptional. I wonder if they did an alternate head sculpt with an open mouth, so we could see his widdle teefs. In the show, they actually used a darker grey color for his upper legs and shin guards and parts of his chest, but we didn't get that here. He could have also used some gold-colored knuckles, but I get that the paint budget for these things is limited and finite.

The robot mode has ball-and-socket shoulders, double elbow joints, swivel wrists, a swiveling waist, universal hip joints, knees that bend both ways, pivoting ankles with ankle tilts in both directions. The shoulders also have a secondary joint necessary for the transformation, so he can sag his shoulders and look dejected if you want. The knees have a soft lock, so you can keep him standing straight and rigid without worrying about him flopping around. The bird tail on his back can pivot up to get out of the way during poses, which is nice.

More than anything else, though, I love that the wings on his back are tucked away into a folded resting position, and not just permanently poking up in the air, as on the vintage toy. A little bit like Kingdom Airazor, the wings have a secondary joint so that you can "shorten" them somewhat for robot mode, tucking them on his back a bit more cleanly.

His sculpted detail includes fake hinges between the arms and the upper body, which look like they should be transformation joints, but are totally fake and are there strictly for fidelity to his CGI look. There are even little molded screws holding the hinges together!

He's got his two feather weapons, which worked as launching missiles on the original toy, but which he tended to wield like cudgels in the Beast Wars show. They fit nicely in his hands, though they seem a bit small, or they can mount to his wings when not being used.

The basic ideas of his transformation are the same (the robot legs become the front hawk talons, the robot arms become the rear wolf legs) but there's a lot of different tricks employed to get there. The wolf head is hidden inside the robot chest, and the upper torso has several hinges that get the rear beast legs into their proper position. The entire head-and-wings-and-tail assembly rotates 180 degrees. There's a lot more complexity here than the old Deluxe-class toy, for sure.

In his beast mode, the toy is quite impressive. He's got an almost ten-inch wingspan with the feather weapons attached, and he stands at a little under four inches at the head. The wings have a hinge at the base, a secondary hinge, and a swivel joint at the mid-point. They are highly versatile for a wide range of different poses. The rear legs and front legs do include locking tabs to help secure them in place, but they are not strictly necessary, and you can unlock the legs if you want to pose him differently. His beast mode does include a mounting point for a figure stand as well. The shape of the beast form is a little bit odd; his chest seems narrow, and his front legs are arguably way too long. Also, his body seems too long, with his rear legs extending well past the point where his tail ends. But, he's a made-up mutant animal, so he doesn't have to correspond to existing anatomy.

The wolf head includes an articulated lower jaw, and he looks happy when his mouth is open, like Blackarachnia is going to throw him a Frisbee or something. His teeth and tongue are unpainted, though.
The face is airbrushed a dark grey, like the vintage toy, and his eyes are yellow with no pupils. The wolf head can move up and down a bit, if you unlock the transformation hinge. That's about it for useful movement in this form. I would have liked it if his talons had just one more point of articulation so he could use them for grasping. They're designed like feet, so they're good for standing up, and that's it.

Hasbro's got at least a couple of existing redeco options to choose from. Windrazor, the BotCon '99 toy, would be the obvious redeco, especially since they've already done BotCon Sandstorm. They could also sell him again as the purple version of Silverbolt, as seen in the Transformers: Universe toy line from about 2003 or thereabouts. I imagine we can expect to see either or both of these eventually!

With a toy line offering this year that honestly leaves me cold and uninterested, Silverbolt is a refreshing return to form, and a welcome addition to my collection. Seriously, they really need to just focus on the characters from iterations of Transformers that people love, instead of all the weird diversifying they've attempted lately. The writing's on the wall. The G1 updates (and, to a lesser extent, the Beast Wars updates) still sell out first, way before any of these other random characters. They see the sales right there on their own web site, so surely they've reached the same conclusion.

Zob (okay, Hasbro, now bring on Quickstrike!)

Preordered and delighted to hear your positive review. I saw pictures of the Core-class BM Cheetor and cancelled that ugly thing right quick!

Eagerly anticipating the delivery of Silverbolt and Cybertron Starscream...in the meantime, enjoying the surprisingly satisfying new G1 Metroplex KO (going price online including shipping...$35).