Like all great Seeker toys, the biggest difference between Thundercracker and his brothers is the paint job. The majority of TC is molded in metallic blue plastic, while his soft plastic bits and joints are molded in black. Most of the Takara figures rely on stickers instead of paint, but for some reason the Seekers seem to have a bit more. I feel like the silver really adds enough detail to the figure, making the stickers mostly unnecessary for me.
Since Thundercracker is technically a remold of Skywarp, he comes with an Arms Micron instead of missiles. This time we get another Balo in metallic chrome plastic. I guess it’s fitting that one of my favorite TF molds comes with one of my favorite minicons. I have to admit, this Balo looks really nice in shiny silver, unfortunately it’s a coating over the original plastic. This makes some of the joints ill fitting, causing them to pop out easily. Not so bad if you’re going to have him posed, but not that great for a toy.
Transformers Prime’s AM Thundercracker is a great looking figure that makes a nice trio of Seekers, but unfortunately he’s a bit more difficult to track down than your average Takara since he’s an exclusive in Japan. He’s definitely more of a splurge than a necessary figure.
-Vault
Great review and pics, as usual.
I’m holding off on this mould until it’s available as Slipstream. The attenuated, gangly design works better as a female seeker in my books. Otherwise, the Seeker lads just look, at best, like a bunch of whisper-thin Bohemian types.
I hear that a lot, but I’ve gotta disagree. While I’m excited about Slipstream, the mold looks at best like a fifteen-year-old girl. It’s just too angular and pointy and devoid of feminine curves to read instantly as “must be female” to me, as far as robots go (and yes, I know I just insulted a lot of thin girls, but thin girls by and large do okay in the overall opinions of society, so I hope they’ll forgive me).
Well, the way this mold falls into a naturally slouched hunch, you just need to cross its arms in front of its midsection, and it’ll look like any girl between the ages of 11 and 25.
Why do so many females walk around like that these days? They never used to when I was younger. Man, I feel old.
I think you’re definitely hanging out with the wrong crowd, Beedo! LOL
but yeah, this torso definitely implies a more feminine bust. I’m not sure if they were trying to keep the classic idea of the G1 chest turbines(!), but it’s definitely there.
I don’t much hang out with ANY crowd, mate. I just observe.
They think they’re fat even if they’re not and they’re trying to hide their rolls.
If that’s the case, that’s messed up.
just more victims of Hollywood’s “thin = beautiful” mentality.
I want to emphasize this isn’t a knock on you, Vault, because as you mention in the intro, you’re totally down with new-character redecoes of molds, but I’m always a little frustrated by Transformers fandom’s simultaneous decrying of toys being “lazy repaints” while demanding Skywarp and Thundercracker and Ramjet and Dirge and Thrust and Sunstorm from every Starscream mold.
I bet Hasbro’s current TF guys would love to go back to 1984 and tell them “make sure you make at least four color schemes for every single mold so we can print money twenty years from now”.
well, isn’t that the way most fandoms’ evil armies are? All the Heroes get unique IDs and backgrounds, while the Villains only get this for the head honchos and an army of nameless grunts. the Decepticons buck this trend a bit by giving us the Seeker army, but also giving each one their own identity. When the Autobots do this (OP/UM, Arcee/Elita-1/Medic, Sideswipe/Sunstreaker, Ratchet/Ironhide, Prowl/Bluestreak) they usually have some “familial” connection, no matter how tenuous.
While I’m not a particular fan of the Seekers, there IS a precedent for them. There’s a world of difference between wanting four figures that are SUPPOSED to look like each other, and taking, say, Generations Kup, slapping a new coat of paint onto him and saying that he’s Shockwave, Grimlock, Seaspray and Sky Lynx.
Right, and that precedent was set by “we’re only using six molds for all the bad guys in the first year”. That’s kind of my point; the fandom is all about mold reuse as long as that mold reuse happened when they were kids too.
This guy gets it. With the original Seeker trio it’s perfectly acceptable, even preferred, that they be straight up repaints of the same mold.
I think the Seekers got carte-blanche back in the day because they were supposed to be an army, and that notion stuck. Three or more from the same template is a cohesive, awesome fighting force*. Two is lazy, cheap, and neon.
* Like anything from Star Wars with “-trooper” in the name,
I’m Team Skywarp. Sure, I’ll get most Starscreams (except this one, the blah color scheme doesn’t do anything for me), but I’ll always go for the Skywarp version and maybe the TC version. I’m not sure if it’s because he always looked cooler and bad ass in black, the fact I never had the G1 (only SS), or my high school’s primary color was purple. (and white. and we were the last to have the orange accents, too.)
I would like to know if you are going to cover more of the retail line, like Prime and WFC lines. I recently got WFC Shockwave and Prime, and had a few quibbles on them. Like, speaking of color variant army building, WFC Prime is too small for a deluxe, imo, but twiddling with him a bit, I could see an easy Pipes redeco simply by making the cab blue and twisting his chest/hands around. (or orange for Huffer.)
and I think WFC Jazz looks more like Prowl than Jazz.
aaaaand just saw there’s a blue UM coming. Lovely. so all I need to do to custom WFC Pipes is figure out how to swap fists without breaking the arms. @_@
oh, and red Shockwave is Air Raid (new torso cover)?
Well, he was originally Fireflight, and he has a Fireflight head and Fireflight’s red and white colors and his bio and tech specs are Fireflight’s, but for some reason Hasbro has decided to release him as Air Raid.
Meanwhile, Tomy is still calling him Fireflight, but they recolored him black. C’mon, guys.
Anyone else think they could’ve redone it as Galvatron without much tweaking?
ok, I thought I heard the red Shockwave was coming out as someone else, but forgot who. I guess I assumed it was Blaster or something?
You should get a Baro 2 for Starscream so all your seekers have matching Microns. Do it.
Great Job vault! I have been on record many times saying I hate this mold and its spindlyness, but you always manage to take great pics of it!
Balo? ha ha ha
It’s the Japanese transliteration of “buffalo” with the middle syllable taken out.
Yeah, all the Arms Micron Mini-Cons have terrible names.