Subject:
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Review of BTR Transformers Armada Jetfire
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.reviews
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Date:
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Sat, 9 Aug 2003 00:34:29 GMT
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5294 times
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Brick Review
Hasbro BTR Transformers Armada
JetFire kit
$7.99 at Target, 39 pcs
I've been interested in Lego almost all of my life, with Transformers up there
in my appreciation. When I was younger I once used my motley collection of
legos to make a Voltron-like giant robot, one which was formed from about ten
vehicles that linked together. Given the variety of odd parts that I had, I
thought it worked pretty well.
So, when I was at Target the other day and saw they had Lego-like Transformer
toys, I was gleeful and eagerly grabbed a couple sets. They look good from the
outside, with clean looking pieces that really do look like they were
manufactured by the LEGO company. This is a review of the first of the kits
that I've tried, for JetFire.
The pieces are very good quality. The plastic feels nicer than MegaBloks, and
snaps together just as well as I expect LEGO bricks to do. There are no sprue
bits poking out of the pieces, the paint (when applied) looks good and even, and
the color of the plastic is consistant. The waffle-bottom of the pieces is
similar to megabloks, with round sections connected with straight lines. I
wouldn't have any hesitation with using these alongside original LEGO bricks.
The bricks are generally large preformed pieces, and it may take some ingenuity
to reuse them in another model. The third cone on the back of the model is one
large gun piece, that fires a long thin missile out of the cone. (In the robot
model, it's held like a gun.) One interesting fact is that the trigger
mechanism is a 2x2 rotating plate set into the piece - you rotate it
counter-clockwise to fire, which is something that could be interesting to use
in a Mindstorms model, with care.
The model is of what looks like a space shuttle to me, with an alternate robot
form. There is an additional 'minicon' smaller model which interlocks with the
big one, which looks like a small tank.
The Space Shuttle model is a good one. Parts are well designed, and the model
sticks together very well, with only the cones in the back being at all easy to
knock off - and not too easily at that. The shuttle is very stocky, not being
much longer nose-to-base than the wingspan, but at that it doesn't look too
badly. The mini-tank form is simply a cute little tank piece without much
detail that fits into a hole on the back of the shuttle to give it another
forwward facing gun. Although all of the parts are used to make the Space
Shuttle, there is one odd piece left when you build the minicon tank. However,
if you stick it on top of the turret piece, it looks fine. (Inspection of the
"Demolishor" model suggests the extra piece is stuc under the 'front' of the
tank to give the attachment stud for the minicon a better grip.)
The transformation is unfortunately not Transformer-like - you basically have
to disassemble the unit most of the way, unfold the arms and legs from the
inside piece, and then stick (most) of the pieces back on to make it look like
the robot transformed. You end up with about half a dozen pieces left over, and
one piece left over when the mini-con is transformed. The robot looks pretty
silly, really, and after looking at it a few times, I rebuilt it as the Space
Shuttle, which looks better. However, it is fairly sturdy and stands up well.
The hinges for the robot are in the same style as the Megabloks giant robot
kits, only instead of having twelve positions in 360 degrees, they have 16,
giving you more posing possibilities. The hinges seemed to work fine when I
tried using them, but I don't know how much weight they might support or how
much use they can take before wearing out. They aren't the same size as the
Megabloks sets, so they're not interchangeable.
Summary:
As a building kit, this is simple, with large pieces that could have been built
up from smaller ones. There's not a lot of satisfaction in the building,
although the finished product does look good and has play value in it's
sturdiness, good look, and with two vehicles to play with. The robot form is
less satisfying, basically involving unfolding the base into a robot shape and
sticking pieces on to make it look better. However, the Space Shuttle form
looks good, feels good in the hand, and is oddly pleasing to me. The price
seems fair to me given what you get.
As a transformer, the kit is disappointing, largely because it doesn't
transform - you basically just use the same parts to build a robot, and not all
of the parts either. I suspect I'm going to spend some time seeing if I can
rebuild the kit so it truely changes.
As a source for parts this kit is good for the quality of the plastic and the
moulding, but is bad for the large pieces, which may be challenging to use in
other kits.
But on the whole I'm fairly happy with the kit for reasons I find hard to pin
down. I'm glad I picked up this model, and look forward to playing with it to
improve it. If you don't share my twin obsessions with Lego and Transformers,
though, you might want to go on to one of Hasbro's other models for GI Joe, for
instance, as the plastic quality really is astonishing for an off-brand product.
If Megabloks can get Hasbro's plastic formula, they'd be a lot more popular with
AFLs.
I'll give this three stars out of five.
-john
jcfiala523@hotmail.com
jcfiala@comcast.net
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Message has 2 Replies:
 | | Re: Review of BTR Transformers Armada Jetfire
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| (...) Wow. That's more expensive per part than the Bionicle series, and they don't look anywhere near as good. (...) That's one of the main disadvantages I see with the BTR line of sets. Hasbro claims to have larger models for less cost, but when (...) (21 years ago, 9-Aug-03, to lugnet.reviews)
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