I apologise for low quality pics. I spontaneously bought this as I objected to the ripoff price. But then I caved and thought that this will be the only one. So I had to uses my phone camera for the shots. I might get around to whipping out the good camera and do some proper shots and review later on.
*Update: Pics with my good camera here*
The box. It’s a nice box which has a illustrated picture of Powerglide’s jet mode. Hasbro, being somewhat poor wordsmiths have decided to use a phrase to make the toys seem like it has some awesome gimmick. That phrase is in a little bubble on the side “Missile Pods Form Assault Weapon!” Apparently important enough to warrant a capital letter for each word. To be honest though I would be more impressed if it said “Missile Pods Form Bunch Of Flowers.”
Of course a missile pod would form an assault weapon. A missile pod is a bloody weapon!
The cardboard around the front can be opened up and reveals the toy, which makes a nice change as you don’t have to wreck the box to get to him. Although if this was a price factor, I would have preferred the older boxes and a lower price.
First look at a freed Powerglide and he looks pretty good really. Much better than the Ultra sized abomination they unleashed on us a couple of years ago. Good colouring, appropriate red, simple but nice paintwork. He has what is I guess the way to have an air-force insignia on the side. Silver face and they have given him some blue for eyes. Grey hands and large fore-arms and we have a pretty good looking Powerglide here.
He stands smaller than a scout class from the old size scale and perhaps is closest to an Activator size, as he is clearly larger than a legend size. Bit annoying though as the commander class seems more expensive than the scout, but not as well made. No waist joint, but excellent movement available on legs and arms can compensate well. Not head joint either, so he is stuck looking forwards.
His missile pod is in two parts in the box and can combine to form his Assault Weapon, although it just looks like a collection of missiles. When joined together and put in his hand, it looks pretty rubbishy. Looks like they can be mounted on his fore-arms though. Will have to look into it.
Transformation time!
Transformation is simple, quick and fun. Not frustrating and the instructions are easy to follow. Good work designer guys.
Again simple, but effective paint. the turbines actually have a light shading over them, which I didn’t expect, as does the mini-gun on the nose of the plane. The jet mode is a version of a real plane. I remember playing with it in microsoft flight simulator, all I can remember is that it is a Tank Buster of some sort. Designed for low flying and has the capacity for carrying a large range of various weapon load-outs. This Powerglide can carry his missiles underwing, which make him look pretty damn hard core. However if you prefer a more G1 look, remove the weapons and he still looks good. He certainly doesn’t look like he is missing anything.
I was impressed to see that he has retractable landing gear, although again I would have been happy for this to be left out for a cheaper toy. Especially since it doesn’t work well, the rear of the plane is so heavy that when you put him on the ground, the nose sticks up in the air.
Sculpting is good, lots of panels and rivets, which is pretty impressive on sucha small figure. The plastic eems pretty good. It’s a little bit soft, but they have been like that for a while now. Even the greay bits aren’t the usual greay that Hasbro like to whip out in place of metal colour, and it’s actually a shade darker, to pull off a metallic colour pretty well.
My initail thoughts are that it is a pretty well designed toy, larger than the legend size, but definitely smaller than a scout. I would recommend this toy to everyone IF the price was lower, but at $18 a pop, I can only say get this if you are desperate. That probably goes for the rest of this size as well. For what you get, $18 is asking waaaaaaaay too much!
Size Comparison pics:
Robot mode with others. Up against an Activator Bumblebee, Scout SomeGuy, Deluxe Thundercracker and Voyager Lugnut.You can plainly see he is smaller than the scout guy. Even Mass-wise.
Jet Mode next to Deluxe Thundercracker.
jet mode next to Voyager Lugnut. Admittedly Lugnut is large for a voyager size toy, mainly due to that awesome wingspan. Probably not the fairest of comparisons.
Finally, next to Activator Bumblebee. This is probably the most equivalent in size. Sadly I don’t have any Legends on hand to compare with, but PG would be bigger.
Finally a pic of the card. the 3-d effect works pretty well on this. There were four choices, this one, Optimus, Bumblebee and Megatron. I think I chose well.
I took a video in an attempt to show the 3-d effect. Which naturally won’t work, but you can get the general idea.
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