Fall of Cybertron Starscream

Going through some of my older photos, I see I still have this guy on my harddrive.  So with the intention of lightening the load on my computer, I now give you, a  review of Fall of Cybertron Starscream (and by the way of default, War for Cybertron Starscream).

Most of the Fall of Cybertron deluxe figures I have looked at have been less than inspiring.  The Combaticons were cheap feeling, as was Optimus.  Kickback suffered from dodgy alternate mode, but very nice robot mode and Grimlock was just cheap and nasty. 

Luckily Starscream managed to come out looking all right.

He came on a normal blister card with some artwork and a simple bio on the back, perhaps in a nice way to avoid spoilers for FOC, they use the description of Starscream from WFC.  Ha ha, unlikely.  More like laziness.  I think that makes this Starscream fall  into my Badly Written Bios category…

One thing that impressed me is how his light piping even manages to shine through while he’s in box.  Nice! He also came with ‘Spinning Assault cannons,’ which I think were the standard machine gun of FOC.  In a nice touch, you could add a third one to the top and make it look like a scrapmaker.  The gun is of course, over sized, just like all the others.  They can be used separate from each other or combined.  When combined, spinning one barrel would spin the other.  A nice touch!



With SS out of the package, we can see that it’s a pretty faithful representation of his triangular jet mode and very much like how he looked in WFC (and FOC).  I really like this vehicle mode and while paint is a bit lacking, there is enough to get the job done and it by no means looks unfinished.  I just wish it was painted exactly like his in-game look (impossible of course).  The guns are meant to be mounted under the wings, despite them not being used in vehicle mode in the game.  They end up being way too large for the small wings he has.

There’s lots of nice details on this guy all over the place and added little sculpted parts that didn’t really have to be included.  Due to his design, you can have his head up and about while he flies around.  Huzzah?  The underside of the jet also manages to hide robot parts fairly effectively.

Transformation is fun and quick, without being excessively simple.

You can have the guns plugged into his arms in a number of ways, but I think he looks best with them in the fists.  Once again the sculpted detail is surprisingly nice and he has heaps of articulation allowing him the capability of holding many poses.  In a way, my biggest issue with FOC Starscream comes from his game design.  I always hated his bit chunky feet and they are faithfully recreated here.  He has big shoulder pad... things which look a bit like the seat belt a pilot would wear, or a parachute harness which is rather cool.  From a practical point of view though it would mean he has  massive blind spot on his left and right sides.  It’s nice to see that they included lots of sculpting on areas that are covered for robot mode and parts that otherwise would not be that exciting in vehicle mode.

he comes with MASIVE forearms which also include some nicely sculpted details but if kept like his game configuration inhibits his elbows.  Luckily a bit of messing about soon sorts this problem out and you will discover how brilliantly articulated his arms actually are.

Behold the MAJESTY of STARSCREAM!

His lightpiping works well as he has a large chunk of orange plastic in his head.  It works  from almost anywhere!  The face sculpt is great too

Now, let’s have a play!



Me Grimlock Smell something!

There you are!

Grimlock Have you now!

Recreating scenes from the game with sloppy photo editing.



I ended up liking this toy a lot more than I though I would.  In fact I would put him up there higher than all of them, except for maybe Kickback’s robot mode.  But since Starscream is cool in robot mode and vehicle mode, I think he probably wins.  I didn’t bother with the recolours of him into Thundercracker and Skywarp, but if I were still as excited by Transformers now as I was then, you wouldn’t go wrong getting them either as they did show up in the WFC game.  The weapons are a bit large, but you can easily leave them off and still have a really nice figure.