Kingdom Cyclonus toy review.

Cyclonus of the Transformers has always been a bit of a loved chap by all.  I remember my friend's one when I was a kid and I liked it, but never enough to want one then.  Plus his forward swept wingyness always made me wonder if a plane of that design could realy fly.  Oddly, yes they are a thing!  Which is cool.

Anyhoo, with the advancement of technology, we eventually got Kingdom series Cyclonus.  It's quite obvious this guy fits into the Studi Series line as well, but, hey who am I to care?  Personally I found the old henkei henkei Cyclonus of yesteryear quite satisfactory.... Until I saw this one.  

Hooooo baby!

While the Henkei one was prety good, it was a deluxe size, so really, a tad on the small size.  The robot mode was pretty impressive though.  This new one is Voyager, so he fits nicely with being an overpowering looking dude.  It also allows from some nice transformation.  The Henkei one did have a small gap at the back of the jet, which did allow for sleek looking robot legs.

This one just looks amazing.  What is also incredible is the only jet pieces visible on him are the wings.  Such a sleek robot!  Just look at it! Amazing.  He is just so neat.  Remember this, it will be a common theme.

Look at how tight that body is!

When I first saw pictures of it online, I thought the legs looked a little large and I think in pictures they often do, but in reality his proportions look totally fine.

Cyclonus comes with a nice blaster, which is used for both modes, it fits nicely in his fist and is moulded to fit the wrist snugly.  It can also be plugged into his back for that nice bit of weapon storage, which I always appreciate.

Sculpting wise he looks pretty fine, a nice 3d interpretation of the cartoon and his face is just lovely.  It's also lovely as he some glorious LIGHT PIPING eyes.  Man I love me some light pipery eyes.  The chest and waist is also very nice with a cool robot button belt buckle.  And look at how MANLY it is.

Paint on the robot is limited, but it does the trick nicely.  There are a mix of plastics on the guy and the colours manage to match nicely.  The times when they don't seem to match up, but I think it is inspired by the cartoon somewhat, so that's cool.   

Articulation is pretty good too.  He does have hollow knees though, so a little bit of care is required.  There are also some nice touches in certain areas.  His shoulders hinge from the top, but there a sculpted underarm in there!

Luckily it's been very common for Transformers to come with ankle tilts, and Cyc's here work very nicely indeed.  He also has some nice forward/back motion too, probably due to transformation so he is a very dynamic figure.

Unfortunately though, I think he looks best when he's just standing around looking tough and mean. 

One thing that was brought in with the Siege line were effect pieces.  Cyclonus has a few areas on his chest which I call "blast nipples" so you can attach little explosiony bits to him.  Yes, blast nipples, are they cool?  If you want to slap little blasty bits on him yes.  If not, then no.  Luckily they aren't too obtrusive if you don't want to use them.

One aspect that I like are his hands.  Because they become the thrusters for the plane, you can transform the hands and it looks like he has a Megaman buster gun.  I remember the Henkei version having the option to plug his Targetmaster partner into the wrist, but this one can't do that.

Mainly because of two reasons. 1. He doesn't have Nightstick, his TM pal. 2. The connection just isn't there.  Hasbro released the toy coloured version with Nightstick and it still is unable to connect on to the wrist.  A slightly lost opportunity.  Personally I think the toy coloured version looks really good too, and if he had been a regular release, I probably would have bought that too...

Transformation into the jet requires compacting the legs and unfolding the nose of the jet from within the chest and flipping the shoulders a bit.  When you see how long the nose of the jet is, I hope you are suitably impressed with the amount of compaction it seems to go under.

It's pretty cool how much is stashed in his chest there and very clever the way it all unfolds.  I do often have trouble getting the very end of his nose cone out of the final section though.

Once he is in jet mode though, HOOO BABY!

What a sleek jet we have!  It's very cool and I'm impressed at how well such a bulky robot manages to fold up so nicely.  There are no signs of the usual robot hanging underneath that so often manages to plague Transformer planes here my friends.

It also ends up being a decent sized jet as well.

There is retractable landing gear in three places.    There is a hole for a flight stand, which uses the same one as the robot mode, however, it is quite recessed and hard to access without an extender peg or something.  In the following picture, it's in the shadowy area above my thumb.

It does look great when mounted though!

You can also mount the gun on the top for an incredibly un-aerodynamic option if that takes your fancy.  

The boosters are also compatible with the effect pieces that Hasbro popped out for the recent lines.  I hope they continue working with the legacy figures that would be cool!  (Spoiler, they don't).

What I will say that's impressive, is this jet is INCREDIBLY sleek.  Over the top it's just sooo smooth.  Underneath too.  However there is one bit that seems a bit odd.  The bits of his side of his chest, kind of stick out a bit.  Now, I could easily imagine them as some sort of air intake thing, but they also don't really plug in all that well and so have a tendency to flop about a bit.

I really dig that you can slap 4 jet effects in there.  It looks very cool!

The jet is a great size for swooshing around the house, and looks cool when placed next to another Voyager.  Speaking of other voyagers, I didn't have my Starscream out at the time, so totally neglected to take some pictures of them together.  Oh well. 

BUT

Cyclonus does look rather cool with Starscream's lasers mounted under his wings.  I'm not sure if they are cluster bombs anymore, as the robot seemed to use null rays and the jet cluster bombs.  The original had different bomby pieces.  I also don't have pictures of the aforementioned weapon mix.

But it does look cool, trust me! Like, look at these pictures with Hot Rod's guns in there!

It's amazing how sleek and nice this vehicle mode looks, I bet you'd be fairly hard pressed to guess that there is a robot mode hidden all the way inside.  It's also amazing how nice the robot mode looks.  Most of the plane parts manage to either be part of his design or hidden away rather nicely it's very well done.

Finally to top off all the goodness of the plane and the robot, the robot is just packed with lovely, nice articulation that makes a good, fun toy!

Voyager Cyclonus here is highly recommended!