Review – SDCC Exclusive Starscream SkyStriker!
The Highs: First ever Joe-TF crossover, excellent rendition of Starscream, fantastic stickers and sticker material, perfect Joe-sized Megatron in pistol mode!
The Lows: Price rocketing skyward, shortened hard points make it hard for missiles to stay on, did we really need another Cobra Commander fig?
The Verdict: About the only way this could be a more awesome crossover would be to make it transform. Good job, Hasbro!
Thanks to a promotion and a move for myself, Ol Yeller Reviews have been MIA for the past couple of months or so. The unpacking has gone slowly…made slower by my desire to get my Joe displays set up before anything else, but hey, what do you expect? Anyway, I FINALLY got around to setting up my desktop last night—still don’t have Internet, I’m tethering my desktop to my phone—but knowing the fervor surrounding this particular item, as soon as I had it in my hands I figured that I’d better get this review out so my JoeCanuck friends could decide if they wanted one before prices skyrocketed too much!
Ask any boy who grew up in the 80’s what his two favorite toy lines of all time are, and probably 7 times out of 10 that boy would say Transfomers and GI Joe. (Star Wars, Masters of the Universe, Thundercats and MASK all deserve honorable mention). Because Hasbro conveniently owned both Joe and TF, a crossover between the two lines just seemed like a natural occurrence. Well, it only took almost THIRTY YEARS, but one of this year’s San Diego Comic-Con exclusives from Hasbro is none other than the recently reproduced GI Joe SkyStriker…painted and stickered to look like the vehicle mode of every Trans-fan’s favorite arrogant, back-stabbing seeker jet, Starscream!
You know things are going to be different as soon as you get the box in your hands. The box’s front artwork is made to resemble a fictitious Joe/TF comic book cover. One side of the box shows pictures of the actual toy, while the other side shows drawings of the toy in red and white…similar to the original SkyStriker’s box. The back of the box shows a picture of the actual toy with artwork highlighting the Transformer “internals” and blurbs about the actual play features. All of this is set over comic panels that could have existed in the fictitious comic shown on the cover. Pretty darn cool box…but don’t you want to know what’s inside?
Open the box (*GASP* Yes, I did it! Toys are meant to be played with!) and a large tray slides out. Snap the cockpit/nose onto the front of the fuselage, add the wings and vertical and horizontal stabilizers, and voila, Starscream! Before some smart-aleck makes a comment, I would like to clear up that yes, I know Starscream & his Seeker brethren were originally F-15 Eagles instead of F-14 Tomcats. You can either ignore the difference or pretend Starscream scanned a SkyStriker instead of an F-15 for his alt-mode. Further, I feel I should clear up that this is NOT your father’s SkyStriker. Though it bears a striking (HA!) resemblance to the original XP-14F, there’s a reason the regular release of the SkyStriker is being billed as the XP-21F…this is a new mold. Honestly, Hasbro did a GREAT job making the new one look like the original, as you pretty much have to have them side-by-side to tell the differences. Just off the top of my head, I can tell you that the wings sit just a tad further back, the nosecone is a little fatter, the cockpit/nose section is molded into a separate snap-in piece, the wings and vertical stabilizers are now removable, and the hard points for the weaponry are shortened. The area around the lever that swings the wings and deploys the landing gear is altered, and the wings swing back a TAD bit further. The wheels on the landing gear are hard plastic instead of rubberized. Also, though Q&A readers knew this was coming, the new SkyStriker now only seats one and there are no ‘chutes…though Hasbro did address the only glaring weakness of the original toy by doing a bang-up job on the cockpit detail. Instead of a few crappy molded-in “gauges” and flat seats now there is a detailed seat, yellow-and-black striped ejection seat handles, molded buttons, and even a flip-up HUD. A throttle control handle sits on the pilot’s left, with the stick on the right. All in all, an excellent job updating the cockpit.
So what sets Starscream apart from the regular SkyStrikers? Well, while I don’t know the color scheme of the regular release yet, this version is molded in a much more Starscream-like satin medium gray instead of the glossy off-white of the original. The rear horizontal stabilizers are molded in blue, mimicking the original toy, and the canopy glass is orange. Red accents run the length of the “walkways” on either side of the cockpit, duplicating Starscream’s red “shoulders” (but this coloring does NOT continue underneath). Then of course, there are the stickers.
I love me some stickers, and Starscream comes with a HUGE sheet of them. Included are of course the stickers that make Starscream Starscream: Decepticon symbols, shoulder detail, and the stripes for the leading edges of the wings and horizontal stabilizers. There are stickers for SkyStriker detail, like the “Panel Removal” and “No Step” stickers. For total customization, there are even Autobot kill signs, Starscream’s crown from the TF movie, Cobra/Decepticon amalgam sigils, and multiple “squadron” stickers ranging from a somewhat standard “Decepticon Airforces” sticker to “Waspinator” and “Kremzeek” stickers! Finally, in one of the neatest touches, there are fake rubsign stickers, one “unrubbed” and one “rubbed.” Personally, I was torn: did I want to use the stickers to get Starscream as close to the original Transformers toy by using the bare minimum, or did I want to add to the detail and really make him like a Starscream SkyStriker? I settled on a compromise…the Starscream stickers plus the SkyStriker stickers with some Autobot kill signs and the “Decepticon Airforces” squadron sticker for that custom touch. The beauty of the stickers is that you can add as many or as few as you want, and it is highly unlikely that your Starscream will end up exactly like anyone else’s.
One other note about the stickers…this is the BEST damned sticker material Hasbro has EVER used on ANYTHING. HASBRO, PLEASE KEEP USING THIS STICKER MATERIAL! The stickers look great and are ultra sticky, but are durable enough so you can gently adjust them several times without them losing adhesion or flawing. They’re a FAR cry from the terrible stickers included with the PoC HISS…you know, the ones that would flaw just from grabbing them with tweezers? Case-in-point on the stickers: I muttered a few curses when I noticed that the square vent on the nose cannon was going to interfere with the placement of the Decepticon sigil on the jet’s nose. However, once I put the sticker on there and pressed down…it stayed down. And didn’t flaw. And actually still looked fantastic! I know, I’m going on and on here, but praise be to these stickers, because they eliminate so many nightmares and headaches! May every Joe vehicle from now until the end of time come with this same kind of sticker material!
This wouldn’t be much of a GI Joe toy if it didn’t come with a GI Joe figure, and Starscream comes with version #8,792 of Cobra Commander. CC is a blue repaint of the upcoming Ace that is included with the regular release XP-21F. He does have a nicely vac-metallized head, along with a matching helmet that I’m sure came with one of the million versions somewhere along the line. I’m not thrilled to get yet another version of Cobra Commander…but he DOES look good, and you would figure CC would be the one to team with Starscream…especially considering that Chris Latta voiced BOTH of them in the original cartoons! On another note, CC does NOT come with a pistol for his ankle holster, which would normally annoy me greatly except for two points: 1. if you don’t have a pistol to rob from another Joe, that’s kind of sad and 2. the pistol he DOES come with more than makes up for it. This pistol is none other than the mighty Megatron in Walther P-38 mode. The detail on Megatron is astounding, especially considering that it seems kind of doubtful that Hasbro will find another opportunity to release him again in the Joe line (unless they do more crossovers!) It is easy to tell that whoever sculpted this tiny Megatron really wanted to get it right, and had the original Megatron toy sitting right in front of them while they sculpted. Bravo!
There is one final bonus item I have to mention. Included in the box is of course a filecard for Cobra Commander…as well as similarly sized reproductions of the tech-specs for Starscream AND Megatron (minus the graph you needed the transparent red plastic to see). From what I can tell, the tech-specs are word-for-word reproductions of the originals, though I admit that I don’t exactly have my old tech-specs handy. Yet another fantastic touch!
I don’t have a whole lot of complaints with this toy. About the only serious complaint that I have is that the shortening of the weapon hard points makes it very easy to knock the missiles off, and it seems like the larger “AIM-22s” are much more susceptible to it than the Sidewinders and Mavericks. Just like on the original SkyStriker, I wish the wings could be swept independently of the landing gear. And since Hasbro obviously made a new mold, I really wish they had come up with a novel new way to hide the wing sweep/landing gear slider.
Hasbro did a fantastic, bang-up job with the first ever GI Joe/Transformers crossover. To me, this opens the door for more Joe/TF crossovers, and the possibilities have me excited. How about a purple/neon green “Scrapper” Earthquake, a “Brawl” MOBAT, or my favorite option: an all-new “Optimus Prime” R.O.C.C.!!!!!! How about it, Hasbro? Make a non-transformable cab section (cabover style Prime only, please) with a trailer that opens up DTC R.O.C.C. style, and include a new General Hawk. If you thought the fervor over Starscream was nuts, imagine THAT! For the meantime, you could argue that Ashiko’s Cycle Armor uses Autobot technology to combat the Cobra/Decepticon threat.
If you want a Starscream SkyStriker for your very own, be prepared to pay big bucks. The average price rocketed upwards by $50 in just a week, and is hovering around $200 now…with prices ever slowly creeping upwards. While it seems Hasbro learned a little from their mistakes with the Sgt. Slaughter exclusives last year and produced more Starscreams than they did Slaughters, the main problem is that Joe fans are also fighting TransFans for these. And honestly, what TransFan WOULDN’T want a giant Starscream?
Hasbro took my favorite Joe vehicle, made it resemble one of my favorite Decepticons, and threw in plenty of customization options and awesome extras. Now, I can’t wait to get the new XP-21F to see how the changes made in the new one compare to the original…and to give Starscream a true equal to battle!
