(I'm Not Your) Stepping Stone

One of the 3 'Voyager' moulds released in the Classics range was Megatron. This is toy I do not own, therefore it seems reasonable to move right along to the Decepticon's very own Air Commander - Starcream.

The original Starscream transformed into a McDonnel Douglas F-15, and unsurprisingly, he still does. Not that you can get too specific, but Starscream is a single seater, which means that he is either an F-15A or an F-15C. As you can see in the picture, in plan the mode is really quite convincing. There is a plethora of detail, panel lines everywhere, I have no idea if it is accurate, but it looks good! If you have a look at the area around the air intakes / robot arms, you can see that the designers have even incorporated the conformal fuel tanks found on the F-15E.

The deco is clearly influenced by the original toy, but is quite different, as the red is applied in a completely different pattern. The G1 version also has blue tail planes, which this doesn't, while here we have a blue streak along the spine of the aircraft which wasn't present on the original. Armed with two launching missiles (moulded after the originals 'Null Ray'), the jet mode is pretty convincing... unless you see it from the front, where you are confronted with a gaping hole. Shame.

After a transformation that pays homage to the original Starscream toy, you are presented with a pretty good robot mode. Taking elements from the toy, the animation model and it would seem, Don Figueroa (the fans! the fans!) the figure looks exactly as it should. The downsides, such as they are, are the short, stubby arms which also have a restricted field of movement and the head, which also suffers from the same problem. With the exception of the nose cone, there is no kibble! Everything folds up neatly. The two missile launchers can be positioned on the arms as you would expect and they can also be held by the hands.

There's not too much else to say about Starscream. This is a solid mould, there is one glaring flaw, but other than that it is fine, if unspectacular. For me, Starcream is the Tramsformers equivalent of REM. Unfussy, solid, but a bit boring. A couple of decent albums and everyone loves them.