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Thursday 20 October 2011

Familial October - Jetfire and Jetstorm

"Created using the most advanced techniques known to Autobot science, Jetstorm and Jetfire were clones tech recovered from Starscream. Brought online in a secret laboratory deep beneath Cybertron, they are the first Autobots created specifically to battle the Decepticons. Though they are young, they are extremely intelligent, working their way through the Elite Guard boot camp in record time. Together they are potentially the most powerful Autobots of all time, especially when they combine into their Safeguard form.
* The only Autobots that can fly.
*Youngest Elite Guard members of all time.
*The first robots with the ability to combine."

Toyline: Animated US
Generation: Animated
Size Class: Voyager (Deluxe each)
Faction: Autobot


Jetfire


Jetfire is the orange ad white Twin, and he goes a little something like this....


Jetfire has a yellow Translucent panel on his chest with a sculpted pattern inside it (like an expanding stylized T shape). That panel is surrounded by a white border and a pair of brown markings on bottom (maybe they're light indicators?) and his lower torso is a slender black form that leads to his groin and legs. A little fun thing in that part of the body is that his chest panel can open up, so you can make pretend that Ratchet or someone is doing open-spark surgery on him, or that the Matrix can be hidden there.

Jetfire's head is connected onto the torso by a connector that is held in place by his collar. the head is connected to the neck-connector by a hinge that allows him to bob up and down and also turn to either side. Jetfire's head is sculpted with a pair of air-men's goggles, a pair of side ear muffs, and a flame effect on top as hair (which can be lit up along with his orange eyes by his light-piping effect. Jetfire's face features a sculpted smirking smile and stubby nose and of course the TFA trademark...a large chin (in the shape of a chin strap). Jetfire's face itself is white, and his helmet is orange, whilst his goggles and chin strap are brown.

Jetfire's arms are connected to his upper torso by an orange folding part that slots into place at the shoulder point. The upper arms are connected to that piece by a ball joint that allows it to move pretty much freely. His elbow joints are created by a hinge and a pivot that alloows it to rotate fully and bend forwards by 90 degrees. Jetfire's lower arms are just solid blocks that feature a flaming blade on the outside. Jetfire's wrists are articulated to rotate fully, but his hands themselves are just sculpted there and cannot hold any real weapons (but what does he care? he can make fire happen!!)

Jetfire's legs are connected to the groin area by a couple of messy hinges, but luckily they're covered up by his hip-guards (which feature his Elite Guard insignias). The actual legs are articulated up the top to move forwards and back as much as needed by a set of pivots and to rotate at the top due to another pivot , so he can be posed in a more stable manor. The lower legs are connected by a knee joint created by some hinges that allows them to bend backwards by about 90 degrees and inwards on itself by a small amount as well. Jetfire's feet are simply sculpted and made to look like boots, complete with grips on the bottom, arch and a heels. The lower legs themselves are shaped to look like a well sculpted runner's legs.


Jetfire's alternate mode is a Cybertronian jet of some sort with a thin nose-cone and a pair of boosters at the back, backed up with a pair of fold out wings at the back and a pair of smaller non-moving wings at the front (possibly meant to show his powers activating rather than actually being wings)

He also features a non-opening cockpit in the center as well and several speed enhancing parts, like slimlined parts and extra wings for aerodynamic reasons etc.

Jetstorm


Jetstorm, being Jetfire's twin, is understandably very similar to his brother, so rather than making you read the exact same review AGAIN I've decided to go for the lazy option, and just list what parts of him are different to his brother!

Jetstorm's body is of course most noticeably different in terms of his colours, Jetstorm uses a dark and light blue colour-scheme, with gold highlights instead of brown
Jetstorm's flame decos are also different as these ones are meant to emulate ice or wind currents, so they are much sharper and more jagged looking that Jetfire's smooth lines, and of course they are blue instead of orange.

Jetstorm's head looks more streamlined that Jetfire's and features sharper lines and more points to it. His chin guard is a light blue with two bolts up the top, connecting it to the rest of the helmet. His helmet itself is the dark blue of his body with a pair of gold stripes down the middle. His eyes are in a visor format (akin to Jazz) unlike his brother's individual eyes and can be lit up using his light piping feature. Jetstorm's face is silver with a sculpted, sloping mouth (doing a :/ face) and a small nose under the visor.


His alternate mode is exactly the same as his brother, with the only exceptions being the colour-scheme and the wings/flames being made to resemble his ice/wind motif.

Safeguard

Safeguard is the combined form the the Jet Twins, but not in the usual manner for a combiner...

As you can see from the picture above, the Jet Twins actually fold themselves inwards, hang their arms off their backs, convert one arm and one leg each into an arm or a leg for Safeguard, fold their individual head inwards and flip out a half-head for Safeguard, then both sides are slotted together thanks to some clips in his groin, chest and head halves.

Safeguard is able to bend his arms and legs at knee and elbow joins thanks to some hinges and picots which gives him some limited articulation. The connectors for his legs and arms that lead to his torso are unable to move forwards, but can allow them to move upwards to the sides as far as you can. Safeguard also features a rotating pivot at the tops of his limbs that allows them to rotate fully to whatever pose you need them to be in.

Safeguard's feet are the same as they are on his smaller components, but his arms are different (since they were the "other" leg in each case and feature a sculpted fist and a stinger weapon on his knuckles. His hands are obviously unable to hold any other weapons, but they can flip out the flame/ice blades that were from his individual part's legs (and as such there are another set on his legs as well).

The Twin's chest plates are reused in this form as chest plates again, but in a different configuration (having a mirror-image format here) and the Twin's arms are folded back to act as a set of wings for Safeguard to help him with flying.

Safeguard;s face is half orange and half blue with a silver stubble surrounding a sculpted mouth and yellow and dark purple markings on the top of his head (purple on the orange half and yellow on the other. Safeguard features a lightpiping effect for his eyes, which glow yellow and blue (depending on the side) when a light it shone through the back.

Safeguard's alternate mode is just a combination of his two individual halve's jets. You just clip them together using the clips found on the underside of their nose-cones and the middle-parts on their main body (that was a part of their torso in robot mode) as can be seen in the second image above.

This "Mega Jet" shares the same features as the smaller ones, but just doubled up!

My Thoughts

The Jet Twins are an odd batch, bar their head sculpts, wing decos and colour schemes, they are identical (as twins should be) ans yet they look different enough that it's pretty much impossible to mix them up, and also, despite them having identical transformation schemes and alternate modes, they actually have to combine in a set order (Jetfire is the right, Jetstorm is the left). Also weird, is that the combined form of Safeguard features his own alternate mode, which is pretty much unheard of anywhere else. Their combined form could be seen as an abstract version of the old Multi-force from G1 or the Energon combiners from Energon, but that they combine vertically rather than horizontally.

Both twins are made up of a lot of clear plastic that allows them to glow in the light, giving him a powerful look (and luckily it seems to be strong plastic, as mine hasn't snapped yet!)

In the TV series the twins feature a broken English-Russian accent for reasons unknown but was most likely just decided on by the voice actors on the day, they can generate wind and fire each (Jetstorm and Jetfire respectively) and can use both in their combined Safeguard mode. Also, the Twins have the distinction in the TV series are being two of the only toy-based characters in the series to deviate from their toy transformation schemes when on screen (when they combine it looks different to how it does in toy form). In the IDW comics it showed that the Twins were both in buggy-modes before an accident that led to them being used to create these guys in the Safeguard project.

The Twins are the only characters to have been officially introduced through the comic book, before they appeared in the TV series who were intended to have toys and be main characters (so Perceptor and Wheeljack don't count)

Jetfire's name has been used several times by various jet-based Autobots in the franchise, but doesn't resemble any of them (in fact the designers have said that if they decided to make a character based on the classical Jetfire character model, then they'd name him Skyfire, after his own rename in G1)

Jetstorm however is a character who has had his name used by Decepticons and Predacons, rather than an Autobot like he is here. Also though his name has "Jet" in it, at least one of his name-sakes actually had a car mode instead!!

Safeguard's name of course was taken from Vector Prime's Mini-Con partner.

The concept for the Jet Twins was actually around from the beginning of planning, even when the series was going to be "Heroes" and had a different aesthetic, with even resin versions of the toys being created for them as well (turning into jets who combine as well, but in a different design style.)

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