Death's Head
15-08-11, 07:45 AM
Jazz is a Transformer that I spent a long time warming to. His cartoon appearances were usually an embarrassment, as the writers struggled to make him all ‘street’. His toy bio had him down as something of an earthen culture junkie, but where his patois and general demeanour marked him down as a brother who’d be more attuned to hip hop and graffiti, the cartoon gave us a guy who liked his ‘80s hair metal and snapping his fingers in time to ‘the beat’. In short, like his toy, Jazz was just too white. Subsequent updatings to the original character through the recent Transformers : Animated cartoon have me finally appreciate the character and his stature as ‘go between’ between Autobot high command and the rank and file grunts.
Originally a Porcshe, for the Reveal The Shield line, Jazz is now a rather bland white bubble on wheels. It’s the sort of unimaginative squirt of toothpaste that can be seen cluttering up the roads the world over. At least he’s not silver. It’s just a totally boring design. Not even the presence of those familiar racing stripes can lift such an unimpressive effort. The slightly bulbous front end and compact rear end also serve to make the vehicle mode look clumsy. Elsewhere, it’s the usual overly plastic affair that has come to characterise the Transformers toyline. Black tyres and hubs, minimal paint apps and a general stinginess with the detailing to further bland out an already uninteresting looking car. There are clear blue tinted windows, but set against those blue racing stripes and blue headlights it’s an application of blue to far. Some clear windows (or even smoked windows) and silver hubs would have gone a long way to redeem such an unremarkable car. The slightly cheap feeling pearly-white plastics used for the majority of the toy don’t help matters either.
As part of the usual toe curling ‘fan pleasing’ nature of Classics toys such as these, there’s some speakers that can rotate around from the inside to stick outside of the vehicle mode as it did in one episode of the 1980s cartoon. Whether this will be of tremendous importance to you, the consumer, will depend on your level on indebtedness to a frankly creaky kids cartoon that’s best left alone now than repeatedly mined for such navel gazing nonsense as this. Particularly when it seems to have cost Jazz a more deserving application of silver paint elsewhere and makes him look ridiculous.
Jazz’s transformation to robot mode is pure win. It’s really nicely executed, mimicking both the sequence of the original toy and adding a few nice modern touches. The legs fold out of the back and those rear wheels rotate around to flip out the shins – a really nice touch which stops him having horrible hollow legs. The bonnet folds down and as it does, it moves his head up into place! The arms are a little bit fiddly, as they are clipped quite particularly into the chasis and have to go into a few twists to get into place.
The robot mode is good, brilliant in fact. He ticks all the right boxes in terms of overall sculpt, design and appearance, despite the rather glum facial expression which renders him a little Judge Dredd –like. All the normal modern engineering ticks are in place: swivel joints, hinges and rotating joints to give Jazz a superb range of movement and posability to make him an excellent action figure, one of the very best in fact. In the play stakes, there’s little to fault here. There’s no cumbersome parts to get in the way, nothing that’s likely to fall off or get lost, nothing that moves when it shouldn’t. Yet there’s still an overall feeling that the figure somehow falls short. The use of cheaper and more durable plastics are no doubt a huge boon to child’s play, but in rendering the Transformers in these materials, they cease to be the quality product they once were. For someone who still gets a great deal of joy out of playing with these things, that might come as a strange thing to say, but it’s hard not to be constantly disappointed that small touches such as vacuum metalising and rubber tyres have been sacrificed to cut manufacturing costs. To me that leaves you with an end product that’s no more different or in any way special to any other action figure that’s on the market.
153154155
Originally a Porcshe, for the Reveal The Shield line, Jazz is now a rather bland white bubble on wheels. It’s the sort of unimaginative squirt of toothpaste that can be seen cluttering up the roads the world over. At least he’s not silver. It’s just a totally boring design. Not even the presence of those familiar racing stripes can lift such an unimpressive effort. The slightly bulbous front end and compact rear end also serve to make the vehicle mode look clumsy. Elsewhere, it’s the usual overly plastic affair that has come to characterise the Transformers toyline. Black tyres and hubs, minimal paint apps and a general stinginess with the detailing to further bland out an already uninteresting looking car. There are clear blue tinted windows, but set against those blue racing stripes and blue headlights it’s an application of blue to far. Some clear windows (or even smoked windows) and silver hubs would have gone a long way to redeem such an unremarkable car. The slightly cheap feeling pearly-white plastics used for the majority of the toy don’t help matters either.
As part of the usual toe curling ‘fan pleasing’ nature of Classics toys such as these, there’s some speakers that can rotate around from the inside to stick outside of the vehicle mode as it did in one episode of the 1980s cartoon. Whether this will be of tremendous importance to you, the consumer, will depend on your level on indebtedness to a frankly creaky kids cartoon that’s best left alone now than repeatedly mined for such navel gazing nonsense as this. Particularly when it seems to have cost Jazz a more deserving application of silver paint elsewhere and makes him look ridiculous.
Jazz’s transformation to robot mode is pure win. It’s really nicely executed, mimicking both the sequence of the original toy and adding a few nice modern touches. The legs fold out of the back and those rear wheels rotate around to flip out the shins – a really nice touch which stops him having horrible hollow legs. The bonnet folds down and as it does, it moves his head up into place! The arms are a little bit fiddly, as they are clipped quite particularly into the chasis and have to go into a few twists to get into place.
The robot mode is good, brilliant in fact. He ticks all the right boxes in terms of overall sculpt, design and appearance, despite the rather glum facial expression which renders him a little Judge Dredd –like. All the normal modern engineering ticks are in place: swivel joints, hinges and rotating joints to give Jazz a superb range of movement and posability to make him an excellent action figure, one of the very best in fact. In the play stakes, there’s little to fault here. There’s no cumbersome parts to get in the way, nothing that’s likely to fall off or get lost, nothing that moves when it shouldn’t. Yet there’s still an overall feeling that the figure somehow falls short. The use of cheaper and more durable plastics are no doubt a huge boon to child’s play, but in rendering the Transformers in these materials, they cease to be the quality product they once were. For someone who still gets a great deal of joy out of playing with these things, that might come as a strange thing to say, but it’s hard not to be constantly disappointed that small touches such as vacuum metalising and rubber tyres have been sacrificed to cut manufacturing costs. To me that leaves you with an end product that’s no more different or in any way special to any other action figure that’s on the market.
153154155