Transformers Universe: Stormcloud

 The repaint is an integral part of most major toylines. Here’s the boring reason: each toy is made through an expensive process of design and steel molds and boredom, apparently. The repaint is the companies’ opportunity to make extra profit on the existing mold(s) by reusing them. Since the initial investment has been made, theoretically all the money made on repaints should be profit. Repaints are usually different characters of similar type to the original. The Transformers brand has counted the repaint as part of its backbone dating all the way back to 1984 and the first wave of toys. The Seekers, the Autobot Datsuns, Ironhide and Ratchet, Soundwave’s cassettes. Later waves would bring the Coneheads, and retools like Hoist and Grapple, modified versions of the existing Trailbreaker and Inferno. 

Repaints are oft decried as lazy cash grabs, but people who view them as such are missing one of the biggest points: repaints like Stormcloud here are essentially blank slates, homunculus-type characters that have no backstory other than whatever two sentences are printed on the package. They are chances to make your own characters! I love repaints for that reason. The Universe line and all it’s numerical postscripts have some kind of vague storyline hammered into them, but they are and always have been just repaints of toys. The may have some relation to the original use of the toy, but when you get to a certain point, they are just blank slates.

So here’s Stormcloud, a repaint of the Classics Ultra class Powerglide figure. Released as part of the main thrust of the Universe line, what had been dubbed 2.0 and incorporating updated, ‘classic’ style versions of G1 figures, Powerglide was a strange entry, as it was the largest toy in the series but represented a G1 Minibot, among the smallest toys of that series. Stormcloud’s G1 roots run to a member of a Micromaster team, with whom he shares a paintjob but has the alt mode of another member, Tailwind. The toy is an . . . interesting one. 

Really top heavy.

Stormcloud is all upper body. His legs look nice and armored, but the thighs and hips are very small. This makes him have an awkward look, something like a man on stilts, and it is not a very cohesive look over the entire figure, as his upper body is super thick. The jet engines form the upper chest, what had been referred to as the ro-boobs on Powerglide. The arms hang a little low on the torso, and they are also a little on the small side. He’s very wide across the shoulders, but the rest of the robot mode proportions are all kinds of off. The thinness of the legs and hips and waist make this a tough toy to pose, perpetually off balance and wobbly. He doesn’t do much well other than stand perfectly still.

 

Alt mode is roughly an A-10 Thunderbolt II, the iconic and often replicated ground assault aircraft. All the cues are there, and as a plane, Stormcloud looks good. Black and silver is generally a winning combination, so there’s little to pick on here. 

But here are some things to pick on Stormcloud for. 

The older I get, the less I like things like missile launchers and electronics. Missile launchers seem like they just get in the way, and man does Stormclouds. The gun he carries fits under the nose of the jet, but the missile inhibits the landing gear, which makes a difference if you’re trying to put him on a table or something. The molded gun part is far better looking, so you just leave the missile out and turn the weapon around. Problem solved. The electronics in this toy are a real bust. The usual set of sounds for a jet (engines, swooshing, machine gun, transformation sound) don’t add anything of value; the same goes for the lights in the engines/re-boobs, eyes and cockpit. The real bad thing about the electronics here is that you can tell they designed the toy around them: the main idea here was to get the soundbox and everything into a figure, regardless of what chaos that would wreak on the toy itself. The upper body is so huge because it houses all the electronics and batteries. A shame. Had they not had to include that stuff, this figure could have been so much better designed. This toy is literally a vehicle for an electronic set that is a slight step up from the kind found in laser guns at a dollar store. Not a good idea at all. 

I know, I know. Toys are for kids. Kids probably like missiles and noises. I don’t care about children and their interests. 

Looks pretty good in jet mode, at least.

The front of the jet mode simply folds down along the robot back, and then just hangs there. So, you can’t look at this guy from the rear or he disappoints. The robot just looks awful from certain angles, like anything other than straight on. The torso in general is a messy looking thing, and Stormcloud is floppy despite being largely unposable. Since the torso houses the electronics, there is not a lot of movement or anything that it can effect. The way the wings rotate upwards to tab onto the shoulders is usually frightening, as the rotation includes a tooth-type protrusion that acts as a stop for the entire wing part: rotate the wing to the correct spot and said tooth slots in to a similarly shaped recess in the plastic of the other wing part. It seems like this assembly is meant to rotate in only one direction, but it will move in the other direction as well, provided you use enough force. Sufficient force here means just about enough to make you worry you’re going to break it, and it’s not going to surprise me if repeated transformations stresses the crap out of the plastic. The head is odd. Clearly meant to be someone else, a general mouthplate face should work as some many other people but this one is just Powerglide, albeit a strange Powerglide even. In the “minor bitch, but still” category, a flip up panel on the chest reveals a molded heart, a Powerglide reference to The Girl Who Loved Powerglide episode of the G1 cartoon. An episode that has nothing to do with Stormcloud at all. But hey, it’s a part of the toy, so of course it was going to end up on a repaint. Not an issue, but the kind of thing that would most certainly be removed were this a 2016 repaint. A common thing on repaints pre-2010. 

I don't wanna be a pinhead no more.....

Because I seem to be interested in this kind of thing right now, this mold is one of those strange missing link kind of figures. There is some evolutionary quality about this toy that I think is notable. The Universe 2.0 line was a continuation of the Classics idea of updated versions of characters. The original Universe line was a collection of straight repaints that usually never even got different names or identities. A figure like Stormcloud here is a repaint which serves as an update of an obscure non-character toy in a size class that was apparently not very popular, falling between Voyager and Leader, that incorporated a number of gimmicks that generally aren’t loved by collectors, the sort-of focus of the Universe 2.0 line. Late 2008 through early 2010 was an exciting time for Transformers collectors, as we were entering the start of the era that we now have: I know that was terribly said, but many things from 2008 would pave the way for things we now almost take for granted. Electronics are relegated to the kiddie lines, and greater emphasis was placed on updating G1 characters, even the ones that were Stormcloud-tier “Who?”s. Repaints would begin to be reworked as well, and new uses of old molds began coming with new heads at least, and later with a bevy of new parts. In the end, toys like this wouldn’t even matter, as they would be routinely overlooked at retail and scoffed at online, but were never regularly found at retail for reasons unknown. The modern iteration of the collectors market was heating up right about that time, fueled by the live action movie of 2007 and a new-found awareness that there were adults with money who were buying these things, and that they were no longer only for children. There are things in the transformation scheme and overall design of this figure that would show up in later, better toys.

I don’t know what to say, ultimately, about Stormcloud. The other Universe 2.0 Ultras, Onslaught and Silverbolt, were leagues ahead of this one in pretty much all categories despite also including electronics. They had much simpler transformations, and in the case of Silverbolt also having been a jet, incorporated the electronics gimmick much better. Subsequent years have provided us with other smaller and better Powerglide updates, rendering this mold generally obsolete, but that makes it all the better as a different character. Large and brawny although misshapen and bizarrely proportioned, Stormcloud is a great chance to invent your own Transformer character. The box mentions something about some advanced spying electronics Stormcloud possesses. Who cares? He can be any and everything, everyone and anyone. Bodywise he gives that big dumb oaf vibe, like he’s the bruiser who hangs around a smaller, weaker, smarter guy; a Robo-Lenny, if you will. That sort of “If you have a problem, you’ll have to take it up with my friend here” guy, the kind that you’d think should hang with somebody like Starscream, until you remember Starscream wouldn’t actually need a goon.