Transformers: Titans Return Blitzwing

 I occasionally wax nostalgic on here about Transformers experiences from my childhood, and this article on Titans Return Blitzwing is going to begin in just that way. I remember a kid in my second or third grade class had G1 Blitzwing (the only Blitzwing at the time) and let me see it during recess. Man, that toy blew my young mind in terms of what I’d later know to be engineering and design. The transformation scheme was out of this world, and the toy changed into three distinct modes. THREE! Amazing. I didn’t add a G1 Blitzwing to my collection until many, many years later, and now I feel I have a hundred of them. (In truth, there are only three in my possession: an original, the Platinum Series reissue from two years ago, and an eHobby Overcharge.) Blitzwing has gotten a handful of updates over the intervening thirty years, the most recent being in the Generationsline, which was a real mixed bag of a figure. So, it falls to Titans Return to produce a version of Blitzwing that works all around, in both alt modes and as a robot, while presenting a transformation scheme that effectively creates and then hides all three forms. How well does it do?

The short answer is: about as well as it can do. Right off the bat, let me say that this is a figure that I like a lot, and I think it does a lot of things well, but is by no means perfect. I know people have a laundry list of issues with this toy, and I think most of them are pretty valid; but, I believe the strengths and successes of the figure compensate pretty well.

Blitzwing is a repaint of the Titans Return Voyager Megatron, although the smart money says that this was the original use for the mold, and that Megatron was just released first. That makes Blitzwing a “pre-tool” in the parlance of our times. The Megatron figure is some reference to a cancelled G1 design where Megatron was a triple changer, as well as a bizarre G1 idea that Megatron could transform into Skywarp and then a jet. Wild times, those 1980’s.

This mold just screams Blitzwing. The tank barrel sticking up behind the back, the wings behind the shoulders, the jet engines and tail fins on the feet, the chest. Everything about this figure says it was always meant to be Blitzwing. Oddly, the same features scream Megatron to me as well. The figure has a very blocky torso, and there is no waist joint: it is essentially a rectangle with arms and legs attached to it. This is a necessity, as both alt modes are blocky themselves. The posing options are limited, as there are only a few joints on the figure, and missing are any in the foot and wrist.

Normal, standard shoulder, just like yours and mine.

This is a real good look.

Blitzwing has some very interesting arms. The shoulders are rotate and also have hinges that allow the arms to move outwards from the sides. It looks bad, but functions rather well, and is generally an interesting design. The hinge part is needed for transformation, so this is a design choice made from necessity, and overall I have to say it works. But boy does it look bad. Blitzwing has zero articulation in the torso, and this bizarre shoulder joint makes the shoulders look wider than they feel they should be: it’s like an unnecessary and somewhat unsightly additional width across the body, giving the impression that the figure is even more blocky and static than it already is. The arms pose outward at a strange, thin angle, because the entire arm, for lack of a better description, detaches from the body, held on by a mere hinge. Arm poses remind of Combiner Wars Leaderclass Megatron, where arms look flimsy and lame in all but a few positions. The arms are made worse by their lack of wrist swivels, meaning that while he can effect some wide arm spreads thanks to his odd shoulders, Blitzwing can’t turn his hands or forearms, a drawback when one considers one of his robot armaments is a sword. One more joint, maybe even a forearm, would have alleviated this issue, and allowed some more dynamic posing. But, one must then consider how much difference even that would have made, as Blitzwings’ arm carry all of the tank tread parts, either directly molded on or attached via hinges which then flip over to not so much cover the arms, but rather flip down to obscure them. The robot arms are utility to the extreme, as pegs plug into the hands and the tread parts tab in to each other in order to become the sides of a tank or fold away to become the body of a jet. The legs are also a bit annoying, in robot mode and during transformation, as they rely on some pegs below the knees to keep them in place when standing. If the legs are not aligned just right, the figure is wobbly and the vehicles don’t assemble properly, and both situations are generally frustrating.

Tank mode is decent but suffers from the two tone color scheme of the character. The tan that is the main tank color only covers half the vehicle, and the other half is a very deep purple. A turret on top provides seating for the Titanmaster, named Hazard, but it’s just a seat on the top, not an enclosed seat as on so many other Titans Return figures. This is a little bit of a bummer, because one thing that the alt modes in the line have really gotten right are the cockpits. Blitzwing’s jet mode will more than make up for the shortcoming here in tank mode, though. The treads are solid plastic, but hide rolling wheels. Generally speaking, the tank mode is fine, but does require the observer to cut it some slack. Not in the same way as the horrendous jet mode on Broadside, the main failure of Blitzwing’s tank mode is the colors, and the fact that half of it is purple and nothing can be done to compensate for this. G1 Blitzwing kept vehicle modes separated by color mainly because conversion between the two consisted of turning the toy over; but this new version has a more complex transformation, and isn’t able to maintain the color separation. Conversion is fun and reasonable, with jet wings folding down to enclose the rear of the tank, and I think that’s a real cool step. The tank does depend a bit on perfect alignment of tabs and slots, otherwise it is floppy and loose; but, getting everything lined up correctly presents a decent vehicle that really is marred only by color clashes and maybe, maybe too small a barrel.

Jet mode is pretty great, far and away the better of the two vehicle modes, but is again highly dependent on the perfect alignment of multiple parts. This mode is mostly purple, and looks good except for the glaring issue of having a tank turret hanging off the bottom. The Curse of Blitzwing is that, perhaps more so than any other triple changer, one of his alt modes is largely defined by an unwieldy component. Were he some kind of other military vehicle, or a different kind of tank, maybe this would all be avoidable, but as the fairly generic tank design that he has almost always been, there’s not much that can be done about that turret. Others have tried, so some success: G1’s turret was removable, the Generations version has a turret that comes together via arm transformation, I don’t remember the Animated figure. The Titans Return version mimics the G1 toy in that the tank turret simply hangs underneath the jet fuselage, but is not removable. It also does not lock into place, so it freely swings beneath the jet. This is not an unusual Blitzwing impediment, but it is one that I do wish a designer could solve, once and for all. The problem is that Blitzwing alternates between modes that are in any reasonable context incompatible, and so there isn’t really a way to get all the kibble accounted for. The Generations figure probably dealt with this issue the best.

On the totally awesome plus side, the jet mode cockpit opens up completely, allowing a Titanmaster to sit inside what looks like too thin a space. I love this. Absolutely love it.

Blitzwing is a figure that I developed a better appreciation of the more I played with it. My initial impressions right out of the box were not all that positive, but they were the result of not realizing that parts weren’t correctly pegged in. The more I transformed it, the more I began to enjoy it. It certainly does have its drawbacks, such as the silver metallic stickers that I mentioned on Broadside, here on Blitzwing appearing even more problematic because they cover the wings and are ALREADY curling up at the edges of the segmented parts. Right out of the package these stickers are a concern, and I add my voice to the online din wondering if the stickers are this flimsy upon opening the box, what are they going to be like years down the road? While that is obviously a concern for the future, I’m more concerned about how well the stickers are holding up already, which is an odd combo of already beginning to peel and generally fine. Paint would have been a much better idea.

That's a real mess.

Blitzwing also does require some pretty precise tab arranging, but this is something that we’ve grown very accustomed to over the last eight or so years of the franchise. If the robot mode isn’t tabbed together exactly, the knees are floppy and won’t support the figure; but done properly there’s little issue. The same is true for both alt modes. The robot mode is pretty much a brick and isn’t all that poseable, but it is a good looking robot, so I feel it’s a tradeoff. The arms take some getting used to visually, but once you do, I find them to be a real interesting part of the toy.

I really like Blitzwing. He looks great overall, even though he isn’t perfect. This is a good representation of the character and a good toy, being the most intricate of the Voyager class entries to date.