Transformers: Power of the Primes Blackwing

 

It has been a long time since we’ve taken time for any official Transformers product, so let’s break that streak with Blackwing here. Warning: it’s not going to be pretty.

But that’s not entirely going to be because of Blackwing himself. There’s a lot going on peripherally that will color this write up, and while that may not be entirely professional, it fits Blackwing’s general character. Power of the Primes Blackwing is a Combiner Wars repaint of Aerialbot Air Raid with some minor retooling so as to accommodate the Primemaster . . . chestplate thing. . . as well as the slight alterations to become the back half of the Darkwings super jet combined mode. If you harken back to the January expose on Power of the Primes Dreadwind you’ll be able to guess that these changes are basically affected by doing something different to the wings; and you would be correct.

Like his brother, Blackwing is not a real feature in any American G1 media, but was a major player in the Japanese series Super God Master Force as Hydra, literal brother to Buster. If you have experienced any of the multitude of Combiner Wars Aerialbots, you know how Blackwing operates. This makes trying to write anything about him challenging.

Maybe more challenging is saying anything positive. Let’s see: he looks good. The grey and purple and teal color palate is a nice and subdued one, and is a real good selection of cold colors that feel pretty iconic to this character. Even as a kid, and again when I began my serious collecting as an adult, these colors yell “Darkwing” or “Hydra” or “Blackwing” or whatever. Even that Universe 2.0 Silverbolt repaint, which I own but didn’t think of digging out for pictures, is clearly *-wing in that color scheme. The paint on the wings looks rather strong, and despite the separation from the shoulders, the head is a very nice sculpt. For reasons of the super jet mode, Blackwing’s head is mounted on a small plastic arm that flips over the back of the figure, not attached to the combiner peg in the chest, the way all of the other Combiner Wars-style Aerialbot heads. It is still really stupid, but that Primemaster thing looks better on Blackwing than Dreadwind’s does on him, perhaps because it is a solid teal plastic block and thus is a lower profile accessory. But, this feature is still pretty dumb.

And, that’s pretty much it for the positives. The head doesn’t have light piping, despite have a translucent visor. The wings are mounted on ball joints that are mounted on this plate that lifts off the back of the figure/jet to allow the wings to flip 180 degrees over, so that the paint is visible in robot mode or jet mode . . . but NOT super jet mode. This plate on the back occasionally comes loose, and the wings don’t tab into anything, so they are constantly floppy. The blasters are fine, for what they are, but they are not much. The entire figure is kind of fidgety, and that lowers the enjoyment factor. The back panel that secures the wings is prone to coming untabbed, even from simple movements such as trying to adjust or pose the wings, and the shoulders/torso look too wide and flat. This makes Blackwing seem much wider than Dreadwind, which is not true, but it does look like Blackwing is wider and for no real purpose.

 

Jet mode is fine, but really is just another Aerialbot, as in alt mode the differences or changes don’t even register. The two figures look good together in jet mode, which is excellent, since they really are a pair. But, if you totally ruin the individual jet mode, you get the extra garbage super jet mode.

While the G1 original needed a helping of imagination to work, the Power of the Primes version doesn’t even manage that. Partner Dreadwind slides his jet wings down a little bit, and Blackwing does all of this stuff to combine into what is intended to be an entirely new craft. Intended. The nose section flips over the back of the jet, INCLUDING THE ROBOT HEAD, WHICH JUST SITS THERE, NOT EVEN FITTING COMPLETELY INSIDE THE NOSE SECTION, SO BLACKWING’S HEAD IS JUST TURNED AROUND BACKWARDS BUT IS FULLY VISIBLE AND OBVIOUS. Even the G1 toys did this better. The two jets are connected via a 5mm peg that folds out from underneath the back plate on Blackwing, and inserts into the hand/foot port on the bottom of Dreadwind’s feet. This makes for a terrible connection, loose and weak. The two jets can move independently of each other and usually just slip apart; there is also no good way for the Blackwing wings to align with Dreadwind’s. It is a total loss.

Blackwing was the first figure I purchased following our move to our new apartment, and upon finding him in a store, I was pretty happy. It’s pretty well known that my Power of the Primes interest has been essentially Dreadwind and Blackwing, Roadtrap and Battleslash, and that eventual Unite Warriors Blast Off that will be released under this banner. Already had Dreadwind, and found Battleslash at C2E2, and then Blackwing; I am almost finished with the line. Buying Blackwing did bring me some excitement, but the positive feelings were very short lived. I had him open for a handful of minutes before I realized that I was seriously underwhelmed by this toy, although there may be many reasons for that response. It could be that I have handled this mold several times already, and there isn’t enough newness left in it to be inspiring. That is definitely a possibility, but the fact that this is a new character, and completes the SGMF pairing that I was really hoping to get should have been sufficient to get me to look past the nth time for this mold. But this toy is boring. Could be mold fatigue (a totally justifiable one); could be due to not having an interest in the line at large, so I know that this is like a one-off figure for my collection, thus providing no real reason to be hyped about it; could be because I’ve spent so much time on and with unofficial figures lately that something like this just can’t compete.

I feel that that last possibility is pretty accurate. I have put down for a bunch of preorders over the last month, all on third party figures, and it does look like my collection is taking a decidedly 3P turn. I’m even looking to weed out a few things once the semester ends, and it seems like a lot of stuff is going to be sold to make room for unofficial but better figures. The day I spent taking pictures of Blackwing, I was also taking pictures of MakeToys Celeritas, the last two TFC Toys Seacons that I needed pictures of, and was playing around with Tamashii Nations Darth Vader. Having Blackwing in hand in the context of those toys absolutely made Blackwing feel inferior, and vastly so. I made this declaration back in January that I wasn’t going to be buying the Power of the Primes line, with the exceptions of these two figures and the Battletrap Legends figures, and I have not regretted that decision. Sure, I have almost broke down and bought the Deluxe Dinobots twice, but I think that was more from the want for new toys than anything like the want of those toys. And I’ve been down that road before, with things like the Age of Extinction figures, and probably the Dark of the Moon figures before that. I’m not interested in going down that path again.

I do not regret buying Blackwing here, but he is not a good figure. Even if we want to clarify and exclude third party figures, Blackwing is not a good Hasbro figure. The super jet mode is totally tacked on and is an absolute fail; some people on line would argue that, despite its’ crappiness, we should be happy that Hasbro loves us enough to include it. You can pound that idea: if Hasbro intended to include that as a feature, which they clearly did since there is a dedicated piece to facilitate it, they should have at least done it correctly. It’s basically a fanmode. You know, most of my dislike of this figure stems from the crappy super jet mode; aside from that, the figure is a pretty basic Combiner Wars toy. Much like Dreadwind, not very exciting or inspiring, kind of just a Transformer. I know this is not any kind of an endorsement, but you could do worse than this figure. Being sort of an uncharacter in the US and being a Combiner Wars figure AGAIN won’t really instill a ton of enthusiasm, but Blackwing sorta is what he is, and that’s really all.