Warbotron WB01-A Air Burst

So, Warbotron is apparently the name of the company; I’d always thought that Warbotron was the name of the combined mode, a fitting replacement for Bruticus. But apparently that’s not the case, as Warbotron also has its name on a set of Technobots. While I do not wish to dwell on this confusion, it has been a point of confusion for me. The combined form apparently has no distinct name, so we've got to go with Warbotron Bruticus here.

Air Burst is the Warbotron Blast Off analog, and is a pretty good figure to start off the set. The general rundown on the Warbotron figures is that the four apparently unscramble-able limb figures are roughly modern Voyager sized, while Fierce Attack, aka Onslaught, is larger, maybe the old Ultra size. Each of the figures comes in a window box that has a silver slip cover, each of which has a portion of an image on the back, so that when they are arranged together, you get this:

Pretty cool, honestly.

The plastic of the figures is generally thin feeling but not weak feeling, so, kind of modern day Hasbro Transformer plastic. Air Burst does not come with any combiner parts, as they are all included with Fierce Attack. The set presents a slightly more real-world take on the Combaticons in vehicle mode, while sticking pretty close to the original G1 animation looks for most of the members.

Air Burst is the Blast Off of the team, and is a generally good figure that does have some minor flaws. The colors on it are nice, but the brown or tan, whichever it is actually supposed to be, is a little too light. OG Blast Off is more of a dark brown, and Air Burst is not. As if this were part of the plan though, the purple is lightened up a fair bit as well, and Air Burst is the only figure on the team that has this degree of color change happening: everyone else is pretty faithful to the figure that inspired them. It is easier to see in pictures, believe it or not, than in hand, but the combiner peg is housed in the chest, and then covered by a dense but translucent flap which does mostly obscure it from view. Air Burst has good arm movement, including an outward from the shoulder motion, and the shoulder pads are mounted independent of the arms, so they are able to move with the arms and not obstruct them. The feet are kind of bad, as they are comprised of a flat foot panel and the engine of the shuttle mode which acts as a heel, but doesn’t really support the figure very well. It takes a little bit of effort, but Air Burst can be posed in a number of cool ways, and once the engine heels are properly positioned, they offer little problem. It can be a tad frustrating finding this out though, because the foot plate is large enough that it does seem like it should be enough to balance Air Burst without the engine. But it’s not. 

 

For accessories, Air Burst comes with a pair of extendable blasters and a pair of arm-mounted pods with slide-out rockets. The rocket pods form the back section of the shuttle mode, and the blasters are just blasters. The extending blasters are a slight problem, as there isn’t anything that really prevents the barrel from sliding out of the body. It doesn’t fall out, but it isn’t really held in place by anything, so pulling it too much causes the barrel to pop right out of the part. The arms pods don’t have any place to go if they are not attached to the arms, but the figure does look more complete with them attached, a fuller, wider look that gives a stronger, tougher feel to Air Burst, who is generally a bit thin. With the arm pods being partsforming segments of the vehicle mode, and not just a garnish on the robot mode, there is some mass missing from the robot mode. Having the arm pods attached helps make up for that.

Something that will most probably be mentioned with every figure of the set is the terrific accuracy of the head sculpts. Air Burst looks just like G1 Blast Off, something that was not at all attained by the official Blast Off figure of a few years back during CombinerWars. The figures tend to go back and forth between real G1 accurate and referring to but different from G1 appearances, but the one absolute constant is the heads.

The cockpit of the shuttle folds behind the robot back, and this is something that does present a bit of concern, as the cockpit is, predictably, translucent plastic. There are two hinges, one at the front and the rear of the cockpit, and given translucent plastics’ habit of degrading over time and becoming more brittle, it is possible that, in the future, too many conversions will cause the pieces to break.

Space shuttle mode is pretty cool, simple but really likable. The colors are real subdued, and there’s not anything extra flashy about it. Yet it ends up being probably the best alt mode of the entire team, or at least the most imaginative looking. The wings don’t attach to the fuselage in a stably fashion, so there’s always a bit of separation visible from certain (i.e. most –mr) angles. There is apparently some manner of upgrade kit available for this figure, which looks like it replaces the segmented, folding wings with static, one-piece wings, but I don’t own it, and I’m not sure that this is a matter that warrants seeking it out. But the robot folds up cleanly, and the shuttle does look smooth and cool. Once more, the arm mounted missile pods from the robot mode wind up forming the rear third of the shuttle mode, but they do so in a real clean fashion, so it does not look like there’s partsforming involved, which is a plus, even if you happen to dislike partsforming. If you’re really that opposed to it, might be a good idea to just stay away from the set, as Whirlwind (the Vortex stand-in) will do it as well, as will the combined mode, which looks like it will employ additional pieces of Fierce Attack’s vehicle mode to create legs for the combined form. 

 

An issue with third party combiner team figures is that, for the most part, deciding if you want one of them is largely conflated with the idea of wanting (or needing) all of them in order to build the combined mode. Air Burst is part of a set, yes, but is also a totally cool stand-alone figure. Not to get too far ahead of myself here, as this is just the first entry for the Warbotron team, but all five of these figures are good on their own. The experience thus far with third party combiners is that there’s usually one figure who youhave to get to build the giant robot, and that’s the main impetus for doing so; the Warbotron team here is individually cool, and if your collection contained any one of them but not the others, it’d be ok. Air Burst succeeds on his own, as a single figure. 

Good looking, fun to transform. Air Burst is a real winner of a figure. These figures seem to be hard to locate nowadays, but this one would be completely worth it, even if your only desire was for a good Blast Off to add to your collection.

Canonical. Thanks, Til All Are One.