Mastermind Creations Airborne Squadron

In 2006, the third party scene was just beginning to turn into blossom into its current form. Around that time, most third party offerings were things like add on sets for official figures. Very slowly, original pieces were beginning to surface from a smattering of ambitious companies, and the modern day market as we know it, consisting of established characters and full toys, as opposed to the more accurate accessories or embellishment kits, was born.

At the same time, a new comic publisher called IDW, risen from the promising ashes of Dreamwave, was dabbling in original Transformers fiction, and was launching its “Evolutions” label, which would have been (spoiler alert) it’s “What if. . .?” series, exploring what might have been had only things gone slightly different in the world of the Autobots and Decepticons. The series would not last longer than its first entry, entitled Hearts of Steel, a miniseries which saw some hibernating Cybertronians awaken in the antebellum 1800’s. As a fiction, it is probably best remembered as an aberration that brought us Bumblebee hanging out with steel drivin’ man John Henry, and for the image of Shockwave taking an alt mode reminiscent of the Merrimack, the Confederate armored ship. The story . . . sucked as badly as you imagine it did.

But there were never plans for Hasbro to realize the strange, vaguely steampunk robot designs as figures, and so one third party company decided that this would be their introduction to the stage of original figure designs. Mastermind Creations produced a few of these Hearts of Steel designs, including a locomotive Optimus Prime, a terrific looking Shockwave renamed Cyclops, and a trio (naturally) of Seekers, in the form of Screecher, Stormer, and Warper.

Screecher, Stormer, and Warper are the Hearts of Steel incarnations of Starscream, Thundercracker, and Skywarp, and this trio of figures really is a mixed bag. On the one hand, what we have here are very unique, very stylized, and certainly different, takes on characters who are generally known for all looking the same. That remains true of these figures, but the look is a radical departure from probably any other body the Seekers have ever worn. The Airborne Squadron sports alt modes of precursor airplanes, a kind of steampunk vision of what early airplanes would have been, and feature three propellers and multiple sets of wings. It is fairly clear that these are Seekers, sharing the standard Seeker signs of the behind-the-shoulder wings and the arm mounted blasters. Each of the three figures has a different style of arm blaster, with Screecher having a Gatling gun, Stormer having the most traditional-looking null ray-style blaster, and Warper having maybe the coolest, a double barreled cannon-type piece. The Mastermind Creation design ditches the chest cockpit for a chest mounted propeller, and it’s not as jarring an alteration as it sounds. The wings are very cool, with the propeller pods and wings that swing out to effect a more bat-like silhouette. There are fins and additional wings parts all over the figures, so there are plenty of pointy tips and blade-like accents.

Each figure comes with a different face, which is pretty neat, considering how long ago these figures were first produced, and different faces seemingly being a much more recent third party inclusion. Screecher has a sneering face; Stormer is more of a blank and expressionless one; Warper is shouting about something. The heads are also capable of two different looks: each head has fins or wings mounted on the sides of the helmet, and these can be folded flat against the helmet for a more traditional Seeker head look, or folded out to keep the bat or canvas wing motif going. (in case you didn’t know, early airplanes had canvas covered wings because it was light, and early aircraft didn’t have the engine power available to lift large, solid, heavy bodies off the ground. Even earlier, pre-aircraft aircraft like what these are supposed to represent would have had the same general canvas wings. –mr) While either configuration looks fine, the more traditional Seeker head look is the better of the two.

The alt mode is pretty cool, and certainly is something different. It shares enough cues with every other Seeker design to make it almost immediately recognizable as a Seeker, while being so different and innovative that it is really something that makes you turn it over in your hands, and try to see from every angle. The plane mode is tall rather than long, as the robot basically folds its legs underneath itself and is thus an aircraft. Some parts of the transformation employ automorph, or what came to be called MechTech during the live action movie toy lines, but it really ends up being just some gear pieces that move when the legs bend, as opposed to anything that actively influences transformation. A pair of train wheels folds out to serve as landing gear, as well as allowing the Airborne Squadron figures to link up into a strange kind of train with the Optimus Prime figure of the series serving as the engine. Cool option, and Stormer and Warper each come with a piece of train track to sit them on in this large, strange train mode.

 

So they look cool, and are something different, but the Airborne Squad is not a set of perfect figures. The plastic is very thin and flimsy feeling, and this is of actual concern, as some of the points where it feels the weakest wind up being pieces that need to move or are supposed to move or something. The large hip mounted wings are listed in the paperwork as being detachable blade weapons, but the connections are small dovetail-type joints that just don’t feel or look strong enough to handle the strain of being removed and then plugged back in. Theoretically, the wings offer the figures paired swords in robot mode, but the connections are too worrisome to actually disconnect. Two steps in the transformation are also real flimsy, and thus compromise the stability of the alt mode. The previously mentioned hip wings are intended to be locked into place via the opening panel of the forearm which covers the cavity that the hand folds in to, but it is difficult to line this up and secure it. Small grey pieces are intended to nestle inside equally small trenches in the elbows, so that the figure kind of props itself up on them when the robot sits down into plane mode. But there isn’t anything to hold this connection together, so it’s basically just resting on a tab. The plane mode ends up being loose and fidgety as a byproduct of these unsecure connections.

The figures have some real thin plastic in places that often bear stress during handling, such as the propeller blades and the hip wings. The large behind the back wings are detached in package, so they have to be connected, and they do so via two pretty small pegs. Warper proved to be pretty difficult with this, like one of the pegs or corresponding holes was too large or small, so the wing didn’t attach easily and required a real lot of pressure. But given the thin nature of the plastic, and the notion that there are precious few places to grab these toys that aren’t bringing contact with extra thin or fragile plastic made this a really, really frustrating endeavor. They generally do not feel like toys that are intended to be handled repeatedly.

The arms are also really, really weakly attached. The entire arm is attached to a plate with tabs at the ends that basically just slots into the shoulder joint which is created by the front and back half of the torso. With Stormer and Warper, the arms have popped off just due to raising the arm above the chest, like the motion causes the plate the arm is mounted on to twist out of position.

For their issues, the Airborne Squadron is an interesting set of figures, but not ones that are going to spend a lot of time in hand. They look good, but are simply lacking in many categories that make figures successful. This may be a result of their age, and the relative lack of sophistication in the third party marketplace back when these first appeared. Really cool ideas, and a great take on the well-worn Seeker look; but overall, kind of flimsy toys that really just stoke transformation nerves more than anything. Interesting display pieces, neat collection oddities, and cool evolutionary steps in the third party game though.