Jet Harrier, or “Harrier,” as he will be known hereafter, is
the second member of the “Third Party”/upsized KO Combiner Wars Aerialbot team, known as Slingshot or “Quickslinger”
in Hasbro parlance, and the first of the limb figures of the set. Roughly Masterpiece size, Harrier is the same
height as MP Sideswipe.
Harrier is the introduction to what the rest of the figures
in the set are going to be, and it is a very comprehensive introduction. If
you’ve experienced the Combiner Wars airplane
figure, no matter what its specifics happen to be, then you already know about
this figure. This is an upgraded version of the Deluxe class toy though, just
as Concorde was an upgraded version of Silverbolt. The alterations are
considerable, however, if you think of the things they improve from the
original, official versions, and it’s kind of puzzling why Hasbro didn’t do
some of the things the Ju-Jiang versions do, because they do seem to be real
no-brainer type changes.
Harrier is large and chunky, feeling in places like a high
quality official figure, and in others like a knockoff. That is a constant dilemma
with this entire set: what am I holding? Is this a Third Party figure, or a big
bootleg that happens to be real good? Hard to tell. Concorde felt good in hand,
and the limb figures sometimes don’t. Sometimes, they feel pretty average, and
that’s where the Third Party label is more of a curse on them than any
blessing. There are some obvious places that seem cheap: the headsculpt is
really, really poor, in that it is about as basic and bland as it can be. The hands
are now attached to a balljointed wrist, mainly benefitting the look in alt
mode, but the addition of a wrist reduces the forearm to a hollow block that
feels cheap. There’s no flap or panel that covers the gap in the underside of
the forearm, which would have solved the issue. The blaster is super cheap,
essentially a barely sculpted piece of plastic. The feet are now mounted on
balljoints as well, providing an ankle joint and increased posing, but the feet
are just plastic squares. They help G1-up these Aerialbots, like this fits that
blocky G1 aesthetic, and the ankle works just fine, but they are not very good
looking.
A consistent issue with these figures will be the butt flap
they have, which in jet mode covers a gap between the robot waist and the
condensed form of the legs. This element does not exist on the Hasbro versions,
and it’s hard to tell why it exists here. The original, official figures proved
that the flap is not needed, but here we are. In robot mode, this flap only
folds up so far behind the back, but does not get in the way of anything
movement wise. It will be something of an issue in combiner mode though. But overall,
robot mode is fun and good.
Alt mode is the fairly common toy version of the Harrier
jet, experienced by this point in time hundreds of times over. Nothing really
special here, but there are improvements made to the figure that make the jet
mode better. Improvements like the previously mentioned balljointed wrists,
which now means that the robot hands are not on full display in jet mode. Also,
and excellently, there’s a trench running along the side of the fuselage that
the arms fold into, meaning that the robot arms are not just held at the jet
sides as on the official versions. What a great adjustment this is, as now, the
arms fold away much, much better than before, and the jet mode benefits from
this immensely. The blaster does not
attach to the jet at all, and the Harrier is not the most threatening looking
of aircraft, and the white paintjob isn’t the coolest looking, so we’re left
with kind of just an airplane. A big, chunky, fun airplane, but still. |
| Changes to the arms really make the jet mode better. |
The size and build of Harrier here makes me wonder: why
wouldn’t Hasbro just do this with their figures? Make them this size and
overall quality, I mean. Ju Jiang managed to do it, and improve the molds ever
so slightly along the way, although aside from the hands and arms tucking away
better for alt mode, the improvements are not really going to be obvious until
the whole team is combined. I’ve not had any experience with them, but these
figures are what I imagine Titan class Devastator and Predaking are like: large
and somewhat bulky, yet fairly simple and none too mind blowing. Ju Jiang
managed to have the entire combiner team sell for around $100, at least, that’s
basically what it cost to get mine, and the Titan class sets of Hasbro’s are
$160. I’m sure there’s some boo hoo profits reason as to why Hasbro’s end up
being half again the price, but the Combiner
Wars Aerialbots could have been this from the get go. Would people pay $20
for a Voyager sized combiner limb? I don’t know, but they’re currently paying
almost that for a Deluxe, and were paying around $16 for Combiner Wars Deluxes, so why not drop a few extra dollars for a substantially
larger figure? It’s not that I’m trying to argue for the larger sized 3P
combiners; I’m saying that the official product could have been this, so why
wasn’t it? I don’t have an answer for that question, but it seems like these
larger versions would have been the way to go. These are upsized KOs as opposed
to true Third Party figures, but they feel better in hand than the official
versions did, and are generally more fun. It’s nice to have a Third Party figure
that doesn’t require my fullest attention to play around with while sitting on
the couch or whatnot.
So, the verdict: a good and fun figure. As a $20 toy,
outstanding. Feels a little cheap, looks that way a bit too, but overall a good
piece. Not as good or solid as Concorde, but Harrier is traditionally the plain
guy on this team anyway. Even though it will be the weakest and least exciting
figure in the set, Harrier lays out what the limb figures will be, which is
honestly more exciting than this write up would lead you to believe.
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