One of the Seekers in the Decepticon army we have Skywarp. One of a trio of F-15 Jets lead by Starscream, Skywarp is fast and mainly due to the fact he has the ability to Teleport while either in robot mode or vehicle mode. Skywarp is an arrogant but powerful Decepticon who has no respect for anyone but himself and maybe perhaps Megatron from time to time.
The ‘classics’ line basically means the return of all our favorite G1 characters but with slightly new looks and more improved articulation and details. Now Starscream has been released for awhile now and Skywarp was also released recently in the Henkei line (The Japanese Version of Classics) and you would think that since these are updates of older figures with more articulation that this would be a fantastic idea and for the most part this is right.
A strange thing seems to have happened to the Skywarp/Starscream mould however when it was produced. One paper the idea is fantastic and works perfectly and should be like a mini-Masterpiece version of Masterpiece Starscream. However it seems that even though the figure has lots of articulation…he doesn’t? what this basically means is that even though you can bend the knee/elbow/shoulder sections it seems he is still limited to movement. An example of this is in the shoulders and the missiles, the shoulders can move but when you do move them the wings on the back end up being pushed backwards or make them look as if there falling down. This seems to be because of the size of the missiles/launchers which just end up forcing the wings to fold down when the arms are moved.
The next slight issue is that the knee area does bend and works perfectly, except that when you do move the legs and knees to a pose you like….well Skywarp seems to fall down 80% of the time rather than just standing up and this seems to be because of the ‘Heel’ on the foot at the back area of the leg. Why two heels were not added on each side makes no sense unless Hasbro were just trying to be cheap on production. An extra added heel on the leg would have helped keep the figure standing much more easily.
The jet mode for Skywarp looks beautiful and the colors make the vehicle look even more fantastic. When you compare the new Classics Skywarp with the original/reissue version of Skywarp in vehicle mode then it looks very similar and its fantastic to see that even though this is an updated and more articulated version of G1 Skywarp that they managed to keep the vehicle modes very close together and keep some of the G1 resemblance. The missiles for Skywarp attach under the wing section just like they did in the original G1 toy and also are held in place by a switch/spring clip but it appears that this doesn’t really work anymore and that’s probably down to the health safety nuts these days (however the Henkei missiles seem to fire fine) who say you can’t reissue figures like Fortress Maximus anymore.
Robot mode looks like the original figure as well but this time with more articulation and more presence. The face looks very much like Skywarp from the original cartoon show and maintains his color scheme very well. The hands are just fists with holes in them which is about average really but still it would have been nice to have been given more articulated hands or maybe a fist swap like what you get with Revoltech figures. All areas bend perfectly aside from the slight glitches mentioned above but aside from those slight problems you can really grow to like this mould.
Paint issues seem to be hit and miss with this figure, if you got the Classics version of Skywarp then you could only really get with him with Classics Magnus as they were only sold as a two-pack bundle. The paint issues are with Skywarp's face as it seems most of the faces were painted in a very rushed fashion because people have said that their versions have smudges/over bleeds/wrong colors and even in very rare cases some people have gotten Skywarp to find his face hasn’t even been painted! (I have only heard of this happen once) but it seems odd why some people got Skywarp with different painted shoulders or slightly different colors of purple on his body. Its still pretty rare you get a defect figure but when this was first released it seemed to happen to a lot of people and the same thing had happened previously with the release of classics Starscream.
A fantastic figure and a great edition to the Classics line but with Skywarp/Starscream/Thundercracker you kinda feel cheated in some odd way, Its hard to explain but you feel a lack of accessories for the moulds considering these guys are pretty much Megatrons bodyguards. It seems a huge missed opportunity that neither Starscream or Skywarp comes with a Mini-Megatron gun for them to hold in robot mode. A G1 Megatron gun for the mould would have been a fantastic edition and would have added more to the characters.
If you wanted just Skywarp on his own then you would have to go onto forums and try to get him because officially he was released as a twin-pack with classics Magnus in a big box called ‘Battle For Autobot City’ which got most fans thinking we were going to be getting classics Metroplex, sadly not however. The packaging was in much the same design as the Megatron/Prime twin-pack boxset which mainly consisted of red and silver with pictures on the back on both bots in vehicle and robot modes.
A great figure and its just so frustrating that the only way to complete you classics seekers set is to either pay $300 for a BASICS figure which is just a repainted Starscream (Botcon Thundercracker) or spend around $60 for the damn Henkei version (you can spend $10 more and get the damn Masterpiece version of Thundercracker for that price!) so really most fans will only ever get Classics Starscream and Skywarp. If you loved Skywarp then you will love this release of him but if you’re a completist for the line then the only way you can have you seeker army complete is to spend a lot of money. Either way Skywarp is a definite must buy.
