Takara continue the Henkei line and now bring us a Botcon exclusive item but thankfully in the Henkei line which means we all get the chance to own Thundercracker for our own Henkei/Classics line but thankfully for less than $100 which Hasbro make us pay for a basic figure who would have only been $12 if released on general sale.
Thundercracker is a beautiful figure to look at and the Henkei version looks even more better than the Botcon version because Takara seem to be going for more G1 accuracy on the Henkei figures. The color on the figure is much more beautiful than the Hasbro Botcon version and makes the Botcon version look slightly rushed in comparison on the paint work.
Vehicle mode (F15) looks amazing and is basically just a standard repaint of Classics Starscream but then again that’s how Thundercracker is ment to look like since he is one of Starscream's troops (however they are loyal to Megatron) and when placed with the other jets (Skywarp and Starscream) he just looks perfect as the trio. The missiles attach to the bottom of the wings as did the other versions and the missiles fire on this one, the difference with the Henkei version is that the missile launchers have chrome on them while the classics version was just painted on.
Robot mode looks the same as the other two but obviously he has a different color scheme from Skywarp and Starscream and also the paint work seems much nicer on Thundercracker than the other two which seems nice considering this is Takara giving us a Hasbro Botcon item but at a much cheaper price and making him look much more appealing.
The arms can bend at the elbow joints and the shoulder area but yet again still suffers the same problems as the previous two because the elbow section cannot rotate 180 which means there is limited movement on the arms but the main problem is the fact that because of the way the missiles and how the wings work then they just end up folding downwards all the time. The missile launchers are rather large when attached onto the arms of Thundercracker and the main problem is that when you move the arms the missile launchers end up moving the wings in a downwards direction. The problem can be forgiven because in all honesty this is the best version of Starscream/Thundercracker/Skywarp we have been given in almost 25 years aside from the Masterpiece versions of these characters.
Knee joints bend at the legs are very flexible but yet again there’s a problem there because the legs don’t have as much support as they should have and the characters end up falling down rather a lot, this could be because the upper body is top heavy or maybe it is just because the figure itself is unstable which makes putting the figure in certain poses rather difficult because the toy will just fall down more than anything else unless the character is just standing perfectly still and not put in any real pose at all.
The packaging for Henkei Thundercracker is that he was released as a Henkei Ganbo exclusive item and the packaging was rather piss poor because it is just Henkei Starscreams packaging but for some reason the picture of the figure itself is colored out and just shown as BLUE rather than showing actual images of the figure it is just Starscream’s packaging but the color has been bleeched out and we have a blue overlay instead.
A fantastic chance to own Classics Thundercracker without having to pay through the ass for the bastard Botcon version which costs over $100 for the god damn basic figure that would only have cost about $12 if it was mass released in general stores. The Botcon item is a joke because it is insulting we as fans have to pay over $100 for a damn basic item but thankfully Takara listen to fans (From time to time at least) and have given us the chance to own Thundercracker in out collection, he is still over priced (around $40ish IF your lucky) but it is still better than paying over $100 for a simple basic item.
