Here we have Highbrow in his WWII-inspired Lockheed P-38 Lightning, an old combat plane befitting an elderly Autobot like himself. With how ROTF gave us Jetfire while the toyline associated with the movie had Ransack as a biplane, this made sense to include for the movie line at the time. I love the rivets and additional gold and silver paint apps here and there to go with the military green, and I also love the unique design of this altmode overall, from the cockpit going all the way back to the rear section being held by the horizontal stabilizer that leaves a uniquely shaped gap in the jet. The retractable anding gear is always a treat, and seeing the wheels roll is always a bonus in my eyes after years of seeing Jetformers with static landing gear.
With such a clean design to the altmode, I also love the P+10 on the fuselage as well as the pretzel tarantula markings on the tailfins (Pretzantula?). Those were explained by Bill Rawley that they were call signals of P-38 Lightning pilot who was the father-in-law of another Hasbro employee, Jared Wade. You have some baby blue visible from underneath, but for this mode, it could pass for some sky camouflage.
Transformation is where we get to see how HasTak engineered a unique plane design into a robot. The arms are made up from the engines housing the propellors, while the nosecone makes up the shoulder pads. We have wings mounted on the hips to form skirt armor of some kind, while the legs are made up from the back of the altmode, which is more unique than the legs being underneath the jet mode. The resulting robot mode looks very bizarre, with the heavy use of baby blue (which is more gray in the Takara version), the forearms almost looking like weird Popeye arms, and the birthing hips that make the lower body look like they were from a different figure. He has that Bayverse aesthetic to him, though he goes into the weirder side of things with his proportions overall. Also, the left heel has a broken part from the hinge which sucks, but I glued it in.
The head sculpt has that WWII-era pilot design that feels like a mix between Crosshairs' dad and any war propaganda hero. With his guns equipped, articulation consists of a neck swivel, shoulder rotation, outward arm movement, rotation above the elbows, elbow joints, slight wrist curling due to transformation, hips that swivel front and back yet ratchet in and out, thigh rotation, hinged knees, and ankles that swivel as well as pivot.
The goggles can flip down and the forearms can hinge downwards so the propellors can be deployed a la Incinerator from the 2007 movie line. The right propellor doesn't spin as well as the left.
As far as reuses are concerned, this is Powerdive, who was part of the 2012 GDO subline filled with repaints of figures spanning from the 2008 Universe line to the Revenge of the Fallen line and even some Prime First Edition figures. The pretool head actually belongs to G2 Ransack, but it works regardless since they're lower tier characters used on an otherwise badass reuse of a mold like this.
Another evil reuse was made for the figure, this time representing the Beast Machines Vehicon Obsidian. I would love to get this version of the mold to go with Strika since both admittedly hadn't had the best figures in the line.
For a size comparison with a modern Transformer, here he is with the Studio Series line's AOE Optimus Prime. He should fit well with the modern Bayverse line more than before when it comes to scale, and it made me want to get some more off-screen characters to satisfy that itch of movie nostalgia that Hasbro today is slow with now than before. After Ernie and I saw Star Wars Episode 3, we talked about how we could see some expanded capitalization on nostalgia for movie toys for things like Allspark Power repaints or bringing in scrapped characters in the Concept Art line that aren't just from the lame ass Bumblebee movie. Imagine a Gamer Edition Breakaway we could later get as Thrust; I'd even accept the old Deluxe if it was a Voyager! And with the way NEST repaints turned out as well as the infestation of Geewunner crap, Highbrow is a figure I'm happy to own. While the robot mode color combo is weird and his proportions super bizarre, the creativity in the transformation as well as the choice in altmode are always a treat. And unlike on-screen dudes like Optimus, Bumblebee, and Starscream who are the kinds of characters we've come to expect within the main trilogy, Highbrow represented a time where we had no idea who else would bulk up the line.
Final ranking: ⭐⭐⭐ and a half out of ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
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