Here we have Cyclonus from his vehicle mode, a helicopter with a cockpit much flatter than normal when it comes to military choppers. It's pretty heavy on the firepower, what with the number of cannons whipped out. While it may seem fairly clunky, especially with how his butt looks small in comparison, it at least goes along with the character's obsession with firepower. Movie Ironhide and Sixgun have some rivalry here! The legs do make the altmode look a little clunky, and while the arms are blatantly under the small wings, at least they're mostly hidden from the cannons, and hey, at least he used his arm at one point in his altmode.
His helicopter butt has a lever that can be pulled to make the helicopter blades spin, which mimics them propelling without manually spinning them. I also love the number of sculpted details and even the silver paint added in parts of this toy. Personally, the caramel brown on parts of the figure may seem pretty out of place, but the pale blue along with the off white and the bits of navy blue, purple, and silver oddly go well together.
Transformation is fairly basic, as all you do is straighten the limbs and hinge the helicopter tail down, but the robot mode isn't actually too bad. I do feel that most Armada Decepticons don't really get quite as much of an involved transformation as one would expect from, say, Hot Shot or Scavenger, but at least the design manages to be decent overall. The pelvis does take getting used to, but my favorite part is the propeller blade positioned to look like a sheathed sword.
The head sculpt is sadly hard to like. While the head has a decent sculpt, the paint doesn't help in making it more pronounced due its inability in making it look sharp. Also, the figure's head always looks up or down but not straight ahead.
Some Minicon features are activated here. Aside from missiles that are launched only when the Minicon is attached, the shins reveal flip out cannons, which makes me wish I had the proper Minicon to go along with this figure.
You can use the propeller blade as a weapon if you want. That can fit on the 5mm ports on his arms, but it doesn't activate any features.
Sadly, my copy of Cyclonus is missing the Minicon known as Crumplezone. Whether or not the one that came with this figure is humping tanks remains to be seen. This little guy can turn into a tank as well as a front cockpit meant for Cyclonus when they Powerlink. It's one of the more unique Minicons in the line, and the front cockpit actually looks pretty cool when attached. I even like how his face is about the same as his larger partner, almost like he's Cyclo's son!
This figure has been repainted a few times. I should mention first that the Japanese version, Micron Legend Sandstorm (yes, his name is different) might have slightly lighter colors, but it's the more unique repaints that matter! First up, it's the Powerlinx version of the figure. He's neon green, maroon, dark gray, and has a black cockpit that looks out of place. Crumplezone gets a similar treatment, and this is apparently an homage to Springer (I don't buy it either)
This is the Energon version of Cyclonus before he was reformatted into Snow Cat. The colors look more militaristic, though I have to admit that this ROTF Grindor-esque repaint isn't as cool as the Armada colors. They just make him look more like a drone rather than an individual with a personality. Crumplezone has a similar share of color treatment, too.
Finally, we have Buzzsaw, one of the few Armada figures that was reused in the Cybertron line. This figure is retooled in places, notably the head, chest, and arms. He uses a Cyber Key to activate the missiles in the arms, though it means that the Crumplezone mold isn't compatible with this toy. This means you gotta stick with the regular version of the tooling, especially the regular Cyclonus and his unique deco!
Final ranking: 🥧🥧🥧 out of 🥧🥧🥧🥧🥧
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