Here we have Blast Off in his shuttle mode. While brown and purple may not be the most practical color scheme for this kind of altmode, it is at least fitting for the character and the design. Granted, I always felt that making it somewhat more cohesive would help it somewhat. Regardless, that is what it looked like in the cartoon, though being a Deluxe shuttle, there isn't much for us to do without any landing gear or whatever else other shuttleformers got. You can place the guns under the wings like a Seeker, but for the most part, he just "be's" shuttle. The sculpted details are nice, but that is about what we have. I should mention that the tailfin is disassembled out of the box, so keep that in mind.
For a vehicle mode size comparison, here we have him with fellow arm, Vortex.as we know, the scale between a military helicopter and a space shuttle is never going to make any sense, so the only way this could somehow work is if Blast Off was reimagined as a drone that resembled a shuttle. Hey, it beats the cartoon logic!
Transformation is pretty close to what I expected with this character design, with the front section becoming the arms, the back becoming the legs, and the fuselage becoming the torso. I always thought that the transformation scheme made him come across like he was about to dive in the water, but that suits a hypothetical submarine retool. Anyways, Blast Off is about as accurate as one would expect from the Sunbow cartoon, with the design likely being the least deviated from the toy it was originally based on. The same thruster toes we got originally with Combiner Wars/Unite Warriors is carried over for this toy, which is how the cartoon came up with feet that were previously nonexistent. The forearms do have a bit of a Popeye look to them, but at least his hands aren't entirely stuck under two obnoxiously featureless nosecone halves like on the old toy. Also, is it me, or does he have a chest similar to Cerebros?
His head sculpt is an example of.how weird animation accuracy can get. The shape of it is blocky like the old toy, but the eyes are left as silver while the forehead has pink painted as if it's meant to be the visor. Why?! I almost want to tweak that so badly because I hate how the animators colored the face that way. Articulation is standard for the line, with the ball jointed neck, swivels for the shoulders, biceps, wrists, waist, and thighs, hinges for the outward arm joints, elbows, knees, and ankles, and universal joints at the hips. One thing I appreciate is that the guns have silver paint inside the crevices where the hollow areas are.
And why not, just to tease the next Combaticon soon to be reviewed, here we have three of the members together as we wait for the rest of the characters. I remember when Combiner Wars' reliance on retools left us with a Blast Off that initially was a brown Quickslinger and Vortex was yet another Alpha Bravo repaint. I'll go over Brawl soon, but in spite of how basic Blast Off is, at least he is making things work so well.
Like Vortex and half of the limbs for the Aerialbots and Stunticons, he splits in half and can attach to the arm frames.
The compatibility continues to surprise me, though I should mention that Hasbro deliberately has Blast Off's bottom side attach rather than the roof due to the use of the frame rather than a peg that would be found on the back of the roof on the old toy. This also was a deviation we sort of had with Vortex where the front section pointed downwards than upwards. Regardless, Blast Off manages to be fine in spite of the small things that bother me. I guess I don't feel as annoyed by him compared to Windcharger because this guy not only is released closer to his teammates, but he also has a more reasonable height and contributes to a combiner. I prefer Vortex more, but Blast Off is still fine as it stands. We'll see if he'll remain at the bottom when we take a look st the remaining 3 members, though.
Final ranking: ⭐⭐⭐ and a half out of ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
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