BOTCON 2007 EXCLUSIVE DREADWIND

Review by Matty Boy

Thanks partly to the impending bona fide hit status of the TF movie, this year's BotCon was at Hasbro's headquarters in Providence, RI. As if an early screening of the movie (June 28th), endless displays of prototype robots literally from the future, and guests like Peter You-Know-Who Cullen didn't make this year's Botcon enticing enough, the exclusives BotCon offered with admission sealed many a deal. The "Games Of Deception" set includes popular molds from the recent unanimously-lauded Classics line, repainted as favorite characters who'd been left out of that lineup (much to fans' chagrin). Specifically: Dreadwind, Thundercracker, and the remaining "Conehead Seekers", Thrust and Dirge. Thrown in for good measure is Bug Bite, who may or may not be the Gobot of the same name, now stranded in a far more high-quality dimension. Each of the 'bots deserves their own review, so I'm going to kick the whole thing off with Dreadwind. Why Dreadwind, you ask?

Because of the great fondness I have for the Jetfire mold that Dreadwind is a retool of, I'd predicted that Dreadwind would be my least favorite out of the five. If you've read the superb Stormbringer comics that feature the Jetfire of which I speak front-and-center, you'll probably understand this point of view. Also, as a kid, I never got my hands on the original Dreadwind; I had his Powermaster partner, Darkwing (not the duck), with whom he would have been able to combine to become a ginormous death jet of some sort. So I didn't get the nostalgic suckerpunch like I get from looking at, say, Thrust.

Then I slid his fat deadly ass out of the protective foam insert and the slag hit the fan.

Alternate Mode: Dreadwind's altmode is, as it was when he was a Powermaster back in G1, a badass attack jet. Because of Jetfire's design, it's boxier than he looked in G1, but this is all made up for with the color scheme. Dreadwind is white, teal, lavender and grey. Unmistakably Dreadwind. His canopy and arm-mounted missiles are a blue-green that matches stripes on his wings. His armaments and weapon are grey, as are his tailfins, landing gear and the tip of his nosecone. Just about anything that was black on Jetfire is grey on Dreadwind, and it looks terrific. Dreadwind's white is a touch more opaque than pearlescent, bringing out the details even moreso. Paint apps are sparse here, but really bring out the beauty of the tiny details, the wing borders in particular. Dreadwind's removable thruster pack is primarily lavender, with a bit of difference between the painted and plastic parts, but honestly it's such a great classic Decepticon color I don't mind. His rubsign is behind the canopy, unlike Jetfire's, which I think was on the wing, I don't know. I took it off. I mean, on the wing?! Come on. I dunno what the rubsign-placers at Hasbro are thinking sometimes... they could put more thought into it, in my opinion. I re-stuck my Classics Ultra Magnus' rubsign in the middle of his truck-mode's bumper. Try it yourself- you will realize beyond all doubt that I am awesome.

Contrary to how I felt about Jetfire, I think Dreadwind looks better without the thruster pack in jet mode. Don't get me wrong, the pack is super-cool (and its mechanics work just perfectly), but anybody who did have an original Dreadwind back in the day would recognize him better without his pack, even though he has two tailfins now instead of one. Also, there are nice simple paint apps on the inside of the tailfins that the thruster pack doesn't leave enough room for you to see when it's attached.

Extending Dreadwind's wings out too much will expose his robot-mode's forearms, which are lavender and grey; the wings look better swept back. There are also two vents behind the cockpit that are painted red; a nice nod to the G1 version's decals. Overall the jet has a great flow, and again, there is no mistaking it for any other 'bot. The seams and lines are just that much more visible than they were on Jetfire, and the result is an eye-pleasing surface on the top of the jet not unlike something James Raiz might draw (even though Don Figueroa, the Jack Kirby of Transformers, was the designer*).

*Don Fig did do the bonerific box art for the set, however. He also recently let us all see a version of Grimlock he designed that might not be released but we all hope it is because it's a freaking awesome Grimlock from before he was a Dinobot and we all want one.

Transformation: For the size, Dreadwind is a nice balance of difficult and easy. The set did come with instructions (under the foam, I realized well after opening it), but it wouldn't surprise me if they hadn't been included; wouldn't anyone paying this much for these toys pretty much know how to transform them in the first place?

Well, I did, anyway. Everything snaps into place nice and firm; it may be my imagination, but I seem to have an easier time standing Dreadwind up than I did Jetfire. As transformations go, it's nowhere near as difficult as the Movie toys.

Robot Mode: The first thing I did upon turning Dreadwind into a robot was remove his helmet. Simply put, it makes him look too much Jetfire. But without it, WOWEE!

A simple remold to the head and we have Dreadwind in the flesh... er, metal. The teal bordering on his wings that I mentioned before is repeated on his hips, which does a damn fine job of impersonating the look of his G1 decals. Except for the size of his wings, if I had my glasses off, it would be impossible for me to distinguish this guy from his G1 counterpart. They even stuck the rubsign in the exact spot where his Decepticon brand would be... which means I have to retract my comments about Hasbro's rubsign-placers from before. It's just as well.

The colors correspond to the original Dreadwind so painstakingly, I could literally go part-by-part to prove my point, thus making this review even more boring. So I'll wrap up by saying this; there were people (myself included) who were so impressed by Classics Jetfire that the phrases "Masterpiece Jetfire" and "Best Transformer Ever" were bandied about. Dreadwind is a repaint of that Jetfire with a distinctive head. If you were one of the few kids who actually had G1 Dreadwind back in 1988 and loved him, get your hands on one of these. If you can't, try not to focus on your desire too strongly or it may rise up and kill you. Dreadwind went from being the 'bot I was the least excited about in a BotCon set to a Transformer that is one of my favorites ever. I took him out of the box first and it was over an hour before I got to the other guys.

Conclusion: If you ever find the opportunity to legally acquire this toy, do so. I don't know if it's seeing heavy scalpage on eBay, but if you can get him for somewhere in the neighborhood of $50 or less, jump. Both modes are striking and incredibly faithful to an old-school robot, the head is Dreadwind all the way, and it's a great mold in the first place. The hint of grey in the white sections is just enough to make his details stand out, and he comes in a color scheme we haven't really seen since the Seacons; good, creepy, Decepticon colors. From pictures, I couldn't tell how good a job they did making him look different from Jetfire. You could stand the two side-by-side and they still look unique. I can't ask much more from a repaint than that.