JETFIRE

Rating: AAAA ½
Pros: Makes me feel young again; looks freaking cool
Cons: I can't make it stand up if I move the legs, like, at all.

Just to make sure that we can propagate the confusion that our readers feel when they attempt to assess our level of maturity here at Awesomeness (though I think it’s obvious by now), I went out of my way to buy myself a Transformer toy.

>>>WARNING: BORING BACKSTORY AHEAD!<<<

However, there is a bit of nostalgia here. Forgive the ramblings of this Awesomeness entry, as it takes me back to a simpler time. I am currently enjoying the delights of righting ancient wrongs and generally being a kid again, but this time with an income. Also, I’m tired and don’t give a shit.

I think it was my first flight overseas when I sat on a window seat and became amazed with flight. I watched the ailerons and spoilers move up and down and thought ‘wow, this shit’s fantastic!*’ (* note: this may be a modern interpretation as I was about 4 at the time and didn’t know the existence of any of these words).

Now, I had a jet Transformer with me on that trip (Cyclonus, I have discovered it to be about 20 minutes ago) and I quickly made sure that I converted whole tracts of the house into runways with little bits of Lego. I simulated landings and takeoffs, flew the thing around, tried to figure out how this whole flight business worked… It was an exciting time, in my mind.

Then, we had a chap come in and repair our air conditioner, and his brat-arse prick of a son evidently tagged along for the repairing of said technology. When they departed, I was minus my dear Cyclonus. Stolen! Ripped right from beneath my eyes. The air conditioner was fixed, however. I think it still works, some 20-odd years later.

Fast-forward. I don’t know what spurred the memory, but I think I was walking through a department store a while back and saw a similar Transformer that reconnected that old feeling of discovery, wonder and being somewhat upset for a short while (at this stage, I still had my Transformer called Scourge, so the universe was still more or less OK in the mind of this traumatised, yet positively-minded youngster). The thought occurred: now that I have some form of stable income, perhaps I can achieve balance once more within my soul and replace a portion of my being that just so happens to look like a jet fighter Transformer?

It was a Zen moment. I may have meditated. I probably went home and ate a biscuit.

At any rate, I found myself walking around another department store and finally decided to gulp down my pride. Stepped in, picked off an item from the shelf, shuffled towards the check-in counter, deflected some inquisitive looks from elderly and youthful individuals alike, turned tail and fled. PLUS it was on special!

So yes, I picked up Jetfire, some form of F-14 jet hybrid, since it has a booster pack on its back and big guns (nothing suss). He’s an Autobot, if that means something to people out there (which it should! Come on, you’ve got to love the good guys), but he used to be a Decepticon. However, he witnessed such cruelty against a human prisoner that he turned coat and fled. Damn that Megatron. Actually, looking at it now, it has the rear end of an F-14, but the front half is what I discovered to be a Valkyrie, or a cartoon/ toyline created by a Japanese company before they applied the same mould to the original Jetfire. This Jetfire, as part of the Classics Transformers line, is a apparently a hybrid.

At any rate, how does it go, I hear everyone cry? This thing… I don’t know what it was like handling these toys back in the day, but this thing is a beast. It’s huge! It also weighs a ton for something that’s essentially plastic. However, there’s a great deal of functionality in there; I tried my best to rip it apart but broke down, wept and read the instruction manual.

Jetfire also does cool things! The wings swing into delta and high-drag/ lift forms, there’s some wheels that come up and down, there’s some spring-loaded missiles, the details are minute and well-modelled, the hand-held energy weapon can be split in two and slung under the wings as gun packs… No, no, no. I promised myself that I was a grown man and that this was just for display purposes only. I would sit it on my shelf and admire it from that perspective. I could then sit, drink coffee and write my thesis.

Having said that, I’ve since assembled/ disassembled the beast a number of times and ‘may’ have conducted strafing runs of my exam-studying partner whilst uttering the words ‘ka-chew’ and ‘pew pew pew’ and ‘PSSSHHHEEEEWWWW’. She wasn’t very impressed, but I had the time of my life.

The only issue here is that in robot mode, Jetfire isn’t very mobile. I’ve tried moving him around into different poses, but he quickly gets unbalanced and falls over. Perhaps if I can fashion him a little glass and fill it up with a mini-pint of Heineken. We might have something in common.

At any rate, I’ve had so much fun revisiting my childhood here. I think I’ve gone through that phase of rejecting toys as being ‘too childish’, but now I’m a (somewhat) grown man I can be comfortable reconnecting with that kid of oh so many years ago.

The Verdict: It’s great! Huge, heavy, great detail… I’ve ordered Ramjet over eBay.