Transformers Armada is generally hailed by fans as one of the worst Transformers TV shows and the worst toy line ever. The show was poorly conceived, poorly written and overly gimmicky. The toy line was riddled with poor poseability, odd design choices and completely dominated by gimmicks. Despite that, however, there was a couple good figures in the line, although not everyone will agree with me. Right now, I’m talking about Armada Jetfire.
Armada Jetfire is an enormous and incredibly well detailed space shuttle. It is big, hefty and sturdy and I love it. It’s one of my favorite alternate modes ever. It doesn’t DO a whole lot, but it doesn’t need to, it just needs to look pretty and be fun to fly around the house while making “whooosh” sounds. He does have some annoying Lights and Sound gimmicks in his rear, middle rocket if you press his tail, but it’s easy enough to remove that batteries.
The transformation for this guy is pretty simple, and some would consider this a knock against him, but I don’t. His transformation does everything it needs to do and it does it well. It’s simple, it’s elegant, it has enough unique twists and turns to be fun. The only bad thing about it is that it requires a bit of parts forming in that the middle thruster is actually his gun and needs to be removed to separate the legs. On some figures this is a big deal to me, not so much on this guy, I couldn’t tell you why.
The robot mode on this guy is where most people end up hating this figure, and I feel a lot of the hate it receives is unwarranted, although I understand where it comes from. First of all, he has not forward and back hip articulation, so while he does have a little bit of side to side hip articulation, some limited knee articulation and some pretty snazzy ankle articulation, from the waist down he is still a brick. Second, this guy is wide. Some people describe him as being “fat,” and I can kind of understand that, but it’s not quite correct. He’s bulky like a muscle builder, not like someone who’s obese. Finally, he looks kind of cartoony, which is a shame, since his shuttle mode was so nice. It’s just something that you’ll either learn to look past or you won’t.
As far as what I like about this guy: He’s big, he’s sturdy, he’s fun to play with. He might be a brick, but bricks tend not to be fragile, which is something I really appreciate in a figure. I would rather have a reliable brick that’s fun than a super poseable figure that could break on me at any time.
Do I recommend this figure? Maybe, it really just depends on your own personal tastes. And I will admit, despite how much I like this figure, I wouldn’t mind if Hasbro revisited this character and either retooled his mold to fix some issues or if they simply gave him a new mold that didn’t have any issues.
