Blackjack was originally released as a Micormaster in 1989, and he served as the leader of a Decepticon “sports car patrol.” It seems he’s since been promoted to the Stunticon team, however, and is now part of Hasbro and IDW’s “Combiner Wars.” With the addition of Blackjack, the Combiner Wars Stunticons officially span all three “standard” Transformers retail class sizes: deluxe, voyager, and legends. Blackjack is, of course, a legends-class figure who, like his teammate Offroad, is a new addition to the team. Or it could just be that he’s an upgraded version of the drone car included with the G1 Motormaster figure back in ’85. Motormaster came with this faceless, nameless little roller drone that would serve as a chest piece for Menasor, the team’s combined form. Blackjack serves the same purpose as a combiner piece, so it could very well be that Blackjack is intended to be Motormaster’s little buddy all grown up. Not that you could tell that from the packaging or anything.
So let’s take a closer look at Blackjack!
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The packaging is standard legends class, so there isn’t a whole lot of character info to be gleaned from it. So, if you were so inclined, you could ignore the Combiner Wars aspect of the figure, and the Stunticon association it would imply, and just display him as an upgrade of the original Micromaster Blackjack.
In robot mode he looks an awful lot like the Battlecharger Runabout. Rumor has it this figure actually was intended to be Runabout, but his colors were changed and he became Blackjack. Not a big deal, I guess. On his own, he’s a pretty cool little legends-class figure. The color combo is eye-catching, and he’s a nicely articulated figure. And since I don’t immediately associate him with the Stunticons and Menasor, it doesn’t feel necessary to pick him up just to complete the combiner; he’s a fairly solid figure in his own right as a standalone.
For accessories, all Blackjack comes with is this purple thing that’s supposed to be a double-bladed ax. Sure. The ax then serves an ornamental purpose on Menasor’s chest as it combines with Blackjack to form the titan’s main chest piece. It works well enough, but it’s not perfect (but we’ll get into that another time with our look at Mensaor).
As far as articulation goes, Blackjack has it where it counts: he has a great range of motion in his shoulders, elbows, and hips, and his knees can easily bend a full 90-degrees. His head is even ball-jointed, which is cool to see since the small figures often have no head/neck articulation whatsoever.
Being a legends-class figure, Blackjack is small, about half the size of his deluxe teammates. This adds a good deal of diversity to the team when you also factor in Motormaster, and he does seem to fit right in, even though he’s another new guy.
His alt mode is a sleek-looking little racer, which, unfortunately, is way out of scale with the alt modes of his teammates, so unless he’s serving as Menasor’s chest, he’ll be in ‘bot mode on my shelves. Speaking of his combiner abilities, he just sort of sits on Menasor’s chest in his full alt mode; no other transformation is necessary, unless you count adding his ax to his roof, but we’ll be looking at that later this week when we have a look at the final combined form of the entire Stunticon team as Menasor.
Blackjack is a cool figure to add to the Decepticon ranks even if you have no interest in the Stunticons. I like him quite a bit as a new-mold legends-class figure, and I’d love to see him repainted as Runabout, whom I’m fairly certain we’ll see at a later date.
Thanks to Hasbro for sending along Blackjack as a review sample, and be sure to check back soon for our look at Menasor!
Blackjack can be purchased here:
