Thanks to Internet snoops and scoops (no, not that Scoop), we’ve gotten a look at the upcoming Leader Class “Thrilling 30” Generations Jetfire. Oh man. After getting a pretty respectable run of figures up to and including the still very cool Classics version, Jetfire has been notably absent from the updated offerings of Transformers up until his “controversial” inclusion in the Epic Conclusion boxset for GI Joe’s SDCC exclusive. But this warrior scientist is no stranger to controversy, so if that’s news to you, read on…
… if you bleed glowy purple energon, than the story of the Autobot flyer with two names is part of your lore. If your first encounter with the name Jetfire involved minicons or twins, then you might want to pull up a chair.
Jetfire was one of the crown jewels in the 1985 Transformers assortment. He was one of (if not the) largest non-citybot Autobots of G1, and was even interpreted as the Autobot leader in some overseas releases as a result. He had an impressive amount of accessories, significant articulation that even up to Beast Wars would’ve been considered cutting edge. Despite the difficulty in finding a complete one these days, he was an imposing and tough figure, built from substantial amount of die-cast and rigid plastic. But some of the more savvy toy collectors of the day saw something familiar in Jetfire …
… and that familiarity comes from Macross. As most of us know now, Transformers, as it came to be, was actually a collection of various transforming toy lines plucked from as assortment of Japanese companies, including Takatoku Toys, which at that time built the Macross Valkyries — Jetfire specifically was a slightly altered VF-1S Super Valkyrie. As such, Jetfire was also a uniquely non-Japanese release, since at that time Macross would have been an equally viable, and therefore competitive, presence at toy stores. This is why Jetfire isn’t going to be in any Encore releases. Probably ever.
Things get even more dicey from there. With Transformers also being an American cartoon, it would seem that Jetfire was destined to be a part of it … maybe. Jetfire, as we know him from the toy, only showed up on TV in a commercial where he squared off with Shockwave. Instead, we met a similarly colored and vaguely similar Autobot jet in 1984 known as … Skyfire.
There’s lots of possible reasons for this to have happened. What makes the most sense to folks is that Takara, being in a partnership with Hasbro, put the kibosh on using Jetfire in the cartoon. Why? Well, if Takara had planned on bringing the cartoon to the home country, they probably didn’t want one of the coolest good guys only available as a toy from a rival company. Hasbro had made separate deals with companies like Bandai for certain “molds,” and since these were all Japanese companies, it would make sense not to provide at best free advertising, and at worst legal ammo, to companies competing in the same market. This would’ve been made even more troubling when Macross’ own American syndicated show Robotech aired a year later.
Whatever the actual reasons were, this begins Jetfire’s split personality. As it was, Skyfire played a fairly regular role in the show as Autobot carpool, and joined Brawn in convincing a young Disthunder how awesome they were in “The Ultimate Doom.” Sadly, he didn’t make it to the movie, though I like IDW’s explanation that the second season guys were waylaid from Autobot City by a Decepticon attack on the Ark, but still managed a couple cameos in the 3rd Season.
After that, Jetfire/Skyfire took a powder for a while. The Jetfire name was recycled for characters in the Unicron Trilogy, but since he was all-new and bared little resemblance to his former conflicted self, it was a non-issue.
It really wasn’t until Dreamwave, and the return of directly G1-inspired toys, that we really saw the old red/white Veritech-type again. The comics brought Don Figueroa’s melding of the cartoon and toy design, and that lead to Classics Jetfire, our first proper version of the character since G1. He was then joined by a War Within Titanium version, as well as a few little others.
After that, there’s some unrelated (even to each other) movie versions … shudder … some cool, but not nearly big enough, game roles, and a certain 2013 box set.
The Epic Conclusion set for SDCC last year was a continuation of GI Joe vehicles cleverly repurposed into the alt-modes of respective Transformers. How this concept is dying to be taken to the next level is a whole ‘nother column, but as-is they’ve been sleeper hits of the various conventions where they were offered. This set was the most ambitious, and obviously included Jetfire as a remolded and accessorized Skystriker, a great match if there ever was one.
But it didn’t take long for Harmony Gold, the current holder of Robotech, to catch wind of this rather dead-on G1 homage and lay siege on Hasbro. In some of the more ridiculous demands were for the recall or destruction of all of the vehicles and for monetary damages that they didn’t have an actual figure for, since the actual amount of damages was, in their words, “difficult to ascertain.”
Right or wrong, the suit has since been dismissed, and the difference settled out of court. The interesting part is that there was apparently language in the settlement that essentially, well, settles the standing of Jetfire for once and all. It’s hard to say for sure, but that might have played a role in getting to this fantastic leader class version we’re looking forward to.
So there you have it, the sordid but abridged history of Jetfire. It’s been an interesting journey for a character whose personality is usually that of an easy-going adventurer or a cool headed scientist, but this is the kind of stuff that happens when you wear a purple badge for part of an episode.
