I saw the combined Superion at SDCC ’14 and turned to Jerry Jivion and might have said something like “f—ing awesome”. Or something like that.
A few months later and I finally got around to reviewing this bad boy. VeeBee sent this along for me to review after meeting with Hasbro at Toy Fair 2015 where Hasbro asked for us to take a crack at reviewing a Transformers for them. My oldest son, who is starting to take over principal photography in the house (it’s LEGOs all over again…), could not wait for this figure to arrive as he is a huge Transformers’ collector and has his doubts about the new Combiner Wars figures.
Doubts no more. Hours and hours of playing and transformation have been had in the Lobo casa and I think words like “greatest Transformer ever” might have been muttered. Once or twice. I think that speaks volumes when a teenager is excited about a toy and then puts it prominent in his display. In fact I’ve been ordered to pick up the rest of the figures so we can complete Superior and do individual reviews on each figure. This will test my ability to write Transformers reviews.
My knowledge of Superion comes from experience as a youth collecting Transformers. Yes, I had the original Optimus Prime (still do, horrible condition) and all of series 1. It was 1984 and and I was 11, there was nothing cooler than robots, specially ones that transformed! I don’t remember Silverbolt or the rest of the Aerialbots and the last time I brought home toys from the US the only combiner I could find was Devastator leading me to believe that by 1986 I moved on to other hobbies, or something like that. As a result I had to hit up TFWiki for some info on Silverbolt (and yes I will be heckled by son for this).
Using that as a strength, the review of this toy will be as that, a review of toy that is part of 5(6) separate bots that make up a combined robot Superion. Silverbolt makes up the chest piece of Superion where the other 4(5) robots make up the arms and legs (and chest piece). Starting with the plane mode, Silverbolt transformers in the now retired supersonic Concorde airplane, the super fast plane that flew from Paris to New York in 3 hours. The plane mode is excellent to look at and it’s impressive these days how Hasbro can make a really cool looking vehicle mode and still make an excellent robot to play with. And the fact that the transformation from airplane to robot is easy make the toy all the more fun.
Silverbolt’s robot mode is excellent, it’s pretty close to perfect for a transforming toy. The modern update on the classic figure looks great and it is impressive to see Hasbro going to great lengths to make these toys channel their classic looks with modern sensibilities. I know that a large part of this success is the IDW Transformers comics that really go to lengths to make these bots look great and are well written to boot (Lost Light rules!). Silverbolt is a great looking bot and has a ton of articulation that is not inhibited by the sculpt or the transformations.
The third aspect to Silverbolt is the final transformation into the chest and head of Superion. And I will admit that I was really dubious about the figure. I can say without a doubt, dubiousness is put to rest. I love the chest! It looks awesome moves well and the head is really killer. The rubber antennae are perfect and welcome change to other figure that have hard plastic sticks that constantly break.
The plastic quality hit me as being off for some reason, the figure is extremely light and the plastic did not strike me as being as robust as previous Transformers. After playing with Brainwave new lighter plastic or hollow construction seems to be the new thing, as long as the plastic holds up over time, I’m gold.
The colors are very bright! There isn’t a ton of paint on the figure and the colors are very basic, which had me a little doubtful of how this would look on shelf. I can see that Silverbolt looks fine with the other Transformers in the collection and he actually pops, in a good way.
I have to concur with my son’s assessment, this is a great toy and definitely one that Transformer collectors should be happy to have on their shelves. Bring on the rest!
You can still pick up Silverbolt at:
