Generations Selects Cyclonus

Prelude: Bringing out the exact same figure with different paint jobs to portray both its cartoon and its original toy incarnation has become all the rage as of late, especially (but not only) for G1 characters. Case in point, Cyclonus, whose Kingdom figure sported the pale purple of his movie / cartoon version. And now we have the Generations Selects version, whose paint job resembles that of the original G1 figure. Better? Worse? We will see. Let’s say go!

Differences: Apart from the coloring, this figure is, of course, the same awesome Transformers toy that Kingdom Cyclonus is, so we will just focus on the differences here. Generations Selects Cyclonus comes in a much darker, nearly blue shade of purple, a near-exact match for the color of the original 1986 toy. His grey parts (face, thighs) are also a darker and somewhat shinier shade of grey and now include his forearms, wings, and feet, which are purple on the Kingdom version. Again, a close match to the original toy.

Additionally, Selects Cyclonus comes with stickers that can apply or not, your choice. Here, too, we have a close match to the stickers of the original toy. I find it kind of funny that Selects Cyclonus already has a Decepticon symbol on his chest, but also comes with a sticker symbol that you can put on top of it. The only difference is, of course, that the sticker looks like a sticker. No idea why, but I find that hilarious. As you can see from the pictures, I did apply the stickers. They look fabulous in my opinion, but again, you can leave them off if you want.

The only non-paint difference between this figure and the Kingdom version is that Selects Cyclonus comes with his Targetmaster Nightstick (on top of his normal gun). Nightstick is yet another repaint of the Siege Battlemaster Blowpipe. It’s a nice add-on, but not something I really needed. Sadly the Battlemaster (and some effect parts) upped the price point of this figure somewhat when compared to the Kingdom version.

So that’s it in terms of differences. Selects Cyclonus very nicely evokes the look of the original G1 toy, so mission accomplished.

Remarks: Nearly every single Generation 1 character looks somewhat different in toy form than they did on the screen. You have extreme cases like Ironhide and Ratchet and you have cases like Optimus Prime, where the on-screen character is merely a somewhat streamlined version of the toy. Cyclonus is somewhere between these two extremes. The original toy certainly looked clunkier than the Movie character and had a much darker paint job, but was still easily recognizable.

For the longest time I was not a fan of the trend of releasing the same figure in toy and cartoon coloring, but Cyclonus here (as well as BuzzBee Terrorsaur) has changed my mind, at least for certain figures. Selects Cyclonus looks awesome and the darker paintjob somehow makes him look more powerful and threatening, at least to me. Which paintjob you prefer is, of course, simply a matter of taste (and Battlemasters are a dime a dozen if you want one for him), so ultimately it’s up to you. That said, Cyclonus (in either color) is an awesome figure and needs to be part of every serious Transformers collection in my mind. I’ll keep both of them, but if I had to choose, I’d probably stick with Selects Cyclonus.

Rating: A