Thrilling 30 Windblade

Robot Mode: The first thing one notices about this robot is that it’s quite clearly meant to be a female. A Japanese female, to be precise, as both her face paint and her ‘hair style’ carry strong Japanese influences. And if there was any doubt left, you can remove the golden piece on the back of her head and put it into her hand. It’s a fan. So clearly we are looking at a Japanese-influenced fembot here. Or maybe the designer was a big fan of the G1 episode “Face of the Nijika”, who knows.

Looks aside Windblade is a pretty cool robot. Articulation is good, no complaints here, and she carries everyone’s favorite science fiction high tech weapon: a sword. A big sword in an even bigger scabbard, to be precise. The scabbard can be put on her back on the side of the jet cockpit hanging there or be plugged into either thigh. Windblade is bendy enough to hold the sword two-handed and pull off all sorts of cool swordfighter poses, so no complaints here, either.

We do have to look at the downsides, too, though. First off, Windblade looks great from the front and the back, but if you look at her from the side you can see right through her torso, as there is a big empty space there between her breast plate and back. Now that alone wouldn’t be so bad, but then there is the other thing: the feet. As Windblade is supposed to be a female robot, she naturally comes with high heels (all females ever in all of space wear high heels, didn’t you know?). Now there are some female TF figures with high heels who still manage a stable stance, but sadly Windblade is not one of them. Her feet are very unstable, as the heel flips in at the slightest touch. You can still manage to stand her up straight and in numerous poses, but it takes some doing.

So the bottom line for the robot mode: Overall very nicely done, but the badly designed feet really drag this figure down quite a bit.

Alternate Mode: For the longest time it seemed to be an unwritten rule that girl robots transform either into motorcycles or spiders, maybe occasionally into a car, but only if it’s pink and named Arcee. A jet, though? Aren’t jets supposed to be restricted to Seekers and Aerialbots and... you know... guy robots? Well, this girl robot here transforms into a jet and does a pretty decent job of it, too. The transformation is complex without being difficult and everything fits together pretty well. Okay, you have the red shins of the robot sitting on top of the jet, which looks a tiny bit strange, but otherwise it works pretty well. Just don’t look at the jet from underneath, as the underbelly looks a bit pieced together.

The jet has a working landing gear (the front wheel folds in, the rear two wheels are static) and the turbines set into the wings can swivel forward if you want. The sword in its big scabbard can be stored underneath the jet, but the hilt of the sword with the mini-turbine set into it now sticks out behind the rear engines. Better to leave it aside. So bottom line, not a bad jet mode. Not the best ever, but not bad.

Remarks: It’s not the first time that a new character has been added to the Transformers myth. Most new series add at least one or two original characters in order to bring some freshness to a cast consisting mostly of the same ten guys from Generation 1. Windblade is a special case, though, because she has not been created by a marketing guy, TV series author, or comic writer, but rather by a fan poll. Since her creation Windblade has not only gotten this toy, but also her own four issue limited comic series from IDW (with more on the way). She has also received a lot of flak from fanboys who can’t seem to fathom that girl robots transform into jets or there being girl robots not called Arcee in the first place.

In fiction Windblade is a so-called city speaker, meaning a Transformer with an affinity for conversing with the age-old Titans like Metroplex. Against expectations she has turned into an interesting character I’m looking forward to read more about. As for the toy, well, it does depict the character nicely, but it does have a big flaw when it comes to the feet, which is dragging the figure down quite a bit. The rest of it is quite nice, but better feet would certainly not go amiss. So bottom line: if you like the character or female Transformers in general, Windblade is a good pick. Otherwise, though, I’d think twice about getting her.

Rating: C+