Animated Silverbolt

Allegiance: Autobots
Series: Animated
Category: Custom Voyager
Year: 2011

Many Autobots believe that something must have gone wrong with Silverbolt's programming. They respect his abilities as warrior and hunter, but even the most virtuous and good-natured among them are tired of his over-the-top hero shtick. He's courageous, he's strong, and he's a major pain in the skidplate, for whom life is nothing but an adventure novel with himself as the lead. The hunt for the former Autobot Black Arachnia threatens to shatter Silverbolt's heroic demeanour, though, not to mention the damage to his nerves. Because a true hero cannot possibly fall in love with one of the villains... or can he?

Remarks: Animated ended far too soon and lots of figures we saw in the TV series or the two brilliant Allspark Almanac books never made it into toy form. Silverbolt is not one of those. While there was an Animated Silverbolt mentioned in the second Allspark Almanac, it was one based on G1 Silverbolt, not the Beast Wars character. But considering that we had a Beast-Wars-like Blackarachnia in Animated, it was only fitting to have a BW Silverbolt, too. And here he is, in all his customized glory. Fair warning, though: seeing as I got this figure as a birthday present from Limewire (plus I’m both an Animated and a Beast Wars nut), there is a good chance I am not entirely objective here. Just so you know.

Silverbolt here is an extensive repaint of Animated Blitzwing, along with a new head supplied by Shapeways. Most of the figure is in BW Silverbolt’s familiar grey with blacks added for contrast and lots of red and gold highlights, particularly around the waist area where BW Silverbolt had his strange belt-loincloth thing. Very nicely done.

Not content with merely painting the figure, though, Limewire also performed some changes on the wings on the figure’s arms, allowing them to fold out sideways to mimic the huge wings BW Silverbolt had in robot mode. Finally, there are now tiny groves in the hands, which allow Silverbolt to (loosely) hold his missiles as clubs, just like the BW character often did. Not perfect, but considering that Blitzwing didn’t have the old fists-with-holes, it was the best that could be done.

The choice of Blitzwing as a basis for Silverbolt was a natural, of course. BW Silverbolt had a mishmash of flying and ground-based beast, so what better choice than a triple-changer with a flying and a ground-based alternate mode? And considering that Blitzwing’s jet mode still has very visible tank threads underneath, that’s probably as close to a “Cybertron Mode” of a flying wolf as you’ll ever come. Transformation into all three modes still works fine with the new head, though it can easily be removed if you want to err on the side of caution.

So in closing I can only give this figure a highly subjective, yet still fully deserved…

Rating: A