Studio Series Thundercracker (Transformers One)

Prelude: Remember Transformers One? Best Transformers movie ever made? Actually treated the Transformers like characters instead of special effects? Yeah, it was a flop, so what? Still the best! And we’re thankfully still getting figures from it, too, such as this Thundercracker here from the Studio Series. Maybe if enough toys are sold, Hasbro will rethink doing a sequel? Who knows, but it’s worth a try. Let’s say go!

Robot Mode: Thundercracker here is a retool of Studio Series TFOne Starscream (surprise, surprise), but since I skipped that figure, this is my first impression of this mold. What we have here is the Seeker (or High Guard) design as we saw it in the Transformers One movie, which carries quite a few elements of the classic G1 Seeker design. We have a cockpit in the middle of the chest, guns attached to the shoulders, wings on the back and thrusters as feet. Don’t mess with the classics if they work, I always say.

Thundercracker got a new head of his own and it’s a great homage to the classic Seeker head design, a humanoid face with a visor and those exhaust grills to the left and right of the face. Very nicely done. The guns on Thundercracker’s shoulders are rotary cannons (the front portion actually does rotate and can unplug, too), which resemble the weapons carried by the Fall of Cybertron Seekers, too. He can unplug them from the shoulders and use them as hand-held guns, too, of course. No way to combine them into a single big gun this time, though.

The articulation is excellent, no complaints here, as Thundercracker has every joint you’d expect from a modern-day Transformers figure. The wings can fold back to give him full arm movement and while the feet look a bit weird from the side, they still provide a solid stance. If you absolutely, positively have to have some kind of flaw here, it’s that he has open knees on the back and slightly open forearms on the inside, but that’s really high-level nitpicking. 

So bottom line: an excellent robot mode and in my own not really all that humble opinion that mold looks much better here than it did for Starscream.

Alternate Mode: The transformation into his fighter jet mode isn’t really all that difficult. Thundercracker really just pulls in his legs, flips out the chest cockpit, and hides his head. Those are just the broad strokes, though, because along the way there are plenty of tiny tabs and pegs that need to go in exactly right or the whole thing doesn’t quite fit together. Like I said, it’s not difficult, but it does require a bit of finesse.

The finished jet looks very good, though. It does have a bit of an underbelly and you can see the robot fists sticking out the back, but those are the only downsides. The rest is a very sleek-looking aerial war machine with the two rotary cannons now underneath the cockpit and the wings folding down at a slight angle. No landing gear, which seems to be the norm for jet Transformers these days, but otherwise I like it a lot. 

You can even open up the cockpit and see something resembling a seat underneath. Not even a Diaclone driver figure would fit in there, mind you, but it’s still a nice detail. So bottom line for the jet mode: very nice. Still, Hasbro, I’d really like for Jet Transformers to start featuring landing gears again, okay? 

Remarks: I honestly can’t remember Thundercracker having much of a role in the Transformers One movie apart from being one of the High Guard and participating in the final battle against Sentinel Prime’s forces. Did he have a speaking part? I don’t think so, to be honest. Like the rest of the High Guard, he left Iacon after Megatron’s defeat and got rebranded (literally!) a Decepticon in the movie’s final scene. 

I very much like the Seeker design from Transformers One and was all set to get Starscream, but then I saw early renders of Thundercracker and immediately changed my plans. The new head, the slightly different chest design, and the new weapons immediately made him more attractive to me and if they go with the darker blues, then Thundercracker’s paint job is my favorite among the standard Seekers, too. The only bad thing I can say about this figure is that the transformation is a bit fiddly here and there, but otherwise? Very nice. Recommended to all Seeker and Thundercracker fans and let’s keep supporting Transformers One, too!

Rating: B+ 

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