Victory Star Saber

Robot Modes: Star Saber actually has two (or three) different robot modes. Star Saber is a Brainmaster, meaning the "real" him is the small Brainmaster figure, which is placed in the chest of the normal robot. Once the chest is closed the face rises up into the empty cranium and you have a normal-sized robot in blue and red. This is Saber. His posability is a bit above average for a figure from that time. He can move his arms at the shoulders in all three dimensions and bend his legs (but only both together). Saber can use the large Saber Blade as a weapon, but it is a bit too large for him. All in all Saber is an okay figure, but nothing too special.

The treat is when Saber combines with the exo suit formed from the larger superjet into the mighty Star Saber. Star Saber is actually more posable than Saber. He can move his arms at shoulders and elbows and his legs bend sideways at the hips and knees. Star Saber looks pretty awesome. Unmistakably an anime robot, but still cool. And in this mode the Saber Blade is exactly the right size to serve as his weapon. There is a fair amount of detailing (much of it done with stickers). Bottom line, Star Saber is a very cool and excellent robot.

Alternate Modes: Saber transforms into a red fighter jet and does a pretty good job here. The jet has a cockpit where you can place the small Brainmaster figure. The jet looks good, but is nothing too special. The large exo suit transforms into a futuristic vehicle called the 'Saber Jet' in the cartoon. It looks pretty cool and you can store the blade of the Saber Blade in it, but it does have one pretty major flaw: The helmet Saber dons when becoming Star Saber rests on top, visible for all to see. The face plate flips up, but you still can't mistake it for anything but a head.

The two jets can also combine into a big superjet and this is where the alternate mode looks its best. The smaller jet becomes the front with its wings flipped up to become lateral fins and the bigger Saber Jet forms the back. Okay, you'll never mistake it for an Earthen craft and there is still the head of Star Saber on top, but still, it looks pretty cool. A nice vehicle mode.

Missing Parts Star Saber had a gun as secondary weapon, which is missing here. Since I don't remember him ever using it in the cartoon I'm not too sad about it.

Remarks: Truth be told, this version of Star Saber is not an original, it's a Korean knock-off, but it's from the same year. And apart for the stickers it came with (since replaced with original ones from Reprolabels.com) I haven't found any differences to the original. Star Saber was the leader of the Cybertrons (Autobots) in the third Japanese-exclusive Transformers cartoon series, Victory. Unlike its predecessor Masterforce, Victory was pretty much your basic good-robots-battle-bad-robots show with very little depth to the plot, but the quality of the drawings was excellent and Star Saber just stood out as an awesome-looking character. And since original Star Sabers cost in excess of 500 dollars on Ebay, I'm pretty happy with my Korean twin here. Star Saber is recommended to everyone who doesn't mind the anime look and can afford the price (or manages to snatch one like mine).

Rating: B+