TFC F-15 Eagle

Prelude: Legal stuff first as always. F-15 Eagle is not a figure released by Hasbro or Takara-Tomy and thus not an official Transformers toy. It's from third party provider TFC Toys and an obvious homage to the G1 Aerialbot Air Raid, but for legal reasons it can't be called by that name. Why they didn't give him some other proper name instead of just naming him after his alternate mode remains a mystery.

Robot Mode: The classic Aerialbots (except Silverbolt) all transformed from their jet modes in the same way, by flipping the front and back of the jet onto their backs and then elongating the body of the jet into their robot body. F-4 Phantom closely follows that design, but F-15 Eagle changes it somewhat. In fact his robot mode design is relatively close to that of the Classic Seekers such as Starscream, in that the rear of the jet splits into his legs. He still flips the front of the jet onto his back instead of it becoming his chest so that the typical Aerialbot look of the nosecone peeking out behind his back remains, but it’s still good to see that they didn’t make all four limb robots transform in the same way.

F-15 Eagle comes in Air Raid’s traditional colors of black, white, and red, whit some yellow highlights thrown in for good measure. The paint job looks really good and easily makes him recognizable as the same character we saw in the G1 cartoon and the War for Cybertron video game. Articulation is pretty much the same as F-4 Phantom, meaning pretty good and up to current standards. I really like his head sculpt, too.

One gimmick more associated with Starscream than Air Raid is his shoulder-mounted missile launchers. You can flip down the panels on his shoulders and expose the sculpted launcher tubes. Nicely done. F-15 Eagle also carries two weapons that are either really big missiles or extra fuel pods on his jet mode. He can either clip them to his forearms or hold them in hand.

Bottom line: a very nice reinterpretation of Air Raid and a nice robot mode overall. No complaints.

Alternate Mode: Yeah, you guessed it. F-15 Eagle transforms into an F-15 Eagle air superiority jet fighter. McDonnel Douglas hasn’t sued yet as far as I know, so the likeness is probably not close enough for legal action, but to my untrained eye it looks very good. And just in case you had doubts that this unofficial third-party figure here is meant to pay homage to Air Raid, just look at the letters on the tail fins.

Not that much I can write here, really. A very nice jet mode with nice detailing, a working landing gear, and his two weapons / missiles / fuel pods can clip under the wings. The jet does not incorporate the big foot of the combiner (see below), but it can still be put to use here as a display stand (see pictures). Nicely done and probably better than somehow trying to cram that thing into a sleek jet design.

So all in all a very nice jet mode, very close to the G1 original, but a lot bigger, of course.

Combiner Mode: F-15 Eagle forms one leg of the Uranos combiner robot. I'll do a separate review for the big guy once I've assembled all the component figures. In the picture above Eagle is attached to Hercules, as the connecting ports are compatible.

Remarks: After Silverbolt Air Raid is probably the most well-known of the Aerialbots, having gotten some bad-ass moments in the G1 cartoon (such as when he lured Scourge and Cyclonus into a trap) and being one of the playable characters in the War for Cybertron game. His name was also recycled multiple times, especially for the Movie toylines (four different Air Raids there).

As for the toy itself, I might as well copy & paste the lines from F-4 Phantom. A very nice figure that I’d buy in a heartbeat at the normal Voyager price point. As he’s much more expensive, though, the only reason to buy him regardless is because he’s part of Uranus / Superion. So it’s not really a question of whether you want him, but rather whether you want the whole lot. Me, I want them, so F-1f Eagle is part of the package. And a very decent part, too.

Rating: B