Legacy United Silverbolt

Prelude: Fear not, citizen, for your favorite heroic character has arrived to stave off the dread and dastardly villainy of the vile Predacons. He is Silverbolt, pure, strong, and fast. Here to protect the innocent and win the heart of his dark lady love, the black poison of his heart, Blackarachnia. Now this purest and most heroic of Maximals has returned in the Legacy United series, once again ready to take up feather swords in the battle against evil. Lets say go!

Robot Mode: While Beast Wars still took a few liberties with the toy-to-on-screen-character translation in season 1, by the time season 2 came around, they had nearly perfected their game. TV Silverbolt was the spitting image of his toy incarnation with but a few liberties taken with the way the wings folded onto the back. The new Legacy figure here does not have much room for improvement in the looks department, so instead it focuses on translating the somewhat streamlined look of the TV character into a new, slightly larger toy. And overall I must say that it succeeds brilliantly.

Silverbolt’s robot mode is excellent, both in terms of resemblance to the original toy and TV character, but also as a stand-alone figure. The look of the original Silverbolt was already quite striking, but this new one improves upon it by better positioning the wings on the back and making them fold down. The articulation, also quite good on the original figure, has been improved by adding ankle tilt, twisting wrists, and a hip swivel. The clawed feet are somewhat “flatter” on this new figure here than they were on the original, who basically always walked on his claw tips. I somewhat preferred the original look, but that is a matter of taste.

The detailing on the new figure is somewhat on par with that of the original figure, so not really much difference here. One detail I would like to mention, though: the original toy had those big hinges framing its chest, which translated into the animation model of the TV character. The new toy transforms somewhat differently, so it does not need those hinges for the conversion. They are still there, though, as sculpted details, in order to retain the resemblance to the TV character. Nicely done.

In terms of weapons Silverbolt still carries his trusty feather swords, but unlike on the original toy he can no longer launch them as missiles. Which is my one gripe with this mode, to be honest. While the wings certainly look a lot better folded along the back than always sticking out sideways, I would have liked to see the option of folding them up and pointing the tips forward for launching missiles, even without a spring-powered mechanism. Sadly Silverbolt can only fold them up vertically (see sixth picture) and while it does look like he might be able to launch his feather swords from that position, too, it doesn’t really look like how he did it in the show.

Overall, though, I really love this robot mode. This is Silverbolt as we saw him on TV, just even better articulated and able to go through doors without having to turn sideways because of his wings.

Alternate Mode: While the transformation from robot to beast mode is a bit different than it was for the original toy, the end result is pretty similar. Silverbolt’s robot legs become the front legs of the beast, the robot arms fold in to unfold the rear legs, and a wolf head replaces the robot mode head. Now we have a winged wolf with eagle talons on his front legs, still possibly the best hybrid mode among the entire Beast Wars line in my book.

Now while the robot mode of this new Legacy figure was brilliant, the beast mode comes with a few problems. Number one, proportions. While the new winged wolf is a bit larger than the old one, that added size is mostly in the front legs and the rear end. In terms of wing span and head size they are pretty much identical, so the legs look a bit out of proportion here. Also, you are supposed to tab the thighs into the torso, which makes for a somewhat sleeker look, but severely restricts the freedom of movement for the front legs. Just leave them loose, is my advice.

And as I mentioned the rear end up above, Legacy Silverbolt is a good deal longer than Beast Wars Silverbolt, but his tail feathers are actually shorter. So to speak plainly: his butt sticks out. Said butt also prominently displays the two fists of the robot mode, so at the very least the tail feathers should have been longer here, in order to hide that better.

That isn’t to say the mode as such is bad. It still looks cool (unless you look at the rear end), it can flap its wings (more than the original toy), you can point the wings forward to (pretend to) launch he feather missiles, and the wolf’s head can open its jaws, too. Speaking of the wolf’s head, it does look a good deal friendlier than that of the old toy, including having the ears stand up straight inside of lying flat. You could say it fits the character better, as Silverbolt was usually a pretty friendly fellow.

So bottom line for the beast mode: still good, but with some problems, and nowhere near as good as the robot mode.

Remarks: In Beast Wars‘ second season, the Fuzors were introduced. The quantum storm that had toppled the stasis pods from orbit had also messed with their DNA scanners, causing the protoforms to scan two different animal forms at once, creating wild hybdrid forms. Only two Fuzors actually appeared in the cartoon, Silverbolt here and Quickstrike, but many more were part of the toyline. Silverbolt quickly became (yet another) favorite character in Beast Wars with his over-the-top heroics and, of course, being part of what is still the best example of romance ever shown in any Transformers TV show. His relationship with Blackarachnia continued on into the follow-up series Beast Machines and even the unfinished Transformers Universe comic book series.

Legacy United Silverbolt, like quite a few other Legacy figures I can think of, does an excellent job on the robot mode, creating a near-perfect image of the TV character with modern-day articulation, while at the same time doing a merely decent job on the alternate mode. Judging purely by the robot mode, I’d give this figure an A- easily (I am missing those shoulder launchers), but the beast mode does drag it down a bit. It’s still a good figure overall and certainly a must-have for any fan of the Beast Wars character (we are not exactly drowning in BW Silverbolt figures, after all), but some things could have been improved, I think.

Rating: B

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