G1 Jazz (Pretender Classic)

Series: Generation 1
Year: 1989
Allegiance: Autobot
Class: Pretender Classics
Function: Special Operations / Saboteur

Do it with style or don't bother doing it.
Optimus Prime's right-hand man. A danger-loving daredevil with a bottomless bag of tricks. Loves Earth culture, particularly rock´n´roll. Outer shell armed with semi-automatic ion pulse gun and deflector shield. Inner robot armed with photon rifle and hydraulic lifters in legs that enable him to jump over fifty feet. In race car mode, equipped with blinding, full-spectrum headlights and deafening 180 decibel speakers. Nitro-injected 12-cylinder engine allows him to reach speeds in excess of Mach 1. Thermal-sensitive windows also provide supplemental solar power.

Prelude: Long before it became the norm for major characters to get multiple figures in every toy line, 1989 saw the return of a number of classic G1 characters as Pretenders. One of them was Jazz, the coolest Autobot of them all, now returned with an armored Pretender shell depicting… a white guy? Oh… okay. So, here’s Jazz, who, remember, is an alien, so it doesn’t really matter what his Pretender shell looks like, right? Right. So, let’s say go!

Many thanks to my buddy Jörg Zimmermann, who loaned me Jazz for this review.

Robot Mode: Let’s start with the outside and work our way in. Like (almost) all Autobot Pretenders, Jazz’ shell, too, depicts a human in armor. A Caucasian human… just saying. Anyway, it’s pretty much the standard Pretender shell from the second year, meaning you get a full human head under a helmet plus a gun and not so much extra accessories. Jazz actually comes with two separate black guns and the Pretender can hold both of them, which is pretty nice. Like all Pretenders, articulation is limited to swiveling the arms at the shoulders. Detail-wise it’s one of the nicer Pretender shells, though I must say I am more a fan of the monster-shells the Decepticons got to wear.

Opening up the shell we get Jazz as a robot. Now among the Classic Pretenders there were some robots that were actually improvements over the original figure (really just Bumblebee), some that were okay (really just Starscream), and some that are almost embarrassing in how bad they are (Grimlock). Sadly Jazz joins Grimlock in the last group. By today’s standard I’d probably call him a 1-Step changer. He’s the car stood upright with the hood flipped forward, that’s it. And flipped forward in such a way, too, that it almost obscures the robot head. The arms can swivel at the shoulders, but that’s it in terms of articulation. Jazz can hold the smaller of the black guns and… yeah, that’s it. It’s recognizable as Jazz, yes, but he looks like someone redesigned him for a tourist trap dollar store.

So bottom line: A nice-looking Pretender shell that hides a robot inside that does admittedly look like Jazz, yes, but has little to offer apart from that.

Alternate Mode: Jazz still transforms into a car resembling a Porsche 935 Turbo and even features some of Jazz’ familiar commercial stickers for Martini. Jazz does look better as a car than he does as a robot and if you put him next to the first Jazz in car mode, the resemblance is definitely strong. Still, it’s really just a robot lying on its stomach. The smaller black gun can be mounted on the roof. So bottom line: a nice car mode, nicer than the robot, but nothing special.

Remarks: The Classic Pretenders only ever appeared in the Marvel Comics, where they were revived by Ratchet to fight against the returned Megatron and Starscream. Jazz, Bumblebee, and Grimlock stuck around on Cybertron for a while, aiding the resistance, and accidentally setting in motion the awakening of Primus and the coming of Unicron. After the Matrix Quest, Jazz simply stopped using his Pretender shell and that was that.

As a kid, the only Classic Pretender I got was Bumblebee and the inner robot, an improvement over the original Mini-Bot, became my go-to Bumblebee. I doubt, though, that this figure here will ever be anyone’s go-to Jazz. The inner robot is really just bad and while the Pretender shell is okay (and a white guy, just saying), it doesn’t really make this toy any more interesting. So unless you are a die-hard Jazz and/or Pretender fan, you can easily leave this one here aside.

Rating: C-