Windblade

It's good to remember that, sometimes, the fans can all come together for something good. "Windblade works really hard to keep me out of trouble - which is no easy task. She's super cool, but once the Decepticons come around it's no more Ms. Nice Bot. No one can give those Decepticon Seeker jets a fly for their money like Windblade can. She's got the whole nothing's-gonna-stop-me-from-saving-the-universe thing going on. And once Windblade puts her mind to something, she is unstoppable." --Bumblebee As you may be able to tell by the fact that the text we dug up from the ancient past for this figure (because if Hasbro had to pay a copywriter a yearly salary, their CEO might have to wait an additional nine whole minutes to buy his third yacht) is seemingly narrated by Bumblebeee, Legacy: United Windblade comes from Cyberverse, not G1. Not that you can really tell. One plane-robot with geisha hair looks pretty much like the next, though if you really get in there and look, maybe the face is a little more cartoony than it otherwise would be? Her face is silver rather than white, because again: if Hasbro had to pay for that extra .0001¢ worth of paint, the wait for the CEO's new yacht would rocket up to an unforgivable nine minutes and one-half second. Although her wings are hinged to fold backwards like the original Windblade's, there's a giant block of kibble between her shoulders that keeps them from doing that. Her legs are not as rounded as before, and the shins are way way bigger. Still looks plenty feminine though; I don't pay enough attention to the fandom to know whether the pendulum of losers is currently swinging to "having a female Transformer at all is pandering to feminists, nobody wants that" or "giving the female Transformer anything less than giant metal boobs is pandering to feminists, nobody wants that," but who cares, those complaints only come from losers. There are bumps on the back of her shoulder armor that have to push the wings out of the way if you move the arms forward, and there are winglets on the forearms that didn't exist in the cartoon. The figure's feet are sturdy enough that it won't fall over, even with that giant, heavy kibble in the back. She has rocker ankles, hinged knees, swivel thighs, balljoint hips, swivel waist, swivel wrists, hinged elbows, swivel biceps, swivel/hinge shoulders, and a balljointed head. Her accessories include a flaming purple sword and a fan that she can either hold in her hand or tuck in her hair. When she's not swinging the sword around, it can plug into her hip like she's carrying it. Converting Windblade is pretty easy. Fold down the little nosecone tip, split the backpack kibble in two and extend the cockpit pieces, flip that entire thing up over the head, turn the waist around, fold the legs up, and that's pretty much it. It's cute the way her hands just end up holding pegs on the legs, like she's just squatting down and gripping her own ankles to maintain jet mode. The jet doesn't look any more "Cyberverse" than the robot does. It's broad and blocky, rather than thin and rounded, and the VTOL turbines in her wings are too small. Those can rotate to face forward, but they can't actually spin, so that's a step down from what we had before. Additionally, because Hasbro has spent the last couple years being cheap as hell, they only bothered to paint one side of the fan blades, meaning they're silver on top and unpainted black on the bottom. Great work team, real professional. Showing at least some improvement over the original toy, the jet is mainly red rather than black, and the sword can plug in to look like exhaust shooting out the back of the jet. There was allegedly a Windblade released during "Titans Return," but come on: was there? More than half that line never made it to store shelves, so this is functionally the first "main line" Windblade in 10 years. The design owes more to Generations than Cyberverse, no matter what name they put on the box. It really just seems like they were looking for any excuse not to go to that G1 well once again, especially when they might not have any opportunity to have a Cyberverse figure in United. -- 07/23/24