Starscream

Ah, nuts! I only realize now that we should have switched the order of reviewing this figure and Optimus Prime, so Starscream could have been up in Pride Month - after all, he is a bi-plane! You know that bit in Futurama where they take Fry to the Year 2000 themepark, which involves things like cowboys on hoverbikes hunting mammoths, or Einstein saying "let's disco dance, Hammurabi"? That's kind of what Hearts of Steel is like, just on a smaller scale. Like, it's set "in the 1880s" as a vague concept, not a specific time - at least, not one that had any research done, and is instead just vibes-based. Imagine if, a hundred years from now, a company wanted to set a story at the end of the 20th century and included a scene of someone riding their Segway to the mall to buy an 8-track tape of Taylor Swift's debut album using Apple Pay, and also Ronald Reagan is there. That's what Hearts of Steel is like. However, the appeal of the story was never the plot, it was ye olde timey Transformer designs, seeing how things designed in the '70s and '80s would be retrofitted to a world a century before. Starscream gets some very strong parallels, thanks to the wings on his shoulders and the pylons next to his head. The kibble on his hips even manages to feel like his original Masterpiece toy, though that's likely unintentional - if anything, the MP toy feels like him, because the book came out a year prior. He's got the red chest and waist, gray limbs, blue forearms and feet, all that. The fact designer Guido Guidi even found a way to put air intakes on his chest is frickin' cool! As mentioned in the Optimus review, before awaking in steampunk times, the Transformers were having a battle in the Ice Age, so they all had primeval kibble on their robot modes until they reformatted. Considering Starscream is a flier, he was probably some sort of pteranodon or something, which explains some of his "modern" design choices, but doesn't really explain the weird wings/gills on his ears. Articulation is good for its size, with movement at the head, shoulders, biceps, elbows, waist, hips, thighs, knees, and ankles. There is one piece of kibble that's been cheated: per the original design, the belt/codpiece are supposed to swing around to the back for the altmode, becoming a cross between a tailfin and landing gear; on this toy, the waist stays where it is, so we've got faux kibble on the front and real kibble on the back. Could have been better. Like so many Starscreams, he has guns that plug onto his arms, but rather than being futuristic blasters, these look like Gatling guns. How appropriate! To fit the toy into the packaging, he's shipped with his wings folded down; but they aren't shown that way in the comic, so you're free to decide for youself if that's a feature you want the robot to have or not. To convert "Star-steam," lower the panel from over his head down against his back, hinge the entire chest upwards (making sure it clicks into place, rather than just stopping when it feels like it should), turn the forearms to the inside, make sure the guns are pointing the opposite direction, swing the arms down so they plug into the wings (making sure the shoulder pads come with them). Lift the smaller wings up out of the waist, extend their struts, and fold them over to plug into the larger wings. Point his feet down, turn the elgs to the outside, hinge the entire waist up, fold the legs so they're parallel to the wings, drop the tail kibble down and plug it onto the tabs from the top of the hips, fold the chest kibble away, and bend the legs at the knees so they can plug into the wings. When Guido Guidi designed Hearts of Steel Starscream, he originally made him turn into a fairly standard biplane. But astute readers will notice that while Hearts of Steel is set in the 1880s, the first airplane wasn't invented until 1903. So why limit things to realistic looks? Starscream holds onto some of the features of his previous "flying lizard" mode by way of scalloped wings that look more like a bat than an aero-plane. Including two little ones on what used to be the robot's feet. Weird. The plane has three working propellers, and three wheels underneath so you can roll it around. The guns stick out between the two main sets of wings, and the colorscheme is classic Starscream. Starscream and Optimus Prime are only available in a two-pack available exclusively on Hasbro's online store, so don't expect to find them anywhere else. They're sold in a rather nifty book-style box that opens to show them off, with all the sides printed to look like era-appropriate technology: lots of pipes and tubes and whatnot. The toys are packaged in robot mode, but since they're just held against a cardboard tray by those stupid plastic tag pins, it's not really reusable; once they're out, they're out. After years and years of Transformers trying to do nothing but copy Generation 1 in more and more precise manners, these Hearts of Steel figures are a breath of fresh air. It's so nice to get something different for a change! It doesn't need to be the greatest feat of sculpting and engineering ever, as long as it's unique and fun, and these figures are definitely that. -- 07/08/25 What alternate-universe design do you want most? Tell us on our message board, the Loafing Lounge.