Autobot Drift
Series - Age of Extinction
Sub-line - Generations
Size/class - Voyager
New/remould/redeco - Redeco of Dark of the Moon Skyhammer
Wave - 2
Released here - September 2014
Approximate Retail Price - $50
Approximate Size - 17cm (up to shoulders)
Allegiance - Autobot
Alt-mode - Attack helicopter gunship (Eurocopter Tiger x Mil Mi-24 hybrid)
Main Features/Gimmicks - swords can combine
Main Colours - lots of navy blue, electric blue & gold
Main Accessories - x2 swords, x2 missile pods

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This review looks on the changes made the mould. For a more comprehensive focus on the original mould itself, please see the DotM Skyhammer review thread.
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This toy is a repaint of Skyhammer, which works surprisingly better than I thought as Drift in both robot and helicopter modes. The fine line detailing of light blue on the forearms really do help exude the 'samurai' look for Drift. I personally would prefer a proper triple-changer toy for Drift (in the same vein as Generations Springer), but short of doing that, I think that Hasbro's made a good choice in using the Skyhammer mould as the 'nearest fit' for Helicopter Drift. This redeco doesn't feel nearly as "forced" as I thought it would; I wasn't really expecting to like this toy nearly as much as I actually do.

Okay, the robot doesn't sport Bugatti Veyron kibble -- but screen-likeness aside, it's a great toy. Deluxe Drift carries a lot of the car mode on his back in a folded up backpack, which is cleverly designed, but was necessitated by the fact that Drift has so little vehicle kibble in robot mode on screen. As a redeco of Skyhammer, Voyager Drift is using a pre-AoE mould created back in the day when the live-action movie aesthetics weren't so counter-intuitive to toy design. And furthermore, Skyhammer was never a screen-character to begin with, so toy designers had full reign to create this fantastic mould, unfettered by being slave to a screen model.

Now I don't know if this was an intentional part of the design or a happy accident that's resultant from mould degradation, but some of the parts are looser and a lot easier to move around and transform than Skyhammer (e.g. popping the rotor blades in and out etc.)! One thing about Skyhammer is that a lot of his parts are really tight and need excessive force to move. This issue has become greatly reduced in Drift, but never to the point where anything is too loose or floppy (as is often seen in other mould-degraded figures, e.g. Cloud Megatron). So whether by design or by accident, the result is a more user-friendly figure.

I prefer the sculpting on the Voyager's head, mostly because the "duck face" isn't as pronounced on this version. Also, there are fine-line blue accents on the side of the 'helmet' which looks really nice. The electric blue isn't metallic like on Deluxe Drift, but I do really like the choice of gold that they've used on this toy. The swords also look really nice with air-brushed gold decos on the sides of the blades. Thanks to the 5mm port system, these swords are also compatible with Deluxe Drift and looks great on him (Deluxe Drift's swords are more downsized to make them stowable in car mode).

Overall this toy exceeded my expectations, and despite my initial hesitation, I would actually recommend getting this figure. I personally got it on sale at TRU, however I'm sure there'll be more sales coming up as the holiday season approaches.


PICTURES

Comparison with Skyhammer





Comparison with Deluxe Drift







Deluxe Drift holiding Voyager Drift's swords