Thes two comments cover my concerns as well. While the robot mode is pretty damn spanking, the vehicle mode is pretty atrocious. It only looks good from the top. Why is this? Admittedly though, in jet mode, mainly because of its size, it extremely swooshable and the more I look at it, the more forgiving I become.
But come on man, transformation isn't all that complex and the vehicle is that gappy??? It's also somewhat awkward. Having to wiggle the shins up over the thighs and then connect the leg boosters to the backpack booster just seems really fiddly. I often find the locking tab for the legs comes undone while I mess about with the boosters.
Kind of final whinge is the titan master seats in the booster back pack. I have to unplug the legs and boosters to access that seat? They couldn't have come up with a better way? That is almost as bad the Ark Titan figure, where you pretty much have to half transform the torso to access the bridge for the minifigures.
Quite obviously all the work went into robot mode, which is pretty nice. But the plastic doesn't feel as good as I'd like it. It's a tad bendy and cheap feeling. Or is that just me?
The armoured mode for robot looks nothing like JetSkyfire in any way at all, but I do think it looks pretty awesome. It just becomes another character. Definitely has an "air guardian" feel to it. I'd be likely to use the armoured mode for the Shattered Glass version TBH. It's a shame the armour just sits on top of the plane like a big blocky thing. Coz it looks daft.
Now that I have bought this guy, I've finished getting all the commanders released so far, and it's a good thing I got him late. If I had picked him up first, I would be much more sceptical of the commander class toys. Jetfire is definitely the weakest.
Lots of whingeing in this post, but generally, I like Jetfire and it's a decent enough figure with good presence on the shelf. Probably not quite worth a lot of dollars and I wouldn't recommend paying through the nose for one.
For a bit of reference, I've been undecided on Jetfire for a long time. Here in Japan, he got a regular release, but the numbers were so limited, I never saw one on the shelves. PLUS he was expensive, coming in at the 19800 yen (compared to the other commanders a 15000ish) and considering how Icould generally grab at Titan class figure for about 22000 yen, Jetfire seemed a bit to pricey for his worth. This one I found nice and cheap, so decided to bit the bullet, with a bit of peer pressure.