Quote Originally Posted by blackoptimus View Post
Did you read the manual?
The fun of Transformers toys is to treat them like puzzles that need to be solved. If you always follow instructions, you don't get the same sense of accomplishment of doing something on your own, without any help from anyone or anything. And like watching a movie, you only really get one chance at surprising yourself, so don't spoil it if you have the patience.

The procedure I use on any figure that isn't too fragile to risk it - is to start off with just the toy to see if I can get it into its other mode, and if not, then I look at the packaging photos first... and then as a last resort, I look at the instructions. And most times I check the instructions afterwards anyway to see if I missed any gimmicks or see if bits aren't where they should be.

In the case of Jetfire, I got most of it done, but still had to refer to the packaging pics for the placement of the arm joints (to make the jet nose sections line up), and I had to look on the instructions for the strap bit (which someone else here posted a clearer description than the instructions had).