The Soapbox II: The Problem with Jets
This one has been irking away at me for a while now. With a deep appreciation for the Aerialbots, I stumbled upon this topic when I was busily rummaging through the database of TFU (a great mob) and my own collection for jets that could be re-customised into Classics Aerialbots. To my dismay, there are so few modern robots that satisfy the criteria for an Aerialbot. The Aerialbots, as a common characteristic, did not have their cockpits as a key feature of their body. There chests were dominated by pegs that supported their combiner form. This can’t surely be right, I told myself. With the rapid advance of engineering over the past decade, surely they’ve been able to construct an aesthetically pleasing Transformer w/out relying on the cockpit, right?
Wrong. They haven’t.
As my searches went on and on, the only toys not dominated by a jet cockpit harkened back to the nostalgic days of G1 It slowly sunk in that the there are few modern jets/planes that don’t feature a cockpit and I’ve come to one conclusion:
Without using the cockpit as a central chest feature, it just isn’t possible to make a good jet.
If we look at the upcoming Classics 2.0 Silverbolt, it’s painfully obvious that the toy is utterly disappointing. The transformation is so incredibly simplistic that one must beg the question why they should pay an Ultra price point for what is ultimately one of the laziest pieces of engineering to scar our retail outlets in recent times? There are Scouts more cleverly designed that it.
It’s a bit harder to draw too many inferences from Classics 2.0 Powerglide at this early stage. It may yet be a good toy but prima facie those thrusters remind one more of one of the opposite sex’s most alluring assets rather than enhancing the visual appearance of the toy. However, it could be possible that Hasbro and Takara tried to hard with those and should’ve kept them simple instead of going the route of electronic and sounds.
An6ther recent toy without the cockpit as dominant chest feature is Cybertron Wing Saber (or TFM Wingblade). A well-articulated toy but there’s few who will deny it is a glorified brick. It is back-heavy and has a propensity to fall flat on its face or onto its undignified backside.
I would add Energon/Superlink Jetfire/Overcast to this category of failures too. He’s a more well-balanced toy than Cybertron Wing Saber but if you look underneath, it’s plain to the naked eye where everything lies.
Consider too Cybertron Soundwave/Classics 2.0 Blaster. The toy gets away with not using the cockpit as a chest feature but if you look underneath, it’s painfully obvious where everything sits. The biggest problem one has with the toy is aligning it. To give it some credit though, the cockpit works quite well as a shield. If it were not for the fact that this toy does do justice to the robot form of G1 Soundwave it’d be tough to like this toy.
Perhaps the only success that one can look on with approval in recent times is Energon Skyblast who was repainted into two TFM scouts: Skyblast and Air Raid. However, the toy is hindered by the fact that the leg articulation is severely limited by the fact that the legs must swing inwards to cover the arms in jet mode. It remains a great toy though for a figure of its size. Perhaps if it had been larger, those faults would have been ironed out.
So why then is the cockpit such a necessary feature?
The first reason of which is that it provides texture. It gives the chest angles and allows the toy to be more interesting in appearance. The possibility of using different shades of clear plastic on the cockpit allows the designer to add an eye-catching feature to the chest without having to be extravagant with the underbelly. The shape and design of cockpits go a long way to enhancing the body of the robot mode. Without it, you are generally left with relying on the underbelly of the jet which for all intents and purposes is weak. You don’t want to look under the toy and see the entire robot mode there already, do you?
And that’s exactly the problem with toys like Cybertron Wing Saber and Classics 2.0 Silverbolt.
More importantly if you think about it, with the design of a jet it becomes almost necessary to rely on the cockpit as a centerpiece of the body. The reason for this is that if you think about it opposite ends of many a Transformer are generally used as legs and chests. With that in mind would you really want to throw away the visual appeal of a cockpit which gives you much more to work with and use the tail ends as a dominant body feature? Probably not. The tail ends just don’t enhance the appearance of a robot mode because you have to also contend with the fact that right next to them generally are the jet thrusters. Those are pretty hard to make dominant chest features now, aren’t they?
The only place that the thrusters have been used as something else, other than as part of the robot mode legs, generally have been as arms. But how desirable is this really? Not much to be terribly honest. We like fists that can hold weapons or have human features. Take for instance TFM Dreadwing or Overcast. They look cumbersome. Heck, even on Cybertron Wing Saber who has gattling gun turrets as his fingers it is annoying. It might yet still work but it strips the robot mode of a key feature. So that rules out the tail end as being a viable option as a chest feature.
And that leaves you with the cockpit as your primary choice as either arms or chest. More often than not it’s going to be body for the abovementioned reasons. And from this fan’s point of view that’s disappointing. He wants some bodies he can use for custom Aerialbots and he might have to wait a long time before he can find some appropriate ones. That or make some compromises.
The final reason for why we have so many jets using their cockpit is quite simple really but obvious if we turn our minds to it. Who do we as a fandom first think of when we talk about Transformers who are jets? The Seekers.
And therein perhaps is one of the principle reasons why the engineering of jets has progressed in the direction that it has. The emphasis on jets that use their cockpit is borne out of fandom’s adoration for the Seekers. Starscream is frequently the first designed jet in any series. Designers therefore begin to have a greater appreciation with the nuances and mechanics of designing a good looking jet using the cockpit. For toys that don’t, they have fewer points of reference, fewer ideas that they can build on. Toy designing, I imagine, is a learning process. And the repository of knowledge of our toy designers have accumulated when it comes to jets seems to be Seeker centric.
From a technical point of view, I would love to see a designer at Hasbro or Takara take this bull by the horns and show us otherwise. Until then, I’m afraid we’ll have to be content with jets that require cockpits as their dominant chest feature (and there’s nothing wrong with that, mind you, as long as it’s a good toy) or else get jets that will only ever aspire to mediocrity.
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Originally Posted by Verno
