Home Special Features Evolution Revolution: A Beast Era Retrospective
Silverbolt (1998 Fuzor)
Height: 12.5 cm (Robot Mode head height), approx. 15 cm (Beast Mode). 22cm wingspan, both modes.
Articulation: points total- ball joint neck; 3 joints each arm- universal joint shoulders, pre-elbow swivel, hinged elbows; swivel waist; 2 joints each leg- ball joint hips, kinge knees.
Colors: Molded silvery gray and gray. Painted copper, black, white, red, and yellow (eyes, both modes).
Accessories: Missiles x2.
Gallery: images.
Author: RAC
Even discounting his Fuzor body, Silverbolt would've been odd. He fancies himself a hero in the mold of the knights of old- or at least in the idealized, fictional version of those knights that has survived to the current day. (I fancy him a hero in the mold of The Tick, or maybe Dudley Do-Right of the Mounties.)
With a sense of chivalry every bit as strong as his contemporary Quickstrike's urge to kick keisters, Silverbolt was a Predacon for a day at most before deciding that Megatron offended his sense of justice and fair play. He has no reservations about fighting evil as he sees it, but if he sees, or wants to see, the slightest bit of good in someone, he will back them all the way, even above the objections of his allies- and sometimes, his own better judgment. (Or common sense, if he actually had any.)
"It's my duty, ma'am, as a Maximal- and as a heroic character.""
Beast Mode
Silverbolt and Quickstrike are the only representatives of the Fuzors subline to appear on the show. In the show, the Fuzors were spawned from damaged stasis pods that were sent crashing to Earth in the wake of the Planet Buster's attack at the end of Season 1.
In toy terms Fuzors are, to my mind, the flipside of the Transmetal "Three-Mode Conversion" idea: instead of having two alternate modes, Fuzors have two Beast Modes at once, making for more striking hybrid Beasts. And, I'm willing to bet, more trademarkable: after all, many many people have made their own cars and dinosaurs that turn into robots over the years, even before the creation of Transformers. But I'm willing to bet there's not a lot of precedent for making a robot that turns into a scorpion with a cobra for a tail.
It it a winged wolf, or a wolf-headed eagle? While the wings, tail and taloned forelegs may well take up more space and plastic than Silverbolt's wolfy bits, I tend to think of him as being primarily a wolf because that's the head his Beast Mode wound up with. Either way, Bird-Dog is a quadrupedal wolf/eagle Fuzor. The sculpt is really intricate, textured on practically the entire beast body, and you can easily tell where fur ends and feathers begin. I find it really conveys the whole Fuzor concept really nicely.
Articulation in this mode is fair, and he's far from the statue that many of the earlier figures' Beast Modes were. Silverbolt's forelegs- destined to become the legs for Robot Mode -have the best range here. The shoulder has a very broad range, stopped only by the wing. The knee/elbow is double-jointed in the way you'd use it to refer to a person, rather than the toyetic sense of having two physical joints. That is, it's a single hinge with 180 degrees of range. Finally, the talons are hinged, though no matter how you pose them you may not be able to get them close enough together for him to clutch at anything small- a pity. On the other paw, literally, the hindlegs are pretty much only articulated at the hip. You can fudge the knee, but it's really only designed to swing out the Robot Mode forearms, and there's not much you can do that's convincing.
The wings also move, swinging upwards after you pop them past the square edge of the physical hinge. Not too useful, but I imagine that the wings would be prone to snapping off without that hinge there. Lastly, when you pull on his bird tail, the wings sweep forward. When the triggers for the missile launchers hit the shoulders, the feathers at the tips of Silverbolt's wings fire at a roughly 70-degree angle. (I imagine it's somewhat difficult to get a pair of Preds to stand at exactly that angle.) Fortunately, the triggers aren't particularly touchy, and you pretty much have to mean it to launch both missiles.
Transformation
It's pretty clever, really- the front legs drop down to form the robot legs, and the hind legs swing forward and plug into the sides to take their place. The wolf head then unfolds to form the front and hold the crotch together more securely. In theory. In practice, the connection's not as secure as you'd really like, as often happens. But I like how it goes from being an entirely horizontal toy to an entirely vertical one.
Robot Mode
There's no getting around it: Silverbolt's Robot Mode was unquestionably meant to be viewed from the front. From the top, all you see is most of an eagle- though wings on the shoulders in this configuration are nothing new to me, so it's forgivable. From the side, you see a bunch of hinges. From the back, depending on how you array the various panels- something the instructions for the figure gloss over entirely -you see an upside-down wolf head where Silverbolt's digestive tract should be. Yeah.
Let's go back to the front, shall we?
It's actually kind of startling how compact the front details are in Beast Mode. Everything- from the "loincloth" to the odd red orb in his midsection (an early pass at a Spark Crystal, maybe?), even his Robot Mode head -folds up into the Beast Mode's wolf head, or the space directly behind it. The robotic parts are covered mainly in neat, horizontal stripes that look somewhat like banded metal armor. On the thighs and forearms are hollow spaces, often included in molding to conserve plastic and allow for a larger overall toy. (You have to figure that plastic went into the wings.) Here, though, those hollows are dressed up with pistons on the forearms and, uh, bones in the thighs. Neat! Creepy, but neat!
The head swivels a little- the shape of its enclosure gives it a pretty limited range- not that turning further would help his peripheral vision much with those wings in the way. The shoulders swing out to an even 90 degrees and have pretty much unrestricted swivel, if you fold the wing straight up. The elbow is about the same, with a 90-degree bend and unrestricted swivel. You can get a bit more range from the elbow if you use the transformation joint on the Beast Mode's hind leg, but it's set up so that you can really only move the joint if you move the leg. If you try and move it by moving the forearm, the forearm will always pop clean off. His hips are equal to the shoulder and elbow, but very stiff on my figure- quite a testament to a ten year-old toy! -and posing him sometimes works his tenuous crotch assembly apart. Ow. The knees bend about 180 degrees front to back, as I mentioned above, but only half of that is useful for Robot Mode. Likewise, the hinged talons don't have much application here either.
Silverbolt's action feature still works fine in Robot Mode- perhaps even a bit better since you only have to squeeze him once the tail is folded down. But the missiles have another purpose here, which I'll cover below.
Paint and Deco
The size of the wings and the amount of paint needed for them means that not a lot of Silverbolt's paint goes into his robot mode. His black "facemask" stands out, and gives him an appropriately superheroic look, but his nose is unpainted, and his robot mode mouth practically vanishes in that gray plastic. From the neck down that just leaves copper detailing on his breastplate, loincloth, and lower legs. And of course the big red target in his midsection, which helps break up some of the drabness the robot mode's got going. But to be honest, the first time I ever saw a Silverbolt, so overwhelmingly gray was he that I was convinced he was a bootleg.
Accessories
-Missiles
If you're going to have springloaded missiles- which of course we are, because it's Hasbro, -this is the way to do it. In Beast Mode, the missiles form the largest feathers at the tips of the wings- which gets us unique left and right missiles, a very unusual thing! In Robot Mode, you can fire those missiles from the wings as normal, or you can place them in his hands as clubs. Or spears. Or large warspoons. (Spear is probably my favorite interpretation, since Silverbolt has thrown them while fighting in Robot Mode during the series. But "Warspoon" is just more fun to say.) Whatever they are, they fit into the hands via the narrow peg at the bases of the missiles. It's a shallow peg- only 3mm long! -but so far I've had no problems. I like the dual use of the missiles, and it continues the Beast Wars tradition of stowable hand weapons, which has been one of my favorite things about the line as a whole.
When Buying Loose
The missiles are obviously going to be the most frequently lost piece, and naturally you'll have to be sure you get the right one if you need a single. Also be warned that some of the hinged plates on the figure are often missing as well. The plate that covers the Energon Chip and the "loincloth" that forms the wolf's back are two of the more common candidates. Also, as it is easy to pop off the Robot Mode forearms, you'd probably better make sure they're there.
Closing Remarks
Silverbolt has a lot going for him! He's pretty show-accurate, reasonably flexible in both modes, he has a versatile accessory, and his transformation is neat. He could use a touch more paint, but that's forgivable. I'd buy a Telemocha-style reissue in a heartbeat, though, and anything you'd willingly buy twice is a winner in my estimation. I'm torn between calling Very Good and calling him Excellent, but I lean towards Very Good.
-RAC
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