Cybertronian Cliffjumper

Height: 14cm ; 10.5cm (vehicle length)

Articulation: 22 total points - ball-joint head; 6 points each arm: double joint shoulder, upper arm swivel, double-joint elbow, ball-joint wrist; swivel waist; 4 points each leg: universal joint hips, thigh swivel, hinge knee.

Colors: Molded cherry red, dark grey, black, smokey clear, clear amber; Painted yellow, clear red, silver, black, dark grey.

Accessories: Gun

Release Data: Released late November 2010 in the US at a retail price of US$11.99.

Author: ExVee

(more...)

Even before the war, Cliffjumper was constantly spoiling for a fight. The Decepticons just gave him an excuse. He's been bending fenders and smashing heads for years now, and the fun never stops. Despite his short temper, he gets along well with other Autobots, who appreciate his eagerness to take the first shot in every battle.

Well, sure, he's a violent thug, but that's okay because he's a good guy! Anyway, I'd be surprised if anybody was really buying this toy on its own merits of being Cliffjumper. There are other more specific motivations at work for many who actually would choose to own this toy. Sadly I'm not too sure that's going to work out as well as was hoped...


Robot Mode

I am so conflicted.

Okay, so I was never a fan of the appearance of this mold in robot mode. The torso proportions are weird without even addressing the huge backpack that makes it look at a casual glance like a ball with legs. In person, freed of its packaging, the perspective changes a bit, and at least you can visually delineate the backpack from the rest of the body, sort of the way it works for Tracks. On the other hand, you also find that the backpack can be problematic like the Universe Ironhide mold suffered from but a bit worse since this one actually scrapes the legs when you're posing the toy.

The arms are designed weird, not the least of which is the inwardly-angled wrists on severely limited ball joints. This, when coupled with the shoulders running afoul of the giant chest block ends up preventing you from pointing the arms completely straight forward in any circumstance. And even if you fake it by way of the elbows, the angled wrist forces you to skew the gun to odd angles. Accepting the arm design and just pitching it out to the side so it can run a straight line, the position of the hand still makes the gun look like it's being held in an extremely unnatural way.

But then when not trying to do anything as conventional as pointing a gun, the arms come across pretty nice. Cliffjumper is one of the few besides Animated Swoop who can convincingly raise his hand to his face. Whatever it says of my personality, I appreciate a Transformer that can do a decent facepalm. And it's entirely appropriate after Cliffjumper sees how poorly his arms work for guns. The shoulders have a pretty great range before they hit the corners of the chest, and the elbows are wide-open double-hinges, so mechanically the elements are here, but impeded. For extra fun the forearms even have flip-out blades so Cliffjumper can totally cut you. Optionally, even cut you while shooting you. But the obstructed shoulders really remove a degree of the potential posing that might be accomplished, and the bizarrely angled, open hands make other poses just look off. It's kind of a body language thing. The natural tendency would be to make a fist if you were to forcefully swing your arm. The open hand makes the effort look weaker.

There is waist articulation, but the scraping at the backpack kinda wrecks it. The knees are only single hinged, but I don't think a double would have served them much better all told. And given the way they have to collapse for transformation, it's likely that it would have just added another point for instability overall. The feet are ball jointed, but not at a conventional ankle, nor does it provide any real aid to posing. Actually, I'm concerned by these ball joints. One is already loose out of the package, and the backpack throws the center of mass back a bit from the feet. If the other foot joint weakens, it's really likely that the toy won't be able to stand on its own anymore. Meanwhile, if you like such things, you can rotate the feet out behind Cliffjumper and essentially give him a roller skate option. As long as his weight is shifted back he doesn't have a problem standing this way either.

The head has caught some attention for people looking to transplant it to Classics Cliffjumper. This has been proven physically possible. But the red on Classics Cliffjumper and this Cliffjumper are very different. Classics is very nearly orange by comparison, leaving any head swap in need of some paint to finish the job. Which would be unfortunate, since I really like the shade of red this Cliffjumper uses. The eyes are designed for lightpiping, but since all the clear plastic is smokey/dark clear, his eyes are effectively black. The other elements from the same sprue may be translucent, but the thickness involved with this specific part effectively renders it opaque black. But it doesn't look bad. The visible eye is so small, and set within the silver painted face and red helmet, you don't really pick out that it's black and not maybe dark blue or some other typical eye color. Certainly better than being colorless clear, at any rate.

The head sculpt is pretty nice. It's not a matter so much of the comparison between WFC and Classics Bumblebee where it's a severe style shift. Going back to talk of head swaps, where you'd encounter a problem is in size. Bumblebee's head is oversized compared to other same-height figures, so as to give the impression of a smaller character. Cliffjumper's head is scaled better to this body to make it look like a normal sized robot. If put on the shorter Classics body, you'd get some odd proportion issues.


Transformation

Going into the transformation for the first time, I started thinking maybe the mold has just gotten an unfair rush to judgement. A bad reputation born out of people jumping to conclusions and parroting what others said before them. And as I worked my way through contorting Cliffjumper down into an increasingly compact shape, I began to feel I was truly on to something. There seemed to be clear indication of how the parts had to move and where their resting points should be in order to bring the vehicle mode together. My optimism climbed! In a very brief span, I had gone almost fully from robot mode to vehicle without any significant hangup - it certainly had gone more smoothly and quickly than the only Alternator I own.

Then I had to do something with the feet. It was clear immediately that they would be obstructing the backpack shell from sealing around the back end of the vehicle mode where I first tried them. A quick glance at the interior of the soon-to-form shell gave what looked like a pretty open space that the feet could sit without offending the personal space of any other parts that had yet to find a home. And so it was, and I closed up the vehicle mode for the first time. ...and quickly found that a bit of the robot mode pieces were protruding down past the wheels, lifting them from the desk's surface. Hm. Okay, unclick this, pop these pegs... Now, I'll spare you the blow-by-blow of this process, especially since there was a great deal of repetition. In summary, an additional 35-40 minutes passed as I attempted a range of possible configurations of foot and ankle parts, with none resulting in a closed vehicle form with all wheels resting upon my desk.

My own pride demanded that I perform what was more and more looking to be the stuff of miracles by my own wits, without seeking any sort of outside help. However, as I neared the end of my first hour trying simply to turn this toy into its intended vehicle form, matters of pride seemed to become less important. Instead, they were replaced with ideas of the utter failure before me as an increasing time counted up in which I had been unable to execute this thing's designed function. And so out came the instruction sheet. And wonder of wonders - the answer I required was illustrated very clearly, and showed an arrangement of the feet that I quickly decided I never would have considered if left to my own devices. Incidentally, it's a matter of turning the feet sole-to-sole, which apparently makes everything pretty well magically work exactly right.

So by my own personal experience, I can reassure you that the tales of woe inspired by the transformation of this toy are hardly exaggerations, as there is at least the one necessary step that is not evident in any way within the design of the toy, nor does it follow any of the process leading up to that point. I really hate transformations where there's a built in trick that has to be done exactly right or else nothing will work and there will be no sign of why it's not working.


Vehicle Mode

The part that bothers me more than the transformation is that the vehicle mode actually looks pretty cool, so there's almost an incentive to transform this again at some point in the future. Either that, or after you transform the first one, you could buy a second to keep in robot mode forever and just switch them out every once in a while.

There's definitely a TRON-ness to the style here. The bubble-top shell and larger wheels make this feel like a small vehicle, which of course plays well against the Earthen modes involving small sportscars and subcompacts most of the time. When you do actually get the thing transformed all the way, it thankfully holds together pretty well. There's a mess of panel lines, very nearly all of which are actual transformation seams. Except in a couple places they tend to fit fairly close together, so they're not going to look too fractured. There's some gaps along the forward edge of the main roof panel that seemingly are designed to leave a bigger space as other edges on the same piece are sitting almost flush against their opposites on the sides of the body. The side panels are mostly dominated by dark clear plastic windows, through which you get an excellent view of the robot shoulders that are pressed directly up against the interior surface. If ever there were a logical case for opaque plastics... There's also a much less obvious transparent rear window. As the only parts butting up to it are black or dark grey, not only is it not obviously clear, but once you realize it's there, there's still no spoiled illusion by seeing the robot parts. Of course, if you can't even tell it's there, why do it in clear in the first place? And why does a robot with no passenger compartment NEED transparent windows? Even if you want to argue sensor suites, the robot parts taking up all the space sort of shoot that down. And the toy has no windshield or other front-facing transparent surface, so there'd be no consistency anyway.

The vehicle mode has no meaningfully moving parts. I say "meaningful" because of course the wheels spin. The wheels are actually done well, with a circle of clear red paint applied in the middle of each clear yellow hubcap, helping to make it look like the wheels are glowing. The yellow pin stripes along the sides of the canopy don't convey the glowy effect nearly as well, sadly. The bit of contrast is nice, though.


Accessories

-Gun

Simple, if odd looking. Kinda reminds me of some Star Trek prop - not always a good thing, that. The 5mm peg is of the normal type so it's well cross-compatible. Sadly it doesn't work that well with Cliffjumper due to the odd angles involved with the arms. It stores under the rear window, though you have to put it in before you finish transforming the thing, since it's really difficult to get in that space once it's all closed up. The shell design does allow for storage in robot mode, as well.


Closing Remarks

It's tough. The robot mode does a bit that I like, and the vehicle mode looks cool. But there's a fair range of problem in between those points. In all honesty, I feel sorry for any kid that asked for or otherwise received either version of this mold. There are Transformers that are ultimately less kid-friendly, but this might be the most unfriendly that's cheaply available at retail right now. I think it's unfriendly TO ME.

I'm not going to call this flawed design, but aspects of the transformation engineering were handled really poorly, and likewise I think the torso could have been managed better to not interfere with the shoulders. I still can't figure out why the wrists are angled like they are, either. I feel like this really Could Have Been Better with an extra pass at the design stage. It would have been uglier if it was a color match to Classics Cliffjumper, but at least then it would have gotten points for being quick custom fodder.

-ExVee