Apparently Canada is lousy with the "Bumblebee vs. Starscream" entertainment pack.  Which is too bad, 'cuz the United States sure could use some!  Adekii heard my pleas and graciously grabbed me one from the plethora in his neck of the woods, and now I have one and his stores have one fewer.

The set is called "Bumblebee vs. Starscream," and it does come with both a Bumblebee and a Starscream, but screw those toys.  It's the humans I'm after.  Silas, the commander of the terrorist organization MECH, plus a MECH trooper are included in this set, and this is the only way to get 'em.

Unlike the Miko/Jack/Raf figurines, Silas and his buddy are all one molded piece.  Their stands aren't removable, nor are their heads articulated.  Dang!  But at least they exist.  Human villain figures are among my favorite Transformers things.

Yeah, there's a slightly-redecoed Bumblebee and Starscream.  Whee, I guess.  They can go in the pile.  ...along with the DVD that also comes in the set, once/if I remove it from the packaging.  I have this series on blu-ray!

The local Toys"R"Us finally restocked their Prime Deluxes, so I managed to pick up the rest of the wave, Starscream and Arcee.  I already  had Arcee in pink, so Starscream was the toy in which I was most interested.  And people who had him kept on saying he was great, so more reason to be excited.

He is pretty great!  Now, I have to qualify this statement in a number of ways.  He's a Transformers jet, which means you can expect there to be a lot of robot stuff hanging off the underside of his alternate mode.  Half of Starscream's mass in jet form is his legs hangin' off him.  And the middle of the fuselage is clearly his robot mode chest, fake eyes and all.  (If you look closely, you'll notice that Prime Starscream's chest is a swipe of Movie Starscream's face.)  With these two things in mind, his jet mode is pretty strongly compromised.  But it's still a fun little jet mode, and I'll tell you why I don't really mind, all things considered.

The robot mode is where Starscream shines.  It's rare that a toy captures the personality of its subject so ... readily.  That characteristic slump of Starcream's spine is built into his architecture.  It's nearly impossible to get the toy to stand in a way that does not evoke the character's essence.  The worst you can do, really, is align the arc of his legs wrong, which results in a pelvic thrust.  And, let's face it, that's still pretty Starscreamy.  He's kind of a filthy jerk.

There's a larger, Voyager Class-sized Starscream coming out next year which will undoubtedly work out a few of the jet mode's kinks.  I'm probably not interested, though.  This Starscream is scaled better to my other toys.  Who wants a Starscream that's bigger than (the inevitable Voyager Class) Megatron, anyway?  Megatron towers over Starscream in the cartoon, and anything else on my toy shelf would just seem wrong.

If there's one thing I didn't like about the various Voyager Class Animated Starscreams I'd accumulated, it's that they all had the same face!  (If there were two things I didn't like about them, the second would be that they take up so much shelf space.)  All these Starscream clones had different personalities, some whose facial expression really shouldn't be the Classic Starscream smirk.

So it was about damn time Reprolabels gave us a sheet of stickers to remedy that.  It's not perfect, since all of the faces on the sheet are colored in Starscream gray, rather than in the colors of the clones' faces, but weighed against them all having the same smirk I'd say it was a fair trade.

There were a few other stickers for the nominal Starscream as well, such as the colored logos.

If you're attending the Second Annual Webcomics Rampage in Austin, TX, be sure to RSVP!  It's required for getting in to see the panel with myself, Jeph Jacques, Danielle Corsetto, Randy Milholland, Joel Watson, Josh Lesnick, and Bill Williams. The panel has limited seats, so RSVP so you don't miss it!  Plus, it's helpful to know how many folks are gonna be around for the signing that happens afterwards.

I've been putting off talking about Leader Class Starscream because he's just so massive and huge and awesome and I could probably talk about him forever.  So to keep me from doing that, since I should really be spending more time getting ready for San Diego Comic-Con (I leave on Tuesday!), I figgered I'd pick an aspect of him and ramble about that instead of everything about him.

But I just know I'm gonna break this personal restriction.  Let's get out our stopwatches.

Anyway, I heard a few folks on the Internet talking about how sucky Leader Starscream's jet mode is.  No jet mode could be cleaner than the ROTF Voyager Class release, after all.  That was one slender jet mode.  The front end's undercarriage is smooth and limb-less.  It's rough to beat.  I can imagine why it would be considered the gold standard.

But I think the Leader Class version gives it a run for its money anyhow.

Yes, the Leader Class jetmode is thicker, proportionally.  But not really by all that much.  If you supersized the Voyager up to the size of the Leader, I think the Leader would have a half-centimeter on the Voyager, tops.

And let's not forget that the Voyager has those robot mode claws hanging prominently out of the backside.  That could be considered a major downside, especially since the Leader carefully hides away those claws.  It's the first version of movie Starscream that hides the arms completely.

Also, let's not ignore the matter of kibble.  Yeah, the Voyager has that clean piece of jet underside, but that just means it hangs off the robot mode's back.  The Leader uses that area more efficiently.  The robot mode feet condense into a shape that recalls exactly the curve of the Voyager's underside.  It's so compact, it's actually kind of awe-inspiring.

Finally, the Leader is fucking huge.  Jets are always better when they're fucking huge.  This is a Fact.  So if you don't agree with me, that means you are stupid.  Pretty simple, really!

(And holy crap, his mouth opens and he has weapons that pop out of his forearms and he has a missile launcher that can attach to his arm or store on his back and his torso is as poseable as hell and...)

(He is sex on legs.)