Posted July 23, 2012 at 12:28 am
In G1, Blast Off's toy was a brownish-black shuttle with some purple.  The cartoon character model made him a lighter brown.  So I guess that's where Fall of Cybertron Blast Off gets his entirely-caramel coloration from, probably?    I'm not skewing more towards caramel than black was a great decision, 'cuz enough of Bruticus is beige already.

FOC Blast Off is still a shuttle, insomuch as a hunk of caramel sculpting detail with what could generously be called wings is a shuttle.  I think the shape of the wings are what makes him still feel like a shuttle versus some other kind of flying craft.  Otherwise, he's kind of out there.  He's really just a pile of shapes.

Stand up the shuttle mode on its ass and fold back the wings, and you have his leg mode.

Unlike Swindle, Blast Off's robot mode has a little more going on, transformation wise.  The body of the jet becomes his chest, the wings fold out and down to become his legs, and the thruster/tailfin area in the back become his massive shoulders, from under which come his arms.  It's a pretty good robot mode.   He comes with two rifles with little wings on them.  (When they're plugged into the tops of his wings in vehicle mode, they provide extra tailfins, because I guess the seven he has already aren't enough.)

It's the arm mode of Blast Off that causes all the headscratching, though!  His arm mode is suuuuuper long.  One half of each of his arm mode's fist are in each of his heels, with an optional thumb for either-handed mode tucked in next to them.  You extend Blast Off's robot mode legs, peg the halves of the fists together, and that whole leg assembly hangs off the entirety of the rest of Blast Off's shuttle mode.  It looks mistransformed.

And, sure, you can try to shorten him a little if you're okay with putting some terrible stress marks on him.  His lower legs double up on his thighs during transformation to shuttle mode, and you can try to do that in arm mode as well, but there will be complications.  Namely, you gotta connect the halves of the super robot's fist together, and this can only happen at an angle.  There's a hook in one leg and a place for the hook to grab onto, meaning you can force it and it mostly won't pull apart, but that's gonna, again, cause some structural damage.  So do that at your own risk.  I recommend not.

Blast Off also has a rotational joint in this mode in mid-fuselage.  Not sure exactly what it's for.  It seems irrelevant to everything, except maybe as a superfluous and mostly unnecessary bicep rotational joint for arm mode.  S'kinda weird.
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