Posted February 10, 2017 at 2:45 am

Hey, remember the Jumpstarters?  If you're old enough, probably, because they were those two pull-back-and-go autotransforming dudes who weren't on the show, which means you probably got like sixteen of them at Christmas after they were the only things left on the shelves.  For years of BotCons, you could probably come home with a basket of them at $5 a piece, despite being vintage guys.  

I don't mean to trash talk 'em too much -- I mean, their concept was actually pretty cool.  You pull them back on their wheels in vehicle mode, they lunge forward, a trigger trips, and they flip up into the air and (hopefully) transform and land on their feet.  And by "transform" I mean they unfold at the hips and then they're done.  Again, these were simple guys, and they were simple guys who weren't advertised in the cartoon OR in the American comics, so they weren't exactly sought after.  Dudes didn't even get animation in their television commercial!

But, hey, Titans Return has given us a new Topspin (the jet guy of the two Jumpstarters), and he transforms like a real big boy Transformer now!  And jeez does he.  Dang friggin' dude takes what was once a simple "put your own face between your legs" transformation and makes it a whole deal.  He doesn't even fold over anymore.  Instead, his lower legs open up and swallow the thighs, then his arms collapse in on themselves to get rid of his biceps and his fists, then those arms hide up against the hull of his vehicle mode.  But before that can happen, Topspin does this Triggerhappy-esque thing where you disengage his hips from his body, then rotate the entire front of the chest around, and then reattach the hips to the other side of the torso.  Reveal the, um, "forks" at the front of the jet mode and then put his cockpit together, and you've got him in vehicle mode.

Yeah, he's got a cockpit now.

You transform his head into a dude and you put that dude inside it.

There's a lot going on here.

Like other Titans Return toys, he has two weapons which combine into a larger weapon which his head guy can sit inside.  Combined, it kind of looks like a Combiner Wars fist/gun to me, since it has four finger-ish guns at the front.  

Also, this guy feels huge.  He's not that much larger than the largest of Titans Return Deluxe Class guys, but he just feels massive.  He's wide and bulky and he looks like he could stomp you.  (It helps that his wavemate Perceptor is relatively scrawny.)  Topspin's searing Allspark Blue is vibrant and I like him.

I found him at Walgreens.  

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