Generally speaking, where there's Bumblebee a Cliffjumper toy is sure to follow. Generally ol' Cliffy is just Bumblebee with some red paint, but this time Hasbro went the extra mile and gave us a new head to go with that new color. The new noggin is unmistakably Cliffjumper-esque, but it's a little less lively with his black eyes. If you examine his head, you'll notice he has the common "light piping" assembly, but since the head and eyes are formed from an opaque black plastic, they aren't going to be doing much lighting up. Ah well.
The roughly 6-inch tall robot is a lot meaner and fatter than his "Classics" toy from 2007. The head is a lot less friendly, with more harsh angles and a sterner expression combined with a fairly large chin. The cheek"bones" look good, and the overall structure is probably a bit nicer than that of Bumblebee-- however, it's a nice normal head on a very pudgy body. There's no getting around the fact that the figure is really portly, and no swing-out hand blades or red-and-black blaster pistol will change that.
With its rolling wheels, the car mode doesn't do much other than look nice. There's nothing wrong with that, but the transformation isn't any easier than it was with Bumblebee earlier last year. The figure's legs require a lot of fidgeting to get the figure in car mode, plus it seems to have a few too many steps for a basic, value-priced toy for kids. If anything, Hasbro's fault with a lot of these toys is in not charging you twice as much for them, adding a little more paint, and claiming it's a high-end collector's toy. Heck, throw some Japanese lettering on there, the kids eat that stuff up.
If you have Bumblebee this one brings nothing new to the table, but it is the first new Cliffjumper in years and a lot of fans were waiting for this figure just so they can swap the head with the Classics 2007 toy. The colors don't match, nor do the aesthetics, but it's a heck of a lot cheaper than buying one of the various upgrade kits on the secondary market. I'd say this body probably works slightly better for Cliffjumper than Bumblebee, so if you're on the fence and can't decide (and won't just go with the cheaper option), this one is probably just slightly neater. The orange blades look really nice.
According to various sources, this character does not appear in the War for Cybertron video game for the Xbox 360 or Playstation 3, but can be found in the portable version. It's still a fun little toy.
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