The most sensible question to ask about Windblade - the first animated take on the Fan's Choice character from a few years ago - is "So is she any good?" The best answer I can give you is a partial yes. This is not a terrible toy. This is not a great toy. Hasbro wouldn't have to try very hard to make a better one - for a $5ish Windblade, she'll do nicely. But you could do better, and given Hasbro and Takara have multiple taller offerings you might want to start there. However if you want a tiny Cityspeaker to hang out with Metroplex, this is really your only sensible official option.
The 2 3/4-inch figure is clever in spots, but not phenomenal. A figure can be pretty awesome at this size, but getting it to hold together in this era of articulation is tough - you get ball-jointed bits, but I can't even say for sure if it's an elbow or a shoulder. There are other moving shoulder pieces, so these are probably elbows - the knees are jointed, as are the hips, and she has 3mm hands with 3mm holes in her wings to mount the weapons she doesn't come with. They did a pretty good job designing her to do more than merely transform, although we could probably have a stronger figure if Hasbro dropped some of the articulation in favor of deco or spending another five minutes on the head.
For a tiny head, she's not the worst, but she's close. Her mouth looks like a more lopsided version of the Hasbro logo smile, and the eyes are tiny - most of the face is blank. No mouth might look less awkward, and larger eyes would have been nice. I will say the yellow "fan" and black "hair" look pretty fantastic, and the paint we did get is largely evenly applied and looks great. I could do without the app sticker, especially since the app will no doubt go out of vogue long before the toys stop being played with by fans. Ah well, welcome to the oddly-integrated future of toys and technology.
Transformations is simple - really all you do is mash the legs together, fold the wings down a bit, and plop down the nose cone. The resulting little space fighter jet is, without hyperbole, my favorite alt mode from the toys I've opened for this line so far. I am only mildly ashamed that when I opened it, in less than two minutes I was walking around the basement pretending it could fly. That's rare... but I like this kind of thing. "Futuristic" and "cybertronian" vehicles are some of my favorite things dating back to the very first cartoon and especially the movie, because I don't have anything that looks quite like it. Well, maybe the Swordfish from Cowboy Bebop. It's kind of like that.
This toy is kind of ugly and kind of simple, but it's also a lot of fun. Transformation is easy, it has a great vehicle mode, everything seems to fit where it should go, and it's a decent sidekick to your Metroplex toy. For five or six bucks, it's worth it if you're inclined to like Windblade. For its current secondary market asking price, you should probably not bother - it's not $30 of fun unless you're the kind of person who has fun paying the same price for a single toy that could net you the entire case of the wave with 7 other dudes in the box. (Sadly, she was shortpacked.) Get her if the opportunity presents itself!
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