Name: Blast Off
Series: Generation 1
Allegiance: Decepticon
Function: Space Warrior
Alternate Mode: Space Shuttle
SPACE SHUTTLE MODE
Height: 5cm Length: 10cm Width: 6.5cm
A primarily brown & black shuttle, Blast Off is probably the darkest of the Combaticons. Basically the shuttle mode is a dark brown, with a black nosecone, black wings, pink cockpit window and purple stripes on each wing. Just below and behind the cockpit on the left is a rubsign indent (this is missing on the Classic version). The colour scheme is a little bewildering, since Space Shuttles are invariably white, but I suppose white would have looked rather out of place on Bruticus, with his dark, military, colours.
He's got three wheels, two just below the wings, one below the cockpit. He can roll freely, but he can't fly. He has two guns which can attach on the back (into the jets) and wrap around the sides, to form an attack shuttle mode. There actually are the three jets you see on real shuttles on the back, though they're cylindrical, not conical, and the top one is significantly smaller than the two lower ones. Still, it's a nice touch that they put them in at all. Oh, and they're flat which allows him to stand upright in launch position. Ok, so this is necessitated by his Bruticus leg mode, but it still adds to the vehicle mode.
The most glaring thing about the shuttle mode is that it's a space shuttle. Forgetting the fact that you don't get dark brown shuttles, when was the last time you saw a military attack shuttle? I _like_ Blast Off, but this particular mode is really out of place amongst the Combaticons. I assume they avoided a plane mode simply because he was released at the same time as the Aerialbots. Still, they could have avoided that problem by making him a bomber of some sort - since all the small Aeriabots are fighters.
TRANSFORMATION TO ROBOT MODE
Fold up the wings, extend the rear section. Extend the front section, split it into halves and bring each half down to his sides to form the arms, and twist the nosecone halves to form hands. You can give him the handgun, but you can also attach the shuttle guns to the sides of the lower legs, although they look a tad out of place.
ROBOT MODE
Height: 8cm Width: 5.5cm
The brown and black continues into the robot mode, with a splash of purple. He has brown arms with black hands, black lower legs and brown thighs, a brown head with whitish eyes and a purple chestplate. This chestplate can be either a darker purple paint on a metallic plate or a lighter purple plastic plate. Considering how dark he is otherwise, the metal plate looks better, simply because it matches the darks better.
Like Vortex, Blast Off has swivel joints at his shoulders, allowing for very poseable arms. He's also got hands that can swivel. Not great by modern standards, but fantastic for a toy of this size in 1986. The fists are nothing more than the insides of the two nosecone halves, and look a tad strange, but at least he has dedicated hands, which is more than many Scramble City components have. The biggest downfall of this mode is the fact that his lower legs are one solid piece, and it's black, so despite the moulding of two legs on it, it looks like a lump of black. The back half of this piece has the tailfin, which is why I suspect they made it one piece.
The robot chest has three stickers, all of which look pretty awful when the toy's old. I'd almost recommend removing them or leaving them off, but the two stickers are to hide the screws that attach the chestplate. In fact, my plastic chested toy has the stickers and my metal chested one does not, and I have to say that no stickers looks better than worn stickers.
A very dark, but fairly useful (for the time) robot mode. About average as Combaticons go, and IMO this set is better than a lot of other Combiner sets.
VARIATIONS
As mentioned, there's both metal and plastic chestplate varieties. He also was issued as a Classic (plastic chest), which is easily distinguished by the lack of a rubsign indent. he was also the basis for Shuttle Gunner of Battle Gaia, as well as G2 Blast Off and Shuttler/Movor in Car Robots/Robots in Disguise.
OVERALL
A pretty good square-peg style combiner limb, although his colours are somewhat strange and it's a stretch to have a combat space shuttle. The robot mode is poseable, albeit the lower legs are somewhat disapointing. The shuttle mode's nice for the size. He's a cartoon character, so many people will get him for that reason alone, and of course you need him to complete Bruticus. Not as good as Vortex, with whom he shares design traits, but not bad really, either. 6/10
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