Name: Divebomb
Series: Movie Tie-ins
Allegiance: Decepticon
Alternate Mode: Sukhoi Su-37 Fighter
Thanks to Tiby for loaning me Divebomb for this review
JET MODE
Height: 6cm Length: 18cm Width: 13.5cm
A light yellow fighter jet extensive brown camouflage patches, with jagged edges, Divebomb has off white highlights including the edges of his tailfins, stabilisers, nosetip and missiles under his wings. There's not much G1 Divebomb here, and not a lot of taste, to be honest. The colour scheme is certainly distinct, but in a garish way. I'm not sure we'd see these colours on fighter jets much either, if at all. The canopy is a transparent light blue, which is the most tasteful element here. Divebomb is a repaint of Cybertron Thundercracker, and is a backwards step compared to the garish colours on that figure.
The jet is reasonably accurate - colours aside - with a few changes made to accommodate the key gimmick. The lines are good although the seams don't stand out amongst the yellow and brown. There are two thrusters at the back and two missiles underneath each wing. The tailfins, nosetip, missile and stabilisers are all composed of a soft off white plastic for some reason. The missiles don't detach, but then being soft plastic there's not much point - and he has a hidden missile launcher anyway.
There are three off white wheels underneath which can fold down, and while they're solid moulded, they're detailed enough to keep me happy. If you plug his purple Planet Key into the back of฿ the jet, the spine of his fuselage lists up to reveal a single transparent blue missile, which can be fired by pressing two off white buttons at the back of the launcher. The missile travels okay, but considering how much of the toy is taken up by this gimmick, it's not terribly impressive. The open spine looks strange and it exposes the robot head.
This jet mode is poor. The soft plastic has no good reason for being here, the colours are ridiculous without don't really tributing his G1 namesake and the key gimmick breaks up the jet without bringing much.
TRANSFORMATION TO ROBOT MODE
Fold away the landing gear, swing out the spine to form one arm, lift the other arm out from underneath, lift out the legs and then fold to nose down to form his chest. Divebomb's transformation is pretty much the Cyberjet model, which is 10 years old. He does have a couple of small enhancements - the right fist deploys from within the forearm and the thrusters swap out for his feet.
ROBOT MODE
Height: 13.5cm Width: 12cm
The light yellow is still his main colour, with the off white now becoming Divebomb's second colour. His head, shoulders, feet and thighs are grey while the face is off white with blue eyes - and working lightpipe. The camouflage is limited to the canopy on his chest. Again there's not really anything here that suggests the G1 Predacon, and again the colours are garish - although at least the camouflage is reduced.
This robot mode is dominated by the large missile launcher that is Divebomb's left arm, and this is not a good thing. The weight of this weapon arm makes Divebomb tricky to balance, and even pulls the chest away from the backplate. There's nothing other than resistance in his shoulders keeping the chest and backplate together, which is really bad engineering. The wings hang off his back, and look pretty good, especially with the missiles underneath, and had they given this toy two proper arms they'd be a great backdrop, rather than kibble to help the arm look awkward.
Divebomb's legs and normal arm have good poseability, but this is sabotaged by his two main drawbacks. There are only so many stable poses you can achieve without him coming unstuck or falling right arm first. The head rotates and there's some motion in the right shoulder, although the right elbow isn't well articulated, limiting what you can do with the missile launcher part. The key gimmick still works, but is even less impressive now, since Divebomb suffers so much because of it - by the time you fire the missile you're already mad at the gimmick.
While the Cyberjet plan Divebomb uses was a decade old by the time this mould was released, this robot mode had some a lot of potential. Had they bothered to secure the torso and not proceeded with the stupid missile launcher arm, this could be a good robot mode. As it was released, this mould didn't need to be repainted - and certainly not like this.
VARIATIONS
None that I'm aware of. As mentioned, he is a repaint of Cybertron Thundercracker, and also shares the mould with Cybertron Skywarp.
OVERALL
A needless uninspired repaint of a poor mould. The colours are awful and don't look anything like those of G1 Divebomb, and the mould was poor to begin with. Divebomb is a victim of his own key gimmick, which much ado about very little. The missile launcher isn't really much to get excited about, and the compromises made to include it simply aren't worthwhile. The mould doesn't fit into the movie aesthetic and was bad enough the first two times around. Unless you have a thing for yellow fighter jets, I'd avoid this one - 2/10
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