A Masterpiece Superion has been distinctly missing from my collection. TFC Toys Uranos is passable for a CHUG display, but is obviously too small for a Masterpiece shelf. Although I knew that Fans Toys will be releasing their take on the Aerialbots eventually, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to take a look at Zeta Toys Air Strike. It’s a decent take on my favorite Aerialbot.
Air Strike looks great as an F-15 Strike Eagle. Unlike Combiner Wars, his head and arms are not visible. He does not look like a robot with a jet on his back, but he could be sleeker. The panel lines and gaps are not too bad. The stripes on his wings could have used another coat of paint. The canopy opens to reveal a double seater cockpit. His airbrake panel is also functional. His rear landing gears fold down from the sides, but his front landing gear requires disassembling the nose cone to deploy and retract. Despite tiny wheels, he rolls along just fine. I wish he came with two rifles to assuage my OCD for symmetry. MP-06 Skywarp has him beat in overall shape and aesthetics.
Transformation back and forth is not difficult at all. The legs are very reminiscent of Combiner Wars. The front and rear parts of the jet are on textbook Aerialbot armatures. The two parts of the backpack are a bit fiddly and are prone to popping off their hinges so take some care. The front landing gear assembly is obnoxious and the tolerances don't seem to be quite right. In experimenting with his leg mode, I forgot to extract the nose cone for robot mode.
Although he does have some metallic paints, he's mostly colored plastic. The line work is decent. I wish there were more white on his body. Not surprisingly, his legs are a bit kibbly. The missiles, their racks, and the wings can be removed for a cleaner look, which is what I will probably end up doing. As expected, he has a jet backpack, with part of a nose cone sticking up past the top of his head and a bit of the tail sticking down past his butt. If you leave the nose cone out, it sticks up that much more over his head.
His head is on a ball joint. He can't look up or down very far. His shoulders are on swivels and hinges. He can raise his arms up and out parallel to the ground. His elbows are single-jointed and can only perform half curls. His thumbs are on ball joints. The rest of his fingers are single-pinned and articulate individually. They all have a single, articulating knuckle. He swivels at his biceps, wrists, and waist. His backpack gets in the way of his waist swivel. His hips are on universals with ratchets for the side-to-side axis. He doesn’t really have a thigh swivel; it’s just the slight rotation as part of the universal joint. He can perform full side splits, but his front splits is impeded by his backpack. He has ratcheted, single-jointed knees that can only perform half curls. His feet are on ball joints.
His accessories include his rifle and four missiles. The rifle has some decent line work and some paint. It uses the reverse Masterpiece-styled tab found on Toyworld Primorion. It works just about as well as a regular Masterpiece-styled tab - not very well. The missiles and their racks are just black and gray plastic. They pop off very easily.
I will probably keep Air Strike on my Toyworld shelf. I'm not too enamored with the design aesthetic. Maybe it's just the nature of the Aerialbots to be so kibbly. Hopefully this set will make a suitable Superion for my display so I can keep the upcoming Fans Toys release as individual bots. I put my not so considerable investigative reporting skills to use to learn more about Zeta Toys, ie I read a couple of forum posts. It seems that they are comprised of a few breakaway designers from Toyworld. Just based on pictures of their releases of Jazzy, Arc Arcee, and Dinokong, they appear to be putting out the same figures as Toyworld, but with a fresh paint job. If Dinokong were upscaled to match the Toyworld line, then I would be interested. As it is, I'll probably just complete the Aerialbots and Combaticons and save room on my shelves for more favored designs.
