Review – Unofficial Transformers Nightbird

When I bought Prime Targets: The Unauthorized Guide to Transformers, Beast Wars and Beast Machines* way back in 2002 I never realized what a useful resource I was buying. But over the years I have opened the book several times to check details on a Transformers episode or comic, and today I find the book in my hands again.

Here we see Nightbird from Impossible Toys. Inspired by the season two episode, “Enter the Nightbird,” this 5-25-inch tall action figure represents the Nightbird robot from the cartoon. A human-constructed ninja robot, Nightbird falls under Decepticon control and soon goes up against the Autobots. It’s a fun episode and you can either check the book or the TFWiki for details on the episode and the character.

A Weak Design

Impossible Toys’ work runs from the excellent to the merely okay, and Nightbird is one of their weaker designs. The toy’s sculpt, while close enough to the cartoon to work, feels soft and cheap, which combined with the fragile plastic gives the toy an overall feeling of inferior work than I get when playing with any of their Quintesson toys. And the minimal paint apps don’t help matters any; a gray wash over the silver body would have helped bring out the sculpted details.

Articulation

With swivel waist, swivel-hinge shoulders and hips, hinged elbows, knees, and ankles, and hinged wrists mounted on pegs that give the wrists 360-degrees of swivel motion the articulation should be just fine, but it’s not. The hinges on the elbows swing in instead of out and the lack of any neck articulation at all cuts down on poseability. Generally, from sculpt to paint to articulation Nightbird just simply isn’t one of Impossible Toys’ best works.

Accessories

Nightbird comes with two weapons — nunchucks and a lasersword — and both can either be held in the toy’s hands or stored in the mounted backpack. Excellent and necessary accessories for the character.

Closing Thoughts

Another addition to Impossible Toys’ line of Generation One toys, Nightbird is a good buy if you’re a G1 fan and have always wanted the character on your shelf. But it’s more of a “pose on the shelf and don’t touch” toy than a playable toy; the weakness of the plastic and the articulation makes me worry I’ll snap a limb if I manipulate the toy too often.

Only for the most dedicated of fans . . . and only then if you can find it for $20 or $25.

Now for someone to bring us an Autobot X toy (see the TFWiki).

Philip Reed continues to make progress on Transforming Collections. Adding twenty pages to the book is making it take a little longer than he wanted it to.