It’s pretty normal as a Transformers collector to wind up with a couple different repaints of the current Seeker tooling. You get Starscream, whichever one of Skywarp or Thundercracker is easier to get, maybe a Conehead, maybe one of the wildcard obscurities they like to throw in. And if you end up getting the same character twice, it’s often in one of their extremely-different variants (Ghost Starscream, Generation 2 Ramjet, Action Master Thundercracker, etc.) But getting a minor variant of the same Seeker, that’s less common. So, why’d I get this guy? I already had Earthrise Starscream (along with a couple other iterations of the tooling), and even did a grand review of him, his Earthrise companions, and the Siege Seekers back in 2020. And now, the Studio Series 86 line’s seen fit to re-release him in a Leader-class box, with accessories to imitate that incredibly extra moment in the ‘86 film when he donned a crown and cape, and was shot and killed for being a don.
Shot on the spot, even.
Despite only wearing the outfit for a minute, it’s a popular visual that gets referenced a lot on the merchandise side, often in the form of unrelated figures getting a crown (Like his Cybertron figure the 2000s, or his Combiner Wars Leader), though he’s also gotten a Masterpiece, and plenty of non-transforming action figures with the full cape-and-crown setup. And now there’s this guy, doing the full set of gear in the mainline for what I believe is the first time. Honestly, the reason I went in on this was because Toyhax is doing a kit for Earthrise Starscream to convert him into a Generation 2 version to go with Ramjet, since the scuttlebutt is that we’re not getting any more Earthrise Seekers after Mr. Coronation here, so I have a new purpose for the vanilla Earthrise guy (after doing some comparisons, of course.) And I like the novelty of this new version, on top of already liking the Earthrise tooling. So let’s see how this expanded re-release of it is, and if it’s worth bumping it up to Leader-class prices.
Robot Mode
I’m just gonna leave his chair in the background for a lot of this.
To my surprise, this version of Starscream came out of the box with four whole Null Rays. For the sake of the core figure, it’s the ones with the grey pegs that you want to use. So, yes, at a glance, the figure at the center of this set is basically Earthrise Starscream again, which is to say it’s a G1 Animation Colored version of the old 2006 Classics figure writ large, and with more joints. It’s a figure I liked when it came out in Earthrise, and it’s one I like now. I have a lot of nostalgia for the older Classics Deluxe, and having that with additional ankle tilts, limb swivels, and jointed wings, along with a bunch of other tiny improvements feels great.
Still the best 1986.
The big knocks against him are still his lack of a waist joint, and the fact that he’s generally less bendy and svelte than the Siege Voyager, though, warts and all, I still think the Earthrise one comes out ahead, as I said in my detailed comparison back in the day.
Skywarp photobombs the picture.
It’s not 100 percent the same figure, though, thanks to a few changes. The biggest thing is that he’s got newly-tooled hands, that have four-fingered “mitten” joints, and are sculpted in such a way that he looks to be gesturing with his fingers, while still being able to hold accessories in them. Extra articulation is always nice, and I appreciate the expressiveness these new hands bring to the table.
POV: Starscream tries to make an intellectual argument for his leadership.
Such a drama queen.
The rest is all tiny changes: The Decepticon logos on his wings are a little bit larger, and he’s missing a little bit of dark grey paint on his shins, and stripes on the wings on the sides of his feet. Other than that, he’s nigh-identical.
The difference is mostly in the legs (Coronation on the left, Earthrise on the right).
For features, you can take the Null Rays off his arms, and have him hold them…
A more direct pew.
…or mount them on any one of the thirteen total War for Cybertron ports across his body.
Think he’s got enough of them?
I seem to have lost a tiny, but irritating bit of the Quality Control Roulette, in that the red “collar” pieces on either side of his head don’t like to evenly sit on his chest, and are slightly askew, so watch out for that.
Check out the big gap on the left.
But, anyway, onto the main attraction: The new stuff.
Wear. The. Gear.
The big draw of this box is the Coronation gear, which comes in the form of shoulderpads, alternate Null Rays, a cape, and a crown you can affix to him. It’s a pretty substantial pile of parts. The instructions are a little unclear on what’s up with his shoulderpads, though. Basically, you’re flipping a small panel on the inside edge of them outwards, and pegging it into the ports on his shoulders, before taking the second set of blue-pegged Null Rays, and attaching them to smaller flip-out panels on the outer edges of them.
Like so.
The reason he even has a second set of weapons, by the way, is because the connection points are shaped slightly differently, due to space concerns. The original Earthrise ones don’t fit in there, they inhibit articulation, hence the second set.
This is about as good of a fit as you can get with the Earthrise ones, and his arm’s totally blocked.
From there, you secure the crown on his head, and peg his plastic cape into the War for Cybertron port that was already on his back
Ready for his closeup.
And, when assembled, it all looks suitably melodramatic, as well as nailing the movie’s look. It helps that all the new parts are really well-colored, with purple shoulder pads with gold highlights, a crown that’s cast in blue, but totally painted gold, with red bits, and a cape in a lighter shade of violet. If I had one criticism, it’s that there’s a lot of visible screw covers on the shoulderpads, due to all the swinging handles.
The cockpit helps secure the cape.
Out of all the accessories, I think the violet cape is the niftiest. It’s made out of solid (but mildly flexible) plastic, and sculpted like it’s billowing, but what’s really interesting about it is that it’s three pieces, connected by a pair of joints that let it “unfold” into a wider configuration, designed to make it billiow more to his right side, to specifically replicate the grand, sweeping gesture he made in the movie.
Real Billowing Action ™.
Also, shout out to his crown for adhering perfectly to the shape of his head, despite having no pegs, or other connection points.
The head that wears this isn’t especially heavy.
It just looks good, fits securely, and plays well.
In this timeline, Unicron added an errand decimal point on his scale chart.
Starscream’s speech was allowed to continue, but he didn’t have anything planned, so he just started showing off his kicks.
Technically, all of these accessories are compatible with any other non-coneheaded Earthrise Seeker, though you’ll have to use the Starscream-colored alternate null rays, regular-sized ones don’t fit on the shoulderpads.
Can we all agree that Skywarp’s screaming face exists as a hypothetical pretool for About To Crumble Into Dust Dead Starscream?
You can also fit everything but the crown onto a Conehead…
Ramjet just wears the crown with more style.
…and, in fact, since all the non-crown accessories peg on using War for Cybertron ports, you can give them to basically any figure with ports in the right place, though I’ll admit, finding ones that can fit his shoulderpads are nigh-impossible.
“Ever tried going mad without power? It’s boring, no one listens to you.”
The cape, in particular, travels well to other figures, since a port in the middle of the back is a very common feature throughout modern Generations releases.
It really enhances Optimus Prime’s dramatic monologues.
The last big thing in the box is a solid purple throne.
Just a big ol’ slab of plastic.
Reflexively, you’d think this was something from the same specific movie scene as the rest of the gear, when in fact, there’s no throne in the scene (though a pillar-like object behind him is easily mistaken for one). Instead, this is specifically based on the command chair Megatron sat on inside the Nemesis, in the show’s first episode.
A part of this complete command crew.
Wherever it’s from, it’s actually an impressively large, substantial, and weighty hunk of plastic, with a surprisingly large amount of sculpted details. Importantly, it’s the perfect size and shape for a Voyager-class Transformer to sit in (and plenty of smaller ones, too), meaning most mainline figures can act like the big boss.
Time for a montage of people sitting in it.
Starscream sits in it well, though you need to unclip his cape to do so.
Bringing some class to the proceedings.
Fortunately, there’s a tab on the back of it you can plug the cape into. In fact, as a bonus, there’s storage space on the back of his throne for all of his accessories. The crown clips at the top, the non-coronation null rays beneath it, the cape in the center, and the shoulderpads (with their weapons) into ports in little nooks in the bottom.
All that’s left is to hang up his cape.
It’s the little extras like this that make the whole thing feel more substantial, though I do wish the crown fit more securely, it’s a bit of an unstable connection.
Transformation
There’s no real substantial changes here, we’re looking at the same ups and downs as the Earthrise release. The ups are that it’s a fairly fast, intuitive conversion, that’s, again, basically the Classics transformation again. The downs are that compressing his arms to fit inside the jet body is still way too complicated for something the Classics version solved nearly two decades (!) ago…
This really feels like it should be simpler.
…squeezing the chest to pop it out still feels a bit uncomfy, and when converting him back to robot mode, you need to make sure to plug two tabs inside the backs of his knees in order for everything below them to come together.
The end result.
Jet Mode
That sure is a Decepticon Jet.
It’s still a good-looking, cartoon-style jet mode, though I do find myself wishing he had landing gear (again, the Classics one did.)
Old in the back, new in the front.
It’s mostly identical to the Earthrise one, albeit with an oddly specific deco change: He’s got two dark silver rectangles painted on the center of Jet’s back, apparently to replicate one specific shot from the movie (The “Pathetic fools! There is no escape!” one).
To be fair, it’s a cool shot.
This also explains why he’s missing the painted stripes on his tailfins, they were uncolored in the same shot, though to be fair, the show was really inconsistent on whether they were solid blue, or blue and red.
In another nice bonus, the missing tailfin stripes makee him match Earthrise Skywarp and Thundercracker better.
Other than that, there’s not much more to say about this form. It’s still a good, swooshy jet.
Air, land, and sound.
Well, okay, there’s one thing that does bug me: He has no way of using any of the new coronation accessories in this mode, aside from plugging the extra null-rays in.
A little extra firepower.
It doesn’t feel like a missing feature per se (he never interacted with them in his jet mode, anyway), but it does feel like a missed opportunity for some fun, bonkers altmode crown-and-cape integration.
The worst launchpad ever.
At least the throne can stash everything while he’s in this mode.
Overall
Taken in isolation, I like this release a lot. The Earthrise Seeker tooling’s an odd duck, as an upscale of the Classics tooling with more joints, but it’s one I’m fond of, and the new hands really do add something. Meanwhile, the Coronation gear is very well-realized and well-executed, and really does add a lot. And, between that and the huge throne, it does feel worth the price point, I can say that.
He needs a big camera to capture all this majesty.
But, okay, if you have the Earthrise guy like I do, but don’t have plans to Toyhax him up, this is a hard sell, since it’s just the old figure with new parts. Peak “but she’s got a new hat!” really, to the point where I can’t really recommend it if you’ve got the other one. But if you don’t, this is the version to get.
For over 100 Bot, Non-Bot, and Retro Bot Reviews, click here to view my archive.
