Generations Power of the Primes Jazz

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Generations Power of the Primes Jazz

First there was the repaint: paint a Transformer toy in a different colour.

Then there was the remould: change some of the parts so the toy looks different.

As time has gone on the remould has got so extensive that the number of parts changed or replaced vastly outnumber the parts kept and it gets hard to see what's been reused. The Titans Return Blurr/Chromedome and Scourge/Highbrow/Windblade are excellent examples.

And now we have the case of Combiner Wars Dragstrip and Power of the Primes Jazz which takes it to another level again.

Combiner Wars Dragstrip only got two repaints in Combiner Wars, and he's the only Hasbro originated toy in Combiner Wars without a remould/retool so he rather stood out as everything else was reused and turned into something else. When Power of the Primes Jazz was unveiled at SDCC 2017 it took some while for people to notice he had reused parts from Dragstrip. Not many parts, just the Combiner Wars connector in his chest, with the ridges on the corners, and the wheels, larger at the back than the front, but nevertheless they are the same parts from Dragstrip. It's almost as if there was an acknowledgement when they designed Dragstrip that reusing it was going to be hard so they made these parts separate so they could be reused, and on Dragstrip they are obviously different colours to the rest of the toy. This is nearly at the stage where X is using Y's gun or A has B's Titanmaster head!

But apart from those parts Jazz is all new.

Part of the reason it took so long to spot the similarities is that Jazz is quite a departure for Combiner Wars style cars: his car bonnet folds over onto his chest! None of the other Autobots done in Combiner Wars who had this feature on their original version, like Prowl or Smokescreen, could mimic that on their Combiner Wars toy to the detriment of those figures.

I think the most important thing to remember when looking at this figure is that he isn't Reveal The Shield Jazz and he isn't trying to do the same thing. RTS Jazz was manufactured as an upgraded articulation version of the original Jazz and is generally thought to be he best Generations Transformers toy. Power of the Primes Jazz is being manufactured to be a Jazz that combines so there's slightly different priorities here. But nonetheless the comparison is inevitable. Putting the two next to each other reveals POTP Jazz is slightly shorter, but only slightly: I had it in my head that RTS Jazz would tower over him as memory says it's one of the largest deluxes. The other most obvious difference between the two is that POTP Jazz has no door wings. A couple of minor colour quibbles: I'd have moulded the hands and waist in black instead of white: the waist at least has it's front painted but it would have looked better solidly black. Going back to the SDCC pictures to see if these were originally black - a few years ago Combiner Wars Wheeljack changed significantly between SDCC 2015 and his release I see that they were the same there, but note the Combiner Wars connector has changed from silver, like Dragstrip's, to white, which blends in more in the small gap in the car bonnet chest. In fact it blends in so well you don't really notice the gap.

Articulation: Head turns, shoulders raise to the sides at the body and also turn, ball jointed elbows - hurrah! Easy way to save on parts and still get a bicep swivel plus they're easy to fix, turning waist, ball jointed hips, thigh swivel & bending knee.

Weapons: Jazz come with a gun which kind of resembles his original shoulder cannon and missile. Sadly there's no peg holes to mount it on his shoulder but, in addition to his hands obviously, he has one on the side of each forearm, one on his bottom and one either side on the rear of his waist. His second "weapon" is his Prime Armour, a big black lump superficially looking the same as the one the Dinobots use. However the moulding is different here: gone are the knuckle spikes replaced with the tops of two large barrels. This improves it's usefulness as a weapon and also looks good as a jet pack, though mounted low on his bottom it looks a little odd. It would have been better mounted higher up the back where as a bonus you could have used the thumbs as shoulder mounts for the gun. I've seen it resting there, but the connection isn't solid. The official connection isn't too great either: the tabs on the thumbs, used for holding the armour on Swoop, peg into slots on the car front in the grilled inserts bellow the headlights. As per the other Prime Armours the cover, clear again here like the Dinobots, is removable as a square hand gun. Another connection that could be better is that between the body and the front of the car: if it's lined up right it's fine but it can be a bit tricky to line up ok.

Transformation: Remove the weapons, straighten the arms to the sides and fold the chest back 90°: You can see the slots either side of connector on the top of the body that tabs under the hole in the chest tabbed into. Fold the head down through the gap in the chest, and then the chest strip up through the hole,, straightening it out revealing a number 4 then tuck the striped end under th curved front window, you may need to bend the car bonnet forward a bit to do so. After that check the points at the back of the chest have tabbed in either side of the car windows: they may need some very gentle manipulation to get them to lock in right. Fold the arms back 90° at the shoulders so they're level with the car windows then fold down under the windows to become the sides of the car: there's a slot on the piece of plastic under the hand that locks onto a clear peg under the windows. Fold the robot's head forward under the bonnet between his shoulder. Fold the feet up into the legs. Open up the lower leg: it's hinged along the front inner side and splits along the rear outer side, and to be fair the whole process would have been easier with the hinge on the front outer side of the leg as the legs could have been locked together first. Instead you need to spread the legs out, fold the upper leg into the lower leg, close the legs and bring them together! The lower chest then, via the hinge on it's back, folds into the cavity under the windows and between the arms, with the rear of the windows tabbing into the legs.

Jazz vehicle mode isn't his original Porsche 935 Turbo, but he does appear to be a Porsche still, in this case a 962 variant, the Schuppan 962CR, or close enough to one to get it past the copyright lawyers.

The vehicle mode features another big step forward for modern combiner cars: clear plastic windows, which is very nice to see. He's got the traditional Jazz racing stripes over his roof and onto his bonnet with the number 4, his Japanese ID number, on it. There's three 5mm peg holes on the car: Centre of the rear of the roof and two slightly forward of that to the sides of the windows. The middle one is a perfect mounting point for his Prime Armour. On the flatter rear of the car, between the 5mm hole and spoiler, are 4 individual Titanmaster footpegs. An additional 5mm hole is on the rear of the car.

Leg Mode: From car mode swing the roof, sides & front of the car up & back to rest on the rear of the car. Tabs from the side fit slots just in front of the spoiler and the combiner socket is exposed. Place a foot in the peg hole at the rear of the car.

Surprisingly stable as a leg, though the roof & sides keep wanting to pop out their tab holes.

Arm Mode: From car mode swing the roof, sides & front of the car up. Split the rear of the car in two, open each half up then extend them into the robot's legs. Fold the Combiner Wars connector out the chest. Transform the Prime Armour into a hand and insert in the hole in the rear of the car. Fold the car roof, sides & front back towards the body.

At this point the instructions are rather unclear, suggesting at one point that the front, roof and sides of the car should be folded back round the body and in the next that they should be sitting some way back. The second version is doable, with the advantage of freeing the waist up for movement, but the connection feels very tenuous on my toy with black tabs sticking out the rear of the body tabbing into the robot arms. I suspect I shall end up folding the car shell right the way down round the body even though it will hamper the waist movement.

Then there's the matter of who to use him with..... I am a great fan of the idea of doing all 18 of the Diaclone Autobot cars as Combiner Wars toys. Looking at Jazz he would seem to me to automatically gravitate towards the Wave 3 Voyager Inferno. The problem here is there are, as yet, no other Diaclone cars spare in Power of the Primes, though if you've collected all the Combiner Wars cars you should have a Blue Bluestreak and one of Smokescreen or Ratchet spare. However Jazz's card art shows him as part of Elita-1's Combiner, seemingly twice! However since Elita-1 has a ready made team in the Female Autobots, of which Moonracer has been revealed and Novastar leaked, I'd expect her team to be completed with another two of the Autobots seen with her in the cartoon, Greenlight and Lancer. Further complicating the matter is that Jazz is the first combiner limbs released on his own, and not part of a combiner boxset, in the Japanese Power of the Primes line. Since complete combiners in Power of the Primes are staggered through multiple waves of toys we may not know the answer to who, if anyone, Jazz is meant to combine with for some time!

So.... Car Design is a little different, but a reasonable choice for an update. However it doesn't tab together that well an issues which also affects arm & leg mode. Robot isn't bad but is missing the wing doors. As a Combiner Wars car it's a big step forward in terms of car front chest and clear windows. As a Generations Jazz it feels a step back from the RTS version. If you want a Jazz to be Jazz, track the older RTS version down, if you want one that combines, buy this toy.