Inferno

Allegiance: Minicon
Size: Mini-Con
Difficulty of Transformation: Very Easy
Color Scheme: Dark military green, light military green, light milky gray, and some silver, black, and bright lime green
Rating: 7.2

    Vehicle mode is a mobile missile launcher artillery truck. This mode is pretty good, if you ignore the robot fists on the sides of the missile launcher. No extras whatsoever, and although there isn't much paint detailing, there's enough variance in the color scheme where it's not really noticeable. Of course, the coolest part of this mode is the great Minicon gimmick- yes, he fires a missile, but there's no "trigger" in this mode to activate it. Instead, connect him to a Powerlinx port on a larger Transformer, than pull BACK on Inferno to fire the missile! Very innovative!
    Inferno's robot mode is a bit uninspiring design-wise, but he's certainly not bad at all, and he has a couple of things to make him stand out from Joe Average Minicon. For one, he's the only Minicon that has his own hand-held weapon- the missile launcher from truck mode, which has a standard trigger available in this mode so that you can fire the missile the traditional way. Plus, you can take the missile launcher off his hand (it doesn't stay firmly in its hole there, anyways) and connect it to his back to act as a sort of "jet pack"! He also has pretty good articulation for a Minicon- he can move at the shoulders, waist, hips, and knees. I also LOVE the way his face looks- almost like some sort of grumpy old owl with a monocle for a right eye. The thing is, the PAINT on it is a bit brighter than the rest of the green, and doesn't match up very well. Still, minor nitpick. His Minicon symbol is on the inside of his right arm.
    Inferno's a pretty darn cool Minicon, with only a few minor flaws (like the visible hands in vehicle mode and the fact that his head is just molded into the body in robot mode). Plus, his Minicon gimmick is loads of fun. Whee!

Thrust

Allegiance: Decepticon
Size: Super-Con
Difficulty of Transformation: Easy
Color Scheme: Light military green, light milky gray, dark gray, light pastel green, and some black, red, light orange, violet, dark military green, silver, and sparkly metallic blue-gray
Powerlinx ports: 4 (1 gimmicked)
Rating: 8.2

    Vehicle mode is a jet. I have to say, this mode is very, VERY nice. Absolutely no extras whatsoever, and it's one of the few Transformers jets that doesn't have any robot parts on its undercarriage. On top of that, it's sleek and well-designed, with excellent proportions. There's also plenty of mold and paint detailing, so he's anything but boring. (Although I think the light pastel green is a couple shades too light). I especially like the faded, worn paint pattersn given to the top of the plane and the sides of the rear engine sections. As you can see, Thrust also has a flip-out landing gear in this mode as well as two push-missile launchers. Plus, there's a square indentation on the rear of the plane mode that is the perfect fit for his Minicon Inferno. Awesome! Another plus is that Thrust's Decepticon symbol isn't just a solid painted blob like on the earlier Armada toys.
    Robot mode isn't as good as the vehicle mode, although still alright. It suffers from a couple of really odd design decisions, however. For one, his head- although it is supposed to be a tribute to the three plane "coneheads" of G1, Thrust, Dirge, and Ramjet- looks kinda of stupid the way they did it. The conehead part is too large, and the way it's slanted backwards slightly, it looks like some kind of dunce cap. Plus, there's a long.... thing (made up of part of the plane cockpit in vehicle mode) hanging off his butt and between his legs, and it looks really odd. In addition, his gimmick is probably the lamest of any Armada toy- basically, you pull his plane wings out farther from his body, attach a Minicon to his chest port, and then push down to activate a wing "twirling" action. Now, that's bad enough as it is, considering it really doesn't have any real battle function- but it doesn't even work! It CONSTANTLY bangs into one robot part or another. Blech. Plus, the Powerlinx ports aren't really situated very well- the wing ones are too close to the body for most Minicons to really look good linked to them, and if you stick one on his chest, it just looks plain weird. Oh, and his shoulders should be a little bigger when compared to his large forearms. However, these complaints aside, I love the rest of Thrust. His "air pilot"-esque mask on his face looks pretty nice, and his thrusters-for-arms is AWESOME, and my favorite part of the toy. They can easily be seen as rotary machine-guns for hands (and they are in the box art), and I love guns for hands. I only wish they could rotate if you turned the black wheels under them, but alas, they don't. I also like the upside-down wings on his back, they really complement the mode, and he has great mold detailing all over. He also has excellent articulation- he can move at the head, shoulders (at two points), elbows, waist, hips, and knees.
    Thrust has a practically perfect vehicle mode, but his robot suffers from some odd design choices, such as his failing gimmick and his dunce cap head. If only these couple of things were fixed, he could have been one of the best of Armada, but he's still a pretty good toy. Just not outstanding.

Review by Beastbot

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