(NOTE: Because this is a repaint, this is not a full-blown review. This mainly covers any changes made to the mold and the color scheme, and merely compares it to Revenge of the Fallen Dirge. For a review on the mold itself, read the review of Revenge of the Fallen Dirge here.)
Skywarp here isn't the
usual black-and-purple Starscream redeco you're thinking of; no sir, this
is MACHINE WARS, wherein the original late '90s line had a lot of names
that were kinda slapped on somewhat random molds. (The Botcon fiction makes
this sorta work by making these part of a "new order" and thus the completely
different names and looks are on purpose.) No sir, Skywarp's main color
here is pretty much the opposite, with a rather pearly white being his
main color with some red accents. There's just one problem with this, though;
on the original Machine Wars toy, this resulted in a rather bland, boring
color scheme. The Botcon people improved on it about as much as they could,
however-- the white is a rather nice, pearly shade of the color. (However,
the painted version of this color on the wings is noticeably more metallic
and doesn't QUITE fit in with the plastic color.) The red is a really nice
shade too, being a somewhat dark, metallic cherry version of the color
that really pops and works against the white well. There's also a a fair
amount of black in the color scheme, more noticeable in robot mode as it's
used for a bunch of relatively minor connector parts and some parts like
the upper arms. Additionally there's a bit of a silver around the nice
transparent yellow cockpit, as well as used for the visor on his oddly
orangish yellow head, which is the only instance of that color on the entire
toy. However, this DOES fit the original MW toy, so I can hardly blame
them there. The biggest thing FunPub did to try to make Skywarp more eye-catching,
fun-- and honestly a bit less like Jetblade--
is molding his wings in transparent purple plastic and then painting about
half of them, with a nice "digital" effect to make it look like Skywarp's
just starting to teleport. On paper, this is an AWESOME idea; however,
due to some miscommunications/errors with the factory, this effect just
doesn't look right. The wings SHOULD be completely transparent past the
effect paint app, but white paint along the edges still exists on the main
wings. Meanwhile, on the top tailfins, the "digital teleporting effect"
paint app is a bit misplaced, with the paint not quite matching up. All
in all it just mostly ruins the effect.
Skywarp does have a
new headsculpt, which is quite crisp and matches his original Machine Wars
toy's headsculpt quite well, with a somewhat insectoid look along with
a silver visor and a bit of red on the forehead. The sculpt looks great,
and much better than this mold's original head; no complaints here. On
a side note, although the fiction called for him to have a traditional
G1 Decepticon symbol, at Botcon they gave out G2 Decepticon symbol stickers
for those who wanted theirs to match the original MW toy's.
Skywarp was a neat idea,
but unfortunately the botched paint apps on the wings rather ruin the neat
"teleporting effect" he could have had. The rest of his color scheme is
fairly decent (though not outstanding), with the red and black breaking
up all that white rather nicely, but unfortunately the mold is one of the
weakest movie molds and honestly shouldn't have been used for an expensive
Botcon exclusive, in my opinion. One of the weakest exclusives of Botcon
2013.
Review by Beastbot