Astrotrain's finally got a new toy after all these years, and it's a bonafide triple-changer again to boot! The first of Astrotrain's vehicle modes, a space shuttle, looks pretty good, especially considering that he's a triple changer. It's fairly obvious that there's bullet train halves on the sides of this mode, and the tailfin's pretty small, but otherwise the proportions are pretty darned good. He's got a great color scheme, with white-and-black being a nice, fitting scheme for both a space shuttle and a bullet train. Light red and bronze are used nicely for some cool accent paint apps, and purple is also used quite a bit as a homage to Astrotrain's "original" color scheme on the G1 (non-reissue) release of the character. He's certainly got enough paint apps to go around, and his mold detailing is fair, though a few more details on the "neck" of the shuttle would have been appreciated. Astrotrain has a retractable landing gear in this mode, and his gun is stored on the underside of this mode. His Decepticon rub symbol is on the right side of the space shuttle "neck".
    Instead of being an old-style steam engine, Astrotrain's upgraded into a bullet train for his other vehicle mode. This mode is definitely the weakest of his three modes, but it's still easily recognizable as a bullet train, to be sure, and it's definitely leagues above the in-between-modes "third mode" all the other recent triple changers have had. The main thing wrong with this mode is that the shuttle wings fold around the back half, and they don't really line up with the front half of the train mode, or the pieces right next to them, for that matter. There's train windows on the sides of the folded wings to try to help the back half look more like a bullet train, but it really doesn't help. The front half of this mode is near-perfect, with great proportions, but the back half looks like it's from a completely different toy. There's one other, more minor, problem with this mode, and that's that the split-in-half space shuttle tailfin is on the underside of this mode and sticks out a bit from the sides. Astrotrain's gun is stored on the topside in this mode. Normally I'd consider an alt mode this "off" from the real thing to be a big downside, but given that Astrotrain's the first real triple-changer to come along in quite a long time, it makes the flaws in his vehicle modes much easier to overlook.
    Astrotrain's robot mode is really nice-looking, and easily the best we've ever had on a bonafied triple-changer, and certainly leagues above G1 Astrotrain's robot mode. It still defintiely looks like Astrotrain and shares some major features in common with his G1 self, such as the "space shuttle fin-chest" piece and the head design, but he's got some new things to add into the mix. For one, he's got darned good articulation-- he can move at the head, shoulders, elbows, hips (at two places), and knees (at two places), and all of the joints on his upper body are ball joints that allow for a wide range of movement (though the wings behind his back can hinder this movement some). The bullet train shoulder pads help to give Astrotrain a bit more "beef" than his G1 self had, though I'm not too fond of the big buller train cockpit halves on the sides of his lower arms-- they don't really slide into a locked position when you slide them outwards to reveal the hands, so they tend to collapse into the hands a bit too easily. His upper legs are rather skinny proportionally, out of necessity because of the transformation, but his lower legs are great-- the landing gear form the heels and instead of just leaving the space shuttle cone halves laying on the sides of his legs, they actually peg into the side of the legs to stay out of the way-- certainly a nice feature to include.
    The fact that Astrotrain is the first real triple-changer we've had in years and years, and yet has a robot mode this awesome with two easily-recongizable alternate mode is nothing short of an enginerring feat. And he has a nice color scheme, too. Highly recommended-- my favorite of the Wave 1 Classics Deluxes.

Review by Beastbot

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