Dreadwind
(Power of the Primes)
Dreadwind is a remold of Skydive, but he's a somewhat extensive remold. In jet mode, for the most part this isn't all that apparent-- the nosecone and body of the jet are the same mold as Skydive's, along with the rear section and tailfins. What IS new mold-wise are the wings, which are a bit larger than Skydive's proportionally. They've got little missile pods molded onto the bottom of them, which is a pretty nifty detail, and each wing has a port molded on the underside of it (near the bottom tip), similar to Skydive. The other obvious mold change in this mode are the new robot arms-- granted, they're not INTENDED to be used for this mode, but this design has the arms just pretty obviously on the side of the jet, partially underneath the wings, so there they are. The shoulders form barreled cannons, which look cooler than Skydive's intake vents. The middle portion of the arms is the same, while the lower arms are new, with smaller, slimmer fists and slightly more angular details overall. As for the color scheme in this mode it's fairly light. Most of the jet mode is either an off-white shade or-- in the case of the wings, shoulders, and cockpit-- a light pale greenish blue. These two colors by themselves are a bit too light of a scheme to work by themselves, and color-wise the center portion and nosecone don't look all that great as a result, though it's not downright awful. (Certainly very late '80s, though.) There's some dark gray on the nosecone and on the upper tailfins and most of the rear portion, which complements the off-white while also being a nice contrast, so there's that. What I really like is the royal purple, which is just a fantastic color, but is only used on the rear tailfins and the lower arms. The purple really goes well with every color-- I wish it was used more... but then again, if it was he'd be awfully similar color-wise to Blackwing. There's some nifty silver stripes on the greenish blue wings which-- along with the Decepticon symbols-- help make those parts look pretty cool. He's also got a touch of light red on the sides, above the shoulders. Dreadwind comes with a long-barreled cannon with a tiny tip that's colored greenish blue and looks pretty neat for a new piece of weaponry. Of course, he also comes with a piece of Prime Armor, which can fit a Prime Master in it if you take off the middle portion. It doesn't really fit with this mode, though, being an ugly chunk of plastic on top of the mode and fitting in even worse if you try to fit it under either wing. Using purple and bluish-green for the center portion of the Prime armor while making the digits off-white was a good choice, though, and color-wise the Prime Armor looks neat. Dreadwind also has two little pegs on the top of this mode for Prime/Titan Masters to stand on, near where each wing meets the main body. Also, Dreadwind can combine with Blackwing in jet mode to form Dreadwing, but given that Blackwing came out last, I'll review the combined form with Blackwing.
Dreadwind's transformation is pretty much identical to Skydive's, except that the main wings fold down onto his lower legs and then fold back, as opposed to just folding back from his main body. Out of the two options, I like this one slightly more; Dreadwing doesn't have as much "stuff" behind his back now-- just the nosecone-- and although the large wings do stick out a fair bit behind his lower legs and are pretty obvious, they also help stabilize him more. So they're still a negative, but a pretty minor one. In this mode the other new mold changes are apparent-- the mold details on the body are different, with some upside-down angular "T" sections on his chest that are painted light red, and some circular bolt-like details on his waist that are painted silver with greenish blue paint around them. There's also a small addition to the combiner peg/chest, which involves a little silver-painted triangular bit with a Decepticon symbol on it that can fold open to reveal a peg hole. You can use this to have Dreadwind wear the Prime armor on his chest-- an option I always find looks odd, but your mileage may vary-- but was mostly included here to allow Dreadwind to combine with Blackwing in vehicle mode. Of course, the headsculpt is new, replicating Dreadwind's G1 head quite well while modernizing the proportions a fair bit. He's got a relatively small white chin with no mouth-- just an enlarged chinguard-- two small white antennae on the sides, and otherwise a fairly round, purple head with a small protrusion in the center and two narrowed, yellow eyes. It looks pretty solid overall, and definitely eeevil. That wonderful royal purple is more apparent in this mode, being present on the head, lower arms, and lower legs. It helps "average out" the color scheme between the dark and light more, and makes this mode look a bit better color-wise. The robot legs (minus the addition of the extra wings) are entirely the same as Skydive, and both Dreadwind and Skydive share the same articulation in this mode.
