Cyclonus' vehicle mode
is a bit like his G1 self-- a rather futuristic purple jet with a long
nosecone and forward-sweeping wings-- but they dialed up his defining features
to 11 with this version. Heck, he's practically all nosecone and wings
in this mode! His nosecone is literally the same length as his entire body,
and his wings-- though not quite as ridiculously long-- are quite long
proportionally for a Transformer jet. In addition to the curved-forward
wings, there's two sets of tailfins-- one vertical and purple, the other
horizontal and a glittery charcoal black, giving the latter a semi-metallic
shade. Beyond those wings, he's got four guns-- two below his wings and
two on the sides of his nosecone. The problem here is, the guns next to
his nosecone are pretty darned obviously his robot arms. I mean, there's
guns on the ends of them, but otherwise there's not much of an attempt
to hide them. Thankfully most of the rest of this mode is pretty robot
bit-free, except for the back end, where you can see upper legs folded
up (he essentially has no back end). Given how small the back end is, though,
this isn't that big of a downside, especially for a Legion-class figure.
The mold detailing is fairly sparse for the most part, with some "jet streamlines"
here and there to make it look like Cyclonus has some paneling on him,
and some very basic detailing for the cockpit, but that's it. The color
scheme in this mode is almost entirely a dark purple plastic. This isn't
a bad thing at all... but the main contrast color is a metallic dark violet.
The two shades are so close to each other it's often hard to tell them
apart unless you have the light right on Cyclonus' metallic-painted parts.
They really should have made his purple shades a bit more different to
create some more visual interest. This is especially true since his only
OTHER color of significance in this mode is a metallic charcoal black on
the wings, what becomes the upper arms, and on the cockpit. This is a bit
more visually separate from the purple, but only slightly-- it's still
quite dark, and Cyclonus looks waaay too one-tone in this mode.
To transform Cyclonus
to robot mode, fold his legs up and back-- revealing the robot head and
chest in the process-- then fold the remnants of his nosecone behind him,
while you fold his arms around the shoulders and down. The end result looks
alright, but man, Cyclonus now has some BIG wings hanging off him on the
sides of his body. Usually wings around the shoulders can help enhance
a Transformers' silhouette, but Cyclonus' are just too big. They look kinda
ridiculous. Anyways, that aside, the 'core' of Cyclonus' robot mode looks
pretty decent, especially for a TF this small. The legs are pretty solid
all around, if perhaps a bit skinny around the ankles, and have a nice
mixture of curvy and angular details molded on them. The chest has the
RID2015-usual of looking like it's made up of compressed parts of the vehicle
mode even though it's not, with armored-like pec detailing and some angular
detailing on the abs as well. His shoulders-- made up of the black wings
from vehicle mode-- are a bit on the large side, but nothing like his wings.
The arms themselves are too piddly and skinny, however, even at this scale.
(One of them on mine keeps popping off-- I think it's a bit too big for
its balljoint-- but this could just be my figure.) Cyclonus' headsculpt
has his usual large three-pronged helmet with sloped sides, a silver face,
red eyes, and a "normal" mouth, but the face itself isn't sculpted right.
There's two little line indentations for his eyes and a cartoonishly simple
smirk-- almost like his face is an emoji. Needless to say, it's hard to
take Cyclonus seriously with this face, and I'm not sure how the rest of
his detailing is so good in this mode but they botched the face so bad.
The color scheme for Cyclonus sadly mostly stays the same in this mode,
but with a bit more metallic violet visible. Unfortunately, he's still
far too purple and one-tone, with his silver face being the only real contrast
color. For articulation in this mode, Cyclonus can move at the shoulders,
elbows, hips, knees, and slightly at the ankles. This sounds almost warrior-esque,
but most of these are only in one direction, and the nosecone backpack
does get in the way of upper leg articulation a bit, so although decent
for a Legion figure, it's not as good as it initially sounds.
RID2015 legion Cyclonus
is an okay little guy if you want a figure of him without worrying about
the combining aspect simplifying things, but there's definitely better
figures of this size out there. The arms are too obvious in vehicle mode,
he's got a huge backpack in robot mode, his facesculpt is just weird, and
his color scheme is far too one-tone. That said, his proportions are generally
solid, his articulation is decent, and his transformation is rather unique
for a Legion-class figure. (Additionally, it should be noted Cyclonus is
quite hard to find-- his wave only got a very limited release in a few
countries like Australia.)
Review by Beastbot