Cyclonus (Legion) [RID 2015]
Vehicle ModeRobot Mode
Allegiance: Decepticon
Size: Legion
Difficulty of Transformation: Very Easy
Color Scheme: Dark purple, metallic dark violet, and some silver, semi-metallic charcoal black, and dark red
Rating: 6.9

    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

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