Starscream's vehicle mode is similar in structure to his Voyager class Animated toy, but the proportions are even more exaggerated for the most part. His wings are much longer (good), and his nosecone is much MUCH longer (very bad). I'm not sure what the rationale was behind the vastly elongated nosecone-- there's no transformational reason for it-- but it looks a bit silly, even taking into consideration Animated's often wacky proportions. The robot legs and chest make a pretty decent and solid main body of the jet, but there are some pretty darn obvious robot mode extras-- the robot arms just hang there below the wings, in plain sight. What's more disconcerting, though, is that Starscream's face pokes up a bit from the middle of this mode, which looks really, really weird. Starscream's color scheme is pretty par-for-the-course considering it's of his Animated self, and features mostly a dull blue with red. Not exactly the most exciting color scheme, but it gets the job done. (Though I'm still not sure why they STILL insist on making Starcream such a dark blue when he's clearly not that color on the show...) His paint applications are adequate in that they break up the blue for the most part, though not much more than that. His wings are the exception to this rule-- they're two of his biggest parts and could REALLY use that red stripe down each of them that they have on the other Animated Starscream toys to help break up the blue.
    Starscream's robot mode is fairly accurate to his larger Animated toys considering the size, but I'm going to get this out of the way right now-- I HATE his head and everything about it. For one, it's on this weird pin that makes it impossible for it to look "natural". Either his head looks like it's flush with the chest but is looking downwards, or his head is looking forward but there's a bit of his plane mode sticking out between his neck and the top of his chest, which looks really odd. In addition, the nosecone that folds behind his crotch tends to come off its hinge rather easily (though it's also easy to put back on), and it's at a slight angle to the rest of his body, which looks weird. I do like the proportions in the arms and legs, though-- they're very "Animated-y", unlike most of the other Animated Legends class toys, and the wings look great swept behind his shoulders like they are. The chest is also painted up well, with the exception of the aforementioned neck problem. Starscream has slightly below-average articulation for a Legend-- he can move at the neck, shoulders, and hips, and though the latter two of those are on balljoints, that's it, which makes for some pretty limited posability.
    Universe 2.0 Animated Legends Starscream is one of the better Animated Legends-- surpassed only by Bumblebee, in my opinon-- but he's still definitely way below average when compared to most of the other Universe 2.0 Legends, and his larger toys are all better overall. So unless you're REALLY strapped for cash, I'd recommend those larger versions of the character over this one.

Review by Beastbot

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