Silverbolt's alternate
mode is a supersonic jet, and is fairly close to his G1 alt mode in terms
of its overall proportions and design, though with a few extra fins. The
detailing on this mode is quite good, with rivets and vents in the appropriate
places, but without making the jet mode look too "busy" considering it's
supposed to be a really sleek, fast design. The color scheme is a bit plain,
being mostly just light gray, but it becomes more varied in robot mode
(discussed shortly). Silverbolt has "BOLT-25" and Autobot "25" tampos on
his wings and the sides of where his nosecone meets the main body of the
plane, which are nods to the 25th anniversary of the Transformers line,
which came shortly after Silverbolt's release. Another detail I like is
the transparent blue plastic used for the cockpit windows, small orbs near
the back end of the nosecone that look like gun ports, and the rear engines,
which have a nice red-orange fade pattern on them to make it look like
the "metal" on them is overheating. Silverbolt can hold his robot mode's
gun underneath the nosecone, which is your standard spring-loaded missile-firing
gun. He also has three fold-out landing gear, but there's one HUGE downside
to this mode, and that's that almost his entire robot mode is just hanging
under his jet mode. It's compressed in, to be sure, but it's still blatantly
from any angle except a top-down view. It really ruins the otherwise sleek
look of this mode. As far as his electronics, pressing in on the dull brick
red button near the back end, causes either a repeating "machine gun firing"
sound to be emitted as long as you hold down the button, with the green
lights near the rear of the nosecone blinking; a one-time "jet flying by"
noise; or a one-time "jet starting up" noise with the rear engines blinking
red. Pretty cool how each noise is different, in its own way.
Silverbolt also has
one other electronic noise-- during the final transformation step, as you
push up his head, the classic G1 transformation sound plays and his robot
eyes blink green, which is pretty cool. (The transformation sound also
sounds in reverse when you complete that first step back to vehicle mode.
Also, pressing in on the dull brick red button his backside causes the
repeating "machine gun firing" sound to be played along with the blinking
green lights, but that's the only sound that plays, as opposed to cycling
through the three different vehicle mode sounds.) Silverbolt's robot mode
is very accurate to his G1 self-- in fact, it's a bit TOO accurate. He
has his entire jet mode on his back, sort of the opposite of his his vehicle
mode looks. It's not as bad in this mode, since overall his jet mode is
more folded-up and just has less mass, but it still makes for a fairly
lazy Transformer, especially at this scale. You could shrink down Silverbolt
to a deluxe scale without losing anything except the electronics, and if
you wanted to get rid of the missile firing gimmick and some of the articulation,
you could actually accurately shrink him down to LEGENDS scale. THAT'S
how overly simplistic his transformation and design is for his size class.
Those major complaints aside, the rest of Silverbolt's robot mode is pretty
cool. His proportions are nearly perfect, with the only caveat there being
that his lower legs ar are a tad on the skinny side. The dark red, black,
gray, and dull gold really help break up all that light gray and make Silverbolt
much more visually interesting in this mode. His chest in particular has
some really nice detailing on it. I think the light red-orange is a bit
of a ugly color for plastic, though, and really doesn't work even as an
accent color. As far as articulation goes, Silverbolt's got his fair share
of that; he can move at the neck, shoulders (at three points), elbows,
hips (at three points), and knees, so you can get a fair number of poses
out of him-- however, because of the aforementioned back kibble, not quite
as much as you would otherwise.
Universe 2.0 Ultra Silverbolt
has a fairly good-looking, well-proportioned robot mode, but his transformation
is way too simplistic, with each mode basically "wearing" the other mode
on its underside or back. Because of these major downsides, I think Silverbolt
is the weakest of the new Universe 2.0 Ultra molds. There's simply no reason
this couldn't have been a deluxe toy instead.
Review by Beastbot