Review: Masterpiece Bluestreak

Bluestreak, eh? The unloved brother of police car Prowl and racing car Smokescreen. While Bluestreak is...well, he's not even blue. He's a dull grey and black combination. Odd hint of silver, but mostly he's a boring grey car. Sometimes a slightly 'meh' character can be saved by a cool back story, but he's never really gotten one of those.

Three Masterpiece Transformers are being released by Takara to round off the year, all slight remoulds of each other. Prowl, the most famous, arrived last month; Smokescreen, the cool one, is released at the end of November; and in the middle...well, there's Bluestreak.

There's hardly going to be fights in the toy aisles to get hold of this one.

As mentioned, Bluestreak is a slight remould of Prowl, and thus everything I said about that one holds true now.

...which, when I just went to add the link to that review, I have just discovered I didn't actually review. So, in brief, he's a pretty faultless figure. Yeah, that just about covers it.

Actually, if you're reading this review there's a very good chance you already own Prowl. I can't see there being many people who'd want Bluestreak over Prowl, so you basically know what you're getting. But in grey.

The major difference is that this time the rocket launchers, which for cartoon purists were kept hidden away for Prowl, should now be out and on display. The trouble is that they look a bit rubbish. They're made in a grey plastic, devoid of any paint to bring them to life. 'Sad', 'pathetic' - good adjectives to use here. It's lucky then that Kapow Toys are giving away the Amazon (Japan) exclusive rocket launcher with Silverstreak. It makes one hell of a difference.

The Amazon launcher clips onto the existing launcher on the toy. It's big, it's black and it's got a huge chrome rocket on the front. Suddenly Bluestreak comes to life! Suddenly he has a bit of character and looks like something you'd be proud to own. The only problem is Bluestreak only comes with one launcher.

Thankfully Kapow are selling the launchers separately (they're really supposed to come with Prowl, but Prowl doesn't really need one), meaning you can arm up Silverstreak properly. You do wonder, however, why Amazon thought people would only want one.

Unfortunately there's no where to store the launchers in car mode. Um, yeah that's about all I can say about that. Bit annoying, but then they are an 'extra' and not part of the main toy.

My other annoyance is that the paint on the right side of his face is a bit sloppy. His right eye is a lot more silver than it ought to be. Run of the course for a standard toy, but for a premium collector's piece I expect better.

Bluestreak is not the most exciting character in the world, however with the launchers he's a really good toy. It's not often I point readers specifically to one retailer, but if you are going to get him then I'd go to Kapow Toys, get the 'free' launcher and buy an additional one at the same point. It pushes the price up a bit, but you won't be disappointed.