At last, let the Siege begin. A new line, no combiner sacrifices, longer transformation instructions, and a simple gimmick to not interfere with the toys, unless you're not a fan of them not having a lot more holes in them than normal. Welcome to the War for Cybertron Trilogy, and what better way to start of Siege, then with the missing Duocon from Power of the Primes, now no longer needing split personality requirements to be sold as two toys. Skytread, the new, and honestly far more fitting name for Flywheels. There's no Sky high and Tank tread (you try thinking of something better...), new character obligations here though, unlike his partner in split fashion sense, Battletrap though, so how well does this Duocon go as just a Duocon?
Starting in the alternate modes, these are very faithful recreations of the tank and jet modes the G1 toy had, even the now unnecessary flat tank top. One thing I do wish that both Skytread and the two halves of Battletrap did though was allow for some way to plug the two halves together in their alternate modes, as a small nod to the original toys. It's a bit more understandable for Battletrap due to the other requirements the two have to do, but here, not much would have been needed, and it wouldn't have done much to harm the robot mode. I bring this up because while Battletrap had both Roadtrap and Battleslash to design around, Skytread does far less, by comparison, making the flaws and missed opportunities far more obvious. The worst offender of this is the Sky half of Skytread, the jet mode, which while it looks nice and I love the small touches done with the gold paint, this is some of the worst Robo part storage I've ever seen in a Jetformer. What makes it worse is that it's just his arms. While I like how the torso and head hideaway, the arm blocks are an eyesore, which ruins the jet. The tank fairs a lot better in the robot parts management department, though that's not saying much as land vehicles are normally very good at robot bits management, especially if they're just legs and feet. Tolerances are very specific though on it, due to how the main tank barrel is meant to tab in. I would not be surprised if this is prone to Quality Control issues because even mine has a very small window for error if I want to plug the main barrel into the central port, and even then it's not as secure as I'd have liked it to be. One thing Siege is doing now is adding weathering effects to parts of the figures, and in the case of Skytread, all of it is along the sides of the tanks tread guards. While this is one of the ones I do like, when compared to others in the line, and especially the ones I own so far, it's not an effect I particularly enjoy, because it's very easy to either do too much of it, or too little of it, and potentially ruin the figure as a whole. Safe to say, you'll see what I mean by this later on in the line, but for now, the silver paint does work well for where it is, and honestly, the only other thing I would have done is the treads themselves.
Going into robot mode, and thanks to not needing smaller robot kibble, this is a very clean looking robot mode, though it would have been nice if the jet tail could have folded up, for the sake of clearance. Even though he was made up of two vehicles, Skytread is one of the most poseable Deluxe classes I've seen in a long time, thanks to an almost complete collection of posing joints that are also very tight. Not dangerously tight, but tight enough to make motion feel nice. There's only one ball joint in Skytread, used for the head, everything else is either a swivel or a Universal joint to allow for almost everything you would ever need when moving him. There's also very few hollow pieces on him, and even the two gaps that the hands go into for the alternate modes are quite hard to notice thanks to the brown plastic. The gritty texture most of the plastic has also given it a level of polish not seen in a lot of other figures. I actually prefer it for something like this line as the smoother plastic feels cleaner, and for something meant to simulate a robot in a war, hence the weathering paint job, it feels more appropriate.
The new gimmick of the line is the C.O.M.B.A.T System. What does that mean? Deluxe, Voyager and Leader Class figures have a lot more 5mm ports in them, the replacements for the Prime Masters and Legends class figures all turn into weapons, and you can arm characters to the teeth with guns. In the case of Skytread, you have weapon ports on his back, his wings, two in each arm, two on the legs, two on the bottom of his feet, and there are four more ports meant specifically for the Jet and tank modes, though one's meant for his tank barrel gun (it does still technically work in robot mode for that gun though). Skytread himself comes with two guns, a "HV Electron Breacher", a "EM24 IR Laser Launcher", and the two can combine to form a "LRRF Suspension-Ray Super-Launcher"... Someone must have been really bored one day, and it only gets sillier from here. I am not a fan of the gun names, though the play pattern itself is simple in concept and will get very enjoyable when you start throwing in things like the new Weaponizers (more on them in a few weeks).
While I do prefer Battletrap more, just because of the other things you can do with him, I do still enjoy Skytread for what he is. He's a clear cut example of the improvements made for the general release lines. While it might not be on par with some of the more expensive figures adult collectors can obtain, and many have voiced concerns with the sizes of the new toys, the quality of the figure as a whole makes up for the short size. Definitely a good start to Siege. Next week I'll be looking at one of the "new" Battlemasters, and the Titans Return figure he came with when coming from Japan (or at least another version of him). Battlemaster Firedrive, and Titans Return Hot Rod.
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