Collectibles: Transformers Power of the Primes – Jazz

I love toys! There I said it! I’m not talking about big kid toys like electronics, and such. I’m talking about figurines of my favorite super heroes, Transformers, anime characters etc. Truth be told, I don’t hold a figure in each and make fight sounds as I bash them together, like I used to. These days, I just display them on shelves and every once in a while I’ll change their position or posture for a different look or I’ll use them as photo props. Some of my favorite toys are still in the original packaging! Anyways, I thought it’d be helpful for those of you who, like me, score a lot their loot online because it’s just way to hard or not possible to find them in stores anymore. Maybe extra images or my ‘take’ on the toy, will help you decide if it’s worth adding to your collection or not.

Hasbro’s has introduced this remake of the Autobot Jazz as a Deluxe Class figure in the Transformers – Combiner Wars toy line in 2015. He is now a part of a ‘combiner team’ consisting of Sunstreaker, Prowl, Iron Hide, Rodimus and Battle Core Optimus. Together they combine to form Optimus Maximus. Not to be confused with the red and blue Optimus Prime combiner that forms Ultra Prime with four other random bots, of which Jazz isn’t a part of. I didn’t even know there was a white colored Optimus until I went looking for a torso bot after seeing and impulse buying my two childhood favorite vehicular autobots, Jazz and Mirage. After months of looking/waiting for something “cool” enough to complete my version of Optimus Maximus, I settled on Moon Racer and Nova Star, my first female bots. Rodimus is a Legends class figure and is the optional chest piece of Optimus Maximus. You don’t have to get it I suppose, but I find the torso really, really ugly without something in the chest. If you don’t like a red chest piece, or can’t get Rodimus, you can use the Decepticon Blackjack as it’s the same toy mold as Rodimus. Other bots that can fit the torso, I’ve seen is MP Bumblebee, Legends Pipes (and the other variants).

Jazz’s white and blue color scheme looks good as does the Lemans style race car vehicular mode, I think the vehicle mode is still based off a Porsche model like the original Porsche 935 Turbo Jazz, but don’t quote me on that. The paint job on my figure is good, I haven’t spotted any issues. I really like the vehicle mode, very Porsche-esque. All for wheels touch the ground making it a very easy roll around your desk. Just thought I’d let you know, that I tested the rolling of the car, just for you. I definitely wasn’t racing it around my desk. If you flip the car over, Jazz’s face is, bam, right there. If this bothers you, you can rotate the head 180 degrees. There are two ports, one on either side of the car, just in front of the rear wheels. The port will fit both the weapon and the hand/foot attachment. The hand/foot attachment has a port that will fit the post just in front of the rear spoiler, which looks better than off to the side. Like most Deluxe Class vehicles, Jazz will fit inside Ultra Magnus’ trailer. This is where all the good things end with this figure…

Straight out of the packaging, you can feel that this figure is rather thin and light. You can’t really tell from looking at him in the packaging, well, I couldn’t lol. The panels feel really thin and brittle although nothing has broken yet. Jazz’s head is on a swivel and a hinge joint at the neck (to allow the head to move out of the way in limb modes). The arms are hinged and swivelled to allow for a shrugging and full arm rotation. A ball joint at the elbows finishes off arm articulation. The waist is on a swivel as are the thighs. The legs are ball jointed at the hips and pop off rather easily but easy to pop back on. Finishing off the leg are joints at the knees as well as the foot, specifically to allowing the toes to flip down to form the foot. Overall I’m quite pleased with the way this figure looks but maybe I’m biased because Jazz is one of my favorite characters and Porsche is my favorite car maker. I feel I should mention that all the joints and swivels range from the snug to loose so there’s a fair bit of flip floppery on my figure. If you’re looking to get this figure, the prices have dropped significantly, making it worth it but then again, I’m a bit biased.

SPECIAL NOTE: Not all deluxe class figures are the same height when in limb mode which makes a difference when used as legs, as in my case. Mirage and Jazz are different heights. You can check out my write up on Mirage here.

What makes the combiner teams special is their ‘ability’ to merge into one giant robot. This means that each member of the team will have a third transformation mode, one that’s specifically for the giant robot. The groups will typically consist of five members, one of them being larger than the others (Voyager Class figure) and will transform into the torso/head of the giant robot. The other four will transform into a limb, either an arm or a leg and you can place them however you like. NOTE: Some combiners, whose 3rd transformation is a limb, (when sold/purchased separately) only come with the hand attachment (Prime Armor) which means that the foot attachment will then be included with the torso figure. Since Combiners from the Combiner Wars and Power of the Primes toy lines are interchangeable and not all of them have the same hand/feet pieces you’ll have to really look at the included pieces if you’re planning on mixing and matching to create your own Combiner team. Battle Core Optimus DOES NOT come with any hand or feet attachments and 3 of the 4 limb bots that I bought had Prime Armor attachments so I had to look for solution for the feet attachments. What I found online was something called a Perfect Effect upgrade kit. They make a whole bunch of different kits for Combiners. Some are just hands and feet, others have weapons, chest plate add ons and limb widening add ons. Some of them look really awesome and I’m considering a couple of kits, however, they are quite pricey. While searching I also found some cheaper, different styled, different colored sets that were not from the Perfect Effect brand. I ordered the least expensive one I could find. It was a very pleasant surprise that both the hands and the feet can be transformed into weapons. The feet can transform into a really big double barreled blaster or separated into two blasters while the hands transform to something like a rifle. In foot mode, the tips of the barrels can be removed so that they don’t protrude from the back of the foot. I think the feet look better without the protruding barrels. The peg for the leg port is on a swivel for better posing stability but is a very tight fit.

Another nifty thing about combiner teams is that some Legends Class figures have an alternate mode for use in combiner teams, either as a chest plate or a weapon. For example, Optimus Maximus officially uses the Combiner Wars, Rodimus as a chest piece. You don’t have to use Rodimus because the Decepticon Blackjack is the same mold and used as Menasor’s chest piece. I’ve also seen Thundercracker, Wind Charger and Power Glide used as Optimus Maximus’ chest piece although I kept my Power Glide as a fan mode, chest piece (officailly he’s Superion’s weapon). As for my Optimus Maximus since I have to use Drag Strip I might as well try to find Blackjack too.

Pictured below are the Prime Armor and original feet attachments. The Prime Armor is a gimmick designed to induce more sales of toys, in my opinion. It’s an add on weapon/shield/engine part or whatever you make it out to be, and meant to accommodate a Prime Master. A Prime Master is a little figure that transforms into a ‘spark mode’ to fit into a compatible component, like the Prime Armor. This transformation is as easy as folding it in half to make it look like a cube. It is sold with an exo suit which just opens up to fit the Prime Master inside. This exo suit transforms into some kind of weapon (different Prime Masters have different exo suits). I included this info because some Combiner teams don’t have a large weapon for the merged figure so I got some of these Prime Masters to use in weapon mode. The foot attachment is from another figure that I wanted to show just as an example of roughly what some of the older hand/feet look like. The older ones are also dual purpose, they can be either hands or feet. The original one should look similar but have a Prime Master port, a swivel peg and cannot transform into a hand. Just make sure to look for a peg that sticks out from the top. That’s the peg that inserts into the leg.

Original Hand (Jazz’s is black)	Original Foot

The moral of this story is, if you’re like me and collect toys based on how much you like the toy, set, theme or whichever and whatever, then you’re probably going to mix and match. If you do, please make sure you are set on parts as mentioned above and that the figure you plan on using for the torso is actually capable of that third transformation. For example, just because the figure is from the Combiner Wars series doesn’t mean it is a Combiner. I made that mistake…now I have two Ultra Magnus’! Lucky he’s one of my favorite characters, so I don’t really mind. If you have older Combiners using the older feet (like the one picture above), you can use the hands for feet then the Prime Armors for hands, that way you don’t have to buy an upgrade kit.

Official Build:

My Build:

Hope you enjoyed this post as much as I enjoyed making it. Have fun with your toys !!!

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