I should make it known that Bluestreak is my favorite Transformers character of all time. I think he was my first figure ever, and there isn’t a single complaint I have about that toy, except maybe how fragile the windshield is. For me, design-wise, it’s perfection.

When a Masterpiece version was announced, I couldn’t resist. Even though there have been other colorways, such as a cartoon-accurate version and also the blue Bluestreak (both of which were also Diaclone pre-TF releases), “Silver” is still the real Bluestreak in my book, as I tend to favor G1 toy-accurate releases above all else, at least for this figure. Call me a purist, yep – I’m a bona fide G1 snob.

In car mode, the sculpt is a realistic rendering of the Nissan 280zx Fairlady – one of the most beautiful classic car designs of all time, in my opinion. As G1 Bluestreak was the first time I’d ever seen one, however, my views are probably skewed in its favor. But the real thing is just such a stunner. If I could only drive manual, I’d definitely get one – Goals.

I honestly think that the Takara TF designers also have a deep love for Bluestreak / Silverstreak (I’ll call him “Silver” when referring to the MP from here on). As a kid, I had a fanboy theory that the Autobot insignia came from Bluestreak’s face. And that the Decepticon logo was derived from Soundwave. I don’t think it’s been confirmed officially, but I’ve been saying this since the 80’s – you heard it here first!

In bot mode, Silver’s proportions are a great combination of toy tribute and cartoon homage. For a smaller car-bot (next to other MP’s), he’s on the lean and athletic side, not too skinny or boxy even for a bot. And that face, even though he lost his crying eye lines, it’s still so G1. I always loved how it looked like he was wearing some sort of gladiator / samurai / football helmet, and this sculpt captures that perfectly. I’ll almost say that this MP is almost too close to the G1, to the point that sometimes I’ll mistake it for the original at a quick glance on websites. But unlike the G1 toy, he’s super poseable, even compared to many other MP’s.

Haha j/k. These are pretty common TF urban legends that loads of fans have been spreading around probably as long as I have. Let’s “face” it, the faction logos are a conventionally over-simplistic way of separating the good guys from the bad guys. Good guys have friendly (crying) faces and the bad guys have (evil) squinty eyes with masked faces. Even though lots of Autobots are masked, including the most obvious Optimus, it seems that more Decepticons apparently practice proper hygiene and social distancing measures on Cybertron.

I think Silver is just a magnificent mould. Great proportions, excellent depictions in both alt and bot modes, and a somewhat intuitive transformation sequence that almost seems to pay homage to the original G1 scheme.

I can’t really complain about anything with this figure other than I wish the plastic were made of a better material, like back in the 80’s when it was made in Japan, but I know that’s not possible with the standards of doing biz today. It would have been great if some of the parts were die-cast, like on some of the bigger MP figs, but it’s not really necessary since the sculpt is just so good. That and we’d run into paint scrapes and weight balance issues like with the Binaltech and Alternity figs. It’s a sacrifice I’m happy to take, as long as Takara keeps releasing such amazing G1 re-designs. It feels as if some of the MP’s are almost a G1 reboot, creating a new standard in design that marks a major milestone in TF history, some thirty years later after the original release. After all, they are called “masterpiece” and so it’s only fitting that some of them, like Silver, really are.