I’ve always been on the Cliffjumper > Bumblebee camp. I think it’s mostly because I didn’t like VW bugs growing up all that much, (‘cept for playing punchbuggy yellow). And sporty RED on cars is just so much sexier than hippie YELLOW. But mostly because Bee was and still is depicted as such a goodie goodie, the golden retriever of the bunch, the suckass. Cliffy, on the other hand, is always the hothead, the spicy pepper in the bunch – classic small guy syndrome trying prove himself the big man. They say, “the smaller the pepper, the spicier.” I mean, from the first ever appearance of Cliffjumper, we see him ready to pull the trigger and merc the Prez— er, I mean… Megatron…Whoopsies! If only Hound hadn’t second-guessed him, maybe he wouldn’t have missed the shot! See, this is why I just prefer Decepticons. They’re just way more reliable. Anyways…

Now, it’s well documented that the OG pennyracer minibot is a Porsche, according to its Microman denomination “MC-04 #01 Porsche 924 Turbo,” but I could never see it, even knowing it’s a stylized super-deformé interpretation of the car. That’s why I went for the Mitsubishi Starion Turbo decals by Toyhax for the 86 / Earthrise Cliff’s car mode. It just looks the closest to the real thing to me and the car itself is a pretty sweet little piece of kit. Just check out the clean lines on the ’87 Starion. You were a pimpdaddy if you had one of these in the late 80s. By the 90s, I think the Acura Integra and Honda Prelude had the sports coupe class on lockdown, which are equally classics in their own right, but man does this Starion silhouette age beautifully.

It does bother me a bit that the bumpers aren’t painted black on the front and back. I may just have to whip out the Tamiya paints at some point. I know the Earthrise Cliffjumper has those paint apps already, as well as black limbs. But this guy was under $20 and the red is a lot more sportscar red on 86 Cliffy than the cherry red on Earthrise. In retrospect, I wish I had painted the edges of the windows black before putting on the tinted window decals, to get rid of any of the original skyblue paint. I think these skyblue paint apps as being “toon-accurate” are just a copout for lazy redecos and maybe addressing breakage concerns for the cheap translucent plastic they use these days – G1 figs have clear plastic and don’t break or scratch nearly as easily as modern releases. I’d honestly prefer the original blue translucent plastic on the Earthrise release, even if it could potentially crack in the future. But on this car mode, the blackout decals do Cliffy justice as a Starion Turbo. Super accuracy is not super important for me when collecting modern releases because I get them to play with, not to invest. There’s no scarcity of 86 Cliffjumpers and Hasbro could release this guy ad infinitum if they wanted to. Just the fact that Earthrise, Siege, Legacy, and Studio Series are churning out repaints and reissues so often since, say when we were all in the 2020 lockdown, shows that Hasbro is willing and able to keep printing more. Just like our US dollar.

The most creative aspect of reprolabels is visualizing beyond what was originally intended, and figuring out ways to improve upon the concept. Here, Toyhax even designed decals for the silver brake discs that go under the wheels! You just have to pop off the wheels and put the tiny stickers on. That’s creative. They’ve also supplied lots of small little details, like for the gun and head lights and other tiny areas where you’d be surprised a sticker could even fit, let alone be cut into a sticker. Toyhax uses some high quality sticker paper and laser cutting for sure.

Now as far as alt modes go, I really enjoy waterski mode, and pretty much any mode where you get to use all the parts at once. After owning tons of toys with micro parts and tiny supplemental pieces, like Roadbuster’s viewfinder, Jetfire’s gun clip, Hound’s plethora of tiny parts – I hate losing parts and tracking them down on eBay as if they’re grails. I’ve got a better use for my money than a $50 part to complete my Omega Supreme with broken electronics, thank you.

I really like the metallic blue on his sniper cannon. It’s a nice color pop and makes the gun look pretty high-powered and futuristic. While I usually go for toy-accurate > toon-accurate, I do prefer the black shoulders with gray limbs over the all black limbs on the Earthrise, as it breaks up the monotony of just black and red. I know, black and red are toy-accurate, but for a little guy, the inclusion of gray makes a big difference. The devil is in the details, you know. And I always appreciate extra little detailed sculpting like on the interior cockpit that is only visible during transformation. Too bad it doesn’t hold an actual driver nor is it visible in the car mode – which is what you’d expect for any cockpit, no? I just hope that none of the blue painted parts crack since they’re most likely just clear plastic covered in gobs of paint. The paint should protect the plastic beneath a bit, but who knows over time. All plastic is so cheap and brittle these days.

While I’m no fan of parts-forming (who is?), I find it hilarious (or at least mildly amusing) that he’s literally HOLDING his upper back with his fists in car mode. At least it doesn’t become a blast shield or something completely BS like most leftover parts for a lot of TFs.

The G1 Cliffy on the right is one of my first TFs ever, pre-rub. It was bought at the time of the release, so I must have been eight years old or so. I vaguely remember keeping the card and cutting out the robot points, which probably went towards my first mailaway, the Omnibot Overdrive, which cost a cool $5 and 4 Robot Points. Sweet deal at the time. I’m pretty sure that the main reason I wanted Overdrive the most was because it’s a Ferrari. At the time, with my little available pre-Internet knowledge, I thought it was a Testarossa. In fact, until the time of writing this, I always did – it’s apparently a Ferrari 512 Berlinetta Boxer. I definitely had a thing for red sportscars in the 80s, and even still every time I see a cherry red Porsche 911 it brings a childish giddy smile to my face. Goals…

Back to Cliffy, I really do think that this little guy is the best rendition of his G1-ness in an official mainline fig that Hasbro since the original G1. Who knows if we’ll see the MP version ever release, but I passed on both MP Bees because his bloated face always looks like a polygonized Cabbage Patch Kid to me. I don’t need the MP Cliffy either – the proportions are weird to me and overall the design direction is too toon-accurate for my taste. I like this little guy as a happy medium, or… “cheerful small”?

They did him dirty in Transformers Prime. Cliffy’s not too happy about that.

“Call me a recolor again, I dare ya!”