Air Raid [Age of the Primes/Deluxe Class]

Rounding out the second new Aerialbot available as of this writing is Air Raid. Air Raid, like his team mates, is a butt head. He's fearless, reckless, and often in some sort of trouble. While that doesn't sound so fun to most folks, Air Raid couldn't be happier. I've actually got a bit of affinity towards the little shit. When I was younger Air Raid was my first Aerialbot outside of Easter Basket bootleg sets.

I had acquired him for cheap and happy to finally have an official member of the team. Those G1 toys are actually pretty small, and Air Raid found himself in my bag for a little while. I still remember a late night visit to Dunkin Donuts with friends after work with Air Raid getting passed around. Good times.

Air Raid is very faithful to his appearance in the original Transformers cartoon. He's well articulated and just overall pleasant. To be fair, the Aerialbots are pretty plane looking... HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA *cries*.  Originally, the Scramble City Combiners and Metroplex were designed to be Diaclone toys, but were released as Transformers only. I can see that Diaclone heritage in this Air Raid toy a lot. Makes me wonder what if Transformers never happened. Imagine if Diakron and Kronoform had lived and this was a new updated toy from those series? Air Raid has two blasters that can connect under his wings for alt mode firepower. That's a small thing that's done often... but I like it.

Transformation to his black F-15 Eagle jet mode is pretty easy. Everything just goes into place easily. The only place where you've got to be careful is when folding his legs into the rear of the jet. There's nothing too hard about it, but it's another one of those exactly right or it's not working type spots. It took me a second to get the two sections to snap together out of lack of wiggle room. Not a deal breaker and or a dark spot. Just a brief moment of saying dammit. Air Raid's mix of white, red, and black looks great. It gives a fairly simple looking bot and give him some visual pop. It's funny that a team of butt heads have such simple looking figures. I guess the old mantra 'keep it simple stupid' is always true for a reason. Air Raid looks great in his simplicity and jet mode is fun. Maybe I'll take him with me to Tim Hortons and relive some old memories. My local Dunkin sucks.