When Hasbro announced their SDCC exclusive Void Rivals set, I hadn’t yet fallen down a Transformers / G.I. Joe rabbit hole. Both toy lines were beloved to me – I was a kid in the 1980s, after all – but I hadn’t been paying attention to new releases from either line. Regardless, I was instantly hooked when Void Rivals kicked off the Energon Universe; even if I wasn’t desperate for a massive Jetfire figure, those old-school Joe-style Darak and Solila spoke deeply to my soul. I was eager to get my hands on them (even if it meant that I needed to buy several pounds worth of jet to get them).
Between the announcement and last month’s convention, however, I found myself reconnecting with the toys. I broke out a big bag of old, broken G.I. Joes and began replacing their rubber bands, and I started picking up whatever little Transformers happened to be at Walgreens. The curiosity had overtaken me.
Then I realized that there had been G.I. Joe x Transformers collaboration sets – Transformers that transformed into old G.I. Joe vehicles, complete with 3 ¾” Joes to ride in them – and the obsession deepened drastically. I caught up on all things Energon Universe, I set my new Megatron HISS tank up on a shelf with a new release of Cobra Commander and my original 1985 Destro. I started keeping an eye on Hasbro Pulse’s pre-order pages.
Which is to say that the Transformers/Void Rivals Jetfire set landed at the exact right time for me.
With an official MSRP of $114.99, the set isn’t exactly priced to fly off the shelves – it’s more expensive than the similarly-sized Kup/Sgt. Slaughter set, which also comes with two Joes – but I was still expecting to shell out a good deal more for it on the secondary market, fearing that Hasbro wouldn’t make it available outside the convention (the good news is: they have).
The price is also surprising because the Jetfire presented in this set is said to be a repainted version of the version of the character released in the War for Cybertron: Siege line (though I can’t confirm this); that version of Jetfire is going for forty dollars more than the Void Rivals set. Though the Void Rivals Jetfire lacks some of the accessories – notably some armor pieces – one would assume that two G.I. Joe-style figures (which have recently been released in two-packs for a whopping $35) would make up for that price discrepancy.
All three figures are rather phenomenal: Jetfire is a heavy, massive, and incredibly well-engineered feat, requiring 32 distinct steps to transform from vehicle to robot. Darak and Solila are as comic-accurate as the classic 3 ¾” Joe format could be expected to pull off. The only worry is how immediately lose-able both of their accessories – Darak’s blaster falls out of his hand if you turn it ever so slightly (which means he aims it backhandedly), and Solila’s spear (which could have, let’s face it, been a little longer) doesn’t have a lot of grip to it.
Those gripes aside, they’re lovingly crafted figures, and stand perfectly alongside their classic A Real American Hero compatriots.
As phenomenal as all this is, what the set does best is leave collectors with a hankering for further Energon Universe bundles. Fans of the comics might see how perfectly paired Clutch and Hound might be – especially if Hound were appropriately engineered to double as a G.I. Joe-rideable Jeep. Further sets to consider: scrapped Megatron and Cobra Commander or, and this is a bit of a stretch, a jet pack-equipped Duke paired with Starscream.
If this is to be our lone diversion into official Energon Universe action figures, well then thank the plastic gods we got that Universe’s primary original creations in the titular Void Rivals. But this is a franchise based off of toys, and the more they compellingly overlap in the comics the more the plastic-rabid among us will dream.
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