BLACKBIRD JET — MOBILE AIR COMMAND

X-MEN (TOY BIZ)

“The Blackbird Jet is a hypersonic transportation vehicle for X-Men. The jet is equipped to fly long-duration, high-altitude reconnaissance as well as attack missions. With a myriad of weapon delivery systems and electronic counter-measures, the Blackbird is markedly superior to any adversary.”

To close out this month’s look into the non-figure components of Toy Biz’s X-Men line, I’m looking at what is quite probably the centerpiece of those non-figure components: the Blackbird.  First introduced when the team returned with its all-new, all-different line-up in 1975, its become a fixture of the franchise, with multiple iterations in the comics, and some sort of presence in every notable media adaptation of the team.  It’s use as a major set-piece in the ’90s cartoon also netted it a release in the accompanying line of toys, which is what I’m taking a look at today.

THE VEHICLE ITSELF

The Blackbird Jet was added to Toy Biz’s X-Men line in 1995, alongside Series 4 and 5 of the main line.  While most components of the line were comics-based items that happened to have the same general looks as the cartoon incarnations, the Blackbird goes for a more directly cartoon-based look, albeit adapted a little bit to the constraints of the line’s scale and price-point.  The vehicle measures 15 1/2 inches long and has a 12 1/2 inch wing span.  The Blackbird’s sculpt was a unique one, and a pretty good one at that.  It very much takes the show design to heart, and translates it into a pretty good three-dimensional recreation.  It’s a bit scaled down from where it should be for a 5-inch line, since it would need to be able to fit the whole team, at least two side-by-side.  Instead, the cockpit is a one-seater, and the rest is scaled to match.  Like the rest of this line’s vehicles, its set-up to work with the pre-size-creep figures, so you’re not able to fit later figures into it.  But, it works well with the figures it was designed to be contemporary with.  It its default set-up, the Blackbird looks like the exterior of the one from the show.  The cockpit raises, so you can get a pilot in place, and the mid section also flips open for a passenger.  There’s also missiles to be launched from the back as well.  However, as the box so proudly proclaims, the Blackbird also transforms into three “Action Stages.”  The cockpit separates to become the “Command Center Explorer,” the tail and wings become a glider with ejector seat, and the fuselage slides out into a full-on command center, with a whole view screen set-up on the interior of the top half, which swings up out of the way.  The internal details are largely handled via decals, which include some pretty fun little touches.  The internal decals on my copy have certainly seen some better days, but it’s still very cool.  Aside from the decals (which also add a pair of X-logos to the wings, for some extra X-branding not present in the source material), everything else is molded in proper color.  The metallic blue works very well, and I’ve always dug the translucent red for the canopy. In terms of extras, the original release of this vehicle only included the two missiles, but there was also a later release, which packed in an unmasked Wolverine figure.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

My original Blackbird was, I believe, an Easter gift from my parents.  I recall getting it alongside Phoenix.  It’s notably one of the last things I remember being given at my parents’ old house, before we moved to the one they currently live in.  When they were in the process of buying their current house, there were a few visits to inspect various things, which I went along for, and the Blackbird (almost always piloted by my Series 1 Cyclops, until I got Wolverine II, so that I would have a Wolverine that actually fit in the thing) came with me, so that I had something to entertain myself.  It would go on to be one of my go-to vehicles for a great many figures (rivaled only by my Power of the Force Millennium Falcon in that regard), lasting for a very long lime.  It took quite a beating over the years, and I eventually lost all by the main chunk of the fuselage and tail.  When I got back into 5-inch collecting in college, I wound up getting a replacement, which is the one seen here.  It’s such an amazingly fun piece, and I’m glad to have one, even if it’s not my original.  But, I suppose replacing the Blackbird is kind of appropriate, since the X-Men have done it a great many times.

As a sort of a post-script here, for my birthday this year, my parents helped me reclaim at least one part of my original that I didn’t expect to find again: the original blueprints!  As I’ve touched on here before, my Grandfather was something of a hoarder, and that included squirreling away tons of paperwork from everything imaginable.  Evidently, at some point I left my Blackbird’s blueprints at his house, and he’d filed them away with other papers he’d kept.  While working to clear out the house over the summer, my Dad stumbled upon them, and my Mom had them framed for me, which is pretty sweet!