PORSCHE MODE
Height: 4cm Length: 12cm Width: 5cm

Jazz's car mode is predominantly white, although he has a blue stripe down the hood & roof (with light blue and red stripes inside that), and similar narrower stripes on his rear fenders. There's rubber tires and chromed wheels, a front grill (a recessed sticker) and painted blue headlights on the front as well as a red bumper (again, painted). There's a split silver "Martini Porsche" sticker on the rear spoiler and black stickers with the same text on the sides of the spoilers. Some, but not all, Jazz toys have Martini stickers on the doors. Others have stickers with Just "4" on them (all have the number, by the way).

The front of the car and the rear section (excluding spoiler and windows) are painted die-cast metal. The windows are transparent, although he has his side windows down - there are gaps there instead of clear plastic. The doors open, although they reveal robot torso bits rather than a proper cabin. You can sort of see the Diaclone cockpit, it's nothing more than a depression inside the cabin just behind the windshield.

A very realistic car for the size, with nice attention to detail in a lot of places and lots of die-cast metal, the colour scheme & stickers add to the overall look and it's show-accurate to boot. The only drawback is that since he has no axles, his wheels roll in slightly different directions so he wont roll very far when pushed.

TRANSFORMATION TO ROBOT MODE

Pull the rear of the car back, swing it down and split the sides to form the lower legs. Fold up the silver panels to form the feet. Open the doors wide and fold down the front of the car. Reach under the hood and split his arms apart, then fold them out to the sides. Next fold/slide the front of the car up and back to form the chest, and the slide back the windshield and fold it down to become reveal his head. Position his arms and fists, and give him his weapons (missile launcher & gun).

ROBOT MODE
Height: 11cm Width: 8cm

Well, what can I say about Jazz's robot mode? It's one of the classic G1 characters, and it's very show accurate. The white's prevalent on the forearms, sides of the feet, thighs & chest. He's got chromed silver & feet, with black head (silver face), shoulders, hands and lower legs. There are stickers on the groin and kneecaps. Basically he's black & white with silver highlights, it's a very nice colour scheme. Oh yes, he has wheels as shoulderpads.

Jazz's not very posable by today's standards but he has two joints on each shoulder, with elbow and wrist joints on each arm - which was for the Diaclone toys well above average. The arms are very posable for G1 period, and I remember when I was a kid that Jazz was great to play with because you could do pretty much anything with the arms.

It's a _very_ nice looking robot also, thanks in part to the detail, but that not the only reason. The transform works in the robot mode's favour, since you have the front of a Porsche as the basis of the robot chest - this is a feature lost on many later G1 toys (take Nightbeat or Siren for example - sports cars whose robot modes pretty much don't use the car mode bits). The colour scheme, which I've already mentioned, works well. Chromed weapons are a nice touch, also.

VARIATIONS

The sticker variation on the doors, as I've already mentioned. Jazz was also released as a Classic, so there's a slight mould imprint variation. He was also released in G2 - which basically meant a hole in the roof and a sticker change.

OVERALL

As I've already mentioned, this is a classic G1 character, and that alone makes it a desirable toy for any TF collector. However, while some of the 1984 toys are a little disappointing overall, Jazz lives up to his reputation. It's strong in both modes and has a nice involved transformation. The only flaws this toy carries are the delicate features - the windshield has a tendency to break (Jazz was the first TF I ever got, lasted about two months before the windshield broke - I'm onto my second now) - and the heavy reliance on die-cast metal in car mode means that paint scratches can really wreck this mode. Having said that it's pretty durable paint, so it's not a big problem. If you look at this toy from a character point of view, it's pretty much a must-have, so recommendations fly out the window. But it's worth it anyway - 9/10 (and it only loses that mark because of fragility).