Originally (if briefly) a Decepticon, Jetfire switched over to the benevolent Autobots when his own sense of compassion made him realize that the Decepticons were far too casual in risking human lives in pursuit of their goals. This decision was made a bit easier when he was betrayed by his “old friend” Starscream, who evidently was actually a kind of cool guy “millions of years ago” but had since become an unrelenting jerk.
A lot of Transformers fans won’t really recognize who you’re talking about if you mention Jetfire. For whatever reason, his name was changed for the cartoon series from Jetfire to Skyfire. Most sources cite “legal reasons” for this change, though details on what exactly these reasons were are usually a bit sketchy.
From a collecting standpoint, Jetfire is rare for a couple of reasons. First, his original toy, released in 1985, wasn’t created by Takara, the Japanese company primarily responsible for designing most of the Transformers toys. As such, Jetfire hasn’t been re-released since his original 1985 run, so only those created and sold then are still in circulation. Second, Jetfire has a few notoriously weak pieces where breakage is possible. Finally, intact models are even more rare considering that a 20ber of snap-on pieces were included, which can often get lost by children.
jetfire, 10, “4696”, “”
