Jetstorm

Arrogant and cocky with the skills to back up all his big talk, Jetstorm leads Megatron's Aero Drones in his bid to remove the last vestiges of resistance on Cybertron. He is distinguished from the other drones as having a more purple colour scheme and yellow markings on his body. The only thing Jetstorm likes more than cracking wise is cracking heads. He takes great pleasure in tormenting the Maximals and lets them know at every opportunity how much better than them he is. He has a nasty temper that is barely hidden behind a thin veneer of cool indifference, and it really doesn't take much to set him off. Like that Blackarachnia chick, what's she staring at?

Despite his smarm, bravado and temper, Jetstorm knows when to cut his losses and run for it. He may have a whole load of personality flaws (and a load of aero-drones to back him up), but he's not stupid. Despite early rivalries, he has also developed a camaraderie with Thrust, even though the idea of being friends with anyone initially came as something of a shock.

Jetstorm is in actuality a programmed shell personality given life by the spark of the Maximal Silverbolt.

His command code is "afterburn".

Get it through your CPU! That program has been deleted. I'm Jetstorm. PERIOD!

Fiction

Beast Machines cartoon

Voice actor: Brian Drummond, Scott McNeil (as Silverbolt) (English), Mitsuo Iwata (Japanese), more»

"We're like the Mitchell Brothers, only not bald, ugly, and shit."

Jetstorm came online alongside fellow generals Tankor and Thrust, when Megatron realized that controlling his vast armies of Vehicon drones directly was beyond even his mental capacities. In order to more efficiently guide his forces, he created the Vehicon generals to serve as field commanders answering directly to him. Showing a twisted sense of humor, Megatron summoned the familiar sparks of two captured Maximals and one Predacon from the Beast Wars to be his puppets, installing personality shell programs to make them unrecognizable by their former comrades and foes alike. For the bombastic and cruel Jetstorm, he used the spark of the noble and chivalrous Fuzor called Silverbolt. Fires of the Past

Silverbolt would later admit that he was aware of Jetstorm's sociopathy... and revelled in it, and being free from his code of chivalry. In Darkest Knight

Wonder who would call their child "Problem"?

Jetstorm made his entrance alongside Thrust and Tankor, with Rattrap and Blackarachnia as his audience. When the spider lady noted that three mindless drones shouldn't be a problem, Jetstorm stunned the Maximals by replying that one, they weren't drones; two, they weren't mindless; and three, "Problem" was his middle name. Jetstorm teamed up with Thrust against Blackarachnia, strafing her from the air and obliging her with a ride through the skies after she webbed herself to him. When they initially lost the Maximals' signatures, Jetstorm was the first to detect them inside the spaceport terminal building, and the chase resumed, ending with a firefight between the generals and Optimus Primal and Cheetor that caused the destruction of the Autobot shuttle Omega-Delta. Fires of the Past

So BAE Systems said "if everyone loves the UK's bendy buses, how about...".

Berated by Megatron after his team's failures, Jetstorm protested that he'd almost captured the Maximals, only for the "lugnuts" to screw him up. Unsurprisingly, Megatron didn't buy it. After a couple of painful jolts and a promise of either reward or suffering, the three generals hit the road to find the Maximals. When Thrust stopped and began to brood, Jetstorm confronted him and demanded to know what the problem was, instigating a fight with the Cycle Commander. While they were dueling, the two picked up the Maximals' signatures and took off, only to find Tankor had beaten them to the prize. Teaming up with Thrust, Jetstorm attacked Tankor, landing a solid hit on him but ultimately getting himself knocked out when Tankor's counterattack blew up a fuel tank which walloped everyone but him. Later, Jetstorm angrily told Thrust he never wanted to see "that slagging turret-head" again—right before they were blasted back and then crushed by a falling Tankor. Mercenary Pursuits

A sub-surface scan picked up Cheetor's Maximal signature, and Jetstorm brought some Aerodrones to play. He went right for the new guy, hoping to teach Bat Boy some new lessons in pain. Optimus shook him off, though, and the beasties made a run for it. Jetstorm pursued with a homing bomb, setting it to lock onto the Maximals before zooming in to detonate at close range. Nightscream scrambled its locking mechanism with some hypersonics, however, and the bomb went after the Aerodrones instead! One big plume of flame later, Nightscream pressed his advantage by sonic-scrambling the drones up close, getting them to fire on each other and their general. Jetstorm was fuming, and swore to return with a full battalion to fry the animals. He tried out a new activation code as he took off, too..."Jetstorm: Adios!"

Jetstorm and his Vehicons tracked the Maximals to an underground orchard soon afterwards. Jetstorm gunned down the mouthy punk bat as revenge for earlier, but then Optimus Primal reformatted Nightscream into a techno-organic. The blasted kid now had sonic blasts, and he shot down Jetstorm's wingmen, then Jetstorm himself. Weakened from the fight, Jetstorm initiated an evacuation sequence in his remaining drones, to live to blight another day. Forbidden Fruit

The generals met up with the Maximals again at a Vehicon manufacturing plant. Cheetor and Nightscream were in the process of leading Jetstorm and Tankor into a trap when Rattrap bungled into the picture. Of course, his bungling still knocked the two generals for a loop. After a power surge knocked out at least three quarters of Megatron's power, the backwash also took Jetstorm and the others off-line for the remainder of the solar cycle. The Weak Component

In another chase, Jetstorm and the Vehicon generals attacked the Maximals near the spark extraction facility where Cybertron's populace was broken down for parts. Jetstorm's greatest nemesis during this battle was not the Maximals, but the randomly backfiring coolant vents that littered the area. He just had no luck with those things at all. Discovery Next, Jetstorm and Thrust responded to Nightscream and Blackarachnia blatantly causing a distraction in the midst of Cybertropolis. Jetstorm toyed with the fruity bat boy for a while before the brat fanged him. He soon confronted Thrust about how he was clearly not shooting at Blackarachnia. Thrust finally took the shot, but Jetstorm used the power of peer pressure to push him into finishing the job. Nightscream intervened, only to take himself and Thrust temporarily out of action. Jetstorm stepped in with style and used the portable spark extractor to steal the spider-babe's spark for himself. Descent Once he had her spark, Jetstorm took off to bring his prize to Megatron, and maybe earn a prize of his own. Nightscream was right behind him, though, and he swiped back the spark extractor. Jetstorm was so furious about losing the spark that his jovial mask slipped briefly, and he tore after the Maximal in an absolute rage. Pursuing Nightscream into a building, Jetstorm thought he'd cornered the punk in an elevator shaft until Nightscream dropped the car down on top of him. It hurt, but nowhere near as much as the pun. Apocalypse

When Megatron's Diagnostic Drone suggested Nightscream might hold the key to eliminating his eminence's beast mode, Megatron sent Jetstorm and the Vehicons to accompany the drone on a Maximal hunt. Jetstorm faced off against Blackarachnia, taking a few shots at the little lady before being caught up in her cyber-webs, giving her time to confront Thrust. The two of them stared longingly into each other's optics until Jetstorm blasted her from behind...he just couldn't stand the suspense. They caught Nightscream only to lose him again, and Jetstorm and Thrust chased him down to Cybertron's organic dirt layers. The other maximals caught up with them, and Blackarachnia looked to even the score with Jetstorm. He teased her for a kiss; she dropped a boulder the size of a car on him. All's fair in love and war. Survivor

Jetstorm and Thrust briefly appeared offering to hunt down the Maximals after they stole a Mole Drone, but Megatron informed them he already had plans for the "mole" among the heroes. The Key After Tankor went off-line, Megatron held a funeral of sorts to learn what happened to his General. Jetstorm poetically sang the praises of his fallen comrade-in-arms, but managed to put aside his grief long enough to ask for power over the Tank Drones. Jetstorm and Thrust were then sent out with the Diagnostic Drone to locate a Maximal test subject to apply the key to Vector Sigma on. They soon chanced upon Blackarachnia, despite the Drone's curiously poor directions. Jetstorm got knocked for a loop when the spider-bot's "tickle torture" proved to have more of a charge than he bargained for. He managed to track down her and Thrust, but lost consciousness for a while after a canister bounced off his head. When he woke up, the Maximal femme was looking at him all dopey-like. Then she started calling him Silverbolt, which was just downright unnerving. The Catalyst

As both sides geared up for the endgame, Jetstorm and Thrust prepared for the fiesta at hand. The struggle escalated, and Jetstorm found himself face-to-face with Blackarachnia. He made it clear to her in no uncertain terms that Silverbolt "had left the building" when he summoned some Tank Drones to techno-ize her with the power of their Keys. The final blow was put off, however, when Megatron and Optimus Primal unleashed their respective doomsday weapons, threatening to tear the entire planet asunder. End of the Line

In the aftermath of the energy backlash created by the Key and the Plasma Energy Chamber, Cybertron was off-line and Tankor, Megatron and Primal were believed dead. Jetstorm and Thrust attempted to continue the fight with the remaining Maximals because, well, they had nothing better to do. And besides, the spider-babe was really getting on Jetstorm's nerves by pining away for Silverbolt, and not recognizing the glorious perfection of his Vehicon form. Although they called off the fight, Jetstorm couldn't stand the idea of following the spotted furball, and took off with Thrust to make their own way on the lifeless world. Fallout

They didn't get far. Mere hours later, the Vehicons were under fire from a horrendous dragon creature they nicknamed "Savage". Believing the beast to be another Maximal, they attacked Cheetor and crew when they next crossed paths. Already on a short fuse, Jetstorm practically exploded when Blackarachnia called him Silverbolt again. Once they realized the Maximals weren't behind Savage, Jetstorm and Thrust tried working with them, but that kitty cat was just too big for his britches. When Cheetor demanded they keep the creature alive for questioning, Jetstorm volunteered to bring back several large pieces for Cheetor to chat with as much as he liked. Bravado aside, Jetstorm was quickly crispy-fried and knocked into the distance by Savage's fireballs. Savage Noble

This is a side of him I've not seen before!

After Megatron came back on-line and reassumed control over Cybertron, Jetstorm and Thrust got their old jobs back as hired muscle. They caught Nightscream alone in the ruins and were toying with their prey when the other Maxies showed up. As always, Blackarachnia paired off against Jetstorm, but this time she had a trick up her eight sleeves: a spark extractor rigged to a DNA scanner. She slapped it on the unwitting Jetstorm's back and goaded him into chasing her. Eager to deal with her "crush" once and for all, Jetstorm pursued the spider at full speed underground, bobbing and weaving through the catacombs until she caught him in a net of cyber-webbing. This sent Jetstorm crashing into a pool of organic ooze from Cybertron's core, and a miraculous transformation began to take place. The spark extractor pulled his essence free from his Vehicon shell, as the DNA scanner began acquiring a beast mode based on the fossilized remains around them. The ooze then reformatted his body so that his new beast shell was automatically modified into a techno-organic hybrid. The radical reconstruction of his physical frame deleted the personality shell program that created Jetstorm as well. Therefore, mere moments after the Vehicon general named Jetstorm crashed into the organic ooze, a techno-organic Maximal once again called Silverbolt arose from where he had fallen. In Darkest Knight

Thrust would refer to Silverbolt as "Jetstorm" from this point on, bitter and viewing the Maximal as Jetstorm having turned traitor. 

Ask Vector Prime

In Primax 208.06 Zeta, Megatron similarly created Jetstorm, commander of the Aero drones, from the spark of Silverbolt, a free agent who had been captured by Waspscream's crew. Waspscream and his crew, however, ended up liberating Silverbolt from servitude as Jetstorm. Ask Vector Prime, 2015/08/16

Transformers Legends comic

When Rhinox was turned into Tankor one day, Silverbolt and Waspinator similarly woke up in the bodies of Jetstorm and Thrust, respectively. Seeing a kinship between them, Tankor asked the two if they'd join him in turning the world into a paradise of original Transformers, but the young Jetstorm disagreed, since in his eyes "Transformers" equaled "Michael Bay". The pair's refusal angered Tankor, and a battle broke out between the three Vehicons. I'm Tankor, dana!

Beast Wars: Uprising

Jetstorm was one of three Vehicon generals created by Galvatron from the sparks of his former minions, Doomshot, Krunix, and Nucleon, following the Vehicon Apocalypse. The Inexorable March 

Games

Transformers Legends

Jetstorm was one of Megatron's generals after the Predacon conquered Cybertron. When the Maximals returned to the planet, he, Thrust, and Tankor were sent to take care of them, but failed. Beast Machines

Toys

Beast Machines

• Jetstorm (Deluxe, 2000)
  • Accessories: 2 missiles

Er, right... I'm who now?

Part of the first wave of Beast Machines Deluxes, Jetstorm transforms into a Cybertronic fighter jet. His jet mode cockpit has a spring-loaded extension, giving him a bird-like head in this form that is articulated at the neck to "search" for targets. Both jet and robot modes feature spring-loaded "energy blast" missiles. He also has an alternate robot mode, which folds his legs into a "flight cone" and reveals jet thrusters.

Note that, in the photo to the right, Jetstorm is slightly mis-transformed. In robot mode, the chest panels have holes in the back designed to pop over the yellow nubs on the collar plate, thus locking together the collar and the two halves of the torso. Further, in vehicle mode, his wings should be swept forward (like the Ultra-class toy below).

There is an exceptionally good chance that Jetstorm's cockpit was meant to be transparent at some point, as it has technological detailing sculpted into the underside. This detailing is completely hidden by the opaque cockpit windshield of the final figure.

This mold has been redecoed to make the Sonic Attack Jet, Robots in Disguise Storm Jet and Jhiaxus, and Universe Skywarp. This toy was also repurposed as Shattered Glass Jetstorm.

• More information on Jetstorm (deluxe) at TFU.info

Dancing on air!

• Jetstorm (Ultra, 2000)
  • Accessories: 2 missiles, 2 drones

Part of the first wave of Ultra-class Beast Machines toys, Jetstorm is also the first Ultra-class toy since the beginning of the "Beast Era" to feature electronics. He was also the largest Ultra-class toy yet. Like the Deluxe version, he transforms into a Cybertronic fighter jet, but in this incarnation the jet mode looks far more like the Mainframe CGI model, even if the robot mode bears only a slightly stronger resemblance. His jet mode cockpit/neck is geared up with the pop-up gun turret on his back so that both turn in the same direction when moved. This turret has a light-up feature plus two spring-loaded missiles. Like the small toy, he has both a "normal" bipedal robot mode and a "flight robot mode" with pop-out thruster engines. As with the Transmetal figures before him, sadly, Jetstorm's chrome is exceptionally prone to cracking in a web pattern and flaking off.

This mold was redecoed into the BotCon 2002 exclusive Cyclonus.

• More information on Jetstorm (Ultra) at TFU.info

• Jetstorm (Happy Meal, 2000)
  • McNumber: 4

The McDonald's Happy Meal toy's robot mode was very close to the CGI model — from the waist up. Below the waist, the jet nose splits into two halves. Legs? Feet? Who knows? The toy's front torso is made of translucent plastic to simulate his slender TV show model, despite being quite fat. He also features a light piping gimmick which causes the spark crystal on his chest to light up when he's held up to the light. In jet mode his cockpit also has limited light piping.

• More information on Jetstorm (Mcdonald's) at TFU.info

• Jetstorm (Little Red Rooster Meal, 2001)

The McDonald's Happy Meal Jetstorm was also released in Australia through the Red Rooster restaurant chain. Like the other three toys, it came in four colors: the original colors (with opaques replacing the transparents), red, green, and very light blue. It was retooled from the original version, losing the light piping. To make up for this it has (sloppily) painted on 'eyes' for its jet mode.

Due to the lack of translucent plastic the toy's profile is different to the McDonalds version, looking somewhat fatter. This version of the toy isn't as well balanced as the McDonalds version, either. They fall down a lot.

• More information on Jetstorm (Little Red Rooster) at TFU.info (scroll down)

Beast Wars Returns

• Vehicon Jetstorm (Ultra, 2005-03-31)
  • ID number: BR-07
  • Accessories: 2 missiles, 2 drones

A redeco of the U.S. market Ultra figure, released as part of the Toys R Us exclusive Beast Wars Returns line in Japan. It is one of the less drastic redecos of the line, and is fairly similar to the U.S. release, substituting most grey parts for a secondary shade of greyish blue, and replacing some of the yellow and all the gold highlights with both a silvery grey and more blue, most notably on his cheek plates. It gives the figure a darker, more sombre and overall blue appearance, in order to have greater show-accuracy.

• More information on Beast Wars Return Jetstorm at TFU.info (scroll down)

Merchandise

Robot Heroes

Hey! You! Get offa my cloud!

• Optimus Primal vs. Jetstorm (2009)

• Series: Beast Machines Series

This adorable and rather show-accurate (well, as show-accurate as a Robot Heroes toy can get) figure of Jetstorm would have been packed with Optimus Primal. Sadly, the line was cancelled before these came out, but some trickled out into the wild, as seen in this picture which came from an eBay account.

Proceed on your way to oblivion. This item has been canceled, with no current plans for release.

Notes

Jetstorm's summer wear.

• Jetstorm was originally called Skybolt during development, and that name was even recorded for some early episodes. Trademark problems (likely with now-defunct manufacturer Skybolt Toyz) forced a name change. Bob Skir professed gratitude for the circumstances, feeling that "Skybolt" had given away his identity too readily.^[1]
• Early concept artwork showed Jetstorm as being red instead of blue.
• Jetstorm was prone to making pop culture references, including "Gotta Catch 'em All!" (the slogan for the Pokémon franchise) and "zwing batty-batty!" (a baseball pun intended to nark off Nightscream).
• In the show, Jetstorm has no feet and never walks. He only touches the ground when he is prone/disabled.
• In jet form, as shown above, Jetstorm can bend his fuselage like a bird's neck, with no discernible effect on his flight performance. Also, his flaming jet contrails cast shadows.
• The Japanese dub completely eliminated the mystery and ambiguity of Jetstorm's former identity by giving him all of Silverbolt's vocal and personality quirks, such as being agonizingly polite (ending each sentence in a loud, stressed, "DESU!", for example).
• Pete Sinclair stated at the BotCon 2016 retrospective panel that the two toys he most regretted not being able to produce were a redeco of Generations Springer into Shattered Glass Rodimus Prime and a redeco of Generations Armada Starscream into Beast Machines Jetstorm with a retooled head and legs.^[2] The latter concept was eventually utilized in fiction for the Beast Wars: Uprising incarnation of Jetstorm, as can be seen above.

Foreign names

• Japanese: Jetstorm (ジェットストーム Jettosutōmu)
• French: L'Orageux (Canada, "The Shadow")
• Mandarin: Pēnshèjī (Taiwan, 噴射機, "Jet Plane"), Lìjiàn Fēichuán (China, 利剑飞船, "Sword Spaceship")
• Spanish: Aluvion (toy)