Somebody at Bandai must have really liked World War II fighter planes, and then got fired. Bandai had three fighters of this vintage in the prototype stage, all of which were handed over to Tonka in 1986 after Machine Robo took a break.

Thus, one was used as Bolt for the final series of Gobots, one of the final releases. It also come out in Europe as part of Robo Machine, unchanged from the US version.

Bolt was just in time to make an appearance in the TV series episode "Mission Gobotron", too. This episode taught us W.W.II fighters can fly in space, so was educational as well as entertaining. Bolt himself was the usual off-the-shelf brave Guardian type.

Bolt is a USAAF Lockheed P-38 Lightning. This has always been an aircraft I've been quite so-so about, but somehow as a Gobot it works a bit better - I suppose it's a case of an odd plane for an odd line.

Bolt has to be one of the larger regular Gobots - I'd guess they were designed by the amount of material used, and because there's not a lot behind the wings, they were able to make him have a larger area. He's to a smaller scale than Ace or Bent Wing, but this is only really noticeable if you're a W.W.II expert. A general smoothing of lines brings out a good look, though the join-lines for the robot mode are pretty obvious. It's also a bit of a shame they didn't paint the underside of the wings - not just to keep the colour scheme looking nice, but also because it might have added a bit of weight to them. While not fragile, the plastic is rather thin, and looks it, letting light through.

Like Bent Wing, Zero and Ace, the propellors are fairly fragile, and like all Gobots, chrome wear is a major problem.

Bolt has a simple transformation, but it's a nice basic idea - vaguely reminiscent of Heat Seeker, but more accomplished.

The robot mode looks pretty good - I'd certainly be hard-pressed to get a neater robot out of the P-38. The proportions actually aren't bad, though the wing-arms are a bit thin. At least they've bothered moulding some hands on this one, though. He looks pretty cool, all told, in a gawky sort of way. Nice to have a bit of diecast on a later figure as well.

As usual, the arms are well-articulated, and even the standard "chrome-dome" head is nicely done, possessing a little character and going nicely with the prominent chrome cockpit and propellors.