Here before you now are the two different versions of Fireflight. The image to the left is how he debuted on his each-sold-separately card, aiming his photon displacer gun directly ahead. (Or is he borrowing Skydive's nega-gun?) The image on the right, where we find Fireflight almost-mirrored but awkwardly carrying his weapon askew, comes from the Aerialbot giftset, where we presume he was asked to compromise his grip for the sake of... space? Technical limitations? Padding the job?

In the drive to produce and market a combiner team, a multipart toy where each limb serves primarily to construct and sell the whole, it would be quite easy to skimp on the effort to diversify and individualize each arm and leg. Nonetheless, the creators of the Transformers were surprisingly diligent and inspired about imbuing the majority of the combiner pieces with a great deal of character and personality. Such is not the case with Fireflight. His tech spec is one of the duller ones I've read in recent memory. He is apparently only noteworthy as a distracted flyer, if you can tolerate so outlandish a thing. However, I do not actually believe this feature was ever demonstrated or even mentioned in any comic book or cartoon episode. As a matter of fact, I cannot think of any distinguishing characteristic that Fireflight was ever shown to demonstrate other than his "flammable 'fire-fog' missiles."

Among the other Aerialbots, Skydive is the tactician and one of the most skilled flyers of all Transformers; Silverbolt, the leader, is scared of heights and has confidence and leadership issues; Slingshot is an arrogant and undisciplined blowhard; Air Raid is a close-quarter aerial combatant and thrill-seeker. Fireflight... is unskilled, unfocused, unintelligent and unremarkable. He is little more than the fifth Aerialbot.

And he's standing on my desk right now! His gun? It's pointed in the only direction I can get his floppy arms to stay when not hanging limply downward: they're outstretched, upturned, like he's affectionately awaiting an embrace from a taller friend. Or maybe he's just all "Yo, what's up, y'all!" No one can say for sure.

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Fireflight's giftset art variant comes, ironically, not from the giftset itself, but from the Japanese laserdisc box set, while the carded version was provided by Neo Kerberos. Both scans had partial obstructions to the art, but in swept Liviu Aileni, who masterfully used each to complete the other and helped move this Archive one more step toward completion. Lastly, I should note that it was Shrike who first brought the Fireflight variations to my attention. Thanks to all!