Posted February 8, 2011 at 12:30 pm
As soon as I had Reveal the Shield Jazz in my hands, I knew that there'd quickly be a Reprolabels "upgrade" set for it.  Since most of Jazz's paint was used up giving him what racing deco he has (plus, uh, painting his forearms white), there wasn't bound to be much budget left for paint elsewhere.  So his rear window and taillights are unpainted.  If Reprolabels didn't exist, that's the kind of thing I'd actually bother to try to paint myself.  But they do and so I won't!

The thing of biggest concern to me was the Rub Sign on his roof.  The Reprolabels set includes new stripe stickers that complete the full length from hood to trunk, but since it's a more intricate stripe than the one the toy has, I couldn't just put the missing trunk stripe stickers on and call it a day.  Then it wouldn't match!  But putting the roof stripe on meant potentially covering up the Rub Sign.  That just wouldn't do.

Thankfully, I was able to peel the Rub Sign off without any problem, and it was still sticky enough afterwards to plop it right back on after I'd applied the new roof stripe sticker.  I was even able to center it a little better, so that's another plus.  Mission accomplished!

The set gives you an option between putting a "real" Autobot symbol on his chest/hood or leaving it blank.  Since I was keeping the Rub Sign, I chose the blank option, of course.  That's not the only option on the sheet.  Hell, half of his sticker sheet is a choice between four different sponsor decoes.  You can either have everything say "MARTINI RACING" like on the original toy, have it say either "AUTOBOT JAZZ" or "AGENT MEISTER" like on the reissues of the original toy, or have the text left blank.  Choosing between these was actually a little rough.  I mean, the "MEISTER" stickers were never a real option, but the other three were all vaguely appealing.  In the end, I decided to go for original toy accuracy and choose the "MARTINI" stickers.  Those go on the doors, on the spoiler, and on the top of the windshield.

The last option it gives you is between two personalized license plates.  You can choose between "JAZZ" or "1984."  I chose... neither!  Or both, depending on how you look at it.  Because Jazz's transformation slices up the rear end of the car like a stack of party cheese, each license plate sticker is actually four stickers, each with one character on them.  J-A-Z-Z or 1-9-8-4.  I decided to use J-A-Z-1, because the idea of Jazz  himself not being able to nab his name for his vanity license plate amused me.  Plus, well, it looks more like a license plate that way.

In the end, I'm pretty damn happy.  Jazz looks a little less bare, plus putting on stickers is fun.  And I feel like he's personalized.  He's mine, dammit!  Nobody else's Jazz has "JAZ1" on their license plate!  ...unless you steal my idea.

*glare*






(Here's the toy before stickers.)

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