Maverick (Collaborative)

The name or term "Maverick" refers to more than one character or idea. For a list of other meanings, see Maverick (disambiguation).

Maverick is an Autobot from Top Gun (via Collaborative).

"It's classified. I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill you."

Maverick is an Autobot with a need for speed who loves to play volleyball. He'll take you to the danger zone—and take your breath away.

Toys

Collaborative

"She's lost that loving feeling."

• Maverick (Voyager, 2020)

• Accessories: 2 dual-missile pods, 2 transforming fuel tank rifles, left & right alt-hands, volleyball, motorcycle
• Known designers: AJ Piejko-Brown (packaging)

The fourth figure and the third original character in the Collaborative line, Maverick is a Voyager-sized figure and is almost entirely made of new tooling, reusing only the cockpit canopy from Earthrise Starscream. He transforms into a fully-licensed Northrop Grumman F-14 Tomcat, the iconic jet from the original Top Gun film. The figure features movable variable-sweep wings, front (but not rear) landing gear, and movie-inspired details including cockpit labels for 'LT PETE MITCHELL "MAVERICK"' (the namesake for this character) and 'LT NICK BRADSHAW "GOOSE"'. The robot mode head is based heavily upon the design of Pete Mitchell's customized flight helmets, which feature his call sign "MAVERICK" across the forehead.

Maverick includes a slew of accessories, the most important ones obviously being the robot-scaled Fire Blast effect-peg-compatible volleyball and pair of alternate hands with said pegs for holding said volleyball. He also has a pair of fuel tanks that transform into hand-held rifle weapons, and two non-firing missile pod accessories that can be mounted on the back in robot mode or under the wings in jet mode. Each missile pod is a single piece of plastic depicting a pair of different missiles: an AIM-9 Sidewinder, and an AIM-7 Sparrow. His final accessory, and the only one that he cannot directly interact with, is a miniature Kawasaki GPZ900R motorcycle based on the one belonging to Pete Mitchell in the movies, which can be displayed together with Maverick's jet mode to recreate the iconic scene from Top Gun in which Mitchell on his motorcycle races alongside a F-14 as it takes off. While the Volleyball is effects-peg compatible, sadly none of his other accessories are, nor are his jet exhausts.

Unfortunately, parts of Maverick are susceptible to photodegradation, particularly his shoulder and hip joints, shin flaps, and guns.

His instructions have a hidden message written in Ancient Autobot that translates to "Let's Turn and Burn", a quote from the original Top Gun film and one of the tag lines for Top Gun: Maverick.

This toy was exclusive to the Hasbro Pulse web-store in the U.S. and Canada. It was also available at general retail in Hasbro's Asian markets such as Hong Kong.

The dog tags on Maverick's packaging feature two dates: May 26, 1986, the theatrical release date of Top Gun; and June 26, 2020, the planned release date of Top Gun: Maverick. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Maverick was delayed to May 27, 2022, meaning the packaging was already drastically out of date by the time the toy was announced.

Through the hourglass I saw you, in time you slipped away.

• Maverick (Voyager, 2022)

• Accessories: 2 dual-missile pods, 2 transforming fuel tank rifles, motorcycle

When Top Gun: Maverick finally hit theaters in May 2022, Maverick was reissued in updated packaging, this time without the volleyball and alternate hands, making this release the clearly inferior one on so many levels. It's even still susceptible to photodegradation.

This new version was a Walmart exclusive, with orders going active July 21.

Notes

• Though it could very well just be a case of different people coincidentally arriving at very similar answers to the question of "what if there was a Top Gun Transformer", we'd like to direct your attention to a particular piece of fanart by David C. Ayling, shared in 2009, depicting an F-14 Tomcat Transformer with a swept-downwards wing cape, thruster legs/feet, and a head design based on the iconic helmet... named Maverick. If you do a Google search for something like "top gun transformers", the first result which isn't the official Collaborative toy is this piece of fanart. Now, this isn't to say that anyone was copying anyone's homework—but if nothing else, it certainly helps illustrate the general idea of Collaborative as being "what if that novelty T-shirt crossing over a beloved '80s property with Transformers was a real thing?"

Foreign names

• Japanese: Maverick (マーベリック Māberikku)