No matter what dimension, he’s the coolest cat you know. Jazz!

Jazz is cool. Maybe the coolest dude in Transformers history. What makes Jazz so cool? Even though he is hip and likes nothing better than to jam out to Earth music of all kinds, he is Optimus Prime’s right hand ‘bot because he still has the goods to take on just about anybody in a fight and come out on top.

“Special Ops”. Not only does that phrase describe his function, it has also become appended to his name. See, everyone wants to be like Jazz, or at least use his name. Hasbro no longer has a trademark on “Jazz”, so his toys have had the word “Autobot” affixed to it since his 2003 Commemorative Series re-issue. With a slight break for the Alternators line, when his toy sported his Japanese name “Meister”, all Jazz toys in every toyline has simply been “Autobot Jazz”, that is until his Reveal the Shield release as “Special Ops Jazz”.

This release is astoundingly good. I can think of absolutely nothing wrong with this toy, it is perfect; keeping all the style of the G1 toy while providing exceptional articulation.

Just look at his feet! They perfectly retained the detailing down to the G1 toy’s feet.

This is one case where using a made-up vehicle for alt-mode works really well. Jazz’s new alt-mode looks pretty much like a combination of his original alt-mode, the Martini Racing Porsche 935 Turbo, and his alt-mode from the 2007 movie, a Pontiac Solstice.

Then the designers go that extra step to prove how much they really do love the fans.

It’s hard to tell from this picture, but he’s totally doing the Robot.

Speakers! Beyond his much purported love of music in general, this harkens back to his cartoon appearance, where he would occasionally deploy speakers and use them as sonic weaponry.

In accordance with this, his new toy is able to deploy his speakers in alt-mode as well.

The speakers can also be attached to extend his gun, but I’m not really sure what the point of that would be. They’re speakers. No gun on the planet is going to be as cool as a robot sporting speakers.

Speaking of cool, Jazz is so cool he’s cool regardless of the dimension he exists in.

Jazz’s evil counterpart shows up in the alternate reality of Shattered Glass. As the evil bodyguard of the evil Autobot Leader evil Optimus Prime himself (did you catch all that eeeeevil?), he replaces all of the racing stickers with inspirational messages such as “Kill to Win” and “Massacre Racing”, despite this, he still follows G1 Jazz’s mantra:

“Everything he does has to be with style, from talking to simply transforming.”

All this and he talks like B.A. Baracus.

Even Jazz’s silver Pontiac Solstice namesake in the 2007 movie — after being brought back from his unfortunate fate at the end of the movie — took a toy spin in the familiar red, white, blue, and the number “4” with an eye towards style.

“Just because he’s supposed to be in disguise doesn’t mean that he can’t be noticed. With help from Bumblebee and Autobot Ratchet, he picked this color scheme as the one most likely to get him appreciative looks from all the humans the passes on the freeway.”

Winner for best light-piped eyes? Maybe.

Somehow Cybertron Elite Guard member Animated Jazz even manages to ratchet up the cool factor; replacing the “Special Ops” description with a new job title,

“Jazz has studied Earth culture since he first became aware of it. He loves everything about it – the music, the movies, the vehicles, and – of course – the style. He’s usually a pretty chill guy, being a cyber-ninja and all, but he can barely contain his excitement at finally getting to check out Earth and give his new vehicle mode a spin.”