Death's Head
10-08-11, 08:28 PM
Hooray! A toy bearing the name Roadbuster that doesn't cost an arm and a leg! This Roadbuster forms part of the forthcoming movie (Its nearly here!!! Exciting!!!) version of The Wreckers, the Autobot's 'Mission: Impossible' team.
Roadbuster is a Nascar racing car of some sort (I could care less, it looks like a regular family saloon car decked out in racing livery to me, so unremarkable does it look). Its a decent looking thing, but is pretty light on the usual sponsorship labels that these things are normally plastered with, but at least that spares us witty navel gazing bumwash like 'Witwicky Sparkplugs' or 'Blackrock Oil'. A nice touch for Roadbuster is having circular panels that retract to house the mech tech weapon, rather than having the usual post-holes scattered around the vehicle mode. This does add more join lines to a vehicle mode that is already riddled with them.
As a shellformer, the robot is achieved by unfolding the body from the chasis, with a few folds to the bodywork of the car to make it look like you've done more than, wel, pull a robot out of the chasis. It's a nice sequence, with only those missile pods being particularly hard to get in position (at least on my example). These suffer from one of the great irritants of modern Transformers design: a lack of an axle on a key area. If you look closely, where the arm of the pod is connected to the vehicle bodywork, the hinged joint has a small metal axle running through it so you don't constantly pull the arm and pod away from the bodywork altogether. However, where the arm connects to the pod, no such axle exists and due to how fiddly and stiff the joint is at this point, flipping the pods away from the boot frequently pulls them off the arm. Annoying. So much so, that in faffing about reattaching them, I forgot to flip out the panels on the outside of the pods (which give them a sort of winged look). I'm sure copies of the figure will show up on the aftermarket with one or both of these missing in time... Going back to vehicle mode is also interesting, as the front wheels don't seem to align properly in their wheel arches as they did when you got him fresh out of the pack, which again is one of the odd ticks of modern Transformers - nothing fits back as cleanly as it should.
The robot mode itself is good. Its one of the less outrageous movie designs, being just a very busy looking robot - all squiggly bits of metal and wires and bearings and whatnot. The headsculpt is pretty decent, you can pick out a nose and mouth in amongst all the crumpled bits of metal that make up the face. He has some nice green shades and were he not wearing a hat (of sorts) would reveal a mullet, given the long strands of 'hair' poking out the back. Clearly, these new Wreckers are brawling white trash, so lets hope they don't turn out to be dreadful 'comedy' characters like the deeply irritating jive-talking Skids and Mudflap. There's a good range of movement, nothing out and out spectacular, just the usual to allow you to put him in some decent poses. The door panels on the arm, as with Crankcase, are the only weak area as it looks like he's holding them on like a shield. The Mech-Tech weapon is another hefty bit of fun. Roadbuster's is a sort of chainsaw / bolt cutter type thing with a blaster stuck to the top.
Next to the insane looking Topspin, Roadbuster can't help but look a bit vanilla by comparrison and it would have been nice to have him kitted out with a few more weapons - he is a Wrecker, after all. As it is, he's just a decent looking vehicluar Movie Transformer. The only thing that sets him apart from Jazz, Sideswipe and Sideways is that he's not silver and for one of the Autobot's tough guys, that's not enough.
113114
Roadbuster is a Nascar racing car of some sort (I could care less, it looks like a regular family saloon car decked out in racing livery to me, so unremarkable does it look). Its a decent looking thing, but is pretty light on the usual sponsorship labels that these things are normally plastered with, but at least that spares us witty navel gazing bumwash like 'Witwicky Sparkplugs' or 'Blackrock Oil'. A nice touch for Roadbuster is having circular panels that retract to house the mech tech weapon, rather than having the usual post-holes scattered around the vehicle mode. This does add more join lines to a vehicle mode that is already riddled with them.
As a shellformer, the robot is achieved by unfolding the body from the chasis, with a few folds to the bodywork of the car to make it look like you've done more than, wel, pull a robot out of the chasis. It's a nice sequence, with only those missile pods being particularly hard to get in position (at least on my example). These suffer from one of the great irritants of modern Transformers design: a lack of an axle on a key area. If you look closely, where the arm of the pod is connected to the vehicle bodywork, the hinged joint has a small metal axle running through it so you don't constantly pull the arm and pod away from the bodywork altogether. However, where the arm connects to the pod, no such axle exists and due to how fiddly and stiff the joint is at this point, flipping the pods away from the boot frequently pulls them off the arm. Annoying. So much so, that in faffing about reattaching them, I forgot to flip out the panels on the outside of the pods (which give them a sort of winged look). I'm sure copies of the figure will show up on the aftermarket with one or both of these missing in time... Going back to vehicle mode is also interesting, as the front wheels don't seem to align properly in their wheel arches as they did when you got him fresh out of the pack, which again is one of the odd ticks of modern Transformers - nothing fits back as cleanly as it should.
The robot mode itself is good. Its one of the less outrageous movie designs, being just a very busy looking robot - all squiggly bits of metal and wires and bearings and whatnot. The headsculpt is pretty decent, you can pick out a nose and mouth in amongst all the crumpled bits of metal that make up the face. He has some nice green shades and were he not wearing a hat (of sorts) would reveal a mullet, given the long strands of 'hair' poking out the back. Clearly, these new Wreckers are brawling white trash, so lets hope they don't turn out to be dreadful 'comedy' characters like the deeply irritating jive-talking Skids and Mudflap. There's a good range of movement, nothing out and out spectacular, just the usual to allow you to put him in some decent poses. The door panels on the arm, as with Crankcase, are the only weak area as it looks like he's holding them on like a shield. The Mech-Tech weapon is another hefty bit of fun. Roadbuster's is a sort of chainsaw / bolt cutter type thing with a blaster stuck to the top.
Next to the insane looking Topspin, Roadbuster can't help but look a bit vanilla by comparrison and it would have been nice to have him kitted out with a few more weapons - he is a Wrecker, after all. As it is, he's just a decent looking vehicluar Movie Transformer. The only thing that sets him apart from Jazz, Sideswipe and Sideways is that he's not silver and for one of the Autobot's tough guys, that's not enough.
113114