Death's Head
18-09-11, 05:53 PM
Blackjack, Hyperdrive, Roadhugger and Detour: The Decepticon Sports Car Patrol. One of the best of the Micromaster teams, with better styling and colour choices than the Autobot Race Car Patrol. Perhaps second only to 1989’s best team: The Battle Patrol. Each of the four Decepticons are slick looking sports cars, with only Roadhugger and Hyperdrive black colour scheme complimented by admittedly unrealistic gold tinted windows (!). Hyperdrive has a nice, chunky looking vehicle mode. Roadhugger’s purple street machine looks deadly, with only Detour’s vehicle mode being something of a disappointment. He looks like a fondant fancy. All yellow with a grey blob representing the canopy.
With only two different transformations between the group, it’s down to the robot modes to give them a bit of punch. Which they do in spades. Hyperdrive and Detour are nicely detailed, if perhaps suffering a little from being so brightly coloured, in much the same way that the Autobot Race car Patrol do. The balance between the yellows and blues is carefully managed though, so neither colour dominates. Blackjack is again the sharpest looking of the set, his blacks and purples complimented by some gold paint apps. Roadhugger is similarly nicely detailed, with silver paint picking out details in robot mode. However, he is the proud owner of one of the weakest Micromaster robot forms. Simply because his legs don’t rotate far enough around leaving him having to be stood with something of a squat and his arms outstretched to prevent him falling over. He has clearly been deliberately engineered like this to prevent the vehicle mode having two huge gaps riding up the rear (as spoils Red Hot a little). I could have lived with that to have a more stable robot mode.
Along with the Airstrike Patrol, the Sports Car Patrol represent one of the best Decepticon Micromaster teams, before the dreaded neon took a stranglehold on the Transformers line that bled into the Micromaster line. A good colour palette gives them a sharp look, and some careful detailing and excellent paint apps make them one of the definite highlights of the Micromaster line. As with all the Micromasters, getting hold of a set in good condition with tight joints is a must, as looseness can become a problem (as with all Micromasters), affecting the integrity of the vehicle mode – something which adversely affects Blackjack.
716717718719
With only two different transformations between the group, it’s down to the robot modes to give them a bit of punch. Which they do in spades. Hyperdrive and Detour are nicely detailed, if perhaps suffering a little from being so brightly coloured, in much the same way that the Autobot Race car Patrol do. The balance between the yellows and blues is carefully managed though, so neither colour dominates. Blackjack is again the sharpest looking of the set, his blacks and purples complimented by some gold paint apps. Roadhugger is similarly nicely detailed, with silver paint picking out details in robot mode. However, he is the proud owner of one of the weakest Micromaster robot forms. Simply because his legs don’t rotate far enough around leaving him having to be stood with something of a squat and his arms outstretched to prevent him falling over. He has clearly been deliberately engineered like this to prevent the vehicle mode having two huge gaps riding up the rear (as spoils Red Hot a little). I could have lived with that to have a more stable robot mode.
Along with the Airstrike Patrol, the Sports Car Patrol represent one of the best Decepticon Micromaster teams, before the dreaded neon took a stranglehold on the Transformers line that bled into the Micromaster line. A good colour palette gives them a sharp look, and some careful detailing and excellent paint apps make them one of the definite highlights of the Micromaster line. As with all the Micromasters, getting hold of a set in good condition with tight joints is a must, as looseness can become a problem (as with all Micromasters), affecting the integrity of the vehicle mode – something which adversely affects Blackjack.
716717718719