Dave's RoadBots Rant 1:32 Ford GT 1:32 Mitsubishi Pajero Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Alt/RoadBot1 Some background for people coming into this review "cold". Happy Well has a long history of fairly high quality "knockoffs", which are (as far as I know) actually licensed on some level or another, and at the very least less fly by night than a lot of Chinese toy operations. The RoadBots line is one of their non-copied lines, with totally new designs and what seems to be completely above the board licensing of the automotive modes. Because these are licensed car modes, I'm filing this (and any other) review of RoadBots under Alternators. Unlike Alternators, the RoadBots come in multiple scales. 1:32 is the smallest, going for under $10 online. Next up is 1:18, with figures about 10-11" tall. And the kings of the line are the 1:12 scale figures, theoretically able to carry 6" action figures inside, and coming in at over a foot tall. All RoadBots come with some sort of electronic gimmick, usually a light-up weapon, as well as that hallmark of off-brand robot toys, chrome plating. The designs do seem in places inspired by Alternators, but given that there's only a limited number of ways to break a car up into a robot, that's inevitable even if it's not intentional. To try things out, I ordered the first two 1:32 scale RoadBots. I doubt I'll go for any 1:12 sets (just don't have the room anymore), but other 1:32 sets are possible, and maybe even a 1:18. The two main places I've found online to buy these are BBTS.com and agesthreeandup.com (under Transformers, not under Happy Well, oddly), but I'm sure other places carry 'em. I bought this pair through BBTS. CAPSULES 1:32 Ford GT: A 3/4 size Mirage, sort of. The transformation involves a significant amount of part-shifting (as in, snap off and move to a new location) but is otherwise decent. Very nice vehicle mode, so-so robot mode. Mildly recommended, which is pretty good for an off-brand. $9.99 at BBTS.com. 1:32 Mitsubishi Pajero: AKA a Montero in the U.S. Good vehicle mode, decent accessories, pretty good transformation. Robot mode has some serious weaknesses, though. Mildly recommended. $9.99 at BBTS.com. RANTS Packaging: Even within just the 1:32 scale, the box sizes are not standard. They're both 10.5" (27cm) wide and 7.5" (19cm) tall, but each is just as deep as it needs to be to accomodate the robot mode. The Pajero has a bigger chest, so its box is 3.5" (8.5cm) deep, while the slenderer GT is in a box 2.25" (6cm) deep. Both boxes are corrugated cardboard closed on six sides and with an open window on the front. The toy is sealed between two blister trays inside, with a hole in the outer blister to let you push the "TRY ME WITH LIGHTS" button on each. Around the front border, the upper left has the RoadBot "with lights" logo, with a grayscale photo of the robot below it. The upper right has the Age 5+ and choking hazard warning. The lower right has "TRANSFORM TO" followed by the logo of the car, with a photo of vehicle mode below that. The bottom border has the logo larged, plus the Happy Well logo. The GT also has the official Ford licensed product logo. The RoadBot logo itself has the first O replaced by a wheel, and there's a robot head between "Road" and "Bot". On the bottom panel, a sort of strobe shot of the car transforming into robot mode is surrounded by an energy aura, accompanied by both the RoadBot logo and the car's own logo. The right panel does the same, but with the images rearranged vertically. The left panel has line art of the robot mode above a photo of the vehicle mode, with the RoadBot logo at the top and the car's logo at the bottom. The rear has both logos again and a big photo of the robot mode. In a box on the right are smaller pictures of details of the vehicle mode, such as opening doors, plus the legalese about licensing and stuff. Battery replacement instructions are in this box as well. Inside the package, the toy is packaged in robot mode a bit right of center. To its right are a melee weapon and a secondary clear attachment for the light up weapon. To the left are a pistol, a chromed shield, a detached car body shell piece and the light up weapon. There's no twist-ties, but the outer blister is glued to the inner cardboard tray. The instructions are between the box and the back of the inner tray. They're two-sided in black and white and gray. One side shows car to robot, the other side shows robot to car, a nice touch. The instructions also show various load-outs for the accessories. They also make it clear that you can't store everything in vehicle mode, or use everything in robot mode. Unsurprisingly, the sleek Ford GT has more stuff that won't fit inside the vehicle mode than the Pajero SUV. There are no character names, bios, etc for these guys. So I'll make up my own, and tie these into the Transformers universe, because it amuses me to do so. THE STORY OF ROADBOTS - A Fanfic Background The Alternators Project was not the end of human involvement in the war between the Autobots and Decepticons, of course. Once the demand for new bodies for Cybertronians dwindled to a mere handful a year, these retooled factories were put to use creating purely native Transformers, called RoadBots, to help defend Earth against alien incursions. After all, even if the Decepticons were driven away, there were other things out there to worry about. And, of course, no nation really wanted to let other nations have the only RoadBots. As world geopolitics shifted in the wake of the Alternators War, the corporations who had gotten involved in creating bodies for the Autobots formed a sort of extragovernmental alliance, drawing their home nations into a similar pact. Fuji Heavy Industries, DaimlerChrysler, Ford/Mazda/Changan, and Honda formed the core of this alliance, having done the majority of the Alternators work. However, no technological secret remains secret for long, and a competing alliance formed from the corporations and nations left out of this first group. The first alliance became known by 2013 as the Terran Automotive Group, or TAG. The second alliance, led by the Mitsubishi Group, called itself Diamond Motors, or DM. Mistubishi still retains a presence in Japan, but as its home nation has cast its political fortunes with TAG, most Mitsubishi operations have moved to Russia. While TAG and DM are not at war in any significant sense of the word, there is a strong rivalry between them. It doesn't help that strong suspicions of Decepticon infiltration have dogged DM since its inception, while TAG makes no secret of its ties to the Autobots. Each programs the AIs of its RoadBots to have a strong loyalty to its parent organization first, and humanity second. However, given the poorly understood nature of AI (mostly reverse-engineered from copies of Autobot brains), there have been instances of TAG RoadBots "defecting" to DM, and vice versa. Treaties with the Autobots that allowed the creation of the RoadBots in the first place require that AIs be treated as people, with full rights, so RoadBots are often built with less than absolute cutting edge technology, just in case one goes over to the other side. Of course, by the time a RoadBot is up and running, odds are the cutting edge tech from their design phase has been replicated by the competition anyway. Each RoadBot is an individual, there is as yet no such thing as a "mass produced" RoadBot. However, there are three classes of RoadBot, roughly corresponding to the power level and expense of creation. Class 32, Class 18, and Class 12. Class 32 RoadBots are the least powerful and easiest to create, and are often testbeds for new concepts. This makes them unpredictable, but also unreliable. Despite their lower cost, Class 32 RoadBots are not as common as Class 18, in part because of this unreliability...they're the most likely class to defect, and the most damaging to corporate secrets when they do. Class 18 RoadBots are what most people think of when RoadBots are mentioned. Powerful, but reasonably plentiful. They tend to be more loyal to their creators, but once in a while you'll see one cross the lines. Finally, Class 12 RoadBots are the premiere creations of their respective factions. Often using only completely proven technology, they lack the cutting edge potential of their brethren, but are backed with the strongest power plants available and the finest craftsmanship. They are expected to fall only to direct assault by a powerful enemy, rather than succumbing to accident or simple wear and tear. A Class 12 is a representative of its corporation, and there has not yet been a report of one defecting. Rumors circulate that a DM Class 12 once wanted to defect, but was subjected to AI alteration in violation of treaty. Nothing was ever proven, however. ROADBOT: Fireshot Class: 32 Faction: TAG Altmode: Ford GT Birthplace: Troy, Michigan Motto: "Get there in style, or don't bother going!" Fireshot is the oldest Class 32 still functioning, in part because all of his more experimental systems turned out to be good on the first try. He considers the other Ford GT RoadBots to be like his children, and can be irritatingly condescending around them. Around everyone else, he's merely vain, often pointing out that while all RoadBots cost millions to build, even the "dumb" version of his altmode is hideously expensive. Fortunately, TAG knows how to cater to his ego, and he has never shown signs of wanting to defect to DM. If called upon to back up his superiority complex, he's not completely unprepared. His plasma lance has been upgraded over the years to keep up with the state of the art, and few RoadBots have as much experience with the weapon as he does. Against refractory targets, he has the option of a tungsten-steel axe or a 20mm automatic hand cannon. He also sometimes carries a highly polished golden shield designed to block plasma lances and laser fire. As a backup weapon of last resort, the shield packs a brace of six unguided short-range missiles. STR 6 INT 7 SPD 9 END 5 RNK 7 COUR 6 FRB 7 SKL 9 Avg 7 Robot Mode: 5.75" (15.5cm) tall. The head's a bit small and raised up, but otherwise the proportions are okay. The legs are very reminiscent of the Dodge Viper Alternators mold, down to the feet, but they have the doors hanging off them. The car body bits, head and pelvis are all a dark red (CC0000) metalflake plastic. The forearms, chest and leg cores are a silvery gray (999999), while the hands, feet and some of the joints are black. The helmet has silver gunlike barrels on te sides, a silver face with metallic blue eyes (the nose is red, so you get a sort of V look), and the forehead has a blue and silver Ford oval. The chest has part of the rear bumper on it, with the Ford GT logo license plate. The head turns, and thanks to a transformation joint it also tilts forward and back. It also simply comes off on that joint, for Headless Lieger action. The shoulders are swivels with a little wiggle room, the elbows are ball joints, and the wrists are hinged to turn upward for transformation. The hips are somewhat restricted universal joints, and the ankles are ball joints. No knees. All the joints are stiff, but the feet are kinda short, so if you put the heavy light up weapon in his hand, you need to lean the figure back a bit to keep it from falling over forward. Accessories: He comes with an axe, a pistol, a shield, and a light up sword with two clear blades. Also, the hood of the car can act as a second shield. If you put both shields on and have him hold the sword and pistol, you can stick the axe in between his roof and his back and thus equip everything but the sword's spare blade. Axe - 4.75" (12cm) long with a single large blade and a spike at the tip. It has a rectangular handle 5mm by 4mm, which is standard...for this figure. Rockhound has smaller pegs for his weapons. It's made of black plastic, and has spots to plug in the bottom edges of the car's sides. As such, this is the only weapon with even PART of it going into vehicle mode for Fireshot. Pistol - 4.2cm long, made of black plastic with dark red paint along most of the barrel. It resembles RoboCop's machine pistol. Shield - Gold-chromed hexagonal kite shape with what appears to be a gatling cannon barrel molded into the bottom (which I decided to call a missile derringer). 4.3cm tall, 3.4cm wide. It can be held in the hand, but is really meant to be plugged into a hole on the underside of the forearm. Hood Shield - 4.5cm long and 2.7cm wide, this hood piece has a 4x5 peg, also for the underside of the arm. Mind you, if an arm has a shield on it, it can't hold he axe at all, but the sword and pistol work. Sword - The hilt is a big black block with silver chrome chunks on the side, 5.7cm wide and 4.3cm long including the short handle. There's a bit of silver paint in the middle. A red LED shines up the middle when you press a silver chrome button. The main blade is a fairly simple triangle 7cm long and 3.3cm wide at its base, with a few patterns in it meant to catch the light. You can also plug in a sort of sai blade that looks intended to appear crystalline, 4cm long and 3cm wide. Neither blade lights up well along its width. Transformation: A fair amount of partforming here. Not only is the center hood a shield accessory and the sides clipped onto the axe, but the central rear bumper section snaps off from the robot chest, and the majority of the rear window/"trunk" is just snapped over the roof in robot mode, rather than hinged. So, unsnap all the loose bits and collapse the shoulders and legs to let the remaining bits swing into place. You also have to pull the torso apart to make room for the head inside it...so the legs shorten but the waist lengthens, cute. Vehicle Mode: 5.5" (14cm) long, and comparing that with Mirage's 7.5" confirms that this is indeed 1:32 scale. The metalflake dark red body really looks nice all together like this, and the seams meet pretty well. The windows are all solid black with the trim not being a second color (and sometimes not being carefully black-painted all the way around either). Also black are the vents over the engine (which is in the back), the front and rear grilles, and the exhaust pipes. The headlights, gastank cap and door hinge details are silver. The hood logo is raised and printed with the Ford oval in white on black. The license plate in back is white with a black Ford GT logo. The taillights, top-of-rear-window light and side turn signal lights are metallic red, almost lost against the base plastic. The rear view mirrors are unpainted. The tires are black rubberized plastic, and the rims are silver chromed. The underside has some robot kibble visible, but also has some car detailing in the mold as well, with a bit of black paint to bring it out. The wheels turn freely, and the doors open, but there's no detailed interior as with Alternators. The front-mounted trunk does not open, but the rear hood hinges open to reveal, well, the robot face. No engine molding. Overall: Partformering bothers me, as do loose accessories, but once I figured out the shield (I initially thought it was handheld) I was much relieved. A bit iffy in robot mode still, but worth picking up, especially if you can't find Mirage and want a GT. If you DRIVE a GT, though, you have no excuse for not having Mirage, Hot Rodimus, and any other Transformer that strikes your fancy. You're clearly rich. :) ROADBOT: Rockhound Class: 32 Faction: DM Altmode: Mitsubishi Pajero (Montero) Birthplace: Yekaterinburg, Russia Motto: "Roads are for wimps!" Rockhound loves the mountains, so it's a good thing there's so many of them around Mitsubishi's RoadBot plant in Russia, or he'd never come back to base! Fairly young, he's a testbed for a new series of suspension and AI isolation technologies intended to help RoadBots endure harsher conditions and more severe damage without loss of mental functions. As such, his is a fairly simple mind, but it takes a lot to rattle him. One thing that does rattle him, however, is reminders that "pajero" means something rude in Spanish slang, and he has a special emnity towards RoadBots manufactured in Ford's Mexican RoadBot plant. When provoked, Rockhound has a simple but effective and rugged arsenal to use on his target. He's most likely to simply lash out with his chromesteel sword while protecting himself with a highly refractory sapphire- coated shield, but he's no slouch at ranged combat either. His dual laser cannon has both a long-range setting and a more focused "laser drill" setting for clearing boulders. And if he's feeling particularly inelegant, there's always his 1-gauge shotgun, firing a full pound of shot or a single steel slug. STR 9 INT 5 SPD 6 END 9 RNK 4 COUR 9 FRB 7 SKL 6 Avg 6.875 Never heard of the Pajero? That's because in the Americas it sells under the name Montero (or "Mountain Warrior"). While the whole "Chevy No Va" story may be apocryphal, "Pajero" really does mean something rude in Spanish, hence the renaming. Robot Mode: 5" (12.5cm) tall at the head, 5.5" (14cm) if you count the bits stuck behind his head as a sort of banner. The car shell parts are all white plastic, the arms are a gunmetal gray, and the rest are black plastic. Black and gunmetal paints are used effectively to balance the overall look, though. The face is silver with metallic red eyes, and a single metallic red diamond graces the forehead (NOT a Mitsubishi tri-diamond, interestingly). The front chunk of the vehicle mode forms the big chest, with the doors acting as shoulderpads a la Alternators Prowl. The roof forms a big cape, and does get in the way of the legs at times. The head wiggles a little, but doesn't actually turn. The shoulders are swivels, with upper arm swivels right below them. The elbows are double hinges, which oddly enough aren't required for transformation. Unfortunately, on each arm of mine, the upper hinge is extremely loose, I'll try to use glue to stiffen them up. The hips are very restricted ball joints, and the knees are hinges. In general, the vehicle bits get in the way a fair amount, especially the roof. Accessories: Rockhound has a sort of carbine, a sword, a chromed shield, his rear door which can be a shield, and a light-up gun. And, if you're clever, you can actually attach them all in robot mode, although his elbows are too weak to hold much up. Carbine - 7.1cm long and made of gunmetal gray plastic, it kinda looks like a pump-action shotgun without a stock and with the pump pointing backwards. Unfortunately, the handle (about 4.5mm square) doesn't fit all the way into either hand, but a little knifework on the sides fixed that. There's no place to store this in vehicle mode. Sword - The spare tire cover is the hilt of this, 2.7cm in diameter. If you plug the 6cm long silver chrome blade into one side, the handle pops out, and can be pulled down the rest of the way. At 4mm by 4.5mm, this handle fits into the hand fine. Time to take a file to the carbine. The blade has a sort of daiklaive/spatula look to it. The blade stores on the underside in vehicle mode, and the hilt stores on back. Also, the hilt can be plugged onto the door-shield in robot mode. Chromed shield - 5.7cm tall and 3.6cm wide with a sort of M shape to it. The front is chromed sapphire blue, while the back is silver chrome. It can't really hold in the hand, but plugs nicely into a peg on the outside of the forearm. No storage in vehicle mode. Door shield - 4.5cm wide and 3.6cm tall, this is basically just the rear door, made of white plastic with a black window and windshield wiper. It plugs onto the forearm peg the same way as the chromed shield. Light up gun - The main chunk is 3.7cm long and 3cm tall, made of silvery gray plastic with some black paint on the side and a silver chrome button on top. The default twin barrel is 3.5cm long and lights up well. It also stores on the side of the main chunk. The dual drill tip is 4.5cm long, and lights up well too. The drill tip does not store in the vehicle mode, but the rest takes up the rear compartment. It's supposed to plug into holes in the rear bed, but after several minutes of struggling I gave up and just let it sit firmly in the back between all the walls. Transformation: It's a bit tricky getting the head down into the hood, I'm not exactly sure HOW I managed it the first time, since the head didn't slide like the instructions suggested (I think it's the hood popping up a bit to accomodate it). The instructions are also kinda vague on how the arms go in, it turns out they take the place of space for driver and passenger. The legs twist around a bit, but it's fairly intuitive. The roof does a lot of swinging around and panel-folding, but ends up going into place pretty clearly. The only partforming is the rear door shield, and the sort of flag behind the robot's head, which is made up of the running boards. Sensing a theme here? Designers not knowing what to do with the bits below the doors, so just partforming them off. As mentioned above, I really couldn't get the weapon to plug firmly into the rear, but it still held together okay without that. Vehicle Mode: 5.25" (13.5cm) long, 2.5" (6cm) tall and equally wide. The body is all white plastic, with the windows painted black as with Fireshot. The spare tire holder is gunmetal plastic with a molded Mitsubishi symbol painted red, and "PAJERO" below it. There's a nice attention to detail in the mold, such as little nubs where the rear windows have handles to pull them open. The front grille is painted silver, with metallic yellow headlights and a red-painted little Mitsubishi tri-diamond. The three strips of the taillights are metallic red on top and bottom, metallic yellow in the middle. The side turn signals just ahead of the doors are also metallic red bumps. There's some black details on the front end as well, and a black license plate with "PAJERO" in white. The rear license plate is just a molded outline, no paint. The tires are black rubberized plastic, the rims silver chrome. The underside is pretty much robot bits, including a visible robot head, and the big chrome sword blade. The front doors, rear door and hood all open. There's some engine molding inside the hood. The wheels turn freely. Overall: Better accessories and storage, less partformery, but the robot mode is more kibble-inhibited than Fireshot. If the elbow looseness is endemic, that's a major strike against it. Still, ten bucks or so after shipping isn't bad for what you get. Especially if you drive a Montero. :) Dave Van Domelen, pre-ordering the next two 1:32 figures from agesthreeandup.com, what the heck.