Dave's Car Robots Rant: Wildride (C-002) Yep, it's a new start for Transformers in Japan, as they go back to the beginning of the number line. I got Wildride and Gigatron (to be reviewed later, after I have more time to play with it) from wizzywig.com, which has the best prices I've seen online (not counting hlj.com, but the shipping cost from Japan probably eats most of the savings) for Car Robots. CAPSULE Wildride - Very good vehicle mode, interesting transformation, good (if somewhat oddly-proportioned) robot mode. Nice gimmicks. Some kibble issues, however. Recommended. 1800 yen (about $16.70) in Japan, $26 (+ S&H) at Wizzywig.com. $30-35 (+ S&H) most other places online. Before I go into the Rant, I'm going to give some information on the Car Robots storyline. But since lots of sites are giving that and because I'm in a goofy mood, I've decided to do so in the form of a sketch. In the far future of Beast Wars Neo, some Cybertrons have stumbled across a museum replica of the set from Late Night with Conan O'Brien.... [Late Night set. LONGRACK sits behind Conan's desk, while RANDY takes Andy's spot on the couch. The JOINTRON BROTHERS have picked up the instruments belonging to the Max Weinberg 7 and are playing a salsa mix. DJ is on trumpet, MOTORARM on drums and GIMLET on guitar.] LONGRACK: So, Randy...now that Unicron's scheme has been defeated and the Destrons scattered, some of our viewers may be wondering what happened to the Destrons not actually blown up in the process. RANDY: That's right. And they come to us because they get most of their news about the universe from our show. LONGRACK: Frightening but true. To answer the audience's question, we're going to have to take a look into...the past. RANDY: The past, Longrack? LONGRACK: That's right, contractual pal for life. The past. All the way... to the year 2000. [Lights dim. Salsa mix is replaced by an eerie thrumming.] DJ [singing]: In the year 2000...in the year 2000! LONGRACK: In the year 2000, the Destrons, now calling themselves Destrongers because of long-unresolved inferiority issues, arrive from our time. Their goal is to destroy the Cybertrons who will one day destroy them. DJ [singing]: In the year 2000...in the year 2000! RANDY: In the year 2000, Convoy and most of his forces have left Earth in order to fight their own Destrons in space. Fire Convoy, a minor commander, is left a token force with which to defend Earth. DJ [singing]: In the year 2000...in the year 2000! LONGRACK: In the year 2000, Gigatron leads his Destrongers in their attacks on Earth, with only Fire Convoy's ragtag band to stop them! DJ [singing]: In the year 2000...in the year 2000! RANDY: In the year 2000, Hot Rod applies for his driver's license, but when confronted with a two-way intersection is unable to make a decision which way to go without asking Optimus Prime, so he flunks! [Lights come back up.] LONGRACK: Okay, so that was our look into the distant past of the year 2000. We'll be back after these words from Moon-brand Hassenpfeffer.... RANT: CYBERTRON: Wildride Vehicle Mode: SUV Function: Warrior Extraordinaire Eldest of the three Car Robot brothers, [Wildride] acts with perserverance in the worst of environments, from desert to blizzard. Taciturn but reliable, he is an expert in hand-to-hand combat. The strength in his left arm is particularly prodigious. He uses it for his powerful Southpaw Lariat. [Translation courtesy of Doug Dlin. Oddly, he fires his Southpaw Lariat from his right arm. Later note from Doug: he thinks the Southpaw Lariat is actually a clothesline-style attack, so it'd make sense to use the bulky left arm.] [Additional note from Hydra Darkwings. The two missiles are called the Spetznatz Blade (for its resemblance to that Soviet knife) and Transfaust (exhaust) missile. The hand blade's name is a play on a wheat scythe.] STR 10 INT 8 SPD 8 END 9 RNK 9 COUR 7 FRP 6 SKL 6 Avg 7.875 First, the packaging. In a departure from previous years, Takara is only boxing the larger sets. The rest are on blister cards, glued down rather than the nice slide-open style used in Microman 1999. The techspec card is also in the blister, up near the top of the card. The front of the card is generic for each faction, the individual character stuff is on a cardstock insert in the blister. In other words, Takara is following Hasbro's lead in packaging. The instructions continue to be on separate sheets included inside the blister, and they're very good. There's also a catalog, which not only includes Car Robots through May (with JRX and Gelshark), but also some of the Microman 2000 line. On the back of the card are color pictures of the toy in both modes and showing off various gimmicks. The pictures are either of prototypes or retouched, however, as the classic Autobot symbol is fine in the picture but a little warped on the toy. Vehicle Mode: A silver and aquamarine SUV 5.5" (14cm) long and very nicely proportioned. The tires are rubberized plastic, a definite plus for fans of the original toys. The front doors open as part of the transformation process, but the hood also opens to reveal a shiny chromed engine. A nifty touch is that the robot head is visible through the windshield on the driver's side (note: in Japan the driver sits on the right). You can also open the passenger side door and stick the missile launcher robot arm out. There's no robot mode kibble outside the vehicle, and even the underside looks pretty good with the missiles doubling as exhaust pipes and covering some of the robot bits. The SUV holds together very nicely and rolls so easily I'm having trouble keeping it from rolling off the slight incline I have it sitting on. Transformation: The rear half of the vehicle becomes the "boots" of the robot mode, but that's about where the similarity to standard Diaclone-based G1 toys ends. The hood area becomes one arm, while the other is nicely folded up inside. The upper torso actually rotates into position on an axis passing from front to back (not rotating around a vertical axis). There's some nice touches which are purely cosmetic, such as folding his rear wheels around to the front of his shins. Transformation back is a little tricky, but the instructions explictly show how to do it. Robot Mode: 5" (12cm) tall at the head, a bit taller including his backpack or even taller if you mount his missiles like shoulder flags. However, his proportions are a bit wonky. His head and torso are Basic sized, and he has really long legs and a huge left arm. Basically, he looks like a smaller robot who wears parts of an SUV as extra armor. Still, he's very poseable (14 meaningful joints) and reasonably stable in a standing position. However, you need to be careful in standing him, since his feet are a lot narrower than his shins would suggest. His heels are formed from the halves of his spare tire cover and are therefore rounded. It's worth noting his hands separately. His right hand is just a molded fist that surrounds a launcher mechanism. It would have been nice to have a peg hole in it so that he could hold his missiles as swords in the right hand, but I can live with the lack, considering his other hand. It has a movable thumb. The thumb rotates out of the way, then you put a weapon in the hand and fold the thumb back, giving a sure grip even on objects without normal handles. And in addition to the thumb it has a limited ball joint wrist. Nice touch. Wildride's robot mode has more of the greenish color (dark teal?) than the vehicle mode, plus a number of red accents and some chartreuse (Constructicon green) bits. His head mold suggests that the light-pipe glowing eyes feature was worked into the initial design, but instead he has metallic gold eyes. A comment on the kibble. The main offender is his left arm. Not only does it have the front third of his vehicle mode hanging off the forearm, one of the doors is also on the shoulder where it gets in the way of some poses. The roof of the SUV just hangs off the figure's back, although at least they gave it peg holes so that his missiles could be stored on it. Finally, the weapons. He has two missiles molded to look like a combination of exhaust piping and running board/bar. He can fire them out of his right forearm as missiles, hold either in his left arm as a sword, mount them on his back as flags or mount on on his right shoulder as another form of decoration. Quite nice. But that's not all! Part of his bumper assembly also detaches to become a curved sort of punch-blade. It slices, it dices, it can hack though this nasty Destronger and still cut a tomato! Overall: Has some kibble issues and proportion problems, but is otherwise a very nice toy. Great vehicle mode, and ya gotta love that the Autobot symbol is back (although the Destrongers still use the Predacon sparks). Dave Van Domelen, also notes that with the missile loaded, Wildride looks like he's giving someone the (extremely long) finger....