Note to the humor-impaired: This is a review of TakaraTomy's reissue
versions of G1 Ironhide and Ratchet. At one point, I make a passing
reference to toys voluntarily jumping off my display shelf of their
own volition. This is in fact a joke, added to make my review more
entertaining and fun to read, and as such is not to be taken
literally.)
Ahem: I'd originally thought that I might have been getting some
money from one or more of my relatives for my birthday (I got enough
from my mom last year to get Takara's ghost Starscream redeco). This
year I thought it would be nice to get the encore versions of Ironhide
and Ratchet, but when this increasingly hypothetical birthday money
was not forthcoming, I took it upon myself to save up enough to buy
the pair. (I got them for a little bit less than I expected to pay
for them, because the eBay seller didn't use the word "Transformers"
anywhere in the auction. I think it just said "Ironhide and Ratchet
reissue," so people wouldn't see the auction unless they were
searching for those specific toys.)
I have never owned either Ironhide or Ratchet before now. In fact,
there was a time when I utterly disdained the designs of the toys. I
remember being in second grade and noticing that some kid at school
had brought his Ironhide toy out for morning recess one day. I looked
at him long enough to confirm that, yes, he was in fact completely
lacking a head, and I pretty much dismissed him and his mold brother
as worthless right then and there. It's only in recent years, really,
that I've developed a desire to own either of the toys. I'm not sure
why. Maybe it's because they're two of the three G1 toys from 1984
that I never bought. (Bumblejumper is the third, though in my defense
I was entirely unaware of his existence back in the day.) Maybe it's
because, even though their animation models take the award for the all-
time least effective advertisement for the original Hasbro toys, I
still have a fondness for the characters on some level and want to own
the toys they were (very) loosely based on. Or maybe I just don't
want any more 2007 movie toys but I wanted to get *something* new this
month. Who knows?
It's kind of funny, actually. All these years, I've regarded Ironhide
and Ratchet as patently inferior toys compared to their contem****ary
brethren, barely-humanoid mech suits who don't look anything like
their cartoon ****trayals. I know I'm not the only one who feels this
way. It seems kind of strange to me that Hasbro would select these
two toys as part of the original Transformers line-up, knowing full
well they were of a different nature than the other toys, and yet
later insist that the characters be ****trayed as humanoids despite
this dichotomy of design. Making the cartoon designs conform more
strictly to human anatomy was a completely arbitrary decision; there's
no real reason Brawn couldn't have had claws, for example. He's a
robot, after all, not a person in a robot suit. Along the same lines,
cartoon versions of Ironhide and Ratchet could just have easily been
mechanoids with arms and legs who just weren't built exactly like
human beings are. That wouldn't have made them any different from,
say, the Quintessons or Decepti-Traan or any of the other mechanical
characters from the show who failed to match up precisely with the
human physique.
So in fact, it's not that Ironhide and Ratchet are inherently bad
toys. It's that the cartoon episodes produced by Sunbow served as a
poor advertisement for the toys, misrepresenting them and creating
false expectations for their target audience. Had Ironhide and
Ratchet been depicted in "More Than Meets the Eye" part 1 as machines
with wind****elds for faces who could ride around on mobile platforms,
the toys would likely have been embraced wholeheartedly. Really, this
idea isn't too dissimilar from the depiction of the Super GoBots toys
in the Challenge of the GoBots cartoon. Toys like Staks, Baron Von
Joy, and Zeemon were depicted in precisely this manner, rather than
Hanna-Barbera inventing faces for the characters. (I would be remiss
if I didn't point out that the Herr Fiend toy actually *was* rather
badly misrepresented as Dr. Go, whose bespectacled visage in no way
reflected the appearance of the toy.)
Marvel Comics did attempt to ****tray the characters as more closely
resembling the toys, at least in the early issues of the series, but I
suspect this was the result of not having access to all the available
animation models rather than any artistic license or a desire to
accurately ****tray the toys. It only took a few months' time before
most of the character designs became available, and the designs of
Ironhide and Ratchet were quickly amended. Ratchet used his mobile
platform at least once more, identified here as a MARB (Mobile Autobot
Repair Bay), during his search for the wayward Dinobots in issue #8.
The animated series, meanwhile, depicted Ratchet with his mobile
repair bay accessory exactly once, but in time this feature of the toy
disappeared completely from the animation models. A new and fairly
complex transformation sequence was even devised which showed
precisely how Ironhide and Ratchet's robot forms could unfold into the
entire vehicle, thus completely eliminating the mobile platform from
the equation.
On to the reissues themselves. In my estimation, the packaging for
the toys is very similar to the G1 versions. Obviously there are
differences like the "Transformers: Encore" logo in the corner and the
TakaraTomy logo, but the boxes seem to be approximately the same size
and shape as the original packaging, or at least as best as I can
recall. I was so excited about getting these toys that I took a peek
in the ****pping box as soon as I got it out of the mailbox. I was,
honestly, not prepared for how tiny these guys are in vehicle mode.
Now that I think about it, I guess they're about to scale with the
other Diaclone cars, but... wow. Minivans, with the accent on
"mini." In robot mode, unacessoried, these guys are the same height
as Hound, whom I'd always considered the smallest of the Autobot
cars. (Incidentally, these guys share a rubber tire design with
Sunstreaker. Tiny little wheels on tiny little vehicles.)
I'm actually surprised at the level of articulation on these guys.
They both have swiveling wrists, arms that both rotate and pivot back
and forth, waists that bend, and ankles that move in two directions.
All of these joints are required for the transformation, of course,
but it's especially nice when a G1 toy's moving parts also happen to
coincide with a functional joint of the humanoid anatomy. It's
especially surprising to find an oldskool toy with nine useful joints
to its name that comes from an era when most original Transformers had
two working joints in robot mode, tops. (The toy can even bend so far
foward on its feet that it's touching the ground. I imagine this
would be the ideal scenario by which a Diaclone pilot might climb into
the driver's seat before the robot resumes its normal height.)
A couple of things that appear to be undocumented features (or, at
least, stuff I never really knew about and was pleased to discover):
The long silver rifle is, in fact, designed to mount beneath Ironhide
and Ratchet when they're in vehicle mode. It actually represents the
transmission system, which I think is just amazingly cool. (This goes
a long way towards explaining why it looks like a gun with two barrels
pointing in opposite directions, something that's always perplexed
me.) It's a touch of authenticity that makes sense for the Diaclone
line, but which I was completely unaware of. I've since discovered
that it's mentioned in the Hasbro instructions, but since I never
owned the toys before I guess I never really paid close attention
before. (I guess in retrospect it's really obvious, given the round
gun-shaped indent in their pelvis sections. Like I said, though, I'd
never seen anybody mention this before, and I've never seen any
pictures of either of them in vehicle mode with the transmission in
place, so it was a fun discovery for me.)
The only problem is that when the transmission is in place, neither of
these guys have wheels that can touch the ground. It also fits really
loosely in the undercarriage mount and falls out at the drop of a
battle helmet. I wonder if at some point along the way, some aspect
of the toy (either the gun or the mount) was remolded? Hey, I just
remembered that I actually have a vintage Ironhide/Ratchet gun
somewhere. Some kid at daycare had been using it as a gun for one of
his Jumpstarters, and when I netted the Jumpstarter in a trade, I got
the gun, too. Let me go find it. Okay, here we go. There's
surprisingly little difference, actually, though the peg is noticeably
thicker on the vintage gun and does stay in place better. Hmm.
What this means, though, is that Ironhide and Ratchet are pretty much
the *only* early Transformers who are capable of storing their
accessories in vehicle mode. I'd assumed this was an innovation that
hadn't come up until many years down the road during the days of
Generation 2, so I'm very surprised to see a Diaclone-era toy with
this design philosophy in mind. Admittedly, there's no logical place
for his missiles or weapon peg mount (I just sort of stuff them inside
his mobile platform and fold it up), but still. Optimus Prime does do
this to some degree, but he turns into a truck that tows around a big,
empty box, so it's not exactly a feat of engineering genius to figure
out how to stuff his accessories inside his trailer. (Incidentally,
my Optimus Prime trailers always end up being used for storage. My G2
Prime is loaded full of flourescent-colored guns and spinning rotors,
and my reissue Prime's trailer is stuffed with extra-long missiles and
things.)
As an aside, I never knew there was actually a little decoration on
the front of the van, in the spot where their Autobot symbols usually
go. I guess I've just never seen one of these toys without its
insignia affixed to its chest. I think it's the perfect spot to put
one, since it gives the symbol a bit of a three-dimensional aspect,
like it's popping out at you. I also never knew that their mobile
platforms had not one, but *two* additional seats for a Diaclone pilot
(one on the platform and one inside the gun); I'd always assumed
Optimus Prime was the only one of these toys that had a personnel
capability greater than a single driver. That's pretty neat.
I was also previously unaware that the robot module sort of locks in
place when you stand it on the mobile platform. I'd always figured
they just sort of stood on it like Rodimus Prime did with his battle
podium, but there are actually little tabs on their legs that hug the
platform rather securely. At least I never have to worry about either
of them trying to commit suicide by taking a flying leap off my
display shelf.
Applying the stickers was, of course, a real treat. I really, really
love applying stickers to G1 toys. I'm actually probably more
familiar with the stickers than I have any right to be, since Delta
Star of reprolabels.com was sending me samples of his reproduction
labels for a while so I could "beta test" them, checking the sizing
and coloring and stuff like that against my G1 toys. Obviously, I
couldn't have done that with the Ironhide/Ratchet stickers since I
didn't have originals to compare with, but I still have his early
samples and I've studied them periodically to guess where they might
have gone on the actual toys. The instructions don't seem to be
terribly clear on where to apply the small, red "D" shaped stickers; I
just stuck them on the inside of their ankles since I couldn't figure
out what to do with them. I'm a little disappointed that the
connector pegs for Ratchet's roof lights interfere with the placement
of the stickers on the inside of his mobile repair bay. I like the
fact that their original factory-applied stickers got replaced with
tampo graphics. (I know they originally covered up some of the hinges
and things, but they're pretty unobtrusive. I hadn't realized what
Ironhide's vestigal roof light holes actually were, in fact, until I
opened Ratchet afterwards. The holes are hardly noticeable, really.)
I can't really do an Ironhide and Ratchet review without at least
touching on their lack of heads. The stickers-for-faces are so
utterly, completely silly. It's a Hasbro artifact, not a Takara one
(they did not have these stickers as Diaclone toys), and quite frankly
I think they'd have been better off not doing anything at all than
trying to add almost-heads as a sort of sheeplish concession. There
has got to be some way to modify these toys to add actual robot
heads. I've given it a great deal of thought over the years, and I
had originally thought I could theoretically kitbash new heads and
thought about it for a long time, and I think I could devise some kind
of hinge that would attach to the inside of the top of the
wind****eld. I'd decided that Skids had the best head to use as the
basis for such an endeavour (which is ironic, in light of the strong
Alternators Skids/Ironhide connection.) Of course, this was before I
knew the whole front piece was made of metal. I don't think I'd try
it now, at least not on brand-new reissues that I spent a fair amount
of money on. (Now that I think about it, though, I think Ironhide and
Ratchet's cartoon heads may have been based on the Prowl/Bluestreak
head design. Prowl's head can be interpreted as having a mohawk like
Ironhide or a forehead crest like Ratchet, if you're especially
selective about the details.)
Besides, the *other* undocumented feature I didn't know about was that
on one of the inside box flaps are little cardboard cut-out versions
of Ironhide and Ratchet's heads and chests, designed to slip between
the Diaclone seat and the shoulder struts. In a way, they make the
toys look even *more* silly, since the toy was originally envisioned
as the "head" area being the wind****eld, with the arms mounted just
below that. Adding a paper doll style head to the *top* of Ironhide's
wind****eld changes my interpretation of his semi-humanoid anatomy, and
makes it look like his arms are now jutting out of either side of his
waist. Still, they're nicely-drawn heads and I do like them. What a
fun little easter egg. (I just realized that the sticker-for-a-face
also means that Ironhide has his "head" plainly visible, even in
vehicle mode. Which means, I
suppose, that Energon Ironhide was an even better homage to the
original toy than I'd initially suspected. Speaking of Energon toys,
I have a new appreciation for Tow-Line now.)
Something I've done on occasion was envision what a 1984 or 1985 toy
might have looked like in the cartoon had it been introduced during a
different television season. For example, if Hasbro had sold the
police car Sunstreaker and his character had appeared in the second
season, his design would likely have been different and more toy-like
than the first-season Sunstreaker design. (This is mainly due to the
fact that Floro Dery was interpreting the toys more literally by this
point when creating their animation models.) There's actually a
miscolored Ironhide in the second-season episode "City of Steel" which
I envision to actually be a second-season character named Headcase.
He shows up in colors similar to Ironhide's original Diaclone color
scheme, which was primarily black. I tinkered with putting together a
conceptual animation model for the character, interpreting the
Ironhide toy as though the animation design were being created for the
second season, but I didn't have a lot of good photo reference to work
with so I never finished the attempt. Now that I actually own the
toy, I might try it again.
Well, it honestly doesn't surprise me that Hasbro never opted to
reissue these toys in America. They're so far-removed from their
animation likenesses that their presumed target audience (fans of the
original show and fringe collectors) would have left them as
shelfwarmers for sure. Perhaps if they'd been among the first
reissues, and had released just after Optimus Prime and Ultra Magnus
and Hot Rod, it would have been a different story, but obviously we'll
never know for sure. In any event, I'm quite pleased that TakaraTomy
chose to reissue them a second time. Both toys are now displayed
proudly on my reissue shelf, which is becoming increasingly populated
with more and more Japanese toys. (I think if I were to set my sights
on another one, it would be the purple-colored Galvatron. One day,
I'm sure.)
Zob
|
