Energon Treadbolt

(Femme-Bot Friday #66)

A few years ago, a good friend of mine developed a habit of buying almost anything with TransFormers branding and gleefully presenting it to me at the earliest opportunity. She also really loved visiting charity shops so, when she happened upon a TransFormers Energon toy sitting all alone and virtually complete, she snatched it up at a knock-down price and handed it over the next day.

Being based on a poorly-regarded Armada mold, Treadbolt isn't a toy I would have bought myself, but was more than happy to receive as a gift, particularly since the only thing missing was the missile for the Mini-Con activated missile launcher in the robot's side - even the collectors' card was included.

Funnily enough, it was only a couple of years ago that I discovered Treadbolt is actually a Femme-Bot, which naturally made her vastly more interesting, not least because she's a repaint of the Constructicon-themed Autobot Armada Scavenger, and essentially uses the G2/European Constructicon colourscheme.

Vehicle Mode:
There's actually a lot of good stuff to say about Treadbolt's vehicle mode - it's big, chunky and full of interesting features. First and foremost, those treads... actually roll! They're essentially just a textured rubber band wrapped around structures that contain two rolling wheels - a large one at the back, a small one at the front - with interlocking teeth between them to facilitate the rolling. This is the sort of feature I'd like to see on more TransFormers toys as it brings the vehicle to life in a way that sculpted plastic treads and concealed plastic wheels just don't accomplish. On the inside of the righthand tread, an oval wheel causes the scoop at the front of the vehicle to raise and lower as it rolls forward or back (or it tries, at least - since there's no equivalent wheel on the other-side, it's a little lop-sided), while the massive cleated drum at the rear activates an engine sound as it moves (only a short clip, but it's triggered every time the drum reaches a certain position, so it's effectively continuous as long as Treadbolt is moving).

But that's not all, because her partner Mini-Con, Rollbar, can actually sit in her cab, and placing him in there activates an 'engine ignition' sound effect. That feature alone is cool, and is one of the few occasions when a toy's Mini-Con interaction went beyond just attaching them to one of the pegs. If fact, Treadbolt only has two accessible Mini-Con ports in this mode - on the front wheels of her treads - and neither activate any features. The sound effects are admittedly a little tinny, simply because of the type of speaker used, but this mold is still one of the most playable and truly interactive toys to come out of the Armada line. Of course, this comes at the expense of detail, but the type of vehicle doesn't really cry out for huge amounts of intricate sculpting, so she gets away with it.

The scoop on the front can be raised manually far beyond the range of its automatic motion, but the hinge is very loose, so it will simply fall back down, and the angle of the scoop itself cannot be changed due to the way it clips into place in this form. The cage around the cab can be opened just far enough to admit Rollbar, and it looks as though it was sculpted with him in mind, so it's unlikely that another Mini-Con would elicit the same response from Treadbolt, even if they could fit inside the closed cab.

Compared to the images I've seen of Scavenger, I'd say Treadbolt is lacking in the paintwork department. The body of the vehicle has virtually none - just a bit of blueish-grey on the sculpted suspension springs at either end of the cleated drum at the rear, and some glossy black and red paint on the lighting rig on the roof of the cab. The scoop has a grey gradient on its leading edge, and the couple of triangles of the blueish-grey on the robot's feet are also visible. Aside from that, there are blocks of yellow on the tops of the frames at the mid-point of each tread. I wouldn't necessarily expect a mass of decorative paintwork on a construction vehicle, but Scavenger at least had the yellow and black paint over the sculpted hazard stripes on the front of the cab's roof, with a few extra metallic applications dotted around and a block of black paint on the forward-facing part of what would be the dashboard.


Robot Mode:
While Treadbolt's vehicle mode was easily serviceable, it becomes quickly apparent in her robot mode that building a vehicle out of a few large chunks of plastic isn't conducive to a dynamic robot... At first glance, frankly, she looks crap. The 'legs' barely convince when viewed from the front... from any other angle, they're a disaster.

However, just like vehicle mode, there's an awful lot of play value to this figure. The act of transforming her trips a switch that activates a whole new set of sound effects so that, as one rolls her forward, there's a tinny 'stomp' effect that plays more-or-less in time with the toy's footfalls. Twisting the waist about 30° to the right or closer to 90° to the left, or raising the arms forward about 45° causes a loud clang which, I presume, is intended to indicate that she's punched something. That said, the same effect plays as her head and arms are shifted into their robot mode position during transformation, so I do wonder if that was the only intended application of that sound. Aside from these, the only other unique effect is attached to the hip-mounted missile launcher - a firing sound that almost seems to be followed by a reload... but, again, all the effects are quite tinny so it's difficult to be certain about the intention behind them. It's also worth noting that the engine ignition effect is not available in this mode, despite the entire cab sitting, untouched by transformation, on her backside.

There's a bit more variety to Treadbolt's colour in robot mode, with the scoop forming her shins, and the hips and thighs fronted by similarly-coloured plastic, with more of the pale, blueish-grey paint on the ankles, and black paint on the shins, as well as the dark grey central panels of the scoop splitting up to become kneepads. The torso has a small square of the blueish-grey paint on a faux-grille just below her chest, with two raised strips on either side. The chest is emphasised by the brown flip-up panel featuring a raised and painted Autobot insignia, and there's a sort of grey-ish weathering effect applied to the sculpted details. The only paintwork on the arms is the panel of yellow that is now over each elbow.

In terms of sculpted detail, this being an Armada mold originally, what's there is very chunky and simplistic, with the groin/hip area being a bit muddled and indistinct. I really like the way the treads become her arms and, unlike some more recent models, the active, rolling treads don't stand in the way of her having articulated elbows. The hands are a bit nightmarish, with a massive, flipper-like chunk of plastic representing her fingers, and an awkwardly-placed, L-shaped part for her thumbs. Simple though it may be, it's very effective... and I'm actually suprised this method hasn't been used on any other TransFormers construction vehicles - or tanks, for that matter - since.

Treadbolt comes with no weapon accessories other than the missile for her spring-loaded, Mini-Con activated, shooting-from-the-hip launcher. This seems a little disappointing given that almost all other Armada toys came with some sort of weapon attachment... but it's not as if her ginormous hands could actually grip a traditional weapon... Rollbar can be mounted on either shoulder, or on her hip to activate the launcher, but he's not a great fit there as his overall size and the location of his Powerlinx port mean he gets in the way of her right leg as it raises.

Her head sculpt is not in the traditional Femme-Bot style. Obviously this is mainly because she was originally Scavenger, who was not a Femme-Bot and, at the very least, this sculpt is one of the more mechanical, robotic-looking heads from the Armada line, so it's much like Strika from Beast Machines in that respect. Molded largely in the same brown plastic as her chest panel, she appears to have a kind of Batman-like mask over her face, painted in the pale blueish-grey used elsewhere, while the eyes are a vivid, glossy blue and the face is a less saturated, matte blue. The left side of her head features a large protrusion that appears to have a lense, painted red, on the front, while the right side sports an antenna molded in the same grey plastic as the arms of her vehicle mode scoop.


Mini-Con Partner Rollbar:
Clearly inspired by G1 Hound, this repaint of Armada Rollbar (interesting that it does appear to imply this is the same Mini-Con as was partnered with Scavenger, but with a fresh, military paint job) is basically a dune buggy still, but works well enough as a representation the modified kind used in the first live action movie (which was then turned into Landmine). There's a surprising amount of detail packed into his vehicle mode, from the ridges on his (comparatively) large tyres, the row of headlights mounted on his bullbars, and even individual seats inside the rollcage. Robot mode has a fairly typical level of tech detail sculpted into the torso and shoulders, and a well-designed head than kind of reminds me of G1 Cliffjumper, but with a battlemask.

He also has one of the better paint jobs for a Mini-Con - with the silver panel on the rear of the vehicle becoming the robot's shins, and the silver paint also applied to the robot's face. Everything else is dealt with by having different colours of plastic - Mainly green, but with brown for the tyres, feet and hands/forearms, grey for the thighs and blue for the body and head.

What's really cool is that, despite a transformation not too much more complex than a G1 Mini Autobot, he ends up better articulated than Treadbolt thanks to hinged joints at the hips, knees and ankles. His arms are seriously weird, as it looks as though his wrists are also his elbows... but, even so, he's not the strangest-looking Mini-Con... Though he may have the most unfortunate placement of a Mini-Con port: if you were feeling generous, you could say it's on his belly, but it's basically on his groin... and since it's his 'pin' that activates the spring-loaded launcher on Treadbolt's hip, it's a little bit suggestive...


Despite her size, and likely because of her electronics, Treadbolt is one of those TransFormers toys that barely transforms. It's simply a case of standing the vehicle up on the rear barrel, unpegging the treads from each side, shifting them via their L-shaped channel into their robot mode postion - which also reveals the head - rotating the upper body 180°, then reconfiguring the scoop into her 'legs'... It's quick, and not particularly satisfying, but it's very effecting, and the 'clang' sound effect when the arms clip into place is a nice touch. About the only frustrating aspect is how floppy the scoop's arms become during transformation, and how fiddly it is to arrange them to connect up to the pegs on the outsides of the cleated drum.

She's also not particularly well articulated - the legs only move by rolling the drum at the back and her lower half is otherwise essentially immobile. 360° rotation at the waist is mainly for transformation, but does allow for some surprisingly effective posing when coupled with the excellent range of motion in her arms. What surprised me the most was that she has elbows, even if the range isn't great. It would have been easier to keep her arms straight, so it's nice to see that the design/engineering team went that extra mile to add to the toy's expressiveness... And, while the hands aren't especially well done, posing her with an outstretched arm, with the fingers and thumb splayed outward slightly makes for quite an imposing look.

I'm not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, but I have to confess I was initially a little underwhelmed by Treadbolt. She's big but, aside from the rolling/walking function and the sound effects, there's not much more to her than the average Diaclone-derived G1 Autobot car... Perhaps my feelings have softened slightly since I learned she's a Femme-Bot, but I think I appreciate her more now than I did when she was enthusiastically presented to me as a serendipitous charity shop find and a gift by my friend.

If nothing else, she proves that, even it its absolute worst, Armada presented a lot of play value and fun features.