Nevertheless, and despite the fact that I've only seen a couple of episodes of the TV show, on a random charity shop DVD purchase gifted to me by a friend, I did end up buying all three when I'd later developed a new appreciation of their unique stylings... And so it's about time I dealt with this one.
Vehicle Mode:
I can't remember now whether I acquired Side Burn and the other RiD Car Brothers before or after BT02 Lambor, but I do recall comparing the two and thinking that Side Burn's vehicle mode seemed somewhat exaggerated in its curves... But, of course, this toy was initially available a good three years before the Binaltech figures, and must therefore be an embellished version of an earlier model of Dodge Viper. Looking at the curves of the front wings winging into the doors and the small, snubbed spoiler at the back, I'd guess it's based on the 2000 model. However, where the bonnet on that year's model seems to have had a small opening, near the front, this one has a large, exposed, supercharged engine poking out at the back of an otherwise almost perfectly smooth bonnet. There are square vents sculpted in above the front wheels and smaller, triangular vents (which almost look like speakers because of their texture and black paint) in front of the windscreen, either side of the exposed engine, but the former are well-disguised by the paintwork, and the latter are unobtrusive, blending well with the surrounding paintwork.
Everything on this version of the Viper is smoother and curvier than the 2004 model, with a far more defined arch across the width of the windscreen, and certainly more of a curve over the roof from the front to the rear windscreen compared to the more squared-off profile of the Competition Coupé version used for Binaltech Dead End. The sides of the car dip down where the windscreen meets the doors, then swoops back up along the rear wings to the spoiler, and even the rear bumper angles upward as it turns in from the rear wheels. Viewed from above, the car bulges considerably just in front of the rear wheels, and the whole thing just looks and feels far more - and I really hate myself for saying this about a car - sensuous than the later iteration. I'm sure I read somewhere (citation needed!) that classic cars of a certain era were designed with the intention of evoking the female form, and this generation of Viper feels like a homage to those.
The entire car shell is molded in translucent plastic which, at first, I thought had become sun-yellowed over time. Having looked up older images and videos, it just seems that the plastic has that yellow/orange tinge intentionally, even though it works less well on the headlights than on the car's windows. The car's panels then have a glorious coating of metallic blue paint (similar to that of Prowl), with the addition of a flame pattern on the bonnet and windows in a gradient of a paler metallic blue, accentuated with bold white outlines. While the darker metallic blue seems very opaque on most of the body, it's a little less so on the front bumper of mine, which starts to show its translucency with far less ambient light than the rest of the car. The wheels and exposed engine are chromed, with the latter having additional red paint over the sculpted pipework. The main headlights are left unpainted, while the smaller lights and the front grille are painted silver, and the main tail lights have been overpainted with translucent red. Again, looking at this vehicle mode, I'm struck by how lavish the paintwork seems compared to Hasbro's more recent efforts... and I really miss this level of attention, given that so many ostensibly silver vehicles end up being molded in grey plastic, many without even a metallic flake effect. One strange aspect of the Hasbro version's paint job is the large Autobot insignia stamped on the roof, despite the sculpted, chromed insignia on the robot's left arm being visible via the rear windscreen.
Another thing I miss from the older toys is the rubber tyres, which really add to the sense that this vehicle mode may as well be a toy car in and of itself, rather than simply a terrestrial disguise for a toy robot. One could happily display Side Burn in vehicle mode and be rightly proud of how it looks on the shelf. Simple details, like the 'T.F CYBERTRON' branding on the tyres show just the sort of pride in the product that has been sadly absent for much of the last two decades.
Another thing that strikes me, playing about with another of these toys from almost twenty years ago, is that weapon storage was pretty well-handled... to the point where it's surprising to reflect on how inconsistent it's been since these toys were on the shelves. There have been toys where weapons were perfectly integrated... but many more where the vehicle mode was pocked with 5mm sockets to an unsightly degree, just so these alien robots' weapons could be tacked on to the vehicle shell, utterly negating the 'disguise' element. Side Burn is an interesting case, in that one of his weapons stowes inside the vehicle (under one arm and both feet), the other becomes the vehicle mode's rear bumper, and the missile for its spring-loaded launcher becomes the car's exhust pipe. In my photos, I've attached this part the way I've most often seen it attached, but it can be plugged in so that the bulbous section on the end sits under the car. The robot's torso frame has a notch cut out of it that seems to be intended to accommodate this, but it's in slightly the wrong place - as if the design of the missile was changed after the sculpt of the body parts had been finalised. It works either way and, frankly, looks better with the bulbous part hidden, but that does reduce the car's ground clearance a little.
As a side-effect of transformation, and somewhat like the other two RiD cars, Side Burn's vehicle mode doors can open, and the inner faces feature some sculpted detail of their own... but, also much like the other two, the inside of the vehicle is a jumble of robot parts, so it's probably best not to. Additionally, his head is somewhat visible via the front windscreen, but it's not as obvious as X-Brawn's.
Robot Mode:
Oh dear, oh dear... Side Burn is easily the most awkward-looking of the three RiD Car Brothers, and one of the most insane and egregious examples of shellformers ever to grace the toyline. Whereas many shellformers have the good grace to at least try to fold their shells into as small a configuration as possible, invariably ending up on their backs, or use the shell as wings, or a cape, Side Burn wears his shell in pieces, dotted around his body. The roof and both windscreens become a shield, attached to the left arm via a ball joint on the end of a rotation joint wrapped around his bicep, the bonnet and doors end up sticking out of his back - almost G1 Arcee-style - on the end of semi-articulated, twisty stalks. The rear bumper becomes one of his weapons... but the front bumper just sort of perches on his right shoulder, looking very out-of-place. What remains of the car - the rear wings and wheels - is tagged onto his otherwise quite slender thighs, giving him the appearance of a robot wearing particularly blocky, wheeled jodphurs. This is further emphasised by his slender lower legs and small, tidy feet.
Were it not for the lateral extensions to his thighs and the massive car panels hanging off his back, Side Burn would have the appearance of a reasonably tidy and well-articulated action figure, with his heroically broad shoulders tapering down to a narrow waist via a chest which is bulked out by the vehicle mode's enhanced, silver/red-chromed engine block. His colourscheme is very much in keeping with his vehicle mode, with white gaining much more prominence on his limbs and the pale blue turning up on his shoulders, torso, groin and feet. The thighs are a mixture of translucent plastic painted both metallic blue and white, and actual white plastic for the inner parts with the hip joint, while the lower legs are white plastic almost entirely coated with metallic blue paint. Meanwhile, the arms are white plastic from the bicep down, and entirely unpainted apart from the chromed Autobot insignia on the left foream.
The figure's sculpted detail shows the same inclination toward asymmetry as the other two Car Brothers, with the waist area in particular having some almost organic-looking features due to the curves of the sculpt. All of it looks like armour panelling, with the vehicle's engine being the sole example of exposed inner workings. This is a rather counterproductive aesthetic choice, but I guess it explains why he's permanently lugging around a large shield! The arms, meanwhile, feature not one single common detail, with the left forearm being quite squared-off, and the barrel-like right bicep being covered at the front by a large, squared-off armour plate. The left forearm features the aforementioned chromed insignia, while the right features more rounded armour plating. Below the waist the sculpt becomes more uniform, with the legs appearing identical in their details. The groin section, meanwhile, appears to have elements of a dashboard sculpted in at the top (the central dial picked out with a fluorescent pink paint which only turns up on one other part of the toy), with a rectangular detail featuring a sort of seismograph readout just below. Right at the bottom is a large grille-like section which seems awkwardly artificial compared to the rest of the sculpt.
Side Burn's weapons are fairly cool, if a little unwieldy due to - you guessed it - all the car parts hanging off him. While the Hasbro version's bio makes no mention of either, the Japanese version calls the spring-loaded launcher an "Exhaust Bowgun" on the blue version, and an "Excel Bowgun" on the repaint, and indicates that he can use it as either a gun (via the peg on the underside) or as a sword (via the peg that attaches it to his groin in vehicle mode). The launcher feels surprisingly powerful, but doesn't send the missle flying far, likely because it's comparatively large and heavy for such a small spring. It's also inclined to misfire as the missile can be twisted to either side once slotted into its channel. The smaller weapon reminds me a little of the boss craft from the first level of the arcade game Nemesis/Gradius, but chromed. It also has two pegs, and can be wielded as a gun or a sort of combination dagger/knuckleduster. Since the holes in his fists go all the way through, it looks like it should be possible to attach it as a dagger via the underside of the hand, but the opening is very slightly smaller there.
Each of the RiD Car Brothers has a uniquely robotic-looking head, but Side Burn manages to be the odd one out by having a more humanoid face sculpt, akin to the likes of G1 Prowl/Bluestreak/Smokescreen. The domed helmet is asymmetrically detailed at the front, with a couple of small translucent yellow, tech-detailled 'windows' on the forehead, a single fin on top of the dome that curves down toward a couple of smaller fins sticking out of the back of his head. The right side of the face features a small, white cheek-guard, while the left side has a half visor over the eye, extending back to a small, angled antenna, the whole thing resembling a sort of Cybertronian Google Glass. Given that Side Burn is a robot, the use of this sort of accessory seems strange, since surely the left eye could itself have been configured to include whatever function the monocle provides? The face itself is fairly bland, painted pale metallic blue with fluorescent pink eyes, and the implication of mechanical detail 'beneath' the face supplied by ridged detailing leading into the white armour wrapping around the jawline.
Of the three Car Brothers, Side Burn's is the transformation I enjoy the least, because it involves forcing several parts around other parts in ways that seem to cause undue stress on the joints. While I generally enjoy asymmetry, the way the arms transform feels horrifically misjudged. The right arm has the car's front bumper on the shoulder, and also carries both of the front wheels (one of the forearm, the other folds into the chest), so the whole thing has to be navigated around the chest and the bonnet/door panels - at several points and via several different joints - to expose both wheels for vehicle mode. The arm pegs in securely in both modes, but getting it there is a harrowing experience. The left arm drags the car's roof and windscreens around as a shield, and also has to be navigated around the car's bonnet/door panels via an ingenious yet bizarre arrangement of hinges and pivots, but this is mitigated to a small degree by the fact that the shield itself is on a ball joint on the end of a part that rotates around the arm, between the bicep and the shoulder joint, and the waist joint, which allows the legs to be moved completely out of the way of the left arm's main transformation joint. Largely due to those large bonnet/door panels, all this is perhaps one of the most frustrating exercises I've ever had the misfortune of having to undertake as a TransFormers collector. By comparison, the back end is simplicity itself, with the legs simply folding back on themselves, then pegging into large tabs on the sides of the shield and the spring-loaded weapon pegging to the knees and the groin to solidify everything.
I seem to recall that many car manufacturers declined a Binaltech licensing deal because the act of transformation seemed to them to closely resemble the results of a car crash... and I suspect that impression must have come from watching Side Burn's transformation. Making matters all the worse, the extensive use of translucent plastic means the car shell is that much more brittle than it might otherwise have been. I've only lost one tab from the two bonnet halves, but when I pulled Side Burn off the shelf to start this write-up, I found that part of the left side front wing - between the wheel well and the door - had cracked right the way through at precisely the point where the plastic becomes thinner. It was easy enough to glue back on, and had no significant structural impact on the toy (didn't even make the door fall off) but, since I can't see how it happened, it has made me even more wary when handling Side Burn. It looks as though there are cracks forming in the hinges inside both of the bonnet halves, and on the ball joints in the roof and front bumper, so I'd imagine one of those will be the next to go if I'm not sufficiently careful.
In theory, Side Burn should have excellent articulation - the shoulders, hips, knees and ankles are all ball joints, with the knees further supplemented by the transformation joint, which has a range of bend well over 180°. There's bicep rotation on both arms, and the elbows are hinged at the front, theoretically allowing them a full 180° bend were it not for the car parts hindering their range. Furthermore, his waist rotation is completely unrestricted, despite needing less than 90° in one direction only for transformation purposes. Where it all falls down is the car shell hanging off him. Despite the bonnet/door panels being on long, twisted stalks - hinged at the ends, ball jointed where they attach to Side Burn's back - they are constantly clashing with the bumper on his right shoulder and the shield on his left arm, and the extra bulk of the car's rear wings on his thighs doesn't help matters either. The legs are somewhat less affected, but the range of the hips and knees is made partly redundant by the poor range of the ankles - barely any tilt beyond what's required for transformation. All that said, due to the arrangement of joints and the well-proportioned legs (in terms of their length, at least), he's one of the few TransFormers toys that can kneel very well. The head is also on a ball joint but it's sunk into his torso, and only really rotates or falls backward - the latter happening quite frequently during transformation or posing. Probably the most frustrating parts are those bonnet/door panels, which are almost impossible to arrange symmetrically.
RiD Side Burn is one of those toys I really don't know what to make of. Vehicle mode is gorgeous, , and is probably about as close as Takara could get to the real thing without a license. Transformation is a frustrating, worrysome mess that feels as though something is going to break at every turn. Robot Mode is an ugly action figure wearing large panels of car shell that hinder its movement, and it all looks nonsensical. Nevertheless, I have to admit there's something endearing about him - with his pair of weapons, his large shield and the eyepiece on his head sculpt, he looks very much like a 'bot who's ready for action, but as likely to trip over himself as he is to deal any damage to his foes. I'm almost tempted to track down the TV show on DVD, just to get a feel for what he's like as a character - based on the couple of episodes I've seen, pretty much all I know is that he's really into red sports cars... Which is why it's a little disturbing that the second version of his was a red repaint... Maybe he's just that much of a narcissist as well?
Curiously, while the red repaint - and the OTFCC 2003 exclusive retools - all feature the official Dodge Viper logo, this one does not... so it seems as though licensing was only sought retrospectively, between the release of this original version of the toy and the later repaints.
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