Binaltech BT16 Skids

Here's another fine example of how I've made a mess of things by blogging about later iteration of a figure before the original... Skids was one of the final handful of Binaltech figures, but he came out only very slightly earlier than the last of the Binaltech Asterisk spin-offs, Broadblast, made from the same mold. Nevertheless, I seem to recall I acquired Broadblast much later than Skids, simply because I was following the main Binaltech line with more interest than Asterisk.

Skids was yet another G1 toy that I wasn't able to acquire back in the day, instead picking up the Toys'R'Us exclusive Commemorative Series re-release when it appeared almost 20 years later in 2004. While I was surprised that such a neglected G1 character was chosen to appear in the Binaltech line, the bigger surprise was the choice of vehicle...

Vehicle Mode:
G1 Skids was notable for being one of the smallest of the Diaclone-derived G1 toys in vehicle mode - having been based on the positively bijou Honda City Turbo - while still having a reasonably-sized robot mode. One could be forgiven for expecting the heavily-rumoured Binaltech New Mini to have become Skids, but that turned out to be a baseless rumour, and Skids turned out to be the Toyota bB X Version (with the Alternators version being branded as a Scion xB for whatever reason). Where the original Honda vehicle was small and unassuming, Toyota's vehicle can only be described as an ugly blue box on wheels - a car as designed by a Brutalist artist. It's the sort of thing one might expect to see decked out as an airport taxi, because it looks like a people-mover, or the sort of vehicle you'd take on a camping holiday, rather than something that fits within Binaltech's original premise of performance cars.

It's entirely possible that this choice of vehicle mode for the Binaltech figure was influenced by the misinterpretation of the original toy's vehicle mode as a minivan in both the TV show and Marvel's comics, since Americans don't do 'small cars'. Frankly, the one redeeming feature of this hideous block on wheels is its paradoxically beautiful metallic blue paint job, which makes it far more eye-catching than it deserves to be.

Coupled with that, where the Alternators toy used a darker blue plastic for the vehicle shell, with a jarring 'flaming wheel' decal on each side and 'SCION' branding across the tinted windscreen, Takara instead included a sheet of stickers. This included a flame pattern somewhat similar to the Alternators version (but without the wheel design) as an alternative to a red stripe like that of the G1 toy, along with two copies of the Japanese 'New Driver' icon. I decided against applying any of these and, looking at them again for the first time since I acquired this figure, I found that the silver surface had started to tarnish. Strangely, while it looks something like so-called 'disc rot' on a CD, it is just a surface thing, as there's no sign of it on the underside of the foil sticker sheet when peeled away from the backing.

Between Skids and BT Asterisk Broadblast, Skids presents the most compelling vehicle mode, even if the paintwork on his robot mode feet makes them all the more apparent and incongruous, occupying what should be the cargo space at the back of the vehicle.

As with that version of the mold, Skids has one of the smallest, most unassuming weapons, nestled in between the robot's arms, underneath the bonnet, as a small section of the car's engine. Similarly, all of the lights - front and rear - are translucent plastic, tinted or chromed as appropriate, and contrast well against the metallic blue body, while the hubcaps are again painted silver rather than chromed. Since the numberplate doesn't split during transformation and his name is only five characters long, the almost-standard format of having an Autobot insignia followed by the character's name is a lot less squashed on this figure, even though his name hasn't been abbreviated.


Robot Mode:
The chunky vehicle mode really doesn't do this figure any favours when it comes to representing Skids. The G1 character was quite skinny and lanky, with chunky lower legs, but a surprisingly low-key chest due to the vehicle's small size. This one looks positively pot-bellied, and looking at him in retrospect, I still think he's not ideal as Skids (or, at least, should have had a transformation more like his G1 equivalent, making him taller, but proportionally less bulky). To me, he looks to me more like an interpretation of, say, TransFormers Prime Bulkhead or Breakdown.

But, while the core of the robot, from the chest down, is quite large and blocky, the arms are disproportionately skinny... and they're also where the Binaltech figure's paint job starts to diverge from that of the original G1 toy. The Honda City Turbo figure had entirely blue arms with red fists and tech detail stickers on the shoulders, while this version has blue shoulder chunks, with arms that are red from the bicep down, and his fists are the standard Binaltech black fists. The legs have a very simple paint pattern - black hips either side of the red groin, silver thighs, two strips of red to the outside of the black kneecaps, everything else coated in metallic blue.

Given that G1 Skids - billed as a Theoretician - was one of the most heavily armed Diaclone-derived Autobots (packaged with two guns and a missile launcher, only two of which could be attached to his arms at any one time), and the 2014 Generations/30th Anniversary version, based on the IDW Comics interpretation of the character, designed by Alex Milne, was similarly overendowed with armaments (a pair of integrated guns on both forearms, missile launchers concealed in the shoulders, and a pair of handguns which combine into a rifle), it seems weird for this version to have just one - exceptionally weedy - handgun. It may be more in keeping with the idea of a Theoretician, which is hardly a warrior-type role, but its a further deviation from the G1 original.

And, just to carry on the theme of Not-Quite-G1-ness, the head sculpt is completely bizarre. Nothing like that of the G1 toy, and only superficially similar to his depiction in the TV show and comics. It more closely resembles the head used on some of the early promotional artwork for Diaclone, in which the robot has armaments integrated into his forearms and missile lauchers on both shoulders (so perhaps this is also what Milne based his redesign on?). According to TF Wiki, it's this artwork that his animation model was derived from. Given that Binaltech tended to aim for creating harder-edged versions of the animation model heads, I guess this is a fitting choice but, with its domed helmet and pronounced central crest, many fans saw this more as Ironhide... Honestly, to me, it works better as Blaster than as Skids, and is otherwise probably one of my least favourite Binaltech head sculpts. Nevertheless, the paint job is nice enough - more of that amazing metallic blue for the helmet, a dot of green in the middle of his crest, silver all over the bland, weirdly-proportioned face, and G1 toy-accurate yellow for his eyes.


Transformation wasn't as painful as I remember it being when I first acquired this figure - or, evidently, when I wrote about Broadblast - but only really complicated part is remembering how the arms have to be oriented to stow properly under the bonnet. I have found the paint on the doors is very much inclined to get scratched, right by the hinges, during transformation, but that's more to do with my clumsiness than any inherent flaw in the design.

The funniest thing about Binaltech Skids was that many fans instantly felt that, given the bulky body and van-like vehicle mold, the Toyota bB should have been used as Binaltech Ratchet/Ironhide... and, while I can't argue that it would have worked pretty well as the latter, I can't see this people mover being a particularly successful ambulance. A more general Paramedic vehicle, perhaps - and that may well have been sufficient for the Autobot medic, given that he became a Fire Rescue vehicle in the live action movies - but it's entirely the wrong sort of vehicle otherwise, and judging a mold purely on how it looks in robot mode seems counterintuitive with a licensed vehicle-focussed line like Binaltech.

For me, the problem with using this mold as Skids is the vehicle is too large and the robot far too bulky, even though it more-or-less follows the same pattern as the G1 toy in terms of transformation and distribution of mass (backpack aside!). There were far more appropriate - read: small and economical - vehicles to choose from in 2005, particularly given that Binaltech had, by this point, strayed quite a way from its original concept of TransFormers being reinvented as contemporary performance cars... Given that there were those rumours of the New Mini being turned into a TransFormer (to the point where some online retailers put up preorders, only to withdraw them later), I'd have thought that would have been an excellent choice. Hell, even a Smart car would have been a better choice than the large, bulky and boxy Toyota bB.

Of course, in hindsight, the use of the same mold as Broadblast makes a bit more sense, if only because the chosen colourscheme - silver - evokes G1 Crosscut far better than it does Blaster... so it's a shame Takara Tomy didn't go for the more obvious homage and give the model a new head sculpt. I guess they wanted a more widely-known character, though, and Crosscut had been an e-Hobby exclusive... Plus, partnering a journalist with the Autobot comms guy made more sense than a politician/diplomat.

Much as I feel Binaltech Skids is not a successful adaptation/update of the G1 character, I have to admit that this is another mold that I also bought as an Alternator... But that was for the purpose of making a custom Binaltech/Alternators Soundwave based on the excellent Alternators Soundblaster custom made by Superquad7, back in 2006. However, the advantage to the Alternators version is that it's not weighed down by die-cast metal... and the weak ankle ball joints I found on Broadblast are just as bad here, on Skids.

It's also worth noting that, for no apparent reason, Skids' packaging is slightly different from all the other Binaltech boxes. The windows at either end of the box are square rather than circular, and the metallic texture print is entirely absent. The back of the box features a street view photograph which, based on the appearance of the numberplates on cars visible in the background, appears to be from somewhere in the UK. Meanwhile, a smaller photo, used on the top of the box as a background to a photo of Skids' vehicle mode, looks more likely to be from somewhere either in the US or Japan, based on the look of the buildings and raised highway. This was the first of three deviating box styles - each unique - used for figures 16-18 in the Binaltech line, the others being Black Convoy (Alternators-style bubble packaging) and Rijie (aka Mirage) Electro Disruptor Edition from e-Hobby (windowless box with single-colour print) - BTs 19-22 went back to the original style again.