On Fiction, Part 5: A New Cartoon

It has been announced that a 'new' TransFormers cartoon is in the works, as a collaboration between Nickelodeon and eOne. I'm currently not sure what to make of this news but, for the most part, it feels broadly positive. Hasbro aren't keeping all their eggs in one basket, and with the Netflix War for Cybertron series set to conclude with Kingdom later this year, and the next live action movie supposedly set for release in the summer of next year, they're clearly looking to maintain brand awareness in the visual media.

Robots in Disguise Railspike

Every TransFormers team needs a leader, and for Team Bullet Train, that's Railspike. This role also makes him the uppermost section of the Rail Racer gestalt and, considering how Midnight Express handled being the legs, one would have to become concerned about how so similar a cylindrical vehicle could handle being both an individual robot and the upper chest, arms and head of a combiner.

It's probably not a good sign that neither Hasbro nor Takara Tomy ever repainted this mold, or used the same template with alternate vehicles... But let's see how Railspike works out on his own merits...

Robots in Disguise Rapid Run

Components of TransFormers gestalts have always tended to be a bit weird. Five-component teams, like the original G1 teams, had a certain balance, and two-parters like the Energon Powerlinx gestalts at least had simplicity on their sides...

 

Other combiners, such as G1 Devastator, or the combined form of RiD/Car Robots' Team Bullet Train, somehow end up with one component that feels almost redundant, so minor and perfunctory is the role they play in the larger robot. With Devastator, that was Long Haul... with Team Bullet Train, it's Rapid Run.

But is he a decent toy in his own right, or just necessary cog in the gestalt machine that is Rail Racer? Let's find out!

Robots in Disguise Midnight Express

I have to admit that, much like the RiD Dreadwind & Smokejumper set, I can't remember when I acquired Team Bullet Train - each sold separately in the west, despite being a boxed set in Japan - but I do know that I bought them all together, most likely from eBay and, if the metadata on my original photos is anything to go by, about ten years ago.

As far as I can recall, I wasn't even aware of them when I bought RiD Optimus Prime, Ultra Magnus, Megatron and Galvatron... Possibly not even when I later acquired Scourge or the Car Brothers. In fact, pretty much all I can remember is that I thought they looked like crap when I first saw them... but my feelings toward them later changed dramatically and, while I really coveted the Takara version with its translucent plastic, I ended up 'settling' for Hasbro's version.

The concept - a set of three bullet trains that transform into individual robots and also combine into a single, larger robot - seemed somehow almost stereotypically Japanese (rightly or wrongly, I see Japan as being a little obsessed with trains, not least because of the Densha de GO! arcade games which involve nothing more than the seemingly mundane and routine task of driving a passenger train on a set route, yet have been adapted to home consoles from the original PlayStation to the Nintendo Switch) and, while my appreciation of the RiD/CR line is still a little variable (too many Matchbox-style 'Go-Bots', G1 repaints and Beast Wars cast-offs for my liking), Team Bullet Train/Rail Racer is now among my favourite TransFormers toys.

Let's take a look and try to figure out why...

 

Alternators Optimus Prime

As previously mentioned on this blog, any Optimus Prime mold is fair game for later reuse as Nemesis Prime, so it was a bit silly of me to write up the repaint first... Or was it?

Because, for one reason or another, I ended up with two other iterations of this mold: the Alternators Nemesis Prime figure I've already dealt with, and the Binaltech version, Black Convoy, which turned out to be a bit of a lemon. I picked up the Alternators version of Optimus because, for a while, it seemed as though he wouldn't get a Binaltech release... but he did eventually show up in the much-maligned Kiss Players subline, replete with die cast parts and a unique paint job, in 2006. He also saw a release in under the original Binaltech branding two years later.

Of course, with three iterations of this mold in my collection, is there anything particularly interesting to say about this?

Superlink Shadowhawk Cosmo Type

If there's one thing that can be said in favour of Energon/Superlink, it's that it did things very differently from both Armada/Micron Legend, which it followed, and Cybertron/Galaxy Force, which it preceded, albeit with mixed success. A lot of the larger figures were slightly higher-tech looking, but still much the same level of intricacy as the former, while the smaller size classes included an imaginative range of robots and alternate modes, some of which ended up getting reused in the earliest movie toylines.

One of the oddities of the line was that Takara released a few variants that appeared even in the US version of the TV show, but weren't picked up by Hasbro for release in the Western markets. One such figure was the blue repaint of Shadowhawk/Divebomb, and the somewhat limited nature of its release put the so-called 'Cosmo Type' on my radar.

Studio Series #64 Cliffjumper

When this figure was first revealed, I was quite keen to pick him up, despite his tragically brief role in the Bumblebee movie (something of a running theme for the character in recent years), because Cliffjumper was the first TransFormers toy I ever bought, and I still have fond memories of him. I liked (what little we saw of) the design from the movie, particularly the Bayformer-yet-G1 head, and the toy seemed to have a nice, sleek vehicle mode, somewhat reminiscent of Jazz/Sideswipe from the War for Cybertron/Fall of Cybertron videogames.

 

Once I watched some video reviews and saw the figure in a bit more detail, I was put off - transformation was a clumsy adaptation of Offroad Bumblebee, leaving him with a massive backpack... However, finding a small leftover in my Amazon Gift Card balance from Christmas, and a single Cliffjumper toy remaining in their stock, I decided to order...