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!
So, here we have the odd 'bot out in the trio. Rapid Run is both the shortest train in the set (at a mere 20.5cm/8") and the only one whose predominant colour is not white... which is strange, because the vehicle he's based on - the 700 Series Shinkansen, accounting for his Japanese designation of J-Seven - certainly had a few white models running on Japanese railways over the years. The specific version that Rapid Run gets his colourscheme from is the Hikari Rail Star, and I'm sure there's a story as to why this particular livery was chosen... but it does seem really strange that the three members of the team weren't better colour-matched. On the upside, rather than being flat grey, there's a very subtle pearlescent quality to the plastic. On the downside, the precise shade of grey basically swallows up the effect, so the sparkling is only barely discernible when the light catches it in a very particular way.
The design, at least at the nose, is quite similar to that of Midnight Express, though a bit more rounded vertically, not quite so flat and duck-billed, so it looks somewhat closer to the nose of a passenger aircraft. The sides of the carriage also taper inward very slightly right at the bottom, in the area which is largely painted silver (with a couple of grey patches on either side for no apparent reason) and broken up into mostly square panels, some of which contain vents. The windscreen and headlights appear to be accurately, if simply modelled, but the use of a fairly dull greyish-blue makes them look a little weird in my opinion - based on photos I've seen online, the windows do appear to have a bluish tint, but they tend to appear darker than the dark, painted oval they're set within. All of the windows on this toy are painted the same colour, but even that's different from the other two in the team, who both have lighter, metallic cyan paint for their windows.
Additionally - curiouser and curiouser - Rapid Run has fewer windows running down his sides than the real-life train. There are only ten on each side, plus the windows in the two doors per side (although one of them isn't painted as it's broken up between three moving parts!), where the real train has thirteen... and yet still has space for an additional Rail Star logo at the back of the vehicle, in the section of stripe behind the rearmost doors. I'd imagine this is in service of both his individual robot mode and his part in Rail Racer, because the front end actually compresses down for both, while the back half accounts for Rapid Run's legs, which are already super-long. Other deviations in sculpted detail include the absence of the driver's access doors on each side of the nose and substantially less panel lining on the roof compared to the two other bullet trains.
The paint job is no less curious. Aside from the inconsistency in the paint applied to his windows versus those of the other two trains, the dark stripe down each side and the oval on the cockpit appear to be a dark, sparkly blue paint, where the real-life train appears to use simple black for the former and charcoal grey for the latter. It may actually be all the same colour, and even the bluishness of the paint on the toy may be accurate, but it's difficult to tell from photographs. What's clearly not accurate is the use of gold paint on the smaller stripe down each side. It's very clearly just yellow on the real train's livery, and on Takara's version, so this was a choice made by Hasbro for whatever reason. The use of gold becomes all the more strange when compared to the Rail Star logo tampographed onto the nose, on either side of the cockpit, which still uses yellow. The gold paint has also been applied - erroneously - to the tip of the nose, and there are also two incongruous stripes of gold on the rearmost quarter of the train's roof, seemingly in service of robot mode. Considering how basic the paintwork is, it's strange to see how inconsistent it is - the dark stripe shows some feathering on both sides (albeit in different places), and the level of sparkle is very different on each section.
Like the other two members of Team Bullet Train, Rapid Run has two sets of four wheels - one below the cockpit, one toward the back - which are nicely free-rolling, and molded in black plastic for a nice bit of contrast with the grey train and the silver band along the bottom.
Another oddity with Rapid Run is that his weapon storage is not optional: the shield/spring-loaded launcher connects and stabilises the robot's legs into the rear section, because they don't actually peg together, and also provides a quarter of the train's roof surface. The missile clips in between the legs on the underside to provide some additional stability and the train's hitch.
Robot Mode:
Aside from being another candidate for all manner of 'he never skips leg day'-type jokes, Rapid Run easily rivals Generation 1 Streetwise as one of the most awkward-looking robots from any angle, but particularly in profile. For me, though, the interesting aspect of his design is the two panels of train side that fold forward to cover the sides of the cockpit, protruding slightly, making it look very much as though this is a train's nose section sat inside a very lanky mech suit. This effect is exacerbated by the fact that, while the nose is connected to the back panel, it's not connected to the waist except by that back panel, and the front set of wheels leave a conspicuous void between the train's nose and the waist.
The paintwork unique to robot mode is centred on his groin, with silver paint from the train's skirt carrying on in a narrow strip, sculpted with belt-like details, just above the waist joint, and the entire pelvis painted with two shades of grey - a lighter colour on the more intricately detailed front face, roughly matching the grey plastic, and a darker shade on the back, as a continuation of the grey paint used on two parts of the train's skirt. This feels very much like an error or miscommunication regarding the paintwork, as there's no good reason for the darker grey paint to have been used at all. To brighten things up a touch, the tapered strip down his groin, featuring three raised trapezoid panels, is painted gold.
What's really disappointing about all this is that the insides of the train side panels on the upper body and the exposed inner sections of the lower legs - both between the legs and the front/outer parts concealed by the shield in vehicle mode - are covered with sculpted detail which is crying out for paintwork... yet what little paint has been added to the Hasbro version adds very little of any value to either mode. Takara had an excuse in that most of their paint budget went on covering translucent plastic. Hasbro clearly put more thought into reducing the paint budget rather than making more effective use of it. I can understand not wanting to paint the details on the inner faces of the leg but, if nothing else, the tech detailing on the pelvis, below the waist, really could have used some extra colour. It also seems pretty daft that the one Autobot insignia on the toy ends up on Rapid Run's back... and is upside-down. It could easily have been applied the other way up without looking weird on vehicle mode, because it's on the roof.
Rapid Run's choice of weapon is also quite strange... The Japanese version of his bio states that "He flushes enemies out with his grenade launcher, and finishes
them off with missiles from his Seven Shield. This weapon is very
effective, but is only good for one shot.", while the western release instead says "He fires his grenade launcher to confuse the enemy
with a blinding wall of smoke, so that his fellow Autobots can send
in the heavy weapons. His aim is always accurate, so he never has
to fire more than once". I like the idea of his shield having a name - and that it ties in with his Japanese designation of J-Seven - and a one-shot limitation, but neither description really matches what you get with the toy. There's no separate 'grenade launcher', but both clearly differentiate between this and the launcher on the shield. TFWiki suggests that the missile itself can be used as a rifle, but I see no evidence of that having been the intention. The fact that the peg on the hitch fits the holes in the fists is due to all the peg sizes being consistent between the three figures in Team Bullet Train, in both robot at vehicle modes, for the obvious reason that they were all designed to link up.
The Seven Shield is quite unwieldy, and doesn't necessarily make for a very useful shield because it's smaller in the middle than it is at the sides. It has a tilting handle on the back with a full 180° range, so it can be pegged in quite effectively as a rifle (albeit a bulky one, even with the side panels folded down). Additionally, since the peg is set on one edge of the spring-loaded launcher section it's sufficiently offset from the shield that Rapid Run can hold it out directly in front of him or have it laying flat across the side of his forearm. All that's missing is a rotation joint at the base of the handle, which might have allowed for more effective dual-use without having to unpeg and reattach the weapon. Like Midnight Express, the trigger for the spring-loaded launcher is on the underside but here, at least, it's at the very back of the launcher block, so it's slightly more accessible to human hands.
I'm really not a fan of Rapid Run's head sculpt. While I don't generally dislike the battlemasked look on principle, there's just something weirdly beak-like about Rapid Run's, leading the head overall to look rather bird-like. In fact, with the triangular design on his forehead resembling another beak, it almost looks like one robot bird head sitting on top of another robot bird head. He has the faux-cockpit window on his forehead, just like his team-mates, but it's very angular and looks nothing like his vehicle mode. The choice of colour doesn't help either - rather than the gold paint used on the tip of the train's nose and on the robot's shins, the head has been painted with a very defined metallic yellow, with the battlemask and forehead 'windscreen' painted silver and the eyes picked out in a bold, almost fluorescent green. The sculpted detail of the helmet is quite good, but it's incomplete as the back of the head is the train mode's cockpit.
I'd say that, of the team, Rapid Run has the most awkward articulation and the highest number of complications with his articulation. Shoulders and hips are ball joints, but the sculpt of the thighs is very strange - the bulk of the upper leg is mounted on the front of the hip joint, making it look as though he's crouching slightly even when bolt upright. The legs can swing a little under 90° forward because of the extra bulk at the front, but a little over 90° backward because of the cutaway below what essentially becomes a robo-buttock at the top of each leg. They can't swing a full 90° outward because the cut at the top of the ball joint isn't quite deep enough, and there's no rotation within the thigh, at the knee, or at the ankle. The knees bend to about 90° and both his 'toe' and heel spurs can be tilted downward due to their transformation joints, but the legs just aren't great for dynamic poses. The arms can swing through the full 360°, the elbows have a full range of about 200° (though only 90° forward, the rest is for transformation), and the wrists are pinned with a 180° bend, effectively ratcheting between five positions within that range. However, the arms are attached to the insides of the train walls, which don't actually attach to the torso anywhere but their transformation hinges, so they're inclined to start folding away from the body during posing. Additionally, since his head is pinned in place and sat between two sections of the train's windscreen, it doesn't have a great range of movement - I'd estimate only about 15-20° in either direction before it butts up against his collar. On the upside, Rapid Run is the only member of Team Bullet Train with waist articulation, and that does help add a little something to his otherwise rather stiff poses.
It's always sad to see a TransFormers toy that is an integral part of a gestalt, and yet has been dealt a losing hand as a robot in its own right, and Rapid Run really is the epitome of this phenomenon. He accounts for less than an inch of Rail Racer's height (essentially becoming his belly, acting as a junction between Midnight Express and Railspike) and his main contribution is an awkward, ugly and frankly unnecessary backpack. His individual robot mode is dull, oddly-porportioned and appears to either crouch or lean backward when standing straight because of the wonky arrangement of his legs... He feels generally low-effort, but there's no way to build Rail Racer without him.
Created today (or by a Third Party) Rapid Run might end up looking a little better, or playing a more significant role in the gestalt, but his 20-year-old toy is a flimsy, disappointing chunk of dull-coloured plastic who really deserved more, but is very hard to recommend on his own merits. Then again, since I tend to display gestalt teams in their combined forms, perhaps he's just not the sort of toy anyone would or should ever buy without the other two.
No comments:
Post a Comment