While the three components of Hasbro's Rail Racer were sold separately, Takara's version - JRX - was available as a single boxed set containing all three toys, each one featuring a lavish paint job to conceal the extensive use of translucent plastic in their construction. Given that none of the individual members of Team Bullet Train are exceptionally good, and that they're an unusual size (they'd probably be considered Voyager class these days), Hasbro's decision to break the set up into three supposedly Mega class boxes (probably only to accommodate their length) seems like nothing more than a means of maximising profits. By my estimate, the set of three would probably have amounted to the equivalent of single Super class figure like Optimus Prime or Ultra Magnus.
In retrospect, I'm more than a little weirded out by Hasbro's choice of size class descriptors: Spychangers (the Matchbox-sized vehicles), Basic (mostly G1 gestalt limb repaints), Deluxe (covering everything from the Autobot Car Brothers to the components of Landfill/Build King and G1 gestalt torso repaints), Mega (Team Bullet Train, Sky-Byte and two 3-packs of larger Basics that were effectively Beast Machines overspill), Ultra (Megatron and Galvatron) and Super (Optimus Prime and Ultra Magnus), with roughly Super-equivalent toys like the Dreadwind/Smokejumper set and Scourge being outside the official size classes, apparently because they were US store exclusives. These designations are almost painfully 90s and, personally, I feel that they set Mega, Ultra and Super in the wrong order.
But I digress... Let's finally take a look at the members of Team Bullet Train in their combined form, as Rail Racer!
Due to his strange construction, from three individual robots who turn into trains, my first impression of Rail Racer's components in their gestalt configuration is that he looks like a robot built out of flat-packed parts. Two of the components - Railspike and Midnight Express - look pretty good in and of themselves, and for what they are, though the proportions of Rail Racer's arms are pretty wonky compared to his legs... But, I guess, when a gestalt's arms are made out of one of its components' legs, and those legs are pretty wonkily-proportioned themselves, one has to expect some awkward compromises...
Railspike's contribution to Rail Racer is the upper body and arms, essentially made out of the individual robot's legs, but with the hips split and folded forward on the sides of the train, and the cockpit raised up to reveal the gestalt's head. The end result is not too bad, but it feels as though Rail Racer's elbows are in his biceps, and it leaves him with a secondary elbow that only bends his arms outwards. Railspike's hip skirts try to restrict his hips to providing only outward swing for the arms, while previously unused joints allow them to swing forward and back at the shoulder.
Rapid Run provides Rail Racer's belly, with the nose plugging into his backside and the back two thirds of the train - the individual robot's lower half - repurposed as some kind of jet pack hanging off the robot's back, behind the gestalt's shoulders. This one requires the most complex transformation as, while the legs just kind of fold around a bit and collapse back at the waist, the arms somewhat concealed behind them, the individual robot's torso rotates and slides on its spine, then breaks in half - across the train's nose - to reveal the two sets of clips that let it serve as the junction between his two team-mates.
It's bizarre how little changes between Midnight Express's individual robot mode and his part in Rail Racer - essentially everything below the waist remains the same. His pelvis collapses back into its vehicle mode position with the robo-sporran closed up, his arms fold back under his shoulder panels to bulk up Rail Racer's hip skirts, and the head slips back inside the chest to allow Rapid Run to clip in across his shoulders. Until the three components are connected to form the gestalt, Midnight Express just looks like he's been set aside, mid-transfomation.
Gestalt:
The first thing that becomes apparent with the completed Rail Racer is that the gestalt is so much better-proportioned than his components - a clear case of the whole far exceeding the sum of its parts. Of course, this is a little deceptive because his knees are still too high up his legs (though even that looks somewhat better than it did on Midnight Express simply because his upper body is more substantial) and his forearms are colossal compared to his upper arms.
The next thing that struck me, personally, was that Rapid Run is actually quite redundant. With a few alterations to Midnight Express and Railspike, Rail Racer could easily have been a two-'bot team, with much the same proportions, but without the ugly and awkward backpack. Frankly, while I've seen some folks pose Rapid Run's legs as some sort of Gundam-style booster pack, angled up and outward, I find them too fussy due to the ball-jointed hips being obstructed not only by the individual robot's whole pelvis, but also by the large, rectangular plate they're folded back against on the gestalt's back. Rapid Run ends up looking like nothing so much as an elaborate (and unnecessary) cape. But, hey, at least in this combined form, Rapid Run's Autobot insignia is the right way up.
The main downside to Rapid Run's backpack form is that it limits the range of movement offered by Rail Racer's shoulders. The joints themselves can move freely through a full 360°, but the backpack prevents the arms swinging back by any more than about 15°. On the upside, they don't get in the way of the arms' forward swing, so he can raise his arms beyond the vertical that way. The transformation joints around the shoulder allow a certain amount of 'butterfly' movement forward, though the protruding chest rather reduces the effectiveness of this. My main gripe about the arms is how high up the elbows are, since he can't even get 90° of bend out of them. There's no wrist articulation, but his fingers and thumbs are hinged at the base, with the fingers molded in a right-angled 'grip' to facilitate wielding his weapons. Rail Racer's head is mounted on a ball joint, though it's range doesn't go far beyond the simple 360° rotation. However, the ball joint is mounted on a 'neck' which is hinged for transformation, that allows him to look down further than the ball joint alone.
In terms of articulation, generally, the upper body does better than the lower body. Due to the way Rail Racer pegs together, there's no waist articulation at all. The legs, naturally, only move as well as they do for Midnight Express, but now have to hold up the added weight of Rapid Run and Railspike, with the centre of gravity tending more toward the top/back of the gestalt. The joints are just about strong enough to accomplish this, but the shortcomings of Midnight Express' feet are even more apparent when trying to pose Rail Racer.
It is curious that the tech detailing from the outsides of Railspike's legs ends up on the insides of Rail Racer's arms, with the train shell instead facing outward, but that's down to the way the hands are oriented. Flipping them over - if possible - would bring marginally greater range to his elbows, since the section of train forming his arms is longer at the bottom of the train than on the roof. Of course, that then puts Railspike's 'toes' in the way of the hands, so he wouldn't be able to hold anything without first altering more of the engineering to fix that. There are some chunks of raised detail, specific to Rail Racer, on the fronts of his forearms, but the sculpt is split between the white plastic of the train's outer shell and the blue plastic of the inner face, with no paintwork to improve its consistency or definition. This was even true of Takara's version so, if nothing else, this feels like something Reprolabels should have developed a sticker-based fix for by now. As it stands, it's a nice enough effort, but really needed some supporting paintwork.
One of the coolest features of Rail Racer is the way he uses each team-member's weapons. While Rapid Run's shield does nothing unique in this form, it pegs securely into Rail Racer's articulated hands and can be held (more or less) flat against his arm or out in front of the fist. The guns from Midnight Express and Railspike combine to form a larger pistol, which is almost the perfect size for Rail Racer. The former's spring-loaded missile launcher plays the major part, though the trigger remains hard to access on the underside of the weapon and the handle seems a little too short for Rail Racer's bulkier fists and arms. Part of the reason for this is that the chunky battery/electronics compartment of Railspike's weapon (now perhaps acting as a laser sight?) slips into the very back of Midnight Express's launcher and ends up butted right up against Rail Racer's cuffs. Had the handle on the spring-loaded weapon been just a touch longer, there wouldn't be any problems... though, to be honest, even though Rail Racer is basically just holding the weapon with his index finger, it doesn't tend to fall out as long as the thumb is used to clamp the fingers closed.
Just for a change, the head seems to be quite a good size for the body, and the sculpt is excellent - taking cues from each of the 'bots in its overall sleek, sweeping design and retaining the 'faux-cockpit on the top' look of his components' own head sculpts, while also being completely individual. The overall shape, with the protruding helmet brim and chin guard, is most similar to Railspike, but he also has a large, translucent teal visor over his neon pink eyes. The face itself is painted white, when silver may have been preferable and more impressive and, while the expression appears to be pretty neutral, something about gives the impression of a subtle smile. While there's no paintwork on the helmet other than for Railspike's vehicle mode cockpit canopy, the sweeping 'antennae' on the sides of his head are molded in the darker, richer blue plastic of Railspike's thighs, while the bulk of the helmet is molded in the paler, flatter blue with a subtle metallic flake, which is more evident here than in any of its uses on Railspike.
When it comes to combiners of the Robots in Disguise/Car Robots era, there's not a great deal to choose from... Aside from Rail Racer, there's only a repaint (or two) of G1 Bruticus, named Ruination, and the (frankly hideous) Build Team/Landfill. Given that selection, Rail Racer is quite a fantastic achievement, and easily the most successful gestalt at the time. Had the proportions of his components been a little better, he might even have had a greater impact on the future of combiners within the TransFormers brand. As it stands, he's ended up as one of the more interesting footnotes.
One interesting thing I learned whilst reading up about Team Bullet Train - I hesitate to call what I did 'research' but, y'know - is that Takara Tomy started another line of transformable robot gestalts - all with locomotive vehicle modes - around 2015, called Shinkansen Henkei Robo Shinkalion. The designs of these robots bear a striking resemblance to artwork of Rail Racer/JRX, but then there's a starker contrast between the Shinkalion artwork and the plastic products than there is with the older TransFormers toys. Shinkalion's toys are clearly aimed at a younger market, and feature some spring-loaded automorph gimmickery as part of more simplistic transformations into chunkier, less articulated robots. They're not much more complicated than the Crash Combiners of RiD(2015), and each comes as a set with the trains' front and back ends, accompanied by a single passenger car which contains their weapons. It's a real shame in some ways, because the artwork looks great, and suggests what could be done with a more complex, contemporary take on Rail Racer.
While I consider it beyond unlikely that Hasbro would ever revisit or reboot Robots in Disguise in the sense of remaking all the toys using contemporary engineering, I feel might be worth their while looking into including some of the characters from this franchise as part of an ongoing, multi-continuity Generations toyline, and Rail Racer should be right at the top of the list (preferably as a boxed set). Failing that, Hasbro or Takara Tomy inducting RiD/Car Robots into the Masterpiece line could yield some fantastic results.
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