Real Gear Robots Night Beat 7

Real Gear Robots was a bit of an odd moment for me, as a Collector. Cunningly pitched as movie toys, but originally planned as being tangential to the Cybertron/Galaxy Force toyline, it was precisely the sort of thing I'd aim to avoid these days.

I surely can't imagine a similar toyline being popular now, especially given how simplistic and awkward most of them were... but, for whatever reason, I found the first wave or so quite compelling.

 

Device Mode:

If it was obvious enough that Booster X10 was designed to look like an early iPod, this colourscheme really hammers that home. The icy blue shell is complemented by silver-painted edging, grey buttons and a gorgeous, translucent blue 'display'. At a distance, I'm sure the earpiece could be fairly convincing, if a little retro-looking in this era of tiny wireless earbuds that nevertheless also have microphones.

However, if Booster X10 looked boring due to the minimalist design, Night Beat 7 looks all the more bland because the colours are so much tamer. The best thing I can say about it is that the robot's head and neck aren't quite so visible behind the darker translucent plastic of the display window.

He's also, upon reflection, rather boring because the buttons don't do anything, just like on Booster X10... so there's that much less play value to him in this mode compared to many other Real Gear Robots.

Robot Mode:

Just as well, then, that Night Beat 7 looks so cool - both figuratively and literally - in robot mode. The pale blue, translucent blue and silver give the impression of an icy Autobot counterpart to Booster X10's evil robotic firebird.

Naturally, there's no difference in the sculpted detail - or even, for the most part, in the paintwork. It is a straight recolour, and the only differences I've been able to identify are to the paintwork of the head and neck. Where Booster X10 kept to the black and red colourscheme of the opaque plastic, and introduced orange/yellow paint for the beak, Night Beat 7 covers most of those parts in silver paint, leaves the beak unpainted and showing the base pale blue plastic, but has dark blue paint added to the sides of the neck, closely matching the shade of the translucent blue wing parts.

Even the weapon is entirely unchanged, with only the distribution of the silver paint altered to make it appear more different than it is.

This is a decent mold - certainly a fun, quick transformation, even if the play value of his device mode is sorely limited - but nothing about it fits Nightbeat... they've taken than name, seen it has the word 'beat' in it, and assigned it to a music player.

And, with the benefit of seventeen years' hindsight, I believe my one and only reason for buying this was that - cynical as ever - Hasbro slapped the name 'Nightbeat' on it, and I'm just a sucker for anything that references the Autobot detective. They did a similar thing with a Revenge of the Fallen Scout class Dead End, and the name seemed just as tacked-on there. Granted, Hasbro have to keep using the names to maintain their trademarks, but there were surely better ways than this.