Showing posts with label Wheelie. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Wheelie. Show all posts

Sunday, 8 August 2010

Revenge of the Fallen Wheelie

Wheelie is a name long associated with fan loathing. In the animated movie, Wheelie was a kind of 'kid appeal' character in a cast made up almost exclusively of kid appeal characters. He spoke in irritating rhymes, and wielded a slingshot capable of pacifying the mighty Grimlock. The toy was a hunchbacked disaster which looked nothing like the character in the movie, and was probably one of the ugliest TransFormers ever to see the light of day. Surprisingly, a fan-made version actually makes G1 Wheelie look pretty decent and manages to be very poseable, while retaining the look of the vehicle mode perfectly. The only question would be why a fan-made G1 Wheelie model exists in the first place.

Fast forward to Revenge of the Fallen, and the name Wheelie is applied to a cowardly yet lascivious little spybot - not quite the equivalent of Frenzy, but certainly the same kind of character. Whereas Frenzy referenced G1 by turning into a portable stereo (which, yes, got picked up and left somewhere convenient by a stupid human), Wheelie does something unexpected: he transforms into a toy.