I remember a time when buying a Transformer was a rare occasion for me. But now things are heading towards the other extreme and I seem to always have a backlog waiting to be reviewed. So I thought I’d make a mini-theme week with a repaint review of my own.
While I’ve intentionally been collecting variants to TF Prime’s First Edition Starscream mold, I’ve also been accidentally collecting Wheeljack’s doubles. Wheeljack was an easy purchase because I wanted to complete the team. Dead End was an awesomely hideous repaint, which I definitely have a soft spot for. (Just ask Halloween Skeletor!) But when it came to Wildrider, he just looked too cool not to buy. So I guess I just love this mold too.
With the addition of Wildrider to my Prime shelf, I’ve also come to the realization that I have three fifths of the Stunticons. While I don’t think these figures will ever combine into a decent Menasor, I do feel the need to pick up Drag Strip and Motormaster if they’re ever made. It probably wouldn’t be hard to do. With his race car design, I can easily see the new Beast Hunters Smokescreen being repainted into Drag Strip. Unfortunately I don’t think the Optimus would look quite right as Motormaster. Maybe Ultra Magnus would though.
Body-wise Wildrider is pretty much the same mold as Wheeljack and Dead End. He’s got that fun ninja-monkey physique in robot mode, while his car has a sleek Cybertronian sporty look. Normally the Takara version has additional appendages for the Arms Micron figures to attach to, but this mold only has a couple of pegs on the rear spoiler.
Wildrider does have a completely new head sculpt though. Where Dead End has a crazy screaming face, Wildrider has a very serious and reserved look. I also really like that tall helmet look. It kind of reminds me of a Beefeater hat, or maybe one of those Canadian hats with the flaps on the side. The head sculpt does have some red light piping, but they painted the eyes gold. I usually hate that, but red eyes on a red face would probably be too much.
Wildrider’s body is molded in dark gray with maroon highlights. The subdued colors really work well for the figure and give him more of that polar opposite feel from his Dead End. Aside from a couple more gold painted details, the rest of his colors come from stickers. Normally I don’t use too many stickers on the main figure, but that crooked Decepticon logo on the hood was just too cool to pass up. Continue to page 2…
DE/Wheeljack looks pretty cool in that color scheme. I hope they release it over here at retail. It looks like I may be sitting TF out for a while, not liking the Beast stuff and the classics look to be replaced by FoC?
BTW, they have re-released Dragstrip several times over the years, most recently with TF3’s Human Alliance sub-line.
http://darklorddungeon.blogspot.com/2011/08/transformers-dark-of-moon-drag-strip.html
He’s about the same size as Deadend and Wildrider in robot mode, so no worries there. There have been several Breakdowns in the past few years as well, so we only need MotorMaster. MM is fairly easy to finish the team, as he’s essentially become “Black Prime” or “Nemesis Prime” or “Scourge” or whatever they’re calling Optimus’ evil twin this iteration.
(also, a google image search turns up a Dragstrip redeco from the TF animated Arcee. apparently a 2011 Botcon exclusive?? news to me, but then I don’t bother with Botcon news much.)
btw, saw at Target today that all TFs are on sale. (10% off?)
of course, they had 4/5 of the Combaticons, which I picked up the whole set at WM last week. I seriously debated rebuying the four there, then returning them to WM, but that’s more trouble than it’s worth, innit?
TF Prime deluxes are $10 (down from $16), TF Generation deluxes are $14.81 (also down from $16). I think the other size classes are on sale as well, but all I was interested in was a Smokescreen to keep Team Prime up to date.
Sweet review and excellent pics! And darn you for making me want this figure! And Buttons McBoomBoom! Wildrider DOES look damn good in that colour scheme, doesn’t he?
But as nifty as Wildrider and his killer elephant are, though, I just can’t bring myself to buy Stunticons that don’t combine. Having said that, if Dead End were in the “correct” colour scheme, I probably would’ve bought him when I saw him. I like Dead End. (Well, the original, anyway. Thanks to international DVD publishers, I’ve only seen the first 10 episodes of TransFormers Prime.)
Wildrider looks great! The gray and red look great together. Its a nice looking mold. Now I kind of wish I had picked up Wheeljack at some point now, I don’t care for the Beast Warrior one.
I try to avoid getting redeco’s and Takara versions of the bots wince they are twice the price of the N. American versions, but this one was too hot to pass up on.