Tracks has an okay bot mode. Vault and I were talking about the dual purpose molds Hasbro has been using for the TFs and I think Tracks got the short end of the stick in his pairing with Wheeljack. What I mean is that Drift was pretty cool and reusing him to make Blurr turned out okay, but wasn’t spectacular. Wheeljack looks pretty awesome from the pics so far and it feels like a lot of the elements on Tracks are more for him later than they are for Tracks. Maybe I’m just to Tracks being that sleek Autobot and this figure feels a little more clunky than I would like.
Tracks has a nice head sculpt that captures his classic look pretty well. I’m still used to him having a mouthguard like the classic toy, but Hasbro made the right choice by dropping it. Tracks is almost never depicted with the mouthguard in place. I’m not sure what’s going on with Tracks’ eyes. The design allows for lightpiping, but the peice useds for the back of the head and eyes isn’t translucent. It’s strange.
Articulation is really nice. Ball-joints on the head, shoulders, hips, & mid-foot, swivels at the biceps, hands, knees, & waist, double hinged elbows, single hinges on the knees and ankles. I didn’t really get any good articulation shots into the review, but he can move really well for the most part. The shoulders are a bit restrticed, but the extra features like the c clips on the missles and rifle, the swivels on the wings, and the hinge on the roof of the car also allow for more movement.
The only paint issue I had on Tracks was on his face. That’s the one thing I don’t like about TF collecting, I can’t inspect the figures packaged in alt modes as well as I’d like. The face isn’t bad, the red just doesn’t extend up as far as I’d like. The rest of Tracks is molded in the appropriate colors with minimal paint applications. I did get a bit of red slop on one of the wing tips.
Overall, Tracks is an okay Transformer. I’m surely biased towards the original, but that almost never happens with me. Newer is usally better in my opinion. And the new one has perks like the c clips and the great articulation, but the look of the original wasn’t maintained as much as I’d like or even as much as some of the other current Transformers offerings. Even though I’m looking at parts of him and thinking about Wheeljack, I know that he’s got a lot of little work to distinguish the two and I’m sure they’ll look great together. Despite my misgivings, I’m pretty happy with Tracks – except for his flight mode. I’m glad they tried to include it, but it needed a little more work.
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Yup, he was playing B-ball with Prime: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8DNXsWxqlkY
Thanks!! Always nice to know you’re not crazy… LOL
Really that scene opens a can of worms now that I think about it. Is the court and ball in relative regulation size and scale to the Transformers? How big is that? Who made that? LOL
And it’s not really fair for Optimus to play. That’s like Shaq against a team of… some short basketball players that I don’t know the names of… er…
Spud Webb?
(although he is taller than me)
With this figure, for maximum enjoyment, I recommend posing him in robot mode with his hands on his hips, looking up and to the side, preferably while humming the Superman movie theme.
I dunno if you just prefer him the way he is in the pics, but Tracks’ back section actually plugs closer and flatter to his back. If you pull the wing assembly out further along their tracks to full extension, the white piece connected to the back half can actually lock against the lower back, and the dark grey piece where the missiles mount can now plug into slots on his back. This will restrict posing of the wings a bit, but will make his back more unobtrusive.
Thanks! I had a heck of a time with that backpack part. It turns out I wasn’t fully extending the wings at all. I think I got the misconception that they moved as part of the arm assembly, I don’t know why…
He definitely looks a ton better!
Nice review of Tracks. I actually liked him quite a bit more than you, but he does make me look really forward to Wheeljack!
Wheeljack is going to be awesome!
Love the picture of him looking in the mirror. That’s so Tracks! No mention of his uh preferences? 😉
No, I’m not a big fan of his wiki page and all that it implies.
Great review! You should follow Orionpax’s suggestions though, he looks a ton better when properly transformed!
I did! Pax was right on. Tons better.
Great review. I wanted to ask you though, why don’t you like the rubsigns? They’re a great callback!
They’re cool in their own right. You can see that I got some to put on my Alternators Tracks. I think I just like having the real symbol there instead in comparison.
Loved seeing all the Tracks together. I never realized how small the old ones were. Geez!
I had the same response when I got them all together. I think I still love the original best though.
Nice review. I really like this guy more than I thought I would. Jazz has been the stand-out from this wave for me and for weeks he pretty much had all my attention just getting over how awesome he is, but I’ve given Tracks more and more playtime over the last week noticing the great poses you can get out of him and just how impressive he actually looks in a group line up of Classics – he certainly gets the vanity vote over the likes of Prowl that’s for sure, which is kind of fitting for his character.
Keep bringing us Classics goodness Noisy, in a Year about to be trainwrecked by ugly Film based dreck it’s great to see the Old School being so well represented.