Generations Deluxe Wheelie

As far as I can find out, the new term being used to describe the line this figure belongs to on the toy forums is “GDO”, which seems to be short for “Generations Distributed Overseas”.

That seems appropriate, since Wheelie here is part of a set of 4 Deluxe Class figures in the Transformers: Generations sub-line that is only being distributed in Asia. The other three are Springer (a recolored Hunt forthe Decepticons Tomahawk), Swerve (a recolored Reveal the Shield Sergeant Kup), and Cliffjumper (re-released Transformers: Prime First Edition Cliffjumper). All 4 come with brand new heads, which makes the re-use of the bodies far more tolerable than it might have been.

What also improves my reception of the figures is the fact that they’ve chosen four very good bodies to re-use.

Wheelie here is a re-colored version of Reveal the Shield Jazz with a new head. Jazz was by far, my favorite toy from the short-lived Reveal the Shield sub-line and quite possibly, my favorite Classics style, G1 inspired figure. Not only was it a great update of the character that worked a lot of the old things into a totally new design, it was done in a way that gave him pretty stellar articulation.

Wheelie shares that amazing articulation with an amazing joint set for a Transformer. Hell, it’s a fairly good showing for any toy in this size range. I’ve got DC Universe Classics and Marvel Legends that have less range than these two.

 

But I’ve gotten ahead of myself. The toy comes packaged in car form, which I prefer. I’d rather I find one that has great paint in car mode and some slop on the face than the other way around. Wheelie here has some areas where the orange plastic has been painted with a darker, glossier shade of orange, plus his Autobot insignia is tampographed on, so those are areas to look at before you pick one up.

The card sports some appropriately oriental lettering on it (I don’t want to venture a guess about what language it’s in since I speak neither Chinese, nor Japanese. Or maybe it’s in Korean?), but they leave some room around everything so it’s not as crowded as Takara’s designs: another good job. The back of the card has a big product portrait in both forms, and a short blurb about the character, in which they suggest that he has a thought disorder, like clanging, which affects his speech and causes his compulsive rhyming.

You’d think Ratchet would get a move on and hook the poor guy up with a new processor. Oh, wait. He died in the movie. No wonder.

To be honest, I never really felt that Wheelie was annoying. He was one of my favorite characters in Transformers: The Movie when I first saw it in theaters, and his “You get ship, if I get trip” lines in that chipmunk voice were one of the things that stuck in my head. He wasn’t like Jar Jar Binks of the Star Wars films, or like his namesake in the Bay’s Transformers. He was smart and orange and packed a bad-ass slingshot.

The only thing cooler would have been a yo-yo.

And, hey, Hasbro’s gone and done us another solid by including that slingshot of his with the GDO version! It doesn’t have any rubber bands on it, but Transformers are an advanced race of robots who know how to transport entire planets across the vast reaches of space. I’m sure their slingshots don’t need rubber bands. You probably just have to use the touchscreen or something.

  

Wheelie can hold the thing perfectly, and if fits securely in either hand. You can also flip it sideways so that he can hold it like some odd looking revolver sans drum, but I’m even less sure of how that would work than I am about the slingshot. It also stores neatly under his robo-manboobs (what would be his hood in car form), although it does peek out a bit from underneath.

Speaking of his car form, it is even better than Jazz’ slick looking alt mode

 

He still has the same problem that Jazz did with the middle of his hood (formed by parts of his shoulders that don’t seem meet flush), but the color is far better. Jazz suffered from being cast mostly in white, which made him really translucent and fell cheap, almost knock-off-ish. He would have worked a lot better if he’d been painted as he was back in Generation 1, but I imagine that would have been prohibitively expensive.

Wheelie though is cast mostly in a good hue of orange that is quite opaque. In addition, his bottom portion is trimmed with a shade that's almost pumpkin and slightly glossy. Very nice and solid-looking.

His wheels are still gray for some reason, which looks silly, no matter how you slice it. I know it's a nod to the G1 version of the toy which also had the gray tires, but it still looks goofy nonetheless.

I've also got the Generations Legends Class figure of the character, and both are pretty sweet. The GDO version still wins though, despite being a re-color, simply because the colors are so much more vibrant. That orange... Wow!

Going back to his robot mode, let's talk articulation. If you've seen the Jazz review, then you pretty much have an idea about what we've got here. If not let me say that the toy has got one of the best joint sets in any Transformer I own. The only problem area is the shoulders, since he can't lift them up past a certain height due to his shoulder armor. Still, the double-hinged elbows and knees, foot articulation, and *gasp* the waist, more than make up for any of that.

Again, compared to the original figure, Wheelie wins out due to his color. Sure Jazz has a nicer weapon and color scheme, but the lack of paint applications ruin the nice racing lines and pristine white. I kind of wish they'd done something else with the speakers that came with the Jazz toy. Wheelie still comes with them, but they don't really feel like they belong.

Here's where they could have thrown in that yo-yo.

 

This is probably my favorite re-use of an existing figure that I've ever bought. The great choice of bodies, the nice colors, the fantastic head sculpt that is both a great update and homage to the ball-cap wearing kid-bot with the grin: everything just gels together nicely to give you a great figure.

While I loved the mini-bot characters on the show (Bumblebee, Warpath, Powerglide, etc.), their toy versions were among the worst. I'm so glad that Hasbro is going back and updating those great characters and giving them more modern versions that are both fun and true to the feel of the G1 cartoon.