Phil's
Armada Wheeljack,
Micron Legend Rampage
and
Botcon Sideswipe
Review


Wheeljack

At the point Wheeljack came out there had been a couple of duff Supercon toys - Thrust and Sideswipe - which were followed up by some Transmetal Beast Wars deluxe toys with slight remoulds and Minicons. Wheeljack is another name reused from Generation 1 and that conjures up an image of a white sportscar that turns into a robot with large ear panels. The shape of this toy is more reminiscent of one of the G1 Lamborghinis - Sideswipe especially. I think the Sideswipe name could be used OK on a Decepticon toy but at the time the Hasbro team were keen to use Wheeljack as a Decepticon rather than an Autobot due (IIRC) to the similarity between the name Wheeljack and the word Hijack. Where G1 Sideswipe was red this is black - reminiscent of the G2 version - with some yellow stripes on the bonnet, door and spoiler. There's some beautiful detail on the mold *especially* the sliced Autobot logo on the bonnet with a small Decepticon logo underneath.

There are three usable Minicon posts on the toy - two dead posts on the spoiler mounted very close together, and one recessed into the top of the Passenger compartment. The Recess is shaped so that Windshear can fit in it so you may have difficulty using this post with other Minicons. When activated the gimmick causes the gull wing doors to flip up revealing that there's a missile launcher built into each. The triggers for the missiles are under the wings and cause the yellow stripes on the doors to be fired out of the front of the wings. When the wings are raised you can see another Decepticon symbol moulded into the structure uncovered by the wings.

TF: Activate the wing gimmick and turn the car over. Pull the arms up from under the passenger compartment, pull out to the sides and rotate forward. Pull the back of the car out to the sides and fold down till they click with top of the back now facing down. Fold the front of the car down into the space under the passenger compartment. Pull down on the wings and fold the base of them onto the back of the robot.

The robot is a lovely large Supercon that looks - mould wise - a spitting image for G1 Sideswipe - especially on the head, car front as chest and wheels on shoulders making the non use of that name seem like a joke now. In fact I wonder if the toy was designed with one eye on a potential G1 style Powerlinx repaint ? A lot of white is revealed in this mode on the head, arms, upper legs and feet. There's also more of the yellow for the missiles connecting the back pack and forming the upper arms, knees & heel spurs. He's got good articulation for an Armada Supercon, though some bits a little loose - especially the knees when they aren't locked in the straight position. There's also a swivel above the knees, the hips bend, the shoulders turn - these are very stiff turning forward - the arms swing to the sides bellow the shoulders and bend at the elbows. The hands have a 5mm peg hole and can hold any of the Armada minicon weapons - the Takara version also comes in a giftset with the Darksabre. His Minicon posts that were on the back of the car end up on his knees, leaving the live one dead center on the back. The wings end up as his huge back pack - which Windshear can stand on the connecting piece behind the head.

Nice toy. One of the better efforts in the Supercon size. Unfortunately he isn't even the best toy in his case as the other new Supercon released with him is just stunningly good ...

Wheeljack was released in Japan's Micron Legend line as MD-07 Rampage and was also available in giftset MS-08 with the Air Assault Team. Wheeljack is the only Armada Supercon not to be released in the UK.

The Japanese version of Wheeljack features some additional paint work in blue - see HLJ.com for some pictures. Hasbro indicated that this cartoon accurate version would be released in a future Armada wave that would also contain the intended colours for Powerlinx Thrust. The wave never arrived.


Unreleased Universe Drench

A Wheeljack repaint called Drench was intended to form part of a Battle in a Box pack with a Hot Shot repaint as G1 Smokescreen. Drench in this context is the US G2 Aquaspeeder with a black car body and lots of pale green paint on it as opposed to the European G2 Aquaspeeder Drench (it's complicated - the four US moulds (2 for each faction) are the European Autobots who have different names & colours whereas the Euro Decepticon Aquaspeeders were unreleased in the US) The black remains the same on this toy but green paint to match the US G2 toy is added with the yellow becoming the same shade of green and the white becoming grey.

Sadly this pack remains unreleased.


Botcon 2008 Shattered Glass Sideswipe

However demand for Drench continued amongst Transformer fans so much that when the "Mirror Universe" Shattered Glass set was issued for Botcon in 2008 the colour scheme was used on their evil Sideswipe toy. The black and green - both plastic and paint - remain from the unreleased version but the grey now becomes an off white.

Incredibly this is the only repaint of Armada Wheeljack *ever* released.


Possible Future Repaints

The lack of Wheeljack repaints becomes even more incredible when you consider the number of possibilities that exist for repainting the toy. Most would need some minor remoulding to remove the Decepticon symbols and heal/remove the Autobot symbols but ....

Firstly we have Wheeljack's Autobot cartoon form. This swaps black with white, yellow with dark grey and white with light grey. I find it odd that this never showed up as a Japanese exclusive !

Then we can exploit the G1 lineage of the mould. Sideswipe is an obvious choice - red for the black and black for the yellow with the outside of the head being painted black. Red Alert is easy too, and we've also got G2 Sideswipe, Tigertrack, Deep Cover & Clamp Down using the same G1 mould that could donate their colours to repaints of this toy. Tigertrack is of course very close to Sunstreaker's colours which has a similar car mould if a different robot mode.


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