Phil's
Car Robots J-5
and
Robots in Disguise Railspike
Review


J-5

During the hiatus between G2 and Beast Wars Takara weren't twiddling their fingers, they sold an entire other line of transforming robot toys called Brave which featured lots of combining and lots of trains. So it was almost inevitable that both things would show up in Car Robots. Trains are a hard sell to transforming robot fans - the problem is they differ so much from country to country - UK trains don't look like US trains and neither look like Japanese trains - the same being true for modern and steam trains.

J-5 is a white bullet train with a blue stripe over the top & down the front and another along each side surrounding the windows. There are two fixed sets of four small wheels under the train, a hole at the front and a peg projecting from the back which allows the trains to connect end to front. J-5's trailing hook has a couple of problems. It's connected to the gun for the robot mode with the barrel under the train and the stock folded up the back. The barrel isn't held in that securely and the stock - although similarly shaped to the train - is 6mm+ back from the rear of the train which looks most odd.

TF: Pull down on the back of the train to extend it to form the legs. Split the legs and set the weapon aside. Turn each legs round 90 degrees bellow the knee. Flip down the foot and fold the back set of wheels down as heel spurs. Split the front of the train in two down the middle, fold to the sides, rotate the shoulder down, fold the arms down and swing them 180 degrees at the elbow. Fold JRX's head down onto the chest and turn J-5's head round so it faces forward. Fold the barrel on the weapon over the LED, fold the trailing hook under it and place in the robot's hand

J-5's robot form has huge shoulder pads - the result of the front of the train being folded out - and a very thin body otherwise - it's straight up from the feet to the shoulders. His head looks quite similar to that of the combined JRX form which is perhaps appropriate to the leader of the team (at least according to the US version's tech specs) His head turns, his arms move forward & back and swing to the sides at the shoulder. The elbows are a double ball joint which is always good - this means the lower arm can point up while the upper arm points down. He doesn't have a waist, the hips are ball jointed, there's an odd folding sideways joint above the knee used in combined mode, the knees bend backwards but are limited by the leg sticking up behind and finally the legs rotate beneath the knee.

His hand weapon lights up - there's a pair of watch batteries in the blocky stock which light a red LED that illuminates the barrel. Because the LED can be directly exposed it's good for using with red lightpipe eyes to illuminate them.

Overall: Solid train, decent robot.

J-5 is Car Robots Toy C-012 and also features in the JRX Giftset C-015


Railspike

Railspike is the Robots In Disguise release of Car Robot's J-5 and simply adds an Autobot symbol to the side of the train mode.

Railspike was sold as a Mega sized toy making it poor value for money as it's essentially a large deluxe toy. Of course by this point the UK had turned it's back on the Mega size class though some of the Bullet Train assortment were later available in the UK as "grey imports" through toy shops.

All three of the Bullet Train team and their combined forms had their names reused for the Universe release of Six Train.


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