Ironhide is a 4 wheel drive jeep thing, with a weapons array on top. Yes sadly he goes to the X-Brawn school of robot heads visible in vehicle mode This comes off easy though ;-) Turn it around for some machine gun noise. Push back on the missile launcher to fire and make a firing sound. No clear windows here on the front, but looking in the sides you can see moulded seats and interior. Instinct tells you the TF should be a fold the front of the car down 180 degrees at the knee to form the lower legs: It isn't, there's a bit of sliding around and straightening out to form the legs here and the grill becomes the feet. Sides at back fold up Armada Red Alert style - the jeep is reminiscent of him - to form 2 large shoulder pads and the arms swing round the back. Nice solid robot mode. Again hands are able to hold the std size peg, same size spark as the basics and you can attach an energon chip to it. No hand weapons as such.. we'll come back to Ironhide.....
And now the moment we've been waiting for - POWERLINX !
The Powerlinx clip is a series of teeth with 180 degree turn symmetry - therefore one will complement another the other way up, and lock together. All the Powerlinx Autobots are marked with a gold Pentagon - similar to the Minicon symbol with an Autobot symbol within. Any Powerlinx toy can become both a top or bottom half of a combined robot - similar to multiforce. So Jetfire can become a body and be mounted on Ironhide as legs, and Ironhide as a body can be mounted on Jetfire as legs. The basic gist is each robot's legs are the limbs in either mode - there's a slight tweak to both to get them to form the Powerlinx robot legs, and a more major tweak to form the arms. In Ironhide's case the fold down the front of the car you expected as his TF forms the legs with the grill supporting the knees, in Jetfire's a lock holds the foot origami together. In the case of becoming the arms the individual robot splits at the waist and some detail on the legs becomes the hands. The small robot arms swing round the back (as does the head if you're making legs) and the Powerlinx clip is exposed with a little body twiddling. Push the 2 halves together and the clips recess into each other's body, and you have 2 big TFs. Both are nice robots. As a bonus Ironhide can be connected the wrong way round (the resulting legs look like SixShot's) and his weapons array can be used as a chest cannon ala RID Magnus :-)
This is a great toy, and the resulting combined toys are good, steady and stable. Highly recommended, and deserve to sell by the shed load.
Ironhide was available - without his electronics - in Japan as Superlink toy SC-04 Roadbuster and also in SS-02 Roadbuster & Sky Fire.
Energon Ironhide was available in Japan as Superlink toy SC-24 Roadbuster Wild. This toy had no electronics but did have an additional Energon Axe & Star from Strongarm coloured in an orange/red