Huffer is a bright orange flat nosed truck cab with black windows and a pair of chromed silver exhaust pipes which has a forked end at the top. He feels like he's less of a super deformed toy than the other Minibots but if you look at him maybe the truck's flatbed could be a little longer.
TF: pull the flatbed back to extend it into the legs. Stand with the underside facing you. Swing the cab up & forward to reveal the robot's head. Pull the exhaust pipes out to the sides and rotate forward to become the arms.
Huffer's appearance in robot mode differs from his more familiar cartoon/comic model significantly: The head isn't a face, it's a face plate with visored eyes. I've seen in at least one place where the surround for the head is portrayed as being round - on the toy it's square. I think this later feature makes much more sense as there's no rounded parts on Huffer at all for this to have come from. The revealed face, on the inside of the cab, plus the body and the upper legs are moulded in a dark blue colour. The arms are formed from the exhaust pipes with the odd ends becoming the hands.
I like Huffer. Good fun toy.
Huffer was available in Japan as Transformers toy 14 Drag. He doesn't have a Keychain release like Bumblebee, Cliffjumper, Brawn & Windcharger but does appear in Transformers Collection 12's Minibot set.
Huffer's had not a lot of love over the years at having new versions released. Both 1987's Throttlebot Wideload and 1989's Powertrain are obviously homages to Huffer - most of the Throttlebots seem to echo one of the 1984 Minibots, and 2005's Cybertron Armorhide *should* have had been repainted and mass released as Huffer but instead became Botcon 2007 Huffer. The first mass released Transformers toy released with Huffer's name is the 2010 Power Core Combiner.
It's when we get transforming that things get interesting. Pull the back of the flatbed back to form the legs as before but this time stand with the front of the toy facing forward. Fold the cab back to reveal a new head sitting on top of the robot's chest. Pull the exhaust pipes out to the sides to become the arms.
Yup, he's Huffer backwards ! The new head is smaller with a red visored face. The exhaust pipes form arms that are lower down than Huffer's - it'd almost as if the joint that connects it to the front wheel is a short upper arm and the pipes are the lower arms moulded at a fixed right angle.
Clever repaint and remould.
Pipes is Japanese toy C-60. He was re-released in 2008's Encore #10 Minibot set. This set also contains:
Re-Issue Bumblebee a re-mould of Original Bumblebee
Tailgate a repaint of Windcharger
Swerve a repaint of Gears
Outback a repaint of Brawn
Bug Bite
a Destron repaint of Transformers Collection Bumblebee which is a re-mould of the Original Bumblebee.
Pathfinder
a Cybertron repaint of Cosmos
Small Foot
a Cybertron repaint of Gears
Bad Boy
a Destron repaint of Powerglide
Treads
a Destron repaint of Warpath
Road Ranger swaps Huffer's orange for black, blue for orange and the black of the windows for red.
It's a nice repaint whose name, like the other toys in the set, is taken from one of the original Bandai Gobot toys.
I they'd made the blue of Huffer's body grey or purple he's have made quite a nice Destron/Nemesis Prime repaint of Huffee.