Phil's
Armada Dune Runner & Ironhide,
Micron Legend Spike & Crunch
and
Cybertron Kobushi
Review


Dune Runner

Dune Runner is a Dune Buggy with a gun mounted on the back. He's moulded in olive green with a grey roll cage & gun and green painted seats. The only black on this toy is the wheels. His roll cage lifts up and opens, and the gun can be rotated right the way round. His minicon socket is located on a block to the rear of the car.

You can roll him along a flat surface and the gun moves from side to side if the gun is facing forward - odd things happen if the gun points off to the side. Alternately clip him to the underside of Armada Cyclonus and Cyclonus' rotor spinning action powers the gun moving gimmick.

TF: Fold the front of the car down to form the legs, Spin the block round to show the face. Raise the arms up on the rear wheel axles.

Tiny robot has neck, shoulder, hip and knee joints. I've owned much less articulated larger toys.

In addition to being packed with the rest of the Adventure team Dune Runner also appears in the TRU Bonus Minicon packs with either Powerlinx Cyclonus with Crumplezone or Powerlinx Hot Shot with Jolt. These were a Black Friday exclusive to TRU in 2003. The entire Adventure team and the Sea team are then packaged together in Energon as a Minicon six pack.

In Japan Dune Runner is known as Spike and appears with the rest of the Adventure team in MM-16 and also with Super Mode Grapple in giftset MS-07

My original Dune Runner review reads: "More geared gimmicks here, and some nicely hidden ports.

Here's the star of this set. Here the gun moves from side to side as it roles. Turret rotates, though the gimmick only really works when the turret is facing forward. Flip the roll cage up at the start of the tf, and it's standard MM stuff from there, except that by rotating the head round you hide the minicon port. Hips, Knees and Shoulders here. Like him a lot. "


Ironhide

Ironhide comes packed with a repaint of Beast Wars Transmetal Terrorsaur with minor remoulds to add in some minicon posts. Ironhide is moulded in an orangey brown, with dark brown gun & rollcage and black painted seats. He still has his gear gimmick intact (as he does in all subsequent releases). Unlike Airazor & Predacon's Street Speed Team packs ins this doesn't fall doesn't fall apart !

A nice addition to the Terrorsaur, though perhaps one of the combining teams would have been better to encourage people to buy all the beasts - collect them all and build 2 extra weapons.


Unreleased Armada Dune Runner

See also Remy's Act 232

Like the other two Wave 3 Minicon Teams (Street Speed and Space) there is an unreleased Armada version of the Adventure team. The same base colours of grey and black are used but the main part of Dune Runners's vehicle mode now becomes blue, with some olive paint covering the robot arms and green painted seats. It's possible at this point the arms have been moved from one parts tree to another - see bellow. Looks nice.


Dimension-X Spike

During Micron Legend limited edition repaints of the Minicon teams were released under the Dimension-X label but within the Micron Legend numbering system. The Dimension-X Adventure Team are numbered MM-19 For this version grey becomes black and black remains black. In addition the arms are now black and will remain the same colour as the wheels for all further releases of this toy. The body of Spike is moulded in silver and looks .... odd. It's almost as if it's unfinished metal. A dark green military version may be a better choice !

Micron Booster V1 Crunch

Crunch is toy number 10 in Micron Booster V1. The Adventure Team repaints in this set swap white for grey and keep the black. Crunch's body becomes orange on this release with blue painted seats.

Cybertron Kobushi

Wave 2 of the Cybertron Minicons pairs together both gear gimmick teams. The Adventure team swap black for grey, and grey for hideous neon green. They all have silver Decepticon symbols mounted on top of them.

Kobushi is packed with an Autobot Minicon Landslide (Buzzsaw from Destruction). Both Adventure and Destruction teams are referred to as Exploration Team on their members Bio sheets - I'll call them Decepticon Exploration team ( for the Adventure team repaints) and Autobot Exploration Team (for the Destruction team repaints). Kobushi in Japanese means either Fist or Old Warrior according to the brief research I've made.

I can't make my mind up which side of the taste divide Kobushi's Purple and Neon green colour scheme falls on - yes it's Cybertron Dirtboss' colours again. The purple looks good but the green.....awful.


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