Phil's
Armada Backtrack & Sideburn,
Micron Legend Auto & Redline,
Cybertron Backtrack,
Galaxy Force Sullow
and
Micron Booster Dice
Review


Backtrack

Original Street Speed team review: "Street Speed: Backtrack's Green, Spiral's Blue and Oval's the orangey one.

Backtrack: Pull out the legs at the front and pull his feet out. Arms pull out the side and then slide upwards. If you can do this without using a tool or loosing an arm or forearm you have my admiration ! Back folds down to create the chest and swing round at the waist.

All 3 have joints at the hips, knees and shoulder, Spiral and Backtrack have ball joints there and waists too. There are elbows but they only bend about 10 degrees and the fore arms fall off at will ! But they all look OK as cars and seem quite stable as robots so..... All 3 have a powering socket somewhere underneath them in car mode.

They are the first set of Minicons I've got that don't do anything apart from be small robots !"

Backtrack - like the rest of the Street Speed Team - is a car. In his initial release he was green with a grey underside. He has no spoiler or rear window.

If you turn the car over there's a Minicon socket at the back and in the middle. This can be used to mount the car on a larger robot and (with some imagination) you can pretend it's body armour or a power pack.

TF: Pull forward the legs from the front of the car, separate them, pull the feet forward from the front and bend up. Slide the sides of the car out to form the arms and then pull back to lock them in place. You're probably best turning the car over and manipulating the pins through the slot with the end of a small screwdriver or similar. Fold the arms down and fold the boot down to reveal the robot's head. Turn legs round at waist.

Resulting robot is very articulated for a minicon - bending elbows, knee and ankles plus ball jointed hips and shoulders. Because the toy is so small there's low tolerance on all the joints and it can come to bits very easily - especially the elbow joints The robot maintains the blue of the vehicle mode and adds the grey into the body that the rest of the team have.

OK but small car (especially for a Minicon). Flimsy robot.

Backtrack was available with the rest of the Street Speed Team as the Micron team numbered MM-06 where he was known as Auto. This team was also packed in giftset MS-05 with Silverstreak (Blurr). The Street Speed Team are the only Minicon team not to have a Dimension-X release in Japan (The Dimension-X Street Action team is packed with Final Battle Prime & Overload)


Sideburn

Sideburn is a red repaint of Backtrack from the Street Speed Team. He comes packed with Armada Predacon & Skid-Z - a repaint of Spiral. The third member of the team, Nightscream (Oval), comes with Armada Airazor.

Nice set of colours on this, red always suits a robot.


Unreleased Armada Backtrack

According to the Transformers Wiki there's an unreleased A grey & white redeco of Spiral was planned to be released as part of a "refresh" version of the Street Speed Team in Armada. The coloration of the Team was a "one-off" of the Takara Overdrive Edition version, with each toy's main colour shifted over to another one.

Redline

Redline is a member of the Super Stunt Team which were all available packed with Micron Legend DVD volume 1 - the other twelve volumes each had one Minicon pack not a whole team. He's made with red car bodywork and an orange robot body - this colour is common to the whole team.

Apart from the robot parts this is very similar to Armada Sideburn.


Overdrive Edition Auto

The Street Speed Team Overdrive Edition were given away at Street Speed Team Overdrive Edition World Hobby Fair 2003 and to Itoyokado stores in Japan in 2003.

Auto has back car bodywork & white robot body (common to the whole team)


Override (Unreleased Energon Backtrack)

See also Transformer Wiki

The original intention was that Energon Ultra Magnus would be released with a set of Street Speed team repaints. According the Transformers Wiki this version of Oval would be Clocker. Pictures show a yellow car body with orange windows. I've not been able to find any pictures of his robot mode so I'm unable to say what colour the body parts would be.


Cybertron Backtrack

Cybertron Street Speed Team Spiral was originally released as Sullow in the Galaxy Force Auto Micron team. My original review of the Auto Micron Team reads: "All are in new colours as you can see above and all have lots of detailing changed on them. But - like the Energon Sabre last year - they are essentially the same toys, and seem so far to suffer from some of the same problems - though I've only pulled one limb off so far. The bubble that holds them onto the card has to be the thinnest ever ! You'll get cos you want more Minicons."

All three Minicons in this set have major moulding changes in the surface detail of their car bodies but maintain the same basic shape, TF and robot mode. In particular Backtrack gains what looks like a police lightbar on his roof - it's not painted and the colours of the toy don't match that of a police car

The car body in this case is moulded in yellow while the robot body and upper legs continue to be grey.


Micron Booster Dice

Cybertron Spiral is then recoloured in Micron Booster V3 as Jack. The original Micron Booster V3 review says "Dice (purple) is a repaint of Sullow (yellow) who is a remould of Backtrack (green) who was used to make Sideburn (red) who appeared with Predacon in Armada

Lovely purple here, looks great in both modes

All 3 of these together make up probably the best set of these so far ! All 3 are very realistically painted, you can quite easily believe you could see all 3 as real vehicles"


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