Discharge is the Fire Engine in this set, painted a traditional red. How Hasbro & Takara's designers thought they could away with blue and black fire engines I don't know ! Mounted on top of the fire engine is a ladder/water cannon that turns.
Discharge has a traditional Micromaster car TF with the additional caveat that first the ladder should be pointing forward. Fold the front of the fire engine over this, then fold the back of the fire truck down to become his legs. Stand him up and raise the sides of the truck at his shoulders to become his arms.
The best bit about Discharge is the head sculpt - slightly obscured on the original release by plastering blue paint on the face. He has a fireman's helmet and breathing apparatus. How cool is that ? His exposed head, body and upper legs are in white like the ladder. Unfortunately he has some proportion problems. His lower legs are a short & deep block - the could do with being a good 1cm higher. His arms are both formed from large panels so when you raise them up you can see they're twice the height of traditional Micromaster arms with all the extra mounted on top. He does, of course, have traditional Micromaster articulation of bending knees & hips that are joined together and independently turning shoulders.
Discharge also forms one of Sixturbo's legs - plug a foot into the 5mm peg hole on the back of the vehicle mode - Discharge is usually the left leg so use the left foot. The small peghole under the front of Discharge then pegs onto the bottom of the waist/upper legs piece. Discharge can also be used as the right leg without any additional transformantion, but he's capable of being an arm too: from vehicle mode fold the back down 90 degrees. Peg the back of the vehicle onto the 5mm shoulder peg then put the hand onto the small peg hole at the front of the vehicle. This means however that Neo-Wheel will have to be used as a leg which doesn't work too well.... or you'll need a second Discharge.
Discharge was available in 1992 in Japan in the Operation Combination TF-03: Sixturbo giftset.
The toy is very similar to the original with just some minor paint changes - the paint design on the vehicle is altered to include an Autobot symbol on the side and the face on the new version is silver instead of blue which is a big improvement.
"Red Alert" was sold as a KB Toys exclusive in the USA and was available in Toys R Us in the UK. This release of the toy has the same left foot accessory as the Micromaster collection version.