Chase’s character model, sourced from the wiki
As I mentioned during my Medix write-up, Rescuebots is something I'm aware of but not into or knowledgeable of. It looks perfectly fine for actual children, and has its own identity, but I'm not in its target audience. And that's perfectly fine. Half of the insufferable things about Transformers comes from Hasbro thinking it has to keep people my age happy. To summarise my limited grasp of this matter: Rescuebots takes place in the so-called Aligned continuity, if shuffled into a corner, where a team of novice 'bots work in the emergency services. Chase is the policeman of the group, and is very much a letter of the law type that needed to read some Terry Pratchett. He' s not a bad lad, but a less idealised work would have him drifting into IDW Prowl territory. ACAB is a real thing, and I could go on a lengthy tangent here about how police are tools of the establishment, and how lionizing them like Rescuebots does is propaganda. Then again, if a little kid is lost, I can imagine worse outcomes then them going to the boys in blue for help, so Chase isn't bad to have in a kids show. Waffling aside, is Chase any good? Well, better than I thought he'd be.
Let's start out with the car mode, a police interceptor or muscle car. Given that it's a fairly aggressive type of vehicle, rather than a mundane patrol car, this gave me thought that this toy was a Red Alert or pretool situation. More on that later, but this is actually very faithful to Chase's altmode, just in a different art style. Of note here is the use of translucent plastic in four different shades, picking out sirens, headlights, floodlights, claw weapon, and windows. Translucent plastic is something I'm habitually suspicious of, but it is being used very effectively here, answering most detail requirements. It's a very attractive car overall, but the paint budget clearly ran out before the back-end was finished. There the transformation seams are most obvious, and this area has been cast in white to complete the illusion, but they didn't pick out the tail-lights or exhausts. Hubcaps too, but let's be honest here, a municipal police force probably would skip that detail as well. Slightly imperfect visually then, but nowt obnoxious for a modern deluxe, like exposed clip wheels. Play value isn't lacking either, as while the claw is unavoidably obvious, it does split into 3, allowing for a modular thing with the 5mm ports and floodlights. This toy has five accessories, with options for where you want them to go, and the floodlights merge seamlessly into the car. That’s just good design.
The robot form meanwhile looks the part, but has a few unusual flaws that seem to result from the prioritising of certain key aspects from the animation model. I should stress that Rescuebots never tried to be anything but cartoony in an under-5s way, with all the toys being big and simple. Show accuracy, or indeed toy accuracy, was not a major concern, but having recognisable characters was. I don't think anyone really would have expected total fidelity to the animation with this toy, it's even more obviously self-defeating than with G1, but they absolutely had to nail Chase's vibe, lest this be immediately dismissed as a headswap. And, yes, they did do that for the robot mode, the transformation works very much to facilitate his character. They put in moving headlights so they could end up as boot buckles, for heavens sake. The chest is the car roof too, no faux parts or cheating here, the conversion hitting the same broad strokes as the original, but obviously much more complex. Where things go a bit wrong is in the chest and backpack area. He's got a lot of hollowness in the torso, and two struts of car that stick out, interfering with the shoulders a bit from the back. This feels like another area where the budget ran out, as another joint somewhere could have helped tidy that up, but this entire arrangement seems to exist just so the arms can be the rear flanks of the car form. That's real commitment to the bit. While that is a flaw, and possibly a deal breaker, it's more odd than anything. Like how the wrists tilt inwards rather than swivel, and how the toes angle outwards rather than inwards. Otherwise we have a Legacy standard robot mode with a note perfect head, great colours and great accessories too. It's a different art style, so he's not as barrel-chested as the animation, but is unmistakably Chase. And I do love how his main weapon is a grabby claw, rather than a gun. It suggests that he’s a nicer sort of policeman, as opposed to a handcannon.
To cut to chase, if you'll excuse the pun, I was pleasently surprised with this toy. I was expecting a slightly phoned-in carformer designed for repaint potential, and Chase isn't that. Sure, there's plenty of characters you could make this into, Prime Cliffjumper as a leak would confirm prior to me posting this, but the designers seem to have taken this job extremely seriously. It's not perfect, but it's flaws are magnified by the contrasting strengths, noticeable mainly for all the other things that went right. This is not merely something that exists; it is something I’m glad exists.
“A bit much?”
“A bit much.”
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