Transformers: Legacy United Rescuebots Chase is Something that Exists

 

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.”

Transformers: Legacy Evolution Autobot Medix is Something That Exists

Bloody hell, another white retool article got pushed back. Who'd have thunk it? Hang on, I've been sitting on this for at least four months... OK, lets call it a bonus article. Here we go folks!

The 2016 Playskool Heroes RescueBots Medix the Doc-Bot toy

 

OK, so Medix is a bit of an odd duck. He might be called a canon immigrant or a transplanted character, in that he's a G1 version of a transformer from a different continuity. Medix hails from the RescueBots sub-brand, which is not something I'm knowledgeable of, but can be summarised as "Transformers for the very young". This toy is however not the Medix; Legacy is/w not getting the actual RescueBots characters until 2024 with United, still in the future at time of writing. Rather, this is the version of Medix you could make at a Botcon 2016 custom class from the Combiner Wars First Aid mould, being one of several colour scheme variants availible. Incidentally, I was there, I made a Ratchet and got paint on the floor. Anyways, this places Medix as part of a wider Legacy trend of having exclusives referencing other, often rather obscure, exclusives, but hey, at least they aren't doing dumb shit like making popular characters hard to find. Earthrise, I'm looking at you. So, Medix is, like so many of the toys I've written about, a blank slate whose conceptual history and obscura of the toys is more interesting than the actual character. So, why did I get this then? And not discounted either? Well...

There is something so delightfully transgressive about taking a character whom is not merely a healer by definition but a healer in a show for the preschool audience, and then giving him enough weaponry to satisfy an Ork. And the daft thing is that it didn't have to be that way. What seems to have happened here is that they wanted to have a lightbar for the vehicle mode, which only makes sense, but instead of making a new one, they went to the Elita-1/Minerva mould and decided to throw in the guns from that as well. Perhaps the particulars of the accessories mould itself prevented them from just using the light bar, who knows? As a result Medix is toting a total of 4 handguns and two shoulder cannons. This guy officially a Protectobot, but I wonder if he tried out for the Wreckers only to be turned down because they thought he was too keen. 

 

This frankly excessive amount of dakka can be stored in the vehicle mode, although this is where the eccentricities of the toy begin to be felt. It's primarily based on Crankcase, a toy I haven't got around to handling yet, whom was a "reshell" retool of the Skids mould. This changed the almode extensively, and introduced a new play feature in the removable grill/gun while shifting round the 5mm ports a bit. As such, the vehicle form is even more boxy and has been equipped for off-road work. That's a good fit for a paramedic or first responder vehicle. The colours and decals look good too, if a bit messy around the spare wheel. Unfortunately, the use of the battlemask style head from the other version of the mould leaves an unslightly gap and sunken area on the hood. It doesn't help that the front wheels are have that unfortunate clip design where the plastic colours don't match, and things generally don't seem fit together as well as I would like. It rolls, fulfils the visual brief well, and you can do silly things like peg multiple guns into the light bar at once. Ultimately though, it's an altmode that works best from a distance, like some otherwise attractive individual whom had to put on a lot of concealer this morning.

The robot mode does a bit better. Generally speaking, a Legacy mould with a nice paint job and a lot of guns makes for a good time. From a design perspective though, it's interesting where you can see the push and pull of retooling. So, the original version of this mould sought to replicate the forearm guns of the original Skids toy, while adding a minor combination feature for the accessories. The ports remain for this, but only one of the accessories, a pistol that looks awkward by itself. What Crankcase added in its place was a removable chestplate affair, with the frontend of the car coming off to become a gun. This reveals a chest design closer to his 80's toy, while some regrettably small shoulder cannons lurk in the back kibble. As gimmicks go, it's a bit Top Gear, you know, ambitious, but rubbish. I'm not a huge fan of the modern habit of designers to have panels come off as alleged accessories, although I will give it credit for not being a shield. On the subject of accessories, the 5mm ports have been remixed a bit. The somewhat bulkier upper arms on the outside, which is more useful, if moving the ports on the lower legs to the calf area. This is an inversion of the original, and I dunno, feels like a two steps forward, one step back situation. To make a further comparison with the original, there's the matter of the backpack. The retooling results in a larger backpack, but to facilitate the whole triggercon tribute it locks in two places, so between that and the grill gun, you've got options for the visuals. So you got a nice chunky robot with some nice paintwork and lots of guns, although the colour choices do highlight hollowness and such in the mould.

My point? Only that Medix is something that exists. And while a notable distance from being bad, and definately on the good side of average, this is more a curiosity than a must-have.