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Transformers Road Rage Manufacturer: Takara (Limited Release) Made for: E-Hobby Japan Price: 85 Euros (Road Rage & Crosscut) Packaging: Road Rage comes in a generic Autobot colored box that ressembles the vintage early Transformers boxes. The box has a battle scene on the back. No box art on the box; the art for Road Rage comes on a trading card that is visible in the box together with the toy. Unpackaging the toy is very easy as there are only a few pieces of tape to cut. Includes: - Road Rage figure - gun - 2 missile launchers - backpack - 4 missiles on a sprue - instruction sheet - sticker sheet - trading card with art and techspecs Stickers: The stickers are of decent quality, but a bit thick. Also, Takara made a few mistakes in the stickering instructions. Stickers 6 and 7 need to be swapped, sticker 10 goes on the other side of the backpack (refer to pictures of toy on the instructions and the trading card). Furthermore, the glue could be better, as the stickers that go on the missile launchers won't stay put unless they have pressure applied to them for about 5 minutes. The toy: Road Rage is a recolor of the Tracks mold in its original pre-Transformers red Diaclone color. She is supposed to be female. I never had a Tracks when I was a kid, so this toy is entirely new for me. The first thing that disappointed me was the lack of die-cast contents: only part of the legs is _meta_l. Most Transformers from this generation have a lot more die-cast _meta_l. The second disappointment was the red plastic used: it feels a bit cheap. Otherwise, I think I am much happier with this toy than I would be with a Tracks; this is a limited edition limited to 1500 pieces after all. Onto the rest of the review. Vehicle Mode: Road Rage's vehicle mode is a red Chevrolet Corvette Stingray. The inside of the car looks awfully empty, with quite a lack of detail. Other toys from this generation had more detail. Even the seat look awfully plain. The rear window is not transparent like the windscreen and side windows, it is just painted in a purplish brown color. There a big hole in the rear hood, on the place where the backpack attaches. All in all, I am slightly disappointed by the lack of detail in this mode. Furthermore, the robot mode arms are visible from the sides. Without stickers applied the car mode looks awfully plain, except for the rubsign on the back. The stickers add an Autobot symbol to the roof and flames with an Autobot symbol to the front hood. Another disappointment is the fact that the access hatch on the roof (originally for the Diaclone pilot) cannot fully open. Road Rage has rubber tires and chromed rims. Her bodywork is mostly red in vehicle mode. The red on the driver's compartment is a slightly different shade of red than the rest of the car. Vehicle mode is about 11.5 cm long, for a width of 5 cm and a height of 3 cm. Transformation to Flight Mode: Rotate down the arms and wings. Fold them out, and fold the arms back to the front. Plug the peg of the gun into the hole in the bottom of the car. Attach the missile launchers to the backpack, and attach the backpack to the rear of the car. Flight Mode: One of the fun things about this toy is that it has a flight mode. Of course, this is just the vehicle mode with the robot arms flipped out and two wings extended and the weapons attached, but still...it's a third mode. Anyway, in this mode Road Rage features two spring-loaded missile launchers that launch their little missiles decently far: at least 50 cm. She also features a bottom-mounted gun. This has the inconvenience that she cannot stands horizontally in this mode; she tips over to one side. Her color scheme is almost the same as in vehicle mode: mostly red. The wings and missile launchers are purple, the upper arms are white, and the lower arms, the backpack and the gun are black. She still measures 11.5 cm long in this mode, but her width, or should I say, wingspan, is now 12.5 cm. Her height also went up, to about 4.5 cm. Transformation to Robot Mode: Remove the gun. Pull out the front of the car to form the legs. Flip down the feet. Rotate the waist 180 degrees. Slide out the hands, and fold back the back of the car. Slide the gun over one of the hands. Ready. Robot Mode: The first thing that springs to the eye in this mode is Road Rage's face. Although it is the same as Tracks' toy face, it doesn't ressemble the face Tracks had in both cartoon and comic. There he had a mouth. The toy has a face plate. Thus effectively ending the 'Tracks is gay'-controversy. Now Road Rage is female, and...er, scratch that. Where was I? Oh, yes, I was reviewing Road Rage, who is a female character sharing the Tracks toy mold. Don't try to contaminate my mind with filthy things. Anyway, Road Rage, who shares Tracks' mold, has got, just like the Tracks toy, a different face than Tracks' animation model. The face looks a bit underdetailed, just like the rest of the toy. The gun doesn't peg into the hand, but rather slides over it. Part of the lower legs are made from unpainted die-cast _meta_l; the only _meta_l parts on the toy besides the various screws and axles. The robot mode is a mix of purple, black, white and red parts. The face is painted silver. Stcikers add a lot of detail and also hide some screw holes. The rear hood, onto which the backpack is plugged, tends to flip back down. Articulation is quite limited, with a rotating waist, moveable elbows, and moveable shoulders and wings (but only sideways). The feet can also move, but Road Rage will fall over if they are put in another pose. The missile launchers can also be moved. In total, the toy has 7 points of useful articulation, two mobile pegged-on missile launchers, and 4 other unintended points of articulation (feet, shoulders). It cannot assume a lot of poses. Overall, the robot mode looks boring. Conclusion: Road Rage can only be bought in conjunction with Crosscut. The Tracks mold, which she uses, is not that good, in my opinion. Still, it's a nice toy, and the flight mode is pretty cool. Mildly recommended
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