Bot Reviews: Transformers: Legacy United Deluxe Star Raider Road Pig

Regardless of the rising and falling fortunes of modern Transformers, one thing that I love about where we are today is how many d-list nobody characters get to have modern updates, like Road Pig here.

Originally released in the final year of Generation 2, the early 90s revival of Transformers, Road Pig was a Laser Cycle, a motorcycle-former with a light-up weapon as his gimmick. He had a bio note that described him as a dimwitted, boisterously rude bully with no friends, who was only really good for harassing the enemy, and when it comes to fictional appearances, he has that common d-lister resume of “cameos in random comics and manga,” and nothing more. 

So, why do I care about Road Pig? Because the original was one of the few Generation 2 toys I owned, back in 1995. I specifically remember ignoring his bio note, and deciding that he was Laser Optimus Prime’s long-lost brother turned to evil, for no reason other than the fact that they both had mouthplates. My original copy’s long since been broken and lost, but I got a chance to look at the tooling again when it was repainted in the 2000s as Robot Masters Sideways, reviewed here. As for this new one, it pulls the same trick as the Legacy update of his Autobot counterpart, Road Rocket, reviewed here, in that he’s a retool of another motorcycle-bot that I never got a chance to pick up: The Junkion Crashbar, one of the many new members of the tribe introduced in the Legacy toyline.

So, we’ve hit the double-whammy of character I specifically like, and tooling I’ve never owned. How can I resist? By the way, this guy’s another Wal-Mart exclusive, a part of the new “Star Raiders” subline. In theory, the whole thing’s themed around a group of pirates called the Star Seekers, with everyone in the line being members of the crew, but in practice, it’s mostly an excuse for them to make a toyline of unrelated randos like this guy. I’m certainly not complaining. I’m also not complaining about his availability, which, unlike some previous Wal-Mart exclusives, is actually pretty good. As of this writing, I saw multiple copies him on Wal-Mart shelves yesterday! Let’s see if he’s worth you, dear reader, picking one up. 

Robot Mode

So, an interesting thing about this figure is that out of the box, his silhouette’s pretty different from the original Road Pig, but you can swap his accessories around if you want, to make him a bit more accurate to the original’s shape (not that the instructions tell you to). 

Out of the box, he’s kind of a bottom-heavy bot, with big shins full of motorcycle wheels, and short little thighs. His upper torso, meanwhile, feels like it’s made entirely of rectangular boxes, and feels a bit scrawny. The only bit that isn’t a box is the three orbs on his chest, which are sculpted to resemble the original Road Pig’s motorcycle-front chest. It’s funny, because Crashbar also had this, meaning they’d planned for this retool from day one, yet it feels like kind of a half-hearted homage, with the chest and head doing most of the work.

It’s a real nice headsculpt, though, capturing the helmet, mouthplate and triangular eyes of the original really well. He and Road Rocket both had these oddly polygonal heads, that looked to me like early 3D video game graphics, and that whole look’s preserved here. 

I think one reason he seems kind of scrawny is that he could have used more of a backpack, or parts on his arms to bulk him up. As it stands, he’s got two transparent pink exhaust pipes poking upwards (which are sculpted after the original’s singular laser cannon), which feels a bit thin. However, it’s entirely possible to reconfigure him to look a bit more G2 accurate, which I’ll get into when I cover his accessories and features, since it’s all about moving those around.

The colors, meanwhile, are a more successful homage to the original, in addition to just looking good on their own merits. Road Pig’s a striking combo of black, red and gold, really evocative of a specific era of robot toys in my mind, after the bright, loud excesses of the early 90’s had started to fade. There’s also some silver accents, and those translucent pink weapons, but that’s about it. It’s pretty simple and clean, and it works very well on this body. It’s also pretty close to the layout on the original, and the places where it differs (red thighs instead of black) are to make the colors more balanced, so I appreciate it. 

Build quality’s a mixed bag here, thanks to one of his gimmicks. He’s mostly a solid, stable figure, with nice big feet to keep him standing, but he does have one weak point: His lower legs detach from his body, along his thigh swivels, a remnant from when he was a Junkion. The thing is, the connection’s a little bit on the loose side. He’s not in danger of falling apart, but it’s a little too easy to take his legs off, especially when transforming him. I might give them a layer of glue or floor polish.

Meanwhile, his articulation’s pretty good for a deluxe, hitting all the necessary notes, including wrists and ankles. Speaking of ankles, there’s a funny bit of asymmetry with them: His left ankle tilt has way more range than his right, due to the sculpting. I don’t know why that is, but it’s more interesting than a problem. 

Now, for his accessories and features, therein lies the key to additional G2 accuracy. So, first, he’s got a pair of square, boxy laser pistol-type weapons, cast in black, but painted gold. They’re not based on anything from the original toy, but he looks good dual-wielding them, and there’s an unusually high amount of 5-millimeter pegs on each of them (three apiece!), so they’re very friendly to him using them in all kinds of different ways, including giving him the original figure’s arm cannon. See, both of those exhaust pipes on his back are removable, too, and they each have three more 5-millimeter pegs on the end, so you can plug them into the ends of each gun, plug the gun onto his forearm, and make him look a little more like his old self. Of course, his old self only had one arm cannon, so I tend to try and stash the other set on his back, where a wheel went on the original.

Speaking of wheels, the one on his right leg can pop out, via moving the ligature it’s on outwards in either direction. And once it’s in hand, it’s got a nifty gimmick, the same one I last saw on Legacy Chromia…

You can unfurl three spikes on it at once through a geared motion, turning it into a big Ninja Star. It’s a neat, stim-y gimmick, and the fact that the wheel is larger than Chromia’s means the geared motion actually works more solidly, and isn’t prone to jamming or scraping. He can’t really hold it by the blade like Chromia, but the 5-millimeter peg on one end of it means he can hold it by that, or you can mount it elsewhere on him. I’m fond of putting it on his left leg, because, again, it mimics the silhouette of the G2 original

So, there’s a lot of plausible weapon combos you can do with this guy, between his five accessories, and the 13 different weapon ports across his body. Funny enough, his asymmetrical legs mean his right thigh has two ports, and his left has none. He’s also got a couple in an unusual place, on either side of his abdomen, and ports on both the inside and outside of his forearms. 

As mentioned before, the other hypothetical feature is that he’s supposed to be able to come apart, like the Weaponizers, Modulators, and Fossilizers of previous toylines, and serve as a set of weapons for larger figures.

In practice, though, that’s not really the case? Like I said earlier, his legs pop off, and so do his arms, and that’s basically it.

The instructions also tell you to take his head out of his balljoint, which is patently ludicrous, especially considering it’s partially translucent plastic. I guess you can give his arms and legs to someone else, but they don’t really resemble weapons, so I’m not super sure what the idea is here, besides imitating the way the Junkions can come apart and recombine. To be fair, official Hasbro social media has suggested making a big combiner out of the junkions, but on his own, there’s not much to this gimmick, aside from loose legs.

Oh, and they went out of their way to make the entire back of his head transparent plastic, to facilitate a lightpiping gimmick, and then painted his face so well that it doesn’t work. I wonder why this is such a common thing with modern lightpiped figures.

Transformation

An upshot of the Weaponizer aspect of Road Pig being so mild is that you can transform him without needing to take him apart and re-assemble him, like all the other -Izers I’ve handled. On the other hand, because of how loose his pop-off legs are, I usually end up detaching them anyway, transforming them separately, and pegging them back in. While this guy’s pretty different in transformation from Legacy Chromia, he’s got the same basic idea of turning himself sideways. The big difference here is that you also flip the entire bot upside down. It’s an easy enough transformation that I was able to figure it out off of muscle memory after one or two goes, but it’s not without its wrinkles. Plugging the very front of the motorcycle into his folded-up arms can be a bit frustrating, since the arms don’t really have a set resting place, and there’s basically three different spots, all a millimeter apart from each other, that each of the cycle front’s two pegs could go into. You want the middle ones, otherwise the whole thing won’t rest evenly.

That, and I’m honestly not sure how to get his folded-away head back out for robot mode without a prying tool. 

Motorcycle Mode:

So, technically, you don’t need his accessories to complete this motorcycle mode, but like robot mode, he looks a bit threadbare without them, so you’ll want to add his blasters to the rear sides of the vehicle to form saddle bags, and his two transparent exhaust pipe to form….exhaust pipes.

Do so, and you end up with a mean-looking high-tech hog.

Granted, it doesn’t look very much like the original motorcycle mode did (and not just because he only had one exhaust pipe), but neither did Road Rocket, it’s fine.

I’m mostly interested observing how the front end of it’s completely different, but his robot mode chest is still sculpted like it’s composed out of the original front end. Speaking of the front end, I’ve been spoiled by Chromia, Road Rocket and Studio Series 86 Wreck-Gar, since while he has handlebars, he doesn’t have little sculpted-in speedometers. A positive of this new design, meanwhile, is the way his weapons turn into turbo-powered jets at the back of him. 

For colors, we’re still in the same slick black/red/gold/silver zone, but with more of the red hidden.

Meanwhile, a bunch of interesting tampos are now more prominent. He’s got “Transformers (™)” in gold on his left side, like the original did, since I guess they didn’t care about disguise at this point.

It does bug me that it’s a different font, though. And the trademark would bug me, but I think it’s funny.

What’s also funny is how they tried to have their cake and eat it, too, with the faction symbols. There’s a gold G2 Decepticon symbol on the opposite side, while there’s also a teeny tiny silver Star Seekers logo on the front of the hood. Also, for no specific reason, I find the gold-painted rims on the front wheel to be quite slick. 

For features, a cool thing about this bike is that while it doesn’t have a kickstand, the exhaust pipes act as a stand, and keep the bike supported. I do find myself missing the fact that the front wheel can’t turn with the handlebars, but the transformation prevents that, and it’s a rare thing on cycle-bots anyway. And the wheels roll nicely, too! Meanwhile, his -Izer functionality is still present.

You’d think this would be less relevant in this mode, but the instructions specifically tell you to remove the front and rear of the motorcycle, and create a combined vehicle mode with another Star Raider, Lockdown. I don’t have him, so this doesn’t mean much to me, but that’s fine, since he holds together way better in this mode, with all the extra tabs and connections. 

And speaking of -Izers, he’s got plenty of room for arming up, with nine visible ports (including the two on his guns), plus about six more if you remove his accessories. I’m glad that this feature that was made a standard way back in Siege (in 2019! 5 years ago!) continues to have life in it like this. 

Overall

Hm. Okay, so, this isn’t a bad figure, but he’s very underwhelming. Admittedly, some of that is bias on my part, since the original was an important early figure of mine, and I wish this was a bit of a better homage to him than it is, but then again, he’s such a d-lister that “retool that partially works” is about what I’d expect him to get. 

Stripped of his need to look like something specific, though, he’s still got issues. I think his robot mode looks a bit awkward unless you cover him with accessories, and his -Izer gimmick is kind of nothing, while causing issues in that robot mode, and with his transformation. On the other hand, I do like his loadout of fun accessories, he’s got a lot of good customization potential with all of those 5-millimeter ports, and on a basic level, he’s still well-made, without any real figure-killing problems. There’s just something about him that’s a little underbaked, and I feel like I ought to be more enthusiastic about what’s here. So, I guess, I’d call him worth picking up, but if you don’t see him, don’t lose sleep. 

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