Bot Reviews: Transformers: Kingdom Deluxe Road Rage

When it comes to getting exclusives up here in Canada, the situation’s usually pretty good. Generations Selects stuff is pretty reliably carried by Gamestop and Toys R’ Us, Walmart stuff comes out here the same as in America (often in the same limited, fickle amounts, though), and when it comes to Target, Toys R’ Us has reliably picked up their exclusives, including the entire Buzzworthy Bumblebee line. So it’s really weird that Road Rage, one of those Target exclusives, seemingly got entirely skipped over. Sure, she was a Red Card exclusive in the US (some kind of special Target-branded credit card you need to have), but so were Red Wing and T-Wrecks, and those showed up here on TRU shelves, with no special criteria. But for whatever reason, Road Rage just didn’t come out here, and I had to belatedly grab mine at TFCon for an extra $10 dollars (to be fair, not a bad markup. Thanks for the find, Loco!).

Her lack of convenient release is a shame, because I was really looking forward to her, thanks to reading Brian Ruckley’s Transformers comics. But to back up, Road Rage shares origins with Exhaust and Lift Ticket, in that she’s an alternate, pre-Transformers Diaclone colorscheme (for Tracks, in this case) that was more recently given a Transformers identity, in this case by Takara for a mid-2000s reissue.

Since then, Road Rage has sporadically appeared here and there in Transformers stories, but it was Ruckley’s stuff that finally gave her a key role. In the book, she serves as the stern, no-nonsense bodyguard to Nautica, who’s an ambassador to the many aliens that interact with the Transformers. Nautica’s a curious, zealous researcher, so Road Rage frequently has to bail her out of trouble. They’re a fun double-act, and I did have Titans Return Nautica, so I’m glad to own her partner, finally.

Road Rage is a retool of Tracks, who you can read about here, who’s a figure that I liked better than a lot of other collectors seemed to, so I’ll see what’s different with this release, how I feel about the tooling some months later, and whether she’s worth the extra trouble to track down.

Robot Mode

For sculpt, this is mostly the same as Tracks, fundamental weirdness (shoulder wings, hoodie-backpack) included.

Without a specific cartoon design to cling to, the oddities of the Kingdom Tracks design work better here than on Tracks, I think. Namely, the greebling all over the body that imitates toy details, and the fact that she doesn’t have any ankles, but just has feet that float on struts (hey, as a bodyguard, maybe she wants to make sure no one can slash her ankles).

There’s no excuse for her hollow back, though, that’s still as bothersome as it was on Tracks.

I do appreciate that the sveltness of Tracks’s design also means that this translates into a lady very well, too.

Speaking of that, the head’s the only thing that’s been changed, and she features a new design that’s based on her Masterpiece figure, which was in turn based on her Transformers: Animated (show-only) design, which was in turn just a different interpretation of Track’s G1 toy head, so she’s got a similar face, just proportioned a bit different. Amusingly, she’s got kind of an annoyed frown there, though her lips wound up sculpted wide enough to create an optical illusion that she’s got some kind of extended muppet mouth.

For colors, she’s mostly a nice deep red and black, with some dark blue bits, a bit of white, and accents of silver. It reads as a fairly dark set of colors, and reminds me of fiery embers, appropriate for her name.

Something I appreciate is that this isn’t a Lift-Ticket style palette-swap from Tracks, The various colors are on her in a different, new configuration, including, for example, a painted collar. In some ways, though, she’s plainer than Tracks, mainly in the way her forearms are now solid black, and her shins and feet are an identical shade of black, whereas basically every previous figure of her made sure to include some G1 toy stickers in those places. Still, it’s not a bad look for her, and she manages to not look plain in-hand.

So, I’d mentioned Road Rage having the same quirks as Tracks, and this translates into the panels on the sides of her lower legs still not really tabbing into her shins, like they’re supposed to, thanks to the tabs being way too shallow. However, the joints those leg panels are attached to are just as tight as my copy of Tracks’s are, so this isn’t as big of an issue as I’ve heard from other people, since, even when untabbed, they stay in place, and don’t flop around. Heck, they often don’t even come untabbed from moving her feet or knees, only popping out when I purposefully nudge them.

Again, I guess I got lucky, especially since Road Rage is also just as poseable as Tracks. I was even able to get a bridle-carry setup with Nautica to work, based entirely on Road Rage being able to stay balanced.

For accessories, we’ve got the same black laser gun, and the same set of double-barrelled missiles, now in dark blue.

Thanks to Road Rage not having a Sunbow design to be sacrosanct about, I’m more inclined to place them in the different ports across her body than I am with Tracks, to say nothing about a bodyguard with lots of weaponized guns on her feeling even more appropriate than Tracks would.

Transformation

Turns out that I still can’t figure the legs out from memory. To recap: This is a fairly involved transformation, albeit one that’s pretty intuitive, except for those pesky leg panels, which need to be rotated around at a really specific point in the transformation (when her legs are compressed) in order to make it into their altmode configuration, and that tripped me (and plenty of others) up.

That, and getting those panels pegged into both the windshield, and the sides of the front of the car, which require a very loud snap for the former, and some massaging for the latter.

Still, once I remembered how it went, the rest was pretty doable.

Car Mode

Oh hey, it’s a little red (not) Corvette! Sorry, Tracks, but Road Rage wears this alternate mode a heck of a lot better.

Firstly, the now-mostly-unbroken fiery red looks a lot better than blue, to me, and secondly, the flame design on her hood is now larger and much more elaborate (and G1-figure-accurate), including both yellow and orange flames, beneath the same Autobrand. It just looks good, and more like the stereotype of a vintage 80’s sportscar.

Outside of that, this is more of a palette- swap of Tracks than the other mode is, with the same bits of black up front, and silver on the wheel rims. This time around, the fins hiding in her trunk are dark blue, which even stands out less than on Tracks.

Really, the only flaw here is that I wish she had more weapons ports, for the sake of the character.

Other than that, this is a legit great alternate mode.

Flying Car Mode

I’ll say this much, after flipping out the arms and wings, those side panels at the front of the car hold together a lot better than on Tracks, which is refreshing.

I do wish her forearms weren’t so plain in this mode, though, since they’re missing Tracks’s sticker details.

Other than a couple new weapons ports being added, there’s not much else to say here.

This is still a really goofy mode, but in a very charming way, though the fact that there isn’t a port on the underside of it to make her fly via figure stand is still a very baffling omission.

Overall

I definitely like this version of this tooling better than Tracks. The colors are nicer to my eyes, it’s a character from a specific comic I like (not that I don’t like Tracks), and the tolerances are a little better on this copy.

Of course, how well you’ll like it depends on how well you liked Tracks to begin with. It’s a tooling with some flaws, mainly in those leg panels, which cause problems in all modes, and even during the transformation. But that’s not a figure-killer for me. I don’t know if she’s a hard recommendation from me (especially with those engineering problems), but I like what’s here. That being said, there’s just enough problems that I wouldn’t pay a premium for her, even before getting into how hard it is to get her. I was fine paying an extra $10 over retail, but if you’re not specifically after her as Nautica’s partner, I wouldn’t similarly break the bank. A shame she didn’t just pop up at retail here in Canada, and if she really belatedly does, somehow, I’ll make her a more enthusiastic recommendation.

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