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Dave's Transforming Robot Toy Rant: Metal Cardbots wave 1

Machina City Dump Truck Mech Tackle (garbage truck)

Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/misc/Cardbot4


CAPSULE

$35 from Agabyss.

Mech Tackle: For every clever bit of design there's also a missed opportunity, so this kinda averages out to merely okay. Definitely has one
of the weaker card gear items. Mildly recommended.


RANT

Called Mega Trucker in the original, but on top of probably being a Mach Tackle (Transformers Victory) reference, the new name ties into the football player motif. Like, I now own three toy robots with (Northamerican) football helmet heads. (The other two are Tundra Prime and Gundam Maxter, although I think I actually have two versions of that one.) I may end up painting some forest green bits on this to make it more obviously a Green Bay Packer.

Packaging: This is "Power Class" and is in a larger window box than the three I've reviewed so far, although the trade dress and deceptive "no actual toy pictures/renders" thing remain the same. 10.25" (26cm) tall, 9.75"
(25cm) wide, and 3.75" (9.5cm) deep, with the plastic window on the left of
the front as facing the viewer.


MACHINA CITY DUMP TRUCK: MECH TACKLE
Altmode: Garbage Truck
Transformation Difficulty: 18 steps (Mech Tackle), 6 steps (Mech Defender)
Card Gear: Mech Defender
Motto: "Play life like a sport; it's not fun if it's not a challenge."

Okay, it's a little too orange to be a Packers player, but I'm not going to paint over the stripes to make him a Browns player.

Packaging: The robot is held between the plastic clamshells, ready to
go. The card gear is in the lower right, face forwards, but hidden by the
box. The deceptive renders show the Mech Defender on either side, but it can only be mounted on the left shoulder. Even the art on the card gear
faceplate shows the Mech Defender shield on the right arm. The errors on the main figure are numerous, and will be listed below in the robot and vehicle sections.
The bonus sticker sheet I got for ordering the whole wave just has
vehicle mode window stickers, you'd have to dismantle the helmet (which is glued together) to apply eye stickers anyway.

Robot Mode: So, as noted already, they're definitely going for a
football player aesthetic here, and it's not just the helmet. Big shoulderpads, a generally blocky look, and so forth. Some of the proportions are a it weird, such as the shins being more than twice as long as the
thighs, or the fact that there's two transformation hinges in the arm and neither of them is really in the right spot to be a proper elbow.
The box images have a significantly different upper torso, rather different kneecaps, and forearms that are both longer and shaped differently than the toy. On top of that, the colors are different in a lot of little ways, notably the helmet stripes being painted incorrectly. A big problem is that the cartoon uses medium-light gray on a lot of parts that the toy has in dark gray.
8.25" (21cm) tall in mostly orange and dark gray, with yellow and light gray accents. The light gray plastic is used for the fists, the kneecap centers (as an inlay), vents on top of the upper torso, the gas tanks on the backs of the upper boots, and the heels. The tops of the toes are also light gray plastic as I later discovered when I undid the screw on the sole of one foot, they're painted before being attached. Black plastic is used for the collar area, shoulder roots, the section between the two joints on each arm, toes, some hinges on the back, and the wheels (one on either side of the
upper torso, two on the back of each boot). Dark gray plastic makes up the helmet protective frame, the front grill, bumper and brushguard, outer
surfaces of the shoulderpads, upper arms, abdomen, thighs, panels that cover the gap in the back, and the framework that holds the wheels on the backs of the boots. The face and headlights are clear blue plastic, and some vehicle mode blue plastic is visible on the backs of the arms. Everything else is orange plastic.
The faceplate is painted white with the underside (where I had some
easily removed mold flash) and the area around the eyes left unpainted. The eyes themselves are painted light blue with black pupils, and there's not really any way to get lightpiping on this, so I dunno why they made the part clear in the first place (at least the neck itself is orange plastic).
There's two thin white stripes along the top of the helmet (should be a
central white stripe flanked by yellow stripes), white around the ear holes, and yellow on molded patterns on the sides of the helmet. The shoulderpad fronts have wide diagonal yellow stripes flanked by thin white stripes on either side with a small gap between stripes. The forearms also have yellow "thick I-beam cross-section" sort of patterns on them. The tops of the toes are also painted yellow. All the previous yellows have been more on the
golden end of the color, but the central trapezoids of the kneecaps are
painted canary yellow, as is a pattern on the abdomen (which has a white
stripe around it). There's white stripes on the center of the pelvis and
along the outer faces of the boots. (Already a lot of paint for a Metal Cardbot.) There's a bit of light blue paint at the top of the shin under the kneecap, a color that the box art shows on the forearms as well. The
trapzoids on the underside of the kneecaps as well as the shin fronts are pained a dark gunmetal. Other paints are vehicle-specific even if visible in this mode, so I'll cover those below. Oddly, there's no paint on the
backsides of the headlights, given that they like to paint the backs of clear plastic in this line (and do so for the windshields of vehicle mode). Oh,
and it's worth noting that every paint application goes along with molded detail, even if it's only a very shallow ridge or slot. That definitely
helps keep the borders crisp.
Lots and lots of ratchet joints, and it still tends to be floppy in the torso and fold over easily. Anyway, the neck is the Cardbot-standard ball joint with the socket in the collar, at least this one hasn't popped off yet. Technically, the waist is just a transformation joint, the swivel is near the back and there's a spring-loaded ball in the waist piece that snaps into a
slot in the top of the pelvis to keep it in place, so not only does it look weird when turned it's also not very stable. The shoulder struts can lift up in 45 degree soft ratchets, with a hard-ratcheting swivel between the strut
and the shoulderpad (30 degrees per click). The two elbow hinges both soft ratchet 45 degrees at a time, the upper one is looser than the lower. The upper arm also slides into the shoulderpad for transformation if you want the robot proportions to be even worse. The fists fold in on transformation hinges. The torso has a transformation ratchet hinge between the chest and abdomen, 45 degrees per click but blocked from going all the way by panels folded over the back. On mine, this is weaker than the shoulder rotation ratchets, so trying to lift an arm will make the whole torso bend back if you don't hold it steady. The hips lift to the sides on ratchet joints 10
degrees per click, with a range of one click inward of straight down to two clicks above horizontal. The forwards/backwards swivel is a 30 degrees per click ratchet, but because the thighs are so short you have to use the out to the side joint a little to let the kneecaps clear the pelvis. Otherwise, he knees himself in the groin, which seems to be a bit of a design flaw. The knees are ratcheting hinges 10 degrees per click that can go four clicks in
the usual knee-bending direction and three clicks the other way, which contributes to some of the issues I've had keeping the figure standing.
There is no meaningful ankle articulation, and the feet are sloped with the assumption that the thighs will each be one click away from vertical.
The fists hold 4.8mm pegs if you happen to have any. There's 4mm studs
on the shoulderpads that go into 4mm holes near the wrists. Interestingly,
the screw holes on the forearm fronts and the shoulderpad backs are 5mm in diameter. Some of the screw holes on the inner faces of the boots are also 5mm, but that's less useful. The other screw holes are either narrower or
too shallow. There is a 2.5mm rod on the outer face of the left shoulderpad for the card gear clip to attach to. There's another on top of the right shoulderpad, but that's strictly for transformation, its "don't slide off"
base is too wide to go into the card gear's socket.

Card Gear: The orange plastic of the faceplate matches the orange
plastic of the toy, the card gear itself is clear orange plastic, a bit on
the dark side. The outer and inner layers of the bottom half of the card
swing out to make the pointy bottom and the winged top of a shield, while the outer ring of the circular boss on the top half swing out to make a sort of
fan blade spiral. The bottom blade is blocked by the shield point but the others can swing to much greater angles, so it can take some fiddling to get all four looking symmetric. The Mech Defender shield looks like it should
have a spinning gimmick, but it does not. As noted earlier, it can only clip onto the left shoulderpad, it has no handles or other connection methods that would go on forearms, fists, or the right shoulderpad, nor can it store on
the back.
The center hub and the fanblades are painted silver, as are the outer stripes on the side wings and some details along the middle sides. Medium
blue paint is on the side wings between the stripes and in a tech-y pattern along the face down to the point. The center hub is molded kind of like a wheel hub, but not like the hubs of Mech Tackle's actual wheels.
Aesthetically, I prefer the looks if the fan blades are not pulled out.

Transformation: Pretty straightforwards for the most part, although some of the steps require extra force to make clips attach or detach, and there's some subtle bits that merit mention. For instance, the cab is mostly easy, rotate the collar area to stow the head and fold up the arms on top. But there's panels on back of the shoulders that need to be folded out before the arms can snap together on top, and they swing around to cover up the upper arms. The gray panels that covered the back now fold around to partially
cover the shoulder strut and form...I guess the ladder steps to get to the
cab? Nah, they're in the wrong spot for that. Maybe for helping get up on top. Anyway. Spin the waist and bend the torso ratchet, clip the boots together, fold out the wheels from the boot backs, and then sort of shove
front and back together so that all the joints do the right thing and you can clip the cab to the boot tops. Fold the toes down to let you open up the
shin panels, then store the toes but fold the shin panels all the way around
to the sides to that the back end is open on top. Finally fold the heels in
if you want, it doesn't change the looks of this mode much, and the wheel chunks are already blocked by the thighs from folding inwards.
Note, you can't fold the shin panels closed over the toes if you want
more of a closed rear, the toes have to be all the way out for the shin
panels to be closed.
Going back to robot mode just requires remembering which bits block what other bits so you don't try to do things out of order (e.g. if you folded the heels in, you need to fold them back out before trying to fold the wheel
chunks back). Some excessive force or strong fingernails needed to undo some of the clipped-together bits.

Vehicle Mode: It basically looks like a cabover semitractor which has
been modified with a bin on top of the fifth wheel. It doesn't have dumping action here, maybe it does in the cartoon. I get more of a garbage truck
vibe off the overall shape anyway. The windshields have stern-looking eyes with the sunshade bit being more triangular than rectangular to look like
angry eyebrows (although some of the optional windshield stickers are happy
or goofy expressions). There's molded reflection bits around the irises, but they're painted the same yellow as the irises rather than being white reflections or whatnot. The back end has two separated compartments with useable interiors of about 20mm by 40mm, not big enough to carry the card
gear.
The box art has the shapes mostly right this time (the headlights and wheel hubs disagree with the toy), but a LOT of color differences, including
a hinge behind the rear side window on each side that should be orange but is for some reason clear blue. A lot of the issues mentioned in robot mode
carry over here, although a fair amount of the dark gray plastic is hidden in this mode. The eyes on the package version are glowing blue "whites" and
black pupils and no irises, so very different (one of the full-case bonus stickers approximates the box eyes, if without the glow-effect blur).
A chunky 6.5" (16.5cm) long and 3.25" (8cm) tall, in about the same
colors as robot mode, but a little less yellow, but more light gray and clear blue. The windshields, headlights, and those stupid hinges on the sides are clear blue plastic. There's light gray panels inlaid into the outer sides
and the right and left interior sides of the rear dump compartments. The gas tanks on the sides are also light gray. The dark gray is on the rear half of the roof, the rear fenders, those ladder-ish bits on the sides, and the front bumper/grille/brushguard chunk as mentioned in robot mode. The black is more covered up, just some hinges around the ladder things, the wheels, and the
toes in back. All else is orange.
The side windows are painted gloss black, while the eyebrows and "mustache" above the grille are dark gunmetal. The eye details are yellow as previously noted. The white stripes on the boot sides are interrupted by the folded over shin panels, but still there otherwise.
It rolls okay on the six pinned wheels, but the torso hinge bump results in almost zero ground clearance. There's no other articulation. The Mech Defender attachment point is on the roof, so it can still be attached to the truck, albeit sideways and off-center. There's no other intentional connectors, but there's a 5mm diameter screw hole on the right side ahead of the front wheel, and the ladder-like shapes on either side can hold 5mm pegs
in the middle tier of rectangular holes.

Overall: Not bad, but despite a few clever bits it feels like another "early effort by a new design team" thing. I also wonder if the toys were designed based on early show models and the show models changed, because there's places where this could've easily been more show-accurate (on top of the usual, "the show design doesn't work in 3-dimensional space" issues).


Dave Van Domelen, working his way up to Heavy Iron.


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