Reveal the Shield. Windcharger.

Old Windcharger here was a bit of an impulse buy for me.  He is based on his G1 counterpart, which is always a plus in my book, but best of all, instead of being a random name usage (I’m looking at you ROTF Mindwipe) it is designed to look somewhat like him in robot mode with his head(well his cartoon head) and the vehicle mode is an update, but still based along the same body type.

The reveal the shield part of the line is the current run, since they seem to want to avoid the usage of The Revenge of the Fallen and it seems too soon to start busting out The Dark of The Moon toys. Man those movie names just seem too similar. The fourth movie can  be called The __ of the __ and they can use that indefinitely.  I digress.  Back to the shield.  Well to us olde folks, the shield in question, just so happens to be a rub sign!  Yep, they are back!  They kind of made an appearance on the Classics, but faded away, no they are showing up here.  Huzzah!

The Rub signs are heat activated, and when warmed up will reveal either a Decepticon or Autobot insignia.  Windcharger here however seems to have only the rub sign as any mark of allegiance.  Usually there are other ones printed on.  Still, at least it is in a good spot, right on the centre of the bonnet, which also is his chest.

On to the toy!  his head is a nice mould.  It looks quite similar to the one he had in the G1 Cartoon and luckily nothing like the noggin his original toy sported.  The colour is just about the same as well.  Since the original was a mini-bot, they managed to avoid having complex paint applications, and WC here didn’t need them in the first place.  So the plain red and black with a bit of grey fits the bill nicely here.  He has a lot of articulated joints and they work well.  Even his knees can be bent really far back and they have the rear bumper of the car that can fold over, kind of acting as his knee caps.  I was impressed in that you can make him kneel like a samurai, which is pretty cool.  His ankles are ball jointed too, allowing for extra cool leg poses.  The arms and shoulders are ball jointed, which is just as well as his wrists don’t have any joints.  Which is fine, as he has GUNS!  Neatly flip the hands away and you can have him wielding a couple of blasters!  This is nice!  It hearkens back to the days of the machine Men and TF Minibots who were weaponless, but would blast energy from their fists. Me likey.

A nice and dynamic robot mode, with lots of joints and wrist blasters to boot!  What's the car mode like?

TRANSFORM!

Oh yeh! Lots of good gif-ness here as I test my artistic bounds!

I like this car mode! It is very modern, yet classic looking.  I like the way they have included the sun shade thing that the original car had on the back window (you know, those big black plastic things).  its old and new all together.  Oh and very very Windcharger!  Simple Black and grey to break up the red, and its such a nice red.  Shame it wasn’t mixed properly, as there are swirls in the plastic all over the vehicle.  Some of them match together for artistic effect, but you know they shouldn’t be there, yet there they are.  It is a shame, as the plastic quality is about the only fault I can pick on the car mode.

Most of the panels click together nicely and it is a very nicely designed toys, especially with the air intake on the bonnet, the black windows match the rest of the colouration well to make it very aesthetically pleasing, it rolls really well as I just discovered and having gotten back five minutes later after fishing it out from underneath the dark recesses of a cupboards nether-regions.  Oh and the red plastic is thin too.

So overall, we have a nice looking toys, with cool articulation and added blasters for robot mode, a really nice looking vehicle mode that rolls well and clips together (mostly) very nicely, making this a great toy for people who like to play and those who want to watch.  Both collectors and kids will love this toy.  It’ only let down by the cheap plastic which is evident in the swirls and the mount of light that can be shone through it.  Even with these admittedly minor flaws, I would recommend this toy to most, which is a surprise to me, as I wasn’t expecting to like it this much!

Checking for the levels of cheap:

The bonnet has swirls all over it.           Obvious swirls by the arrow and circle.

Here we can see how thin the plastic is quite easily.

This final picture I was going to use as the header pic, but then I realised you can’t see the colours in the shield properly! DO’H!