Stunticons’ Backup has arrived! Offroad

Offroad is an interesting little figure to me.  He is obviously heavily influenced by theG1  Triggercon Ruckus and according to TFwiki, was originally meant to be Ruckus, but there were doubts about how well he’d fit into the Stunticons....  Considering that Ruckus is a loud adrenaline junkie, I think he’d fit in just as well as the other mal-adjusted  members of the team.  Colour wise, well the original Ruckus could have been an easy replacement for Breakdown, since they both consist of white and blue.

Personally I’m am open to the addition of new characters to a team, but since the Stunticons are high performance cars, it seems a bit of a contradiction to that theme to suddenly have a ute/pickup truck thrown in to the mix.





The colours are not off.

Offroad uses the same colours as the character he was originally replacing in vehicle mode, that being Wildrider.  He is grey with red windows, a metallic grey bit on the bonnet and a slightly surfy styled squiggle on the doors.  Nicely, he has silver painted grills and lights which manage to add a little bit more to him to make the vehicle feel a little bit tougher.

Rough Roadin’ Sculpting

I rather like the look of the vehicle mode, it’s modern looking, with a very slight militaristic look to it in the grills on the front of the windscreen, as well as the slight flare-off at the back.  The ute tray is very shallow, almost useless if the design were to be applied in real life.  He rolls really well and generally is a lot of fun to vroom vroom around the room, or over the couch, on the floor, kitchen bench, or wherever takes your fancy.  Yes, I have tested this at home in case you haven’t noticed.
Look underneath the truck though and you are quite obviously looking at a folded up robot.


Weapons already?!?? That’s a bit off.



Jumping right into the weapons, he comes with the handfoot gun and an axe.  In one way, I don’t mind these at all.  As an extreme conditions warfare, um, guy...  the axe manages to fit rather well.

Actually, what the hell does Extreme Conditions Warfare consist of?

Is this a real thing?  I kind of imagine him along the likes of maybe Repugnus, or some kind of survivalist or something.  

Whoops, went OffTopic.

Anyway, moving on, the axe actually looks like a weapon and on top of that, it almost looks like it’s made from an engine block.

The handfoot gun can be mounted on the back of the car and looks much like an engine, which kind of fits into my own personal theory of him with the high-speed Stunticons;  In that since he is a ute/4wd/SUV thing, the axe which can be plugged onto the side, and the handfoot gun in the tray giving him (in my mind anyway) a massive engine extension.  So in the Tetsaverse™ , Offroad uses his weapons in vehicle mode as a way to get the speed he needs to keep up with the rest of the Stunticons.

Off transformation.

Unlike the other Stunticons, Offroad doesn’t have a nice homage to his G1 self (i.e Triggercon Ruckus in this case).  However he does have a nice simple, quick, fun and most of all effective transformation.  The bonnet shuffles back, to almost  homage the shoulder guns in G1 robot mode, but that’s about it.  His arms flip out from the side and the legs have a nice, clever hinging action, where they unfold from around the thigh.  

Slightly off robo colours
 

Now while his vehicle mode copies Wildrider a lot, his robot mode is rather different.  He now sports a grey chest and legs, with a touch of red on his breast.  Blue thighs and upper arms , a light grey connector port on the chest and some silver on the chins.  It looks kind of good I think.

 

The one part I don’t like that much is his face.  He has a green face, which looks a bit whacky when combined with the blue on his helmet crest and red eyes.   I’m not too sure exactly what they were thinking with that green face, there is no other green anywhere else and it makes him look like he’s got a serious need to barf.

 

He Got dem moves like Ruckus

Luckily he has a nice moves list.

• Ball neck with a great range of motion.
  
• Ball jointed shoulders and hips.
  
• Swivel biceps and thighs, although biceps are hindered slightly by the side panels of the truck.
  
• Swivel waist.
  
• Hinged elbows and knees.

All those joints make Offroad a really fun toy and when you have him armed up with his handfoot gun and axe, it’s really easy to make him look cool and threatening.  Personally I recommend mounting the hadfoot gun under the arm, rather than over the fist.  It makes it look like some kind of experimental  BFG of death dealing terror.
 


Also, the ability to tilt his head in a rather patronising manner, is cool and since it could well be assumed that Offroad fills in the Psycopath section of mental disorders in the Stunticons, appropriate.  The major bummer with this guy though is the door panels off the side of his upper arms.  I like them and think they very cool, but they do hinder the shoulder movement quite a bit.
 

Slightly plain Robo-sculpting.

His robot mode ambient sculpting is a tad on the plain side, but  has some nice touches.    His face however is really well done, just a shame he has big ugly blob of puke-green on his face which manages to detract from the sculpt a little.
 

The head though is so strongly sculpted to be Ruckus, I find it rather incomprehensible that they didn’t just try and keep it the same.  It is a good head sculpt though.  I know the Transformers Collector’s Club has taken the option of using this toy as a Ruckus toy in their BS subscription service, but somehow they strove too closely to the original toy’s colours and it looks like arse.  Maybe Hasbro couldn’t work out a good colour scheme for him within their cost pattern?  I dunno, but I should would like to know.

Time to wrap this up.

Offroad is a bit of an odd fit.  The vehicle mode colours, while appropriate to the story of the bio he comes with don’t really follow through on the robot mode, obviously attempting to make him his own bot.  However the blue and green mix that is there instead doesn’t really  add to make him look tough, or enhance the toy in any way aside from making him stand out a little bit.

The fact that he has Ruckus’ head, Wildrider’s vehicle colours and a crazy arse mix of robot colours, just leads me to believe that Hasbro were just  ‘Whatever, just get him done intern.’
I think that if they had coordinated the colours a little bit better (essentially the face paint), this Offroad could actually be his own character and a cool one at that.  As he is now, he’s a strange mish-mash of ... um, something not thought out well.

However, the good thing is that as a toy, he is actually very good, the tough vehicle and the well articulated and emotive robot mode manage to make up for his mis-colourment.  It’s a shame that his colours aren’t a bit more well thought out, as it is a fun toy.

Just for  my own happiness, I have made him Ruckus’ brother,  as one is a loudmouth whereas Offroad is creepily controlled.