TRANSFORMERS TOYS AND MERCHANDISE SECTION

Robot Mode:

Alternate Mode:

Box Art:

Paul053's Review: Wreck-Gar

Name: Wreck-Gar
Allegiance: Autobot Junkions
Function: Leader of Junkions and watch TV
Subgroup: Reveal The Shield

Wreck-Gar is obsessed with earth television, and maybe just a little bit flaky. He communicates almost exclusively in quotes from commercials and late-night movies, and the grin on his face never fades, even in the heat of battle. Most Autobots have no idea what he’s talking about most of the time, but they appreciate having his axe on their side.

The Junkions were first introduced in the ’86 movie with the very memorable fight against Springer and other Autobot folks (and then later the dance) but then were pretty much no show besides their leader Wreck-Gar in season 3. I was quite annoyed by his voice many times, but sometimes he is a fun character. Wreck-Gar himself later had a very short period of screen time in one Headmasters episode and was then disappeared completely for about 20 years until the rebooted Animated series. As Hasbro’s “plan” in year 2010 and 2011, they released quite a few popular who-need-to-be-redesigned G1 characters in CHURG (Classics/Henkei/Universe 2.0/Reveal The Shield/Generations) line and Wreck-Gar is one of them. So, is Wreck-Gar popular? He now has a brand new mold and even released before many other big names. And he already has two future remolds, one is Takara United Scraphead and another one is as shown on Wreck-Gar’s instruction. Well, the bio said pretty well, “no one knows what he is talking about”.

Alternate mode:

Wreck-Gar’s alternate mode is a motorcycle. Glad Hasbro put him back to his G1 style instead of a garbage truck in the Animated series. Unlike his G1 kind of Harley Davidson style motorcycle, this new design is more like a road warrior style motorcycle. Hasbro’s original stock photo of him is mostly red, but when the product came out, the red parts all became brown. At the same time Hasbro changed their stock photo as well, leaving the red color to Takara’s United version. In my option, this is a better move on Hasbro to make this color change.

Wreck-Gar is well detailed and painted in bike mode. He is majority brown with some light brown. The flames and seat is black and most of the mechanical parts including exhaust pipe (his axe) are unpainted gray. Wheels are black (with no spikes) and the rims are brown. Handles and back mirrors are in PVC soft rubber for safety. He has a clear plastic on the hood but is covered by the nonsensical rub sign. Only looked at it for five seconds and then I removed it and replaced with an Autobot insignia sticker from Reprolabels. Looking from the bottom, you will see his face smiling down there. Looking from the back, the gray area is too plain including the back light and license plate. So I made some extra painting there with some black and red on the back light and added a custom license plate.

Recently Hasbro and Takara have been using some new paint which feels smooth and powdery and this paint can be found on Generation Blurr, Masterpiece Hot Rod, and this Wreck-Gar. Don’t know why they choose this even though this paint might look and feel good but they are very scratchable which already happened on my Generation Blurr and very soon I believe will happen on Wreck-Gar as well.

Now to the fun part. The bike rolls well and the stand makes him stay straight and still. With the thin body, he is really designed to be ride on plus the stand provides him very good balance. Almost all deluxe classes fit well with him. Jazz looks kind of chubby on him and brings me some laugh; Kup looks really heavy; if you have two, he looks fantastic riding himself; Mirage and Arcee fit with him perfectly. Bumblebee? Sorry, not for kids.

Robot mode:

While he has pretty fun alternate mode and robot mode, his transformation is another story. First, fold up the entire back wheel and then hold the front and back and do the thing like you are trying to break a chopstick in half to break the middle connection. Be a little gentle here because there is a problem caused, which will be covered later. The seat area becomes his left leg where the front area becomes his right leg. Even though it’s better to fold the handlebars upward first, it’s very difficult to do so due to the soft rubber. So it’s easier by just pushing up the headlight hard to break the handle loose and hope nothing will break. The legs are joined at the hip very tightly, which is nice but when transforming him back to the bike mode, it’s challenging to separate the legs. The arms and head are pretty easy and logical but I tend to be gentle because of those powdery paints.

Wreck-Gar’s robot mode is what Wreck-Gar should be. Let’s talk about his face first. Yes, he has that Animated-style smiley face. And like it or not, he has his trademark beard, or facial hair, in soft plastic. His eyes are painted red and although almost entire half of his back head is in clear plastic, his eyes light piping doesn’t work very well. He is quite thin and while he has two huge tires both hanging on the left side, he has a thick and beefy lower right leg to balance that. Color is still mainly brown and mixed with black, light brown, silver and those unpainted gray. Chest flame is yellow and the “nipple pointer” things are now placed on the higher chest close to shoulder.

He has 23 articulation points to make him pose very well and keep good balance. His right arm moves well, even though there is a shoulder pad that limits movement a little bit. His left arm suffers too due to the huge wheel hanging there, plus the bike stand is now hanging on the back and blocking the way. The wheel can be unclipped and move forward as a shoulder shield which helps articulation but not much. His trademark weapon axe is stored on the left leg wheel as the exhaust pipe and hubcap. It can be detached and stored on his back as well, and can be held on either hands or both. The blades came out by rotating the hubcap and unlike his G1 axe, this axe’s handle rod is very long.

Being talked nicely long enough, it’s time to talk about some problems. First is his open palms. This is Hasbro’s recent design to replace the traditional fist hole and is pretty much a standard now. Some of them are designed well such as Generation Straxus and RTS Jazz; some of them are not even working such as WFC Megatron; some of them suffer from the quality and design issues such as Animated Arcee, Animated Rodimus, and ROTF Bludgeon and unfortunately Wreck-Gar falls into this category. After several inserting and removing the axe from his right hand, I just found out these actions caused a stress mark in the middle of his palm. My nerve went up and all the fun feelings about him were reduced. Further examining him, I found out two more. There is one stress mark on his right shoulder ball joint stick. I believe this was already there from manufacture when they try to insert his right arm into the ball joint. Another one is on the hook type connector that joins both legs to the bike body which is caused during the transformation (remember the chopstick breaking part I mentioned before?). I have no control on the right shoulder ball joint unless I remove his right arm out and try to put back in again. I can be careful on the hook connector during the transformation but what about the right palm? That almost means I can no more push in the axe from the lower rod but always have to insert from the bottom tip. Will his right palm split in two in the future? The open palm design may look good but unless Hasbro finds a way to fix or avoid this, I just don’t think this is practical and rather to have the traditional fist hole. Plain, simple, and works.

Overall, Wreck-Gar’s robot mode is really nicely designed and fun to display and play with. But because of those stress mark issues and the powdery paints, I am kind of disappointed and instead now I have to be very gentle on him especially during transformation. Pity.

Marks out of ten for the following:

Transformation: 6 – Not that difficult after few times. But have to be careful and gentle because some plastics can’t handle too much stress and you don’t want to scratch those powdery paints.

Durability: 5 – Nothing really falls apart actually and joints are tight. He holds himself very well in either mode, but I already got 3 stress marks and the powdery paints are scratchy.

Fun: If I don’t consider his quality and paint scratch issues, he is totally fun in either mode. Many figures can ride him well in his bike mode and he can kneel down, sit down, and dance with Hot Rod. Solid 9 in this case. But if you add those conditions in, he is 7.

Aesthetics: 10 – A great G1 homage and nice display piece in both modes if you are not bothered by his face.

Articulation: 9 – Another strong point for Wreck-Gar. He has enough articulations to make him pose and stand well. Only the left arm suffers a little bit by the huge wheel and stand.

Value/Price: 8 - Ordered him from Hasbro Toy Shop at $10.79 after 10% down. Only this time I need to pay the shipping. He is worth at this price with those potential quality issues.

Overall: 7 – As I am not really a fan of bike transformers, Wreck-Gar is really a good choice. Even if you are not a fan of Wreck-Gar, you might not want to miss him because of his coolness. If you don’t like his face, there are two future remolds to choose also. I tried to rate him higher but the points were pulled down by the quality issues.