Tuesday, April 16, 2013

Throttlebot Wide Load

I have to confess that Wide Load, and Throttlebots in general, made me lose some faith in Transformers as a kid. Growing up with the G1 cartoon and the comics, I always expected some deviation from fiction or packaging depiction to the actual toy. My Bluestreak wasn't blue and his feet were never separated and couldn't do the pose on the box, but I understood that. Wide Load changed all that for me.

The first Transformers comic, and therefore my first comic ever, I bought was issue 30, titled "The Cure!". The issue featured Ratbat, and the scraplets, but more importantly, it was the first appearance of the Throttlebots! Well, minus Goldbug who had already been on Earth. As a 10-year old, this issue was thrilling. The Throttlebots were kicking tail and taking names. I had to have them.

A few weeks later, my mom had taken my brother and me to a Woolworth's and what did they have? Throttlebots! My brother got Searchlight and I grabbed Wide Load. As soon as we were in the car, I snatched the bubble off the card and transformed him. Disappointment followed. Some would say massive disappointment. I went from thinking I'd have a figure based on the comic that would look like this:



To one that would look like the packaging:



To this:



No. Just no.

As you can tell, Wide Load doesn't have feet. Or legs. His arms are vestigial at best. He's, he's...a Throttlebot.

I'm not sure why I went ahead with this purchase, to be honest. I'm thinking that it was because I was two figures away from completing my group of Throttlebots. Which I have done. The next figure will show up in another post later down the line.

Now that we've all seen what his "robot" mode looks like, let's check out his vehicle mode:



I actually like this mode a lot. It's almost like a Choro-Q figure. As you can see, he has a blue payload. I've always imagined that it was just a blue tarp covering his payload, but I don't see that as much protection as his chest. Still, the vehicle mode is a huge improvement over the robot mode.

Hope you enjoyed this review. Up next I'll be going up in scale as I review another new addition.

6 comments:

  1. Hahaha, the bitter disappointment of the limitations of a G1 figure, classic. I had the same experience when I went to buy G1 Prime and realized that his hands didn't slide into his forearms and then magically slide back out as headlights; it was the feature I was looking forward to the most!

    I feel ya brother, keep fighting the good fight, lol.

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    1. Thank you! I don't think I'll be coming off the frontlines anytime soon.

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  2. As unfortunate as his proportions are, I have to say, Freeway was one of my favorite Autobots as a kid, but mostly because he was blue..lol. I'll be very interested to see what ToyWorld does with Wideload. I'm still looking for a Takara, in box version of him, but so far ebay only has loose US versions.

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    1. Funny that you should mention Freeway...he'll be in an upcoming post.

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  3. How dare you say anything bad about any G1 toy! Seriously though I love Wideload, but I can see how the box art leaves A LOT to be desired. Can't wait to see ToyWorld's take on this character.

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    1. You know, the ToyWorld updates on these guys are the only 3rd party figures I've seriously considered purchasing, but the price is keeping me away.

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