I gambled and it worked out. Remember my blogpost about Titans Return Wheelie? About how he's a great little robot and the transformation is interesting but he's kind of absolutely ruined by his car mode not holding together? At all?
Well, I got a second one (the one on the right in the photographs), the Japanese TakaraTomy one, and that one holds together fine.
Some American ones reportedly hold together in vehicle mode all right. Maybe some Japanese ones don't. But this one is good. It's probably just plastic tolerances. The design is maybe just not engineered in a way that it will hold together under all manufacturing conditions, I dunno. But this one is fine.
Ironically, I like the robot mode colors better on the new one, but the old one's car colors look better to me. The one with the car mode I can't get to stay together is the one with the better colors. Great. But the robot mode on the new one is still alot better, as I said, so it's not all bad. I like the gunmetal legs and the replacing of silver plastic with orange. Plus it's nice that all of Wheelie's head is painted appopriately, not just his face.
The one thing I don't like about the new one's robot mode is the much clearer translucent plastic canopy. The smokey translucent plastic of the old one looked better on the robot chest, I feel. Thankfully, you can just easily swap that, easy as one pleases. Snaps off, snaps on. The only downside is that it gives him THREE Autobot symbols in vehicle mode instead of the still-ridiculous two. Ah well.
I've got a photo of what that looks like on the left, with the slingshot accessory I stole from a previous Wheelie.
Wheelie comes with Go Shooter, who is the little boy who transforms into the head of who we call Siren over here. It's nice that this Wheelie stays together when you try to fit Go Shooter inside. I got so mad trying to get the old one transformed into car mode for the second photo above that I just gave up in a fit of rage. Well, stole your canopy, sorry, and into the bin with you!
