Posted May 24, 2011 at 12:57 am
Nobody can say Roadbuster isn't well-armed.


Disclaimer #1: This is my second Roadbuster.  First one snapped off its left thigh-mounted wheel when I was trying to transform it.  Be careful with that.

Disclaimer #2: I know nothing about NASCAR.

That said, this is Roadbuster!  He's a NASCAR vehicle.  He's based on a real life one, so far as I know.  Who it belongs to, I could really care less, but his signature is tampoed above the window on each side.  There's a foil sticker on the cardback that identifies this toy as official NASCAR merchandise.  And as NASCAR merchandise, he's got some sponsor logos on him.  ...well, in this toy's case, he's got sponsor logos from exactly two entities, Amp Energy Drinks and the National Guard.  I'm fairly certain, without Googling the thing, that there's probably a lot more sponsor logos filling up the large areas of space left blank on the source material.

While knowing zero about NASCAR, having sponsor logos on a car is cool to me.  Cars can be boring, and they liven up the deco.  I expect Reprolabels, once the movie comes out and we get a better look at Roadbuster, will do some Upgrade Stickers that complete his look, and I'll buy them the heck up.

Man, I'm suddenly thirsty for energy drink!


Roadbuster is a member of the Wreckers!  Roadbuster was a member of the Wreckers back in Generation 1, too, so it's sort of neat that Roadbuster-the-green-Wrecker has continued.  I expect him to last maybe two minutes in the film before gruesomely dying.  Maybe that's what'll happen in the clip they're showing us at BotCon.  I'll try not to get too attached to him.  It's not smart to get emotionally attached to Wreckers anyway, regardless of continuity.  They're there to die.

Short of that stupid wheel that snapped off my first Roadbuster, Roadbuster's a pleasure to transform.  He goes back and forth between robot and vehicle modes without incident, even all of the vehicle panels.  The only possible snag is fitting his head's antenna into the groove carved between his thighs, but that's not really a big deal.  (And, yeah, his head is designed to look like a stereotypical NASCAR fan, with a baseball cap, sunglasses, and a mullet.  The other two Wreckers have similarly-styled heads.)

He uses this to open his cans of chew.


Roadbuster's MechTech weapon isn't as inane as Sentinel Prime or Bumblebee's, but it's certainly not as cool as Ratchet's.  But then, Ratchet's sawblade kind of sets an unfairly high standard.  Roadbuster has a gun with sawblades on the side that, with the push of a lever, becomes a chainsaw.  Once you stop pressing the lever, the sawblade halves snap right back into place on the sides of the gun.  Fun, but not Ratchet fun.

Another of Roadbuster's interesting features, and one that's shared with a few other DOTM toys, are the "hidden" 5mm peghole ports for the MechTech weapons in vehicle mode.  Instead of having a big unsightly hole in the vehicle mode, that hole is filled in.  When you push the weapon peg into the hole, the filled-in-area is pushed in, and when you remove the weapon, the filled-in-area comes back out again.  If you look closely at the photograph of the vehicle mode, you can see the little circle-shaped indent in the middle of his "88"s.

(Let's see if I get more comments about not caring who the car's driver is or the English error I employ to make the point.)
Comments