I was also happy to discover that Takara added some bonus Stunticon stickers to the sheet. Just like with Rumble and Frenzy, I love these little bits of extra bling.
Wildrider comes with a couple different accessories. Sometimes Takara ditches the Hasbro accessories for the added Arms Micron figure, so I was happily surprised to see that they included the two katanas that came with the Hasbro releases of this mold. This time the blades are black and a bit more rubbery though.
As for the Arms Micron, Wildrider gets a gray elephant named Ozu. I really love the unmistakable pachyderm look, and I think he may be the cutest minicon in the line so far. It’s hard to believe this little guy is a Decepticon. (Reminds me of that Futurama joke: He’s an elephant who never forgets… to kill!)
According to the TF Wiki, Ozu’s alt mode is a grenade launcher. Personally, I think it looks more like an old Tommy gun with a large drum shaped magazine. I also think the Tommy gun look suits Wildrider’s overall serious appearance. He’s like a Transformers version of Buttons McBoomBoom! If only he had a fedora…
All around I’m pretty happy with this figure. (That’s probably pretty obvious since it’s the third time I’ve bought this mold.) But I really do enjoy that he’s the exact opposite of his teammate Dead End. And even though it’s not necessary, I would like to see a complete set of Prime Stunticons. Plus, elephant Tommy gun!
-Vault
DE/Wheeljack looks pretty cool in that color scheme. I hope they release it over here at retail. It looks like I may be sitting TF out for a while, not liking the Beast stuff and the classics look to be replaced by FoC?
BTW, they have re-released Dragstrip several times over the years, most recently with TF3’s Human Alliance sub-line.
http://darklorddungeon.blogspot.com/2011/08/transformers-dark-of-moon-drag-strip.html
He’s about the same size as Deadend and Wildrider in robot mode, so no worries there. There have been several Breakdowns in the past few years as well, so we only need MotorMaster. MM is fairly easy to finish the team, as he’s essentially become “Black Prime” or “Nemesis Prime” or “Scourge” or whatever they’re calling Optimus’ evil twin this iteration.
(also, a google image search turns up a Dragstrip redeco from the TF animated Arcee. apparently a 2011 Botcon exclusive?? news to me, but then I don’t bother with Botcon news much.)
btw, saw at Target today that all TFs are on sale. (10% off?)
of course, they had 4/5 of the Combaticons, which I picked up the whole set at WM last week. I seriously debated rebuying the four there, then returning them to WM, but that’s more trouble than it’s worth, innit?
TF Prime deluxes are $10 (down from $16), TF Generation deluxes are $14.81 (also down from $16). I think the other size classes are on sale as well, but all I was interested in was a Smokescreen to keep Team Prime up to date.
Sweet review and excellent pics! And darn you for making me want this figure! And Buttons McBoomBoom! Wildrider DOES look damn good in that colour scheme, doesn’t he?
But as nifty as Wildrider and his killer elephant are, though, I just can’t bring myself to buy Stunticons that don’t combine. Having said that, if Dead End were in the “correct” colour scheme, I probably would’ve bought him when I saw him. I like Dead End. (Well, the original, anyway. Thanks to international DVD publishers, I’ve only seen the first 10 episodes of TransFormers Prime.)
Wildrider looks great! The gray and red look great together. Its a nice looking mold. Now I kind of wish I had picked up Wheeljack at some point now, I don’t care for the Beast Warrior one.
I try to avoid getting redeco’s and Takara versions of the bots wince they are twice the price of the N. American versions, but this one was too hot to pass up on.