Transformers: Masterpiece Loud Pedal and Road Rage

 

  I’ve gone back and forth about whether or not I was going to write on both of these figures together, or separately. I would like to think that my ultimate decision is obvious now.

Both Loud Pedal and Road Rage are repaints of the Masterpiece Tracks figure, which is an entry in the series that I skipped, and don’t have much of an interest in going back to find. Tracks, while a fine G1 character, never did that much for me, and my Masterpiece buying is pretty much limited to characters I love or figures that I feel I really need to have or find interesting. Not that long ago, I paid some attention to Exhuast, a repaint of a good mold of a character who I’ve no sustained interest in, but as a repaint interested the hell out of me. Tracks had, as many G1 characters did, his one staring episode, and then he’d show up on occasion, as most of the original Autobots did. These two figures are not characters at all, but rather like Exhaust, Masterpiece versions of G1 Tracks variants, neither of which were widely available, or at least, not available in the US. A strange inclusion in a line like Masterpiece, then, these figures that aren’t really characters.

 

No matter the lack of characters, let’s talk about the figures. At the time Tracks was released, I was a regular listener to a Transformers podcast, and the members of it spoke of Tracks in a pretty bland fashion. In truth, the mold doesn’t have the kind of pizazz that other Masterpiece figures have, and that is one minor strike against it. The figure transforms from Corvette to robot mode, with the semi-third mode of the flying car that the original G1 toy had. The flying car was effected by swinging out the wings that made up a large part of the Tracks silhouette while keeping the rest of the vehicle mostly unchanged, and was a highly imagination dependent configuration. The Masterpiece version fares about as well as the G1 version did. The wings are attached to the robot arms, and so those must be folded out as well, and they don’t peg in very well to anything. So, they just sort of hang next to the body of the car. A neat detail is that a pair of tailfins flip out from the trunk of the car mode, and they add a little bit to the overall look of the flying car.   Loud Pedal comes with a translucent purple flight stand to accommodate flying poses, but Road Rage does not.

The vehicle mode is real slick, but sometimes doesn’t line up properly after transformation from robot mode. Panels won’t align, and being a Masterpiece figure, there is a certain delicacy that is employed in conversion, and this makes me a bit nervous about really pushing parts around. But, aside from that, the car mode is sporty and sleek, and it looks like an 80’s Corvette, another one of those cars that graced Trapper Keepers all throughout my grade school years. The doors don’t open, mainly because the movement that would be necessary for that would cancel out a transformation step, but the hood does open slightly to reveal a painted engine section. I’d forgotten about this, and so I don’t have a picture, but in truth the engine is just some silver painted raised area, and is not very impressive. The engine details are molded into the plastic, not a separate piece like on Masterpiece Seekers, and  it’s a pretty cool detail, but nothing really vital or fantastic. Because the robot arms in particular don’t exactly line up well in transformation, they touch the ground beneath the car, so rolling is impeded. Masterpiece molds like Exhaust and Bluestreak don’t have this issue. Regardless, the car looks good, and has the removable plastic side view mirrors, just like Exhaust. Those are pieces that may ever so slightly enhance the car’s profile, but they don’t really go anywhere in robot mode and don’t attach solidly enough to allow me to feel that they won’t just fall off and get lost. So for me, they stay in the box. Each vehicle has the Tracks flame design painted on the hood, with appropriate faction symbol in the middle as well as on a flipable plate in the middle of the roof. This is the chest in robot mode, so the symbol here is meant to be the one the figure displays in robot mode, but the panel can be rotated to put this out of view. My wife found this really hilarious, since they are supposed to be robots in disguise and all, and so a blatant and clearly visible faction logo does sort of ruin the disguise. Loud Pedal is a better looking car, the glossy black paint looking so much more vibrant than Road Rage’s strong but kind of standard red.

In robot mode, there are a surprising number of mold differences between the two figures. Not having the original Tracks, I had to look for pictures of him online to determine which of these two got remolded parts. Obviously the heads are different, Loud Pedal’s being the knight helmet look of the original G1 Tracks toy, and Road Rage’s being more feminine looking. Aside from the heads, the thighs and codpieces are different on each, with those on Road Rage being more rounded; Loud Pedal has the same parts as Tracks. Also, I don’t know what to call it, so I’ve taken to naming it the collar, but the piece right below the head that attaches it to the chest, that’s different on each figure. The rounded parts on Road Rage really give her a sense of being not just a different looking robot than Loud Pedal, but also a more feminine profile. While there are not a lot of female Transformer toys, those that exist generally seem to signal female-ness rough an enhanced chest. Some of them, such as Prime Arcee/Generations Chromia, use more sleek and slender bodies to signal female, but that mold also has roboobs, sort of cancelling out the gains of the overall body design. Road Rage is rather clearly a female character, and the toy signals this with some rounder thighs and a face sculpt. I wish more female Transformers would go this route, and maybe they will, with the more gradual inclusion of the characters. Just the other day I saw card art for a Titans Return Arcee, which, as of now, I don’t think anyone knows is real or cancelled or not, from the Titans Return Blur mold, and that mold would be a pretty good one for a female character. Not all female characters, which ends up being a repaint problem: suddenly that Blur and any motorcycle figure ever made becomes a female character. The helicopters in the Megatronia set are another good example of a figure representing a female character without some obvious tell, as the Combiner Wars Alpha Bravo (years later, still can’t get over the stupidity of the name) is a bit more slender than most other molds in that line, and with the female headsculpts makes for a pretty easily recognizable female robot. There is nothing about Road Rage that makes me think, “this toy was originally a boy, but now I believe it is a girl.” It looks like a figure of a female character.

 

The mold has some weaknesses. For starters, it doesn’t look good in a number of poses, and essentially looks best in a pose that, itself, looks bad. Stood straight up, gaps in the feet are painfully visible, since they don’t connect to the lower legs aside from an arm that holds them onto the car body. The leg guard panels don’t come down far enough to cover this open space. The figure carries a huge backpack, and the head and neck don’t connect to anything that would keep them in place either. The forearms are super long, while the biceps are super short. The figure is also very flat: if you look at it from the side, it is very thin from back to front. Standing straight up the figure looks awkward and disproportionate. The box art shows the figure, and this is true of the Tracks box as well, standing in sort of a reclining fashion, like with the pelvis pushed slightly forward and the shoulders pushed slightly back, an attitude-y stance. The issue with this pose is that it looks awful. You can get the figure into some decent looks, like a running or spread legged action pose, but just standing and looking good is hard for these two. I mentioned that the car doors can’t open in vehicle mode: they wrap around the figures’ back, and essentially fill in the rear of the robot torso, just beneath the backpack. I honestly didn’t even notice this until I’d put Loud Pedal in my case, and he just so happened to have his back against the glass. The door parts don’t even connect. They peg into the back a little, but they don’t connect to each other, so there is still a very visible gap.

These gap parts make the figure feel flimsy, less stable than most other Masterpiece figures that I’ve experienced. I know that the overall response to the Tracks figure from collectors was pretty blah, and I completely see why. while not a bad figure, this mold just isn’t as engaging as others: it doesn’t  have that “wow” transformation moment; it doesn’t offer a lot of posing options. Yet, there’s nothing actually “wrong” with it, so I’m left with a vague sense of finding it alright, but not really a masterpiece. It feels about the same as Bluestreak and Exhaust in terms of overall heft and quality, but the gappiness of it makes the overall product feel cheap. These are beautiful figures, Loud Pedal especially, but they don’t feel like much more than a look for me. It’s hard to find the ‘correct’ angle to view these figures from, as it seems no matter how you look at them, there’s a big, empty space or something that looks lame.

Other issues with the mold include the over the shoulder missiles being way too tiny: they don’t do much to emulate the over the shoulder missiles that G1 Tracks had, and they just look wimpy. The blaster is a perfect copy of the G1 Tracks blaster, but the hands don’t hold on to it solidly. The flip panel in the chest/roof is held in by the smallest of plastic bumps, and any amount of pressure is liable to pop it out of place. Accessory wise, Loud Pedal comes with a repainted “Sound Warrior” and holomatter avatar from Tracks’ alt mode Blaster and Raoul pieces; Road Rage comes only with a Twincast repaint of Blaster. Each also comes with a front fender mounted blaster for flying car mode, and the previously mentioned side mirror pieces.

On the whole, I think these are two Masterpiece figures that I’m pretty lukewarm on. They aren’t terrible, I’m not sure any Masterpiece figure is, but they aren’t great by any stretch. At times, I think they struggle to attain “Good”. “Ok” is probably the ceiling for the mold. I bought these at C2E2 this years, and got excellent prices on both: Road Rage cost me under $40. I feel like Loud Pedal and Exhaust sort of go together as a Decepticon espionage unit or something, as they really do feel like parts of a set. I can’t really complain about the mold, but it is lacking. I don’t have a need for the original Tracks release, so I think I get to enjoy these two repaints as oddities or blank slate characters, independent of any real kind of background information, and that honestly helps me enjoy them as toys with some flaws. They’re Masterpieces, so they aren’t likely to get taken out of the case and manipulated a whole lot anyway.

 

I would however have to say that I would not recommend these figures for purchase, unless you’ve got a personal interest in owning them. They are nonessential, basically oddities in a line that doesn’t really do oddities, and Loud Pedal is some kind of special release on top of that. I thought he looked good from the first pictures, and again, I got Road Rage for a price that I would have kicked myself over had I passed. I would have left C2E2 thinking, “man, I should have bought that Road Rage.” I don’t regret buying them at all, but they just are not required purchases. And once more, they are toys with issues: the posing and gappiness, the ultimate uselessness of the flying car mode, the gappiness. If you were going to go after one of them, I’d say that Loud Pedal is the better of the two for his stronger overall look. That shiny black paint is really excellent in person.