Got this set in the mail yesterday (I thought Christmas Eve was a federal holiday now?). I actually didn't get any Transformers for Christmas this year per se (a rarity until itself), so I'm going to ramble on about these little guys for a bit. In all fairness, I did warn you this was going to be a thing.

TOTE

So, cute little tote is a tiny red van. If these guys actually were reimagined versions of 1984-85 characters, this would be Micromaster Ironhide. He's box-shaped, similar to the Nissan Vanette or Toyota Onebox. As a vehicle, he's entirely red with black painted windows. He's such an adorable little thing.

His transformation remains entirely unique among the Micromasters. Pieces of the front of the van slide forward on a pin, so you can flip them upside-down to form the robot legs. The back section of the van also slides out so you can swing it back to end up on the robot's back. It's simple, but clever, and results in a clean vehicle without large, round hinges poking out a they do on toys like Roadhandler or Hyperdrive.

As a robot, Tote is two inches in height, and is mostly red with a grey robot body and head, and a light grey painted face. His shoulder armor limits the movement of his arms somewhat, and can only be raised 90 degrees. The nature of his transformation means his knees are more or less a solid, ill-defined block, but his feet can move individually. Even though his large backpack would theoretically make him very topheavy, his large feet help him to balance well. He's overall a solid offering.

MUDSLINGER

Mudslinger is a monster truck with oversized tires. He's similar in shape to the Ford F-250, the same type of truck that was the basis for the original monster truck, Bigfoot. It's very likely his main color (blue, with grey painted windows) was chosen to resemble Bigfoot as well. While he's the same size as the other Off Road Patrol members, he's not the same scale. He's tiny even by Micromaster standards. He's a Nanomaster!

To transform him, the front of the truck unfolds to form the legs, and the robot head has a little plastic tab that you can grasp with your thumbnail to flip it out. He's blue with a bright orange body and upper legs, with a grey painted face. He's got a row of grey-painted windows on his chest that are quite distinctive.

The design of the wheels on this toy are quite clever. The rear wheels are actually split in half, so that the outside of each wheel can roll but the inside of each wheel does not. The insides are actually the same piece of plastic as his robot arms. This design enabled them them to cheat the wheels but still provide the robot arms with the articulation they needed. It's quite clever.

HIGHJUMP

Highjump would probably remind me of Trailbreaker if he were a different color. He's not dissimilar to the Toyota Hilux, though the hinge at the top of the camper shell vaguely resembles some kind of cable winch. He suffers from the same design flaw as Free Wheeler, where a single pin serves as the axle for his rear wheels, and so the rear passenger side wheel has the crimped end of the pin instead of a proper pinhead. He's grey with a visible red hinge on top (he was gang-molded with Tote), and light grey painted windows.

His transformation is very different than most Micromasters. The rear of the vehicle turns into the robot legs, with that red hinge becoming the knees. The rear wheel assembly actually swings up and out of the way, so the robot legs don't have any wheels attached to them at all. The hood folds towards the bottom of the car, and the roof becomes the robot chest.

This style of design eliminates some problems (like the need for a large hinge visible on the truck hood) but it also creates new ones. His arms are incredibly puny, like one of the small Terrorcons, and they are largely useless (swinging them up is effectively transforming them back into the vehicle configuration, so they only look good at his sides). He's mostly grey with a red robot head and upper legs, and a white painted face.

Highjump manages to break the mold and do something unconventional, so he's unique in that regard. But, I really don't like him. His stubby arms are so bothersome. But, I guess not every Micromaster is going to be a favorite of mine.

POWERTRAIN

Powertrain is an odd toy. For one, his vehicle mode doesn't seem to correspond to any real-life designs. He's a long-nosed semi-truck with a sleeper cab, but he doesn't seem to quite match up to any existing trucks. He's something like a Kenworth W900L, but some of his design features (like the single smokestack) seem atypical. (That smokestack, incidentally, tends to break a lot. The Off Road Patrol set I bought actually came with a Powertrain who had a broken smokestack, so I had to swap out the cab section with the one from my childhood toy.)

The toy is a six-wheeled vehicle, but two of the wheels are falsies. His frontmost and rearmost wheels are functional, with the remaining center wheels slightly smaller, and raised off the ground, and do not roll. And I thought the Decepticon toys got most of the cost-cutting! The lack of silver hubcaps (really the assembly pins) sort of spoils the illusion that they're wheels at all, since the fake ones are entirely black. He's orange in this form (he was gang-molded with Mudslinger), and has black painted windows.

Powertrain almost doesn't transform at all. I've given him a lot of flak over the years (no, not THAT Flak) for being oversimplistic, even by Micromaster standards. Basically, you stand the truck up on its end. That's it. You do need to fold the robot feet so he can actually stand, but that's literally all you need to do. Technically, his transformation also involves rotating the cab section 180 degrees, but this is strictly cosmetic and isn't at all required to complete the robot mode. (His packaging shows an early design for the toy, with very different robot feet that were probably a lot more fragile.)

As a robot, Powertrain is orange with a blue robot body and feet, black legs, and a white painted face. (The packaging shows him with black arms, which is not a good look.) He is slightly taller than most Micromasters (about two and a quarter inches) but he's got such an odd design. His legs bend at the hips, so he can sit in compatible vehicles, but unlike most Micromasters, he has no working knee joints. Also, his arms are attached to his head. He looks okay when his arms are at his sides, but when his arms are raised, they're very clearly mounted to his ears. It's just an incredibly bad design.

I'm really enjoying replacing some of my old, badly-customized Micromasters with nicer ones that I can proudly put on a display shelf. The 1989 product line had a heavy focus on Micromasters, and the 1990 product line was entirely Micromasters and Action Masters. So, I've definitely got a few more of these to gobble up before I'm done.

Zob (back to playing Exploding Kittens with the family)