This is, I believe, the last of the Wreck N' Rule sets I'll be receiving (I didn't order Bulkead). They're Amazon exclusives, of course, but I got mine through Hasbro Pulse.

I will admit that I've sort of been falling into the momentum of collecting, and sometimes I will just order things even if I'm not absolutely thrilled about them. But, I'm a huge fan of G2 and I love this Leadfoot tribute, so I absolutely would have paid money for this set regardless.

G2 UNIVERSE LEADFOOT

Leadfoot was originally released in 1994, part of the Rotor Force assortment and one of the first all-new toys created specifically for the Generation 2 toy line. He shared a lot of engineering ideas with G2 Jetstorm, having very nearly the same transformation, but with a coil-driven rotor launching gimmick that made all the toys from that assortment a lot of fun.

If they were going to take the Earthrise Mirage toy and redeco it into a different character, there were potentially lots of characters to choose from.. There are quite a few Transformers who turn into an F1 racer or something approaching that style—GoBots Slicks, G2 Deluge, G2 Double Clutch, Robots in Disguise Skid-Z, etc. Or, they could have done an homage to Machine Wars Mirage or the unproduced G2 Mirage in pink and green. Leadfoot was not the intuitive choice, since he doesn't end up with the vehicle hood on his chest in robot mode the way all those other characters do. Deluge honestly would have matched the Mirage design much more closely.

So, Leadfoot is yellow from the waist up, with blue legs. They used a blue metallic paint over yellow plastic in order to achieve the proper color mapping, so props for getting him accurate. The spot on his chest where the G1 Mirage head tucked into during transformation is painted red with blue, meant to evoke the red vehicle windshield and blue driver's seat on the original toy. He's stamped with racing number 93 (he was a 1994 product release, but probably developed in '93) and he has a red tampographed stripes on his chest (they are interrupted by the recessed sculpted cavity on either side, however). The new head sculpt is reasonably good and instantly reminds me of the G2 toy.

He comes with the same weapons as Mirage, so he's got a black rifle and a black missile launcher with a blue painted missile. G2 Leadfoot launched blue rotors, so I guess this is the closest thing they could manage. I suppose this could be a version of Leadfoot before he joined the Rotor Force and got his spring-powered weaponry.

Vehicle mode is pretty good, and some effort was made to give him a few little paint hits to help sell this as Leadfoot (a patch of red around the cockpit area to represent the windshield; the blue driver's seat; the racing number on the front hood. Since the robot legs form the sides of the car, the sides are very blue, and lack the red stripes that were on the robot chest of the original toy (due to the way this one transforms, the robot chest is tucked into the undercarriage).

I feel like the yellow plastic doesn't quite have the right tensile strength to support this mold. It feels weak and flimsy, and while the vehicle mode locks together reasonably well, the parts don't mate with the precision that I would like. I keep having to give him a parts massage like an Alternators toy.

This toy was designed with the express purpose of matching the Mirage animation model as closely as possible, and it's not quite as Leadfootish as I would have liked. The lack of a large, blue rotor, arguably his most distinctive feature, is a disappointment. Maybe this is simply just *a* tribute to Leadfoot instead of *the* definitive tribute. I mean, there was a time when our only new Powermaster Darkwing was a weird Silverbolt redeco, and our only G2 Skyjack tribute was... well, another weird silverbolt Redeco. My point is, sometimes these things take time.

MASTERDOMINUS

We've gotten this toy, or versions of it, twice so far—once as Ractonite the styracosaurus, and again as Tricranius the triceratops. This time, the same basic design has been reworked so that he transforms into a mastodon skeleton instead.

I'm not sure what box my Ractonite and Tricranius are in right now. I'm not feeling well, so I don't have the energy to go digging through boxes. But, I will push on in the name of science.

He's mostly a medium grey, with the upper torso rib cage painted a matte black, with red visible behind the ribs, as if it were meat. Gives me Inhumanoids vibes. The robot pelvis and mastodon skull and robot helmet are also black. The spine is a mustard yellow, basically what passes for gold plastic nowadays, and the robot chest is painted a metallic gold.

So, a little weirdness about this toy. He came in the package with extra leg parts that the other two toys don't seem to have. I guess they're included in order to increase the height for the beast mode. Why buy third-party leg extenders when Hasbro can just include them in the box themselves? But, the solution for storage in robot mode isn't great. The extra sections just kind of hang off the robot arms uselessly. The designation of the upper torso limbs as "arms" is already tenuous (he doesn't have proper fists, just mammoth hooves) and sticking these parts on the back of the forearms just makes him look worse.

The instructions describe a sort of attack mode in which the mastodon tusk assembly is removed from the shoulder and mounted on the left forearm for use as a weapon. The instructions also show the extra leg parts being equipped, perhaps as makeshift, highly abstract guns, but it's really hard to say what they were going for.

Mammoth mode is taller than either of the two dinosaurs who preceded him, thanks to the leg extension parts. The mastodon tusks fit a little loosely. He's got an opening jaw that I find a bit disturbing for some reason.

The suggested weapons loadout shows Leadfoot decked out with a mammoth rib cage tusk weapon thing, a mammoth skull shield thing, and a couple of shoulder-mounted mammoth leg gun things. If Fred Flintstone went to war, this is what he'd look like.

As I said earlier, there is likely another Fossilizer combiner in the works, given how well the mask-shield-thing from Spindle fits into the mouth of Masterdominus to become what is clearly a combiner head. No word at this time on who else would contribute to the combined form, however.

Zob (needs to stop buying toys I don't love)

Zobovor <zmfts@aol.com> wrote:
> This is, I believe, the last of the Wreck N' Rule sets I'll be receiving
> (I didn't order Bulkead). They're Amazon exclusives, of course, but I
> got mine through Hasbro Pulse.
>
> I will admit that I've sort of been falling into the momentum of
> collecting, and sometimes I will just order things even if I'm not
> absolutely thrilled about them. But, I'm a huge fan of G2 and I love
> this Leadfoot tribute, so I absolutely would have paid money for this set regardless.
>
> G2 UNIVERSE LEADFOOT
>

> This toy was designed with the express purpose of matching the Mirage
> animation model as closely as possible, and it's not quite as Leadfootish
> as I would have liked. The lack of a large, blue rotor, arguably his
> most distinctive feature, is a disappointment. Maybe this is simply just
> *a* tribute to Leadfoot instead of *the* definitive tribute. I mean,
> there was a time when our only new Powermaster Darkwing was a weird
> Silverbolt redeco, and our only G2 Skyjack tribute was... well, another
> weird silverbolt Redeco. My point is, sometimes these things take time.
>

That Silverbolt mold is one of the best, and Darkwing really somehow looks
like Darkwing despite everything.

Skyjack, of course, just looks like Silverbolt wearing the wrong colors. I
love him, but he is really not pulling off his Skyjack impression.