In the final months before I moved out of my tiny condo, I was focusing on collecting Micromasters mostly out of neccessity. I simply didn't have any more room on my single bookshelf for any larger G1 toys, but I could squeeze in a new team of Micromasters here and there. I've got more space in the new house (and the G1 collection is currently spread out among five Detolf cabinets, and will probably be seven cabinets when the collection is completed) so the focus on Micromasters isn't absolutely necessary now, but I only have a few more Patrols to go before I've got them all so I figured I might as well keep going.

The Race Track Patrol (not to be confused with the Race Car Patrol) was originally released in 1990, the second product year for Micromasters and what would be the final product year for the original Transformers toy line.

BARRICADE
"Winning IS everything!"

This guy is a bright medium blue, and turns into an F1 race car styled after the Ligier JS31 from 1988 (as a frame of reference, Mirage was a Ligier JS11 from 1979). His car mode is 1.75" long. The spoiler is large and squarish, which is authentic to the real-life car, but it's supposed to be hollow so it can act as an airfoil. The large hinge near the hood, however, is not authentic but was largely unavoidable at this scale. There's a large screw right in the driver's compartment, which I guess kind of looks like a shiny race car driver's helmet if you squint a little. He has a hint of pink visible around the real axles.

Perhaps not surprisingly, that huge chunk of spoiler transforms into the robot legs. This has the unusual effect of the rear tires, which are comparatively gigantic, ending up on his robot hips. The front section swings back on the hinge and ends up on the robot's back.

As a robot, he's exactly two inches tall. In this form he's the same bright blue, with a vibrant magenta (pink, basically) and a yellow painted torso and robot face. It's a very attractive color scheme, very eye-catching with a real early 90's aesthetic.

Barricade is, of course, also notable in that his name was recycled for the police car Decepticon from the Michael Bay film series, becoming far more notable than his predecessor.

We got an updated Barricade called Decepticon Runner as part of last year's Galactic Odyssey Collection, a redeco of the new Roller Force.

GROUND HOG
"The roar of an engine is music to my ears!"

One would suppose that a name like Road Hog would be a better name for a ground-based vehicle, but I imagine it's a common name used frequently for toy cars, so Hasbro might not have been able to safely use the trademark. So, Ground Hog it is. He wakes up every morning and drives on the same race track as the day before.

Ground Hog is a deep purple car with silver windows and a gold painted flame on the hood, just slightly over two inches in length. His vehicle mode doesn't conform to a specific real-life vehicle model, but he's designed to resemble a funny car, like Sparkabot Sizzle or G2 Meanstreak, with the same oversized rear wheels and tiny front wheels. He comes closest to a Dodge Shelby Charger, only with fins and a turbocharger and side pipes and a custom elongated nose.

His transformation is the same as Roadhandler, with the rear of the car forming the legs and the entire hood flipping up to end up on the robot's back.. As a robot, he has a bright yellow body and upper legs, with purple arms and feet, and a silver painted pelvis and face. He's got the same triangular-shaped visor as Jazz. As a robot, he's precisely two inches in height.

On the original packaging for the Race Track Patrol, photos of Ground Hog show the screw that holds his body together on his pelvis, but the final toy has the screw going through his chest instead. His oversized "belt buckle" was clearly designed to accommodate a screw. I'm not sure why they changed it.

We did get a Ground Hog update in 2020 during Earthrise, but he was blue, not purple. Aside from the color problems, it was a pretty good tribute.

MOTORHEAD
"Burning rubber smells like victory!"

The vehicle type Motorhead transforms into is kind of interesting. Motorhead is a Chevrolet Corvette from 1987, specifically the B2K Twin Turbo edition, as signified by the dual intercooler ducts in the hood. So, he's a distant relative to Tracks or G2 Skram. As a vehicle, he's bright yellow with black windows, and measures two inches long.

He also has the same Roadhandler-style transformation as Ground Hog (he and Ground Hog were gang molded, and share the same yellow/purple colors). As a robot, Motorhead is slightly over two inches in height (he's the tallest of the team, but not by very much), with a purple body and upper legs, and yellow arms and lower legs. He also has a yellow painted pelvis and face. I think he's the first Micromaster I've ever seen who gets paint operations the same color as one of his base plastic colors.

Like Ground Hog, his assembly screw was also moved from the pelvis to the upper chest, and you can see vestigial remnants on his pelvis where the screw hole was originally meant to be. Also, he's got plates poking up on either side of his head that kind of makes him look like a 1987 Nebulan partner to one of the Headmasters. It's an odd design choice.

Motorhead got a new toy as part of the Galactic Odyssey Collection in 2021, sold as a redeco of the new Ground Hog toy.

ROLLER FORCE
"Unless you're behind me, you're in my way!"

Roller Force seems to be named after the mechanical engineering concept describing how much weight, or tire pull, a tire-and-wheel assembly can withstand. It sounds like an odd name for a Transformer unless you're familiar with the concept.

Roller Force is a dune buggy, along the same lines as Powermaster Joyride or Sparkabot Fizzle or or G2 Jetstorm. He's bright pink with silver windows, and he may very well be the most unabashedly pink Transformers toy in the entire range. No other secondary colors to mitigate it or complement it or detract from it—just vibrant and pink from bumper to bumper. He's slightly over two inches in length.

To transform him, the rear spoiler folds down to become the legs, and he's one of the only Micromaster cars whose lower legs are fused together. The top of the spoiler becomes the bottom of his feet, which is why there's a square-shaped space on the top of the spoiler—to serve as the peg-hole for his feet in robot mode. The hood folds over onto his back as you might expect.

As a robot, he's two inches tall, and he's got pink arms and feet, a blue body and upper legs (he was gang molded with Barricade), and a yellow painted pelvis and robot face. His head seems unusually large for such a small body. I can't decide if he's my favorite of the team or if Barricade is. It's definitely one or the other.

Roller Force Got an Earthrise update in 2020, sold with Ground Hog, but he suffered from poor color matching (he was a dark magenta) and didn't much look like the G1 version.

I like that they went with some unconventional car modes this time, distinguishing them significantly from the Race Car Patrol or the Sports Car Patrol, so the set didn't end up becoming just another redundant set of sedans. Ground Hog and Motorhead don't really break any new ground, but Roller Force and Barricade are different than the other Micromasters, both in styling and in color mapping.

Interest in these guys surged a couple of years ago when they first started doing tribute toys, but I figured if I waited a little while, interest would die out and the secondary pricing would come back down a bit. I wrote down that they were going for $40-$50 in 2020 and closer to $60 in 2021, but I got my set for $35, so I feel like I did pretty good.

Zob (work has been really upsetting me lately, but at least I can come home to some tiny plastic robots, yay!)