For the month of October, I decided to go after the rest of the Micromaster Transports. (Yes, I realize it's still September. I got jumpy.) There were four of them released during G1, all of them in 1989, and the idea was each was a Micromaster packaged with a vehicle accessory that could transform into a mobile battle station for the Micromaster to sit or stand in. There were two Autobots and two Decepticons; I used to own Overload and Flattop as a kid until I stupidly sold them. Roughstuff is brand new to me, and I managed to snag Erector earlier in the year so we won't be talking about him today.

OVERLOAD

As I've said before, part of what I enjoyed about the Micromasters, growing up, was that many of them could serve as an allegory for a larger, more familiar G1 character. Obviously the colors and transformations weren't always a match, but in broad strokes there were similarities. Tote was a lot like Ironhide. Fixit looked like Ratchet. Powertrain was like Huffer. Well, perhaps the most obvious of these was Overload resembling a miniature Micromaster version of Optimus Prime.

The tractor trailer cab is two inches in length, but with the trailer the full vehicle is about five and a half inches long. The cab is mostly blue with grey smokestacks (which are pretty obviously robot arms) and the trailer is mostly grey with a red base. It's a car carrier trailer, like Ultra Magnus, and it has an opening ramp in the back so two Micromaster cars can drive inside. Two more can fit on the top of the carrier for a total cargo capacity of four. There are no stickers on the toy at all and only minimal paint applications, with the truck grill painted black and the windows painted light grey.

The cab section transforms pretty much like a tiny Optimus Prime, with the rear of the semi swinging forward to become the legs, and the head flipping up. The front windows form the chest just like most versions of Prime. He's got a blue body with red legs, so basically Prime's colors only reversed. His face is painted light blue. He's a bit of a chonker as a robot, with the truck cab face protruding prominently. He lacks working knee joints, but his hips are articulated so he can either stand or sit on his butt.

The trailer transforms into an aerial vehicle that's five inches long with a four-inch wingspan. The sides of the trailer fold down to become wings, the nosecone flips up from underneath the bottom of the trailer like the cab for Action Master Optimus Prime, and part of the front folds up into a little safety bar like the ones they have on roller coasters. It's designed for Overload to sit in the control seat near the rear, with the safety bar closing over his legs. He plugs into the vehicle seat using the same peg that he uses to tow his trailer when he's transformed. The peg is not compatible with Erector, though, so there is no way for them to play swapsies.

His artwork shows him with some impressive dual-barreled cannons on the wings, and his packaging biography makes mention of them as well, but the actual toy doesn't have these. The pegs that connect to the safety bar when it's folded up into a trailer double as the main cannons, but they're shaped a little like tiny four-shot Gatling guns instead of the big double cannons shown in his card art. The vehicle doesn't change orientation, so it can still roll along on its six wheels.

The aerial vehicle configuration sure isn't very aerodynamic. They really took a lot of creative license with his card art, which strongly emphasizes the jet-like elements (like the nosecone and the cannons) while playing down the actual ungainly shape of the vehicle (the huge control bar and the completely boxy shape). The card art exaggerates the shape of the vehicle so much that it's basically incorrect.

I paid $16.99 for Overload on eBay. There are lots of versions of him that are missing his safety bar, and there's one auction I kept seeing over and over where he's horribly miscolored. But, I'm happy with the one I got. (One day I really do think I'm going to end up with one of the toys I sold off years ago. But, so far, it hasn't happened yet.)

ROUGHSTUFF

So this is a toy I've never owned before in any capacity. I'm sure I had the opportunity to buy him back in 1989, but I judged Overload and Flattop to be the two most attractive Micromaster Transports, back in the day. I was a kid with limited allowance, so I usually bought only one or two toys from an assortment so I could experience the play pattern. It was hard to collect entire sets back then.

So, Roughstuff is, like, this fantasy vehicle, very futuristic, with a swept-back cab that suggests he's very high-tech. The cab is an olive green with purple painted windows, and the trailer is mostly green with some blue parts near the back. His missile trailer has a payload of two large, grey 3..25" missiles, each of them mounted to the interior sides of the trailer. They are positionable to a point, but it's difficult to remove them for a fantasy launch without partially untransforming the trailer to unplug them. The trailer only has four functional wheels, but the rear two wheels are covered and supplanted by a set of six fantasy wheels, sculpted and painted black. The cab can pivot a little to the right or left, but mostly it stays wedged in place when towing the trailer.

By itself, the cab is two inches long. It looks very incomplete on its own, and the robot head is hidden poorly behind the cab, tucked away but still obvious and visible. To transform him, he's similar to Overload in that the rear section, with the peg that tows the trailer, swings down to form the legs. On Roughstuff, the front of the cab becomes the rear of the robot, so the windows end up on his back.

As a robot, he's two inches tall, with a grey body and toes, blue legs, and green arms and head. He has a red-painted face and eyes. He's styled very much like one of the Nebulan partners to the 1987 Headmasters, with rounded arms visible on the insides of his large, rectangular arm plates. It's Micromasters like this that made me think, initially, that they were going to be marketed as transformable Nebulans in armor, and not tiny robots.

The trailer unfolds into an aerial vehicle similarly to Overload, where the sides swing down to form wings and the nosecone flips out. Roughstuff also has a removable double-barrelled turret (blue with black cannons), which pops out and ends up getting plugged in closer to the front so Roughstuff can man the guns when he's seated in the vehicle. The large missiles end up mounted to the wings in this form. His instructions show him sitting in the vehicle flat on his butt, but the toy is designed so that you plug his feet into a peg. So, he can kind of lean back, with his toes plugged in, but he definitely can't sit. There's a black control bar that acts as a seatbelt, folding over his legs.

He's not a terrible toy, but his individual Micromaster vehicle mode is weak compared to Overload or Flattop, and he hardly seems compatible with his own vehicle. If the peg for his feet were positioned farther forward, then you could sit him down properly with his toes plugged into place. But, he's not awful.

I paid $30 for my first one, which was complete and unbroken (technically), but the robot feet won't move, the wheels won't spin because of the rusty pins, and there are stress marks in the plastic. I'm not super happy with the condition, and I'm trying to work something out with an uncooperative seller. In the meantime, I found another one for $20 plus shipping that looks like it's in better shape.

FLATTOP

Flattop seems to be named not for the Micromaster, but for the vehicle that he pilots, which can transform into an aircraft carrier. He shares a name with a Dick Tracy villain from the 1940's.

Unlike the other Micromaster Transports, Flattop's vehicle accessory does not serve as an extension of his vehicle mode. Rather, he is a self-contained jet, specifically an F4 Phantom, so basically he's like a tiny Fireflight. He's grey with a purple nosecone and tail and wings, with some black-painted detail for the wings and cockpit. Around 2.25" in length with a 1.75" wingspan, he has a (non-removable) bomb mounted to the underside of each wing. He's got two rear wheels but no nose gear to speak of, only a peg.

To turn him into robot mode, the center of the jet swings so that the tail folds up and the cockpit becomes his chest—a little like Starscream, but actually closer in concept to the way the Skyscorchers transformed during the G2 toy line. The wings folds up, with the aforementioned bombs becoming the robot arms. As a robot, he's predominantly grey with a purple chest and head, and a red-painted face and eyes. His arms can swivel 360 degrees, and his hips bend so he can be put into a seated position. There's a plastic bar connecting his feet together, so the legs move in tandem.

The vehicle, meanwhile, starts out as the approximation of a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier that is about 4.75" in length. The deck is grey and the undercarriage is purple, same colors as Flattop. It's a miniaturized carrier, basically big enough for Flattop in jet mode but not much else. He can be plugged into two places, near the front of the deck, facing forwards, or farther back and lined up with the diagonal-facing painted runway lines. It rolls on three plastic wheels, and the missile accessories can plug into either side.

The aircraft carrier flips upside-down to transform, and takes some cues from Broadside, like how panels on the deck slide open to form the wings. The control tower folds up, the jet tail section unfolds, and that's about it.. In this mode, the missiles are meant to mount to the main wings. It resembles those kiddie car rides at the amusement park where the cars are roughly shaped like fighter jets, and has a big open section in the top for Flattop to sit. He can stand in the driver's seat, using a peg, or he can sit down and the safety bar folds over his legs and sort of holds him in place.. The aerial vehicle has a flip-down nose gear and two more rolling wheels towards the back (which are visible on the deck of the aircraft carrier).

On Friday, September 30, 2022 at 1:55:07 PM UTC-6, Zobovor wrote:

> I paid $30 for my first one, which was complete and unbroken (technically), but the robot feet won't move, the wheels won't spin because of the rusty pins, and there are stress marks in the plastic. I'm not super happy with the condition, and I'm trying to work something out with an uncooperative seller. In the meantime, I found another one for $20 plus shipping that looks like it's in better shape.

So, I got my second Roughstuff in the mail today. The new one was in much better shape (no rusty screws, no chew marks from kids biting his feet) but he was missing the black safety bar. I figured I'd just swap the safety bar from my first toy and then sell it incomplete at a loss, but the safety bar doesn't fit. The holes are a different size.

I know there were lots of mold changes made to the early Diaclone toys, mostly for safety reasons, but I'm finding more and more that there are tiny, undocumented differences in a lot of the later toys as well. Nobody ever told me there was a "large holes" Roughstuff and a "small holes" Roughstuff, and that parts from one are incompatible with another. It's like the thing with Runamuck's gun all over again. Why has nobody documented this stuff? Where's Freds Workshop when you need him?

Also, the blue coloring on my new Roughstuff is darker than my first one. Like, a whole shade darker. The first one is like a solid blue, the second one is a darker G1 Optimus Prime sort of blue. The toy won't even look right if I mix and match parts. I can accept it as being batch differences. The second one is also from Canada, but it's not like Hasbro was producing toys just for that market, so I don't see that having a major impact on things.

Well, anyway. Now I have Slightly Better Roughstuff to put on my shelf (I wedged the safety bar in place, and that will do until I find a better one that actually fits) and now it's onto bigger and better things.

Zob (also has two more Micromaster Big Daddy toys coming, because I thought the first one was lost in the mail...)