Movie Ironhide now has
a toy released in the deluxe class, covering nearly all your size-class
bases if you want a toy of him. In vehicle mode, Ironhide pretty much looks
how you'd expect-- he's a black GMC Topkick pickup, with excellent vehicular
proportions all around. All of the necessary mold detailing is here, along
with some paint apps on the front bumper and the taillights. It's not exactly
a very colorful color scheme, but it is, of course, accurate. As far as
robot mode extras, the most obvious ones are his large feet, which stick
out from under the rear half of this mode. I kinda wish they folded up
more, as they're really the only slight eyesore in what is otherwise a
stellar mode. His pelvis does jut out SLIGHTLY from the bottom if you look
at him from a directly side-on view, and you can see some of his robot
parts just barely behind his dark blue transparent windows, but those are
minor downsides at best.
Ironhide's robot mode
is also quite good, particularly for a toy of this scale-- in many ways,
it's more accurate than the original Voyager-class
version, which is quite surprising. However, there are certain things
this mold hits a home run on regarding movie-accuracy, and other things
it misses on. First off, the hits-- Ironhide's chest and head assembly
are the most movie-accurate out of any of his toys, bar none (including
the Dark of the Moon toys-- hesitant as I am to point that out, as it shows
permanently just how far behind I am on toy reviews at this point). Everything
just fits and collapses togehter so well, and though Ironhide's head is
a TAD tiny in comparison, it's not by much, and there's plenty of paint
detailing on this toy to make everything stand out. Far from being hte
"all-black" bore his vehicle mode-- and many of his toys-- have been, this
version of Ironhide mixes it up a little by added a healthy amount of bluish
gray to his robot mode, and topping it off with some nice metallic silvery-blue
and bronze paint apps. It's all done quite well, and though not the best
color scheme I've ever seen, gives some much-needed variety to it while
not diverging so blatantly from the movie model so as to be considered
a themed "repaint" or something like that. The legs are also pretty well-done,
as Ironhide has HUGE feet on his movie model, which are accurately modeled
here (albeit with the tires forming the soles of said feet). However, the
pieces of his vehicle mode that hang off his legs are really thin and skinny,
to the point where I'm worried about inadvertently snapping one of them
off during the rather complex transformation back to vehicle mode. The
pieces hanging off the back of his feet are particularly large and kibbly.
The pieces behind his chest fold away quite well, however, with even parts
of each side of the truck mode tabbing together solidly to form his back.
And this leaves us with the arms-- definitely this mold's weak point, and
where most of his points off come from. Ironhide is supposed to have big,
bulky shoulders and arms, but here his they're rather short and-- while
not outright skinny-- they are definitely undersized and stubby. The sides
of his front bumper don't form the shoulder pads on this version at all
like they're supposed to. In addition, big sections of his roof just hang
below said arms unceremoniously, and are his most annoying pieces of kibble
in this mode, as they can get in the way of movement a bit. As opposed
to his oversized twin cannons Ironhide's traditionally had, the cannon
on his right arm is a bit small proportionally, and the one on his left
arm is non-existant. (However, I'm not complaining about the latter, as
instead that pieces comes off to form an AWESOME little turret buddy, just
like in the RotF video game!) As far as articulation, Ironhide can move
at the head, shoulders (at two points), elbows, wrists, hips (at three
points), knees, and ankles (at two points), He's not bad by any means,
but he is a tad restricted in the knees and at the shoulders because of
his kibble.
Deluxe class Ironhide
is a pretty nice toy-- robot mode arms excepted-- but honestly, unless
you're a huge fan of the character, there no real point in getting this
toy. It's too small to display with other mainline figures, and too big
to display with Legends figures. For a character like Ironhide, his weapons
aren't all that impressive either, even if his deploying turret is pretty
cool. His transformation is still complex, so if you want an easier one
to transform you'll have to go with another version, and he doesn't have
a different "themed" color scheme to make him look all that different from
his other versions in vehicle mode. Which pretty much just leaves mold
completists and diehard Ironhide fans to recommend this to. If you want
one version of the character, go for the Recon
Ironhide mold instead.
Review by Beastbot