Ironhide's vehicle mode is an SUV-- a little bit of a departure from his van mode of G1, but still close enough to be recognizable as Ironhide with the primarily red color scheme. Problem is, except for the windows, red is almost the ONLY color in this mode. The tires are black and there's a few silver paint details like on the front grill, but other than that this mode is plain, plain, plain. The proportions are nearly perfect, though, and no robot extras are visible, unless you count the few you can see through the transparent windows. His bumpers are also transparent blue plastic-- a nice touch-- and his license plate says "OREGON" on it, which is where the Autobot ship crashed in the G1 cartoon, sot hat's a nice homage. Speaking earlier of the windows, making the front, front side, and back windows transparent while painting the other windows a very light blue is rather off-putting. Considering you can see the robot parts, I just would have painted all of the windows instead (and made them a darker paint color while I was at it). Still, all these problems aside this would still be a great vehicle mode, except for one thing-- because of Ironhide's rather complex transformation, he has panel lines EVERYWHERE in this mode, and it's rather hard to get them all to line up exactly. Thus, little gaps in the windows and the sides of the vehicle mode are everywhere and VERY unsightly, moreso than almost any Transformer I've ever reviewed. It just looks ugly.
    Ironhide's robot mode is quite accurate to his G1 form (at least in the cartoon), but considerably less blocky. He also has a neat final step to his transformation, wherein a silver "internal detailing" panel with an Autobot symbol on it pops up to fill his rear windshield (which becomes his chest in robot mode)-- a VERY cool touch. In general Ironhide's proportions are quite good in this mode, though his arms could stand to be a bit bulkier, considering his character and all. His lower legs are decidedly hollow, so they don't look all that hot. The main downside to Ironhide in this mode, however, is his considerably backpack, made up of roughly 1/3rd of his vehicle mode. It tucks out of the way, but it's a BIG backpack and sticks out quite far, so it's a bit of an eyesore from any angle except a frontal view. Ironhide's light red color scheme gets a little pick-me-up in this mode, in terms of some more black and light gray added to the mix, but to be honest it still looks pretty boring. A more creative use (or just more) of the paint applications would have helped, particularly on sections of the feet that are almost all red and in placed where there's a lot of mold detailing but it's hard to see. His head-- which doesn't QUITE fold all the way up for some reason-- is also erroneously painted pastel blue instead of silver. Hasbro promised to fix in a later run, but I've never heard any reports that they did. It's not a big deal to me-- this kind of dull blue doesn't look so bad as a face-- but silver definitely would have looked better. One of the best things about Ironhide in this mode is his articulation-- it's fantastic. He can move at the neck, shoulders (at three points), elbows (at three points), wrists (at two points), waist, hips (at three points), knees, and ankles (yes, he can even more them sideways). So you can get some mighty cool poses with him, though the aforementioned backpack can affect balance slightly. Ironhide comes with a weapon that can plug onto either of his wrists-- depending on which end you plug in, it becomes either a blade weapon or a rotary gun weapon, which is a pretty neat idea.
    Ironhide has a decent robot mode-- it has some noticeable kibble, but otherwise its proportions and posability are quite nice. His boring, dull color scheme and his haphazard vehicle mode are what really drag him down and make him a below-average Universe 2.0 deluxe, in my opinion. Having all those panel lines everywhere in vehicle mode was just a bad design decision, no two ways about it. If you're a huge Ironhide this is a definite buy, but otherwise there are lots of other Universe 2.0 deluxes more worthy of your attention before this guy.

Review by Beastbot

Back to Transformers: Universe 2.0 Index