Posted December 12, 2013 at 10:00 pm

Well that's the last of the Autobot Cars subgroup to be remade in Classics/Universe/Generations!  Skids finishes 'em all up.  It makes a perverse kind of sense that it works out this way.  Dude got two lines in two different episodes in the original cartoon, was heavily shortpacked back in the day, and made real appearances only in the old Marvel stuff.  He's the guy you're bound to forget.  

(Maybe that's the hidden joke regarding his characterization in the ongoing IDW comics.  Dude's got amnesia.  He's forgotten himself!)  

His original toy was a Honda City Turbo, which was this tiny thing, so his new toy is a similarly-eensy modern hatchback.  The Turbo wasn't sold in America, and was drawn in the comics and cartoons as a much larger mini-van.  Americans know what mini-vans are.  Compact cars, not so much.

Just like the Trailbreaker toy which preceded him, this Skids is based on Alex Milne's design from the More Than Meets The Eye ongoing comic book but with a more Earthy alternate mode rather than a Cybertronian-style one.  His head is the Milne-est thing ever sculpted, with the artist's signature pointy hook nose.  In robot mode, he doesn't look far from having leapt directly out of the comics.  He's just got a few Earth car parts here and there to spoil the illusion.

I like the idea of Transformers being designed after certain artist's styles.  Especially if we're going to get characters repeating.  It'd be nice to have, say, a "Geoff Senior" Nightbeat or a "Guido Guidi" Galvatron.  It interests me artistically.  Usually instead Hasbro tries to skew towards a more neutral presentation.  

(Skids also comes with an issue of MTMTE, as do the rest of the current line of Deluxes.  But that issue isn't drawn by Milne, so you don't really get the one-to-one comparison.)  

Skids also comes with the "nudge gun" that was a focus of his storyline in the MTMTE comic book series.  This smaller gun can plug into the back of his larger gun (based on the toy's original weapon) to make an even longer gun.

He transforms fairly similarly to the original toy.  He's got a hood chest and his legs fold out of the back of the car and the roof and wings fold onto his back and his arms sorta tuck away somewhere inside.  Also like the original Skids toy, he's covered in weapons.  There's two shoulder-mounted weapons, missile racks sculpted into his shoulders, and guns under his forearms.  Each set of forearm guns is geared into itself so that if you raise one side you raise the other.  

The only thing that bugs me about the toy is the lack of non-hand storage for the guns in robot mode.  I kinda wish I could plug them in somewhere on the robot mode to keep his hands free.  However, the only other 5mm pegholes are on the undersides of his feet in robot mode.  

(His hips are misassembled, so you'll have to swap them to get his legs to bend forward.  No tools needed, just chunk those pieces out of their tabs.)

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