Posted March 28, 2022 at 5:35 pm

The last 1984/1985 Autobot Car guy is here in WFC Trilogy style, and it's Skids, of course, and also the WFC Trilogy is over, this is Legacy, the toyline afterwards, where we pick up the leftovers.  Poor Skids always gets left out.  He only got two lines in the original cartoon, each in a different episode and by a different voice actor.  He had way more luck in the original comic, where he actually got a solo focus issue and appeared in a few ongoing storylines afterwards!  (Of course, in the UK, Skids got displaced to Limbo for years so that Galvatron could hang around from the future, so it wasn't all sun and roses.)

Skids is a vehicle we didn't have in North America, a Honda City Turbo, which is essentially a tiny-ass hatchback.  But American writers assumed he was a mini-van.  And so he got drawn large-ish in the comics and called a "van" by other characters, but he's actually a pretty tiny car!  His original toy was pretty good at expanding to a tall height from such a small vehicle.  

Another thing about Skids is that his character model was drawn from a mistransformed toy photo.  And so his shoulders start at, like, his abs, because the toy reference had his arms hanging down from the sides.  Neither Skids recent Masterpiece toy nor his new Legacy toy try to replicate this, though it's possible to mistransform the Legacy toy's shoulders lower.  

The final thing about Skids is that he got carwashed by a cowgirl and he shuddered a bunch in pleasure.

Anyway, he has a toy now, in the first Deluxe Class wave for Transformers: Legacy!  He's finally a first wave guy, because he's the only 1984/85 guy left!  An honor, sort of!  If there was going to be a Legacy cartoon for Netflix, he might've gotten some airtime.  (There will not be, so he won't.) 

Legacy Skids transforms essentially how you'd think -- the hood becomes the chest, doors become wings, roof stays on the back, arms hide underneath.  The most interesting diversion is how his spine folds up in a zig-zag pattern to compress him more.  A lot of his car shell is translucent plastic, which may give some pause, especially how you're supposed to kind of stretch the roof into place to fit into all the tabs, but it's a pretty thick translucent plastic, so it doesn't worry too much.  He seems pretty hardy.  

Skids comes with his two arm-mounted weapons, and you're supposed to mount them ON his arms, that's why there's 5mm ports there, but the instructions only show you putting them in his fists.  He also comes with a translucent blue Energon axe, but the instructions only show him holding it horizontally like a gun.  I mean, there's a barrel, but it's clearly also an axe.  You can combine all three weapons into a mega weapon thing.  

I painted Skids' hands red at first opportunity.


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