Got a question about the robot modes of G1 Ironhide and Ratchet. I'm putting together a decent collection of G1 but can't decide if I want to get these two as reissues since I have no idea what their robot modes are supposed to be. They're a couple of my favorite characters from the cartoon but the toys look absolutely nothing like their counterparts when in robot mode. I've looked at as many pics online as possible but still can't make out their basic designs as robots. Are they two separate pieces when not in vehicle mode? It looks like one half is some kind of sled on treads and the other is the robot. If so, do the robots separate from the sleds and actually have heads or are the windshields supposed to be their faces? Hope this doesn't sound stupid but I can't make heads or tails of their designs and was wondering what the consensus is on these guys. Thanks.
The original G1 Ratchet and Ironhide were actually from a different line (can't remember the line right off the top of my head) and they served as "battle exo-suits" in that series. Thus the lack of heads. EDIT: From the Transformers Wiki Ironhide was part of the original assortment of Autobot cars released in 1984. His mold was originally used to create a Diaclone Nissan Onebox Cherry Vanette. The Diaclone line of toys were not meant to depict sentient robots, but rather human-controlled machines; the Ironhide and Ratchet-predecessor toys are the ones that most clearly show evidence of this. Rather than a head, these toy robots had chairs behind windscreens where the human rider would control the robot. When ported into the Transformer toyline, it was both the Ratchet and Ironhide figures that differed the most from their animated incarnations, as the cartoon versions did away with all traces of the human-controlled design to give the robots proper faces and heads.
You got it... Yes... No... More or less. The seats behind the windshields have stickers on them "representing" faces. Doesn't sound stupid at all. They're decent figures IMHO, but that may be an assessment based more on nostalgia, as I grew up with them... Ratchet was one of my very first TF's as a kid. If you do decide to get them, there are heads for each figure that you can purchase online. They are designed specifically for the G1 figures.
Thanks for the info, Woolypanda. Very interesting. If they are exosuits that have chairs for heads then I think this makes them an easy pass for me!
Those heads are a definite improvement. Then again, adding them puts their arms on about the same level as their waist!
Turning their arms around does get the arms to look much more in the right place. You won't be able to move the arms around but if you are just posing them on a shelf, they look fine. Depending on what type of G1 collection you are putting together, they are pretty important characters you will have a gap of.
Here's some pics I took of my Encore Ironhide & Ratchet with the 3rd party (unofficial) heads: In this picture, Ironhide's arms are set up the official way and makes him look kinda strange. Ratchet is how I display them and looks better but you loose arm articulation. Pun-3X has a mode in the Radicons section somewhere where he fixes the arms but you have to do some modification to the figures that I didn't want to do. tfsource has some in stock
Grab at least one- Ratchet or Ironhide, it don't matter to me- and fiddle with it. I bought an Encore Ratchet and though i keep him in box with stickers unapplied, he is one of my faves. i'd like to wait until after i buy some GI Joe movie stuff before i order me the Encore Ironhide. but i will get him. they will be an important part of the collection.
Thanks for the pics, Seawing. They do look a hell of a lot better with the arms posed differently. Will have to definitely reconsider. I appreciate all of your inputs.
I'm glad that I bought both Encore reissues, then bought the custom heads. Faces on a chair looking out a window looks and feels lame. I had Ratchet when I was a kid, and glad to purchase the Encore version, as well as Ironhide. Btw, the reissues have cardboard "heads", no thanks Takara.
Get them and the heads, you get an awesome sense of completion with these two. (At least those of us who grew up with them do...) The heads make all the difference in the world.
Personally, Ironhide was my first TF as a kid... I keep him without the head addon, only because that's how I remember him. It does look odd though, I even thought that as a kid. I *think* there was a sticker for the head, to make it look more "War Within" with the windshield to act as a shield for the head.
G1 style to me was the toys. Not the cartoon. I always thought of the cartoon style as the simplification of the toys. Since I was already used to the awekwardness of Gobots, I liked toy Ratchet & Ironhide as well.
