Right before TFCon went away for a COVID related vacation, the last Fans Hobby exclusive was the MB-12B - Wheelblade. A repurposing of their Athena figure, a new Headmaster and an extra weapon basically transformed this Minera homage into a Windblade homage. Never ended up getting it back in the day because I would have had to ship, and there was no way I was spending $40 USD to ship a figure that was $80 USD. As luck would have it, when The Chosen Prime came back this year to TFCon, there were a few of these figures brought up with them, and I of course bought one.
I guess at some point, Fans Hobby changed the vehicle mode from a burgundy to a more pure red, which make sense given the character. Unfortunately, while there is a generous amount of clear coat on the figure, you're ultimately dealing with base plastic colours.
Having said that, welcome to what $100 CAD gets you. It's a slightly better price than the webpage ask of $80 USD. You're seeing what you get, really, which is basically the vehicle (or Transtector if you want to be exact), the Headmaster figure, two guns, a sword/sheath, and a trading card. Unique to Wheelblade are the Headmaster and the sword/sheath, but ultimately, this is exactly what you're thinking, namely they've taken a character that features a VTOL Jet as an alt mode, and turned her into a car.
Thigs are off to a pretty good start. I THINK the vehicle is some sort of Porsche.. I mean it looks like one, so if I'm wrong don't kill me. I just know it's not a Toyota Corolla. Not much paint, as stated, but overall the alt mode looks nice. No vehicle mode extras (doors, hood, etc.), and surprisingly the rims are not chromed plastic.
The little Headmaster figure is neat. Retooled to have Windblade's face on the back (with removable crown to make things a bit more streamline when playing with it.
As this is based off a Headmaster Jr., the size of the figure is amongst the smallest of these mini figures, and that side by side shows this figure is even smaller than a Micro Master. The articulation on the Headmaster is pretty good, slightly better than that of the Titan Master figures, which were pretty good given their extremely small size. There is one extra joint, which is shown as am Ab Crunch here, which allows the Head mode to be flat across the top and not have an protruding hinge. Paint work is again, pretty minimal but it does the job. The legs tend to pop off the figure, but given the size of the thing I'll let that one slide.
Transformation into robot mode is where things start to downhill. To start with, I couldn't get the figure to fit into the cockpit, which is a bit annoying as that was one of the neat things about the original toys - the ability to put the pilot inside the figure. Perhaps more annoying/disappointing is that in order to transform the thing, you need to take to the entire top of the car off.
Now, you didn't have to do that with the original toy, and that was made in the early 90s, so I'm sure the engineering exists these days to maybe, oh I dunno.. fold it up into a crumpled heap or something. These are the same guys who made Power Baser before this, and Naval Commander after... and THIS is the best they could come up with? Clear the B Team wasn't working this design.. maybe not even the C Team.
After you struggle through the instructions, you'll be left with this decently sized robot mode.. Voyager class, I guess? I say struggle because quite honestly the instructions are terrible, and I honestly feel that whomever made them up never really tried to transform the thing, and just went by CAD drawings. I mean, clearly the steps are doable, but there's some intermediary steps that are missing, which is kind of funny because it's already at 111 steps.
The "back" of the figure is actually the car roof just kind of slapped on. Again.. kind of a disappointment given the other things that they've made. I think of all the Third Party figures I've handled, only Big Firebird Toys did that with their Nicee, but in their defense that was their first release.
Perhaps the biggest Build/QC issue on this figure, at least for me, is this. You're looking at the underside of the the figures left leg and yes, the entire top pieces pivots on a point embedded in the tiny plastic sleeve which promptly snapped when I tried to transform it. It doesn't affect things too much, but to have a $100 CAD figure not even survive its maiden transformation really sucks. I honestly don't even know why they couldn't just use a ball joint or something that can be easily reattached, cause now the figure will never be the same again.
One neat thing that Fans Hobby did was include the old Power Meter, which was a thing on the G1 toys that would be a visual of their Tech Specs. Kind of neat, but I WOULD HAVE LIKED TO HAVE A ROOF THAT DIDN'T DISCONNECT FROM THE CAR.
Head sculpt is pretty good. I mean, there aren't exactly any real "photo realistic" heads for this character. It's not worse than the Titan Returns figure or anything like that.
The second major strike against this figure is the articulation. It's not bad, slighly better than that of a Voyager figure in some ways. But that's kind of the problem - it's supposed to be MUCH better than your typical Mainline figure. The ankle tilt is basically non existent, so you won't be able to really make use of those legs. Single jointed knees and I guess you could call them double jointed elbows. Shoulders are pretty much standard. The only other real trick is that you get some ab crunch/back arch, which lets Wheelblade twerk.
The weapons look alright in her hands. Both the guns and the scabbard can be slotted into the thighs, though none of the tabs are really deep enough to hold it in place. Also, because there's only two slots, you can't deck her out with both guns and her sword at the same time. The hands do a decent job at holding the weapons, though again, the small tabs and all - which to be fair is also an issue with the MPs. Sword looks nice and has some decent paint work.
So yeah, like I said. The figure isn't terrible, and pretty much meets Mainline standards. But that kind of is the problem. It really doesn't seem like they tried to raise the bar any. with additional articulation or engineering feats that are present on other releases. It's not like its not feasible. Then on top of that you have the crappy foot design, which is just the cherry on the top of this "Meh" sundae.
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