Hot Rods

This year's Transformers Collectors' Club free toy was Sideburn. I got mine in the mail yesterday. He's awesome.

Sideburn is a repaint of the 2006 Classics Rodimus (Hot Rod, really) mold. This makes him a continuity transplant - the Sideburn character began life in the 2001 Robots in Disguise show as one of the three Autobot Car Brothers. Along with Prowl and X-Brawn, he was a key character, and in many regards filled the Hot Rod-esque "young good-natured punk" role. This eventuated in a repaint of RiD Sideburn in Hot Rod's red & orange colors. For the new, G1 version of Sideburn, the opposite was done, putting Classics Rodimus in Sideburn's blue & white. As I said, it looks great.

Sideburn inspired me to finally getting around to purchasing one of Walmart's DOTM exclusives - a legends class 3-pack with ROTF Bumblebee repainted in gold & silver (pretty much movie Goldbug), ROTF Soundwave in G1 colors, and Universe Rodimus in orange, brown, and silver.

Yeah, you read right. The Rodimus mold has been released in the US twice before, the first time in his typical red & yellow flame deco, and also in blue & red as Smokescreen. However, the original release was all but impossible to find and commands a much higher-than-reasonable price on ebay. Luckily, this mold is close enough to being Rodimus' G1 colors to satisfy me. Heck, IDW has even provided a good excuse for his brighter-than-normal colors - Hot Rod was shown in Maximum Dinobots to have the ability to pull a Human Torch-style "flame on" and engulf himself in flames. So, I guess this toy will be Flaming Hot Rod to me. Go ahead, get the giggles out.