When I got my first batch of movie figures in the wee hours of the morning on June 2, I hadn't planned for Ironhide to be among them. I wasn't a fan of the photos I'd seen thus far, and the closeups I'd seen of his face showed him to have almost a bulldog-like appearance. No, I certainly wasn't going to buy Ironhide that morning.

Now, Ironhide is my favorite of all the movie figures. How'd that happen?

First, there's the reason I picked him up in the first place. He's strapped down in vehicle mode in his package, so that's all I have to go on (I don't trust pictures on backs of boxes). And holy frijoles, his vehicle mode is awesome. Ironhide is a black GMC truck with bottom-mounted missile launchers. I would guess they're supposed to be disguised as fuel tanks or some such thing, but you can't fool me. I fell in love with the black truck with the giant drum-like missile launchers at first sight.

Ironhide's relatively easy to get from one mode to another. His automorph gimmick basically just moves the kibble around on his legs, and while there is an excessive bit of torso-turning, it's all intuitive. It takes a little experimenting to get his shoulders (made from the truck's hood) to calm down a bit - they want to flap all over the place until you get them positioned just right. You'll note that they're still flying free in the photo of Ironhide's robot mode on the box; again, that's why I don't trust box images.

There are actually two ways to configure Ironhide's shoulders: the first uses the chest piece to hold them in place, while the second has them sitting outside the wheels that form his collarbone (?) area. The first is the more kosher, but I think the second is cooler, because it invokes a War Within Prime look.

His ginormous missile launchers actually combine in his robot mode to form a titanic cannon, bigger (scale-wise) than G1 Megatron's fusion cannon. You don't have to combine them; you can leave one on each arm, but they must be combined for the launching mechanism to work.

Finally, we come to Ironhide's head. I'm still not thrilled with the look of it - this is the one aspect of the movie figures' aesthetic that I'm still having trouble with. But, in what is a rare occurrence for Transformers from any line, his head is almost perfectly proportioned for his body (assuming you're using human proportions to judge your anthropomorphic transforming robots)!

And here's the thing - you don't have to be happy with Ironhide's head the way it is! A mod, posted to Flickr by huberific, shows that the back of Ironhide's head has a very, very G1 look to it, particularly when you add a bit of red and silver paint. While I've not yet done this to my figure, I will once it migrates from my desk at work to my home display.

Ironhide's a bot that really surprised me. I didn't even want to buy him, and now he's my favorite. Toy collecting is a lot of fun when things work out this way.

Tags: Flickr Hasbro Ironhide transformers transformers movie

Posted by Dan on June 14, 2007 3:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)