As opposed to his inaccurate 1-step changer, this time around Springload's vehicle mode is accurate-- it's an old rickety pickup truck! From an initial glance, this mode is fairly decent-- the proportions are fairly spot-on, and most of the necessary molded-in details are here. Beyond the basic details like the windows and the treaded tires, his front grill is also detailed in, along with little bitty rear-view mirrors, the RID2015 signature trio of divots along the front sides, wheelcovers, and taillights on the rectangular back end. The color breakup is also good-- VERY good for a Legion-class figure, in fact. Springload's basic light milky forest green color is present, offset and contrasted with a good amount of black on his tires, wheels, and painted on his windows and wheel covers. His front roof is covered with a darker forest green that complements and contrasts against the lighter green quite well, and there's a bit of fairly light blue on his roof that serves as another light color. There's also a bit of silver on the front grill, but unfortunately only the top, not on the black-plastic portions of it further down. However, all of this said, there is some kibble in this mode, some of it significant. The most egregious is the top of his frog head sitting back there where the truck bed should be. If it was unpainted it would actually fit in somewhat well, but given that the eyes are painted a dark red and his eyebrows are painted a dark glossy purple they stick out quite bit. There's also some obvious fake tires in this mode-- used for his frog mode-- that are easily visible on the sides of his truck bed. The black circular-like bits underneath his side windows aren't tires, but kinda look like them they even though they're hinges used for the transformation and are a bit unsightly. On a lesser note, the tips of his rear front tire-feet peek out just a BIT below the bottom of the truck, though this is more looking for issues at this point.
    To transform Springload into his "robot" mode-- really a robotic frog-- you fold back the rear sections to reveal the complete frog head, then unfold out his long front legs fron underneath the truck while rotating up his jaw from inside the body of the truck to underneath his head. The front section of the truck mode also folds back in a similar manner as the back sections, making Springload's smaller rear frog legs visible and hiding the front tires at the same time. The end result is quite accurate to the show, particularly for a Legion-class toy. Yeah, there's a bit of truck mode kibble on his shoulders, but this is there on the show, just not quite as bulky. Same goes for the front top of the truck mode that's used for the main body-- I actually don't have a problem with this latter "kibble" at all, seeing as how it's used so well as Springload's body. In a definite contrast to his 1-step changer, Springload's headsculpt this time around is definitely spot-on to his show model, and his mouth can freely open and close too. (The tiny teeth are even painted white!) His long front legs have some stylized claws on the front, and are mostly painted light blue, giving him some more contrast on the front. His rear legs are molded into the typical "frog crouch" position, with faux wheels forming the feet, and look pretty decent back there, even if they're a little undersized compared to the front legs. Once again the faux wheels are a bit of an oddity here, as show-wise they're accurately on his shoulders but due to the toy size/limitations his real truck wheels are hanging off his lower front legs, which looks kinda odd. Other than that though, getting something this accurate to the show in a Legion-class transformation is pretty cool. For articulation, Springload can move up-and-down at the jaw, as well as the shoulders (at two points), elbows, and two points at the hips-- pretty decent for a small frog figure, overall.
    Springload is my favorite Legion-class design in the entire RID2015 line. Yeah, the top of his head being right there in vehicle mode is a definite eyesore, and some of the fake wheels are a bit weird, but this is such an inventive design in basically all other aspects those are easily overlookable, in my opinion. He's got a smart, interesting transformation-- especially for such a small toy-- with both a unique old-timey vehicle mode and a VERY unique frog robot mode. His color scheme is also incredibly varied for such a small toy, his proportions are pretty good, and his articulation isn't anything to sneeze at either. My only real regret about this toy is it makes it obvious how making the toy a bit bigger-- say, Warrior-class size-- would have enabled Hasbro to get rid of some of the minor oddities from the truck mode, most likely. I really wanted a bigger accurate Springload, but this'll still do.
 

Review by Beastbot

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