Wheelie has gotten a few toys over the past several years, but this one is meant to fit in with the other relatively recent Scout class versions of the G1 "Minibots". In vehicle mode, Wheelie is pretty darned accurate to how he looked in the G1 cartoon; it's definitely not a realistic car, but rather a very very streamlined, curvy, futuristic car. Proportions-wise this mode is pretty spot-on, and there's barely any robot mode extras (the only one being the bottom of the head on the back end where you would expect an exhaust pipe or something instead). The dark translucent black bit in the center can also lift up for you to stick a Titan Master in there, if you so decide to. However, it's rather difficult to get a Titan Master set in securely, because this vehicle mode comes apart VERY easily, which is definitely my biggest issue with it. There's several tabs, but they're almost all too shallow to really hold the parts together. As such, play with Wheelie much and put much pressue anywhere and he starts to pry apart-- even if you lightly touch everything back in place, there's still several obvious "lines" across the mode, as you can see in the pic above. The colors are pretty much the usual Wheelie scheme, with light orange and a duller/darker orange being the main colors, which both complement and contrast against each other fairly well. The black window and tires help add a bit of dark to the mode, and there's some silver on the grill on the front bumper and on grill-like details about halfway back on the toy. The thing is, due to the construction the front half or so of the main bulbous window is painted silver-- which, given that it's on orange plastic, makes the gaps in the toy even more obvious. It doesn't match at all with the black back half of the window either, which is really an odd look.
    Wheelie's robot mode, again, looks pretty darned good. For the most part it's pretty obvious how he transforms just by looking at the two pictures, but there's a few neat little unexpected bits, like the front wheel pieces fold behind his lower legs and out of the way and how his windshield and back of the vehicle compact together. The proportions are spot-on again, and the vehicle mode extras are minimal-- the side doors are merely attached onto the back of his lower arms which is a bit of a bummer, and due to the transformation there's a "bump" of plastic with a pin through it behind Wheelie's head, which almost looks like the top of an actual backpack. As with the vehicle mode, the mold details are very minimal for the most part given the streamlined futuristic look of the little guy, but on his robot-specific parts he does have a few notable details, like Wheelie's trademark hat-with-an-extra-little-visor-bit on top of his head, which is sculpted quite nicely. The hands and details on the lower legs are also nice little touches, too. As for the color scheme, there's the addition of a really pale blah gray which I don't like at all, but to be fair it is accurate to his usual color scheme. I do like some of the paint apps specific to this mode, such as the silver apps on his lower legs, waist, and some really nice silver on his face with blue eyes. Wheelie's very well-balanced, and has excellent articulation-- he can move at the neck, shoulders, elbows, rotation at the waist, and movement at the hips and knees-- most of the these are ball joints, which theoretically should give him good posability. However, most of his ball joints are quite loose, which obviously interferes with articulation but also makes his vehicle mode stability even worse, and is another major bummer (though granted, this can be fixed with some floor/nail polish).
    Titans Return Wheelie is a nice design in both modes, with minimal extras and excellent proportions in both modes. However, he really needed to go through another round of QA, as his joints are mostly quite loose and the tabs that hold his vehicle mode together aren't thick/wide/long enough-- combined, this makes for a frustrating transformation to vehicle mode and gives the toy almost a "KO" feel to it, hich is really unfortunate. Still, moderately recommended if you have floor/nail polish.

Review by Beastbot

Back to Transformers: Generations Index