Zob's Thoughts on Velocitron Voyager-Class Road Hauler

[Zobovor]

I could have owned this toy one month ago, if I'd just bought it at Walmart the first time I saw it. But, I'd already placed a pre-order with Hasbro Pulse, so I assumed they'd be fulfilling it in a timely manner. (They still haven't fulfilled my Velocitron Black Convoy pre-order, either. Any day now, I'm sure...)

I will admit that it took me a while to come around to accepting the idea of characters like Road Hauler. For me, at least, G1 was a clearly-defined set of characters created from 1984-1990 and all these eHobby newcomers and interlopers (Road Rage, Deep Cover, etc.) were most unwelcome. Some of them I still take umbrage with (still not a fan of Loudpedal) but most of them I've come to accept. In my mind, they're all sort of pigeonholed into a "What If?" version of G1, because a lot of them are based on Diaclone toys that certainly *could* have been part of G1, back in the day, if Hasbro had played their cards a bit differently.

Road Hauler is a little different. While he's not based on a Diaclone color scheme, he does have a single canonical appearance in the G1 cartoon series. There's a scene during the Matrix flashback in "Five Faces of Darkness" part 4 in which the Autobots and Decepticons are shown living harmoniously together, and we see a couple of Constructicon-colored vehicles. One is Grapple's crane mode animation model, and the other looks like Scavenger but with a lattice-style crane arm instead of a steam shovel bucket.

Takara has written a bit of fanwankery retconning this guy as being the same character as Hauler, the orange Grapple-like crane who popped up for basically one scene in the "More Than Meets the Eye" part 1 pilot episode. Since the Constructicon color scheme was a flashback, it takes place before the pilot, ergo he was a former Constructicon who defected to the Autobots, and therefore this is a previous, older version of Hauler and not his "current" self (which would basically be identical to Grapple).

The eHobby version of this character from 2003 sells for many hundreds of dollars now, so this version is much more readily accessible at only thirty bucks or so.

In vehicle mode, Road Hauler is a bright lime green color, with yellow-and-black hazard stripes that reminds me of the consumer-applied stickers on G1 Hook or Bonecrusher. He's got green-painted rear hubcaps, gunmetal-painted outriggers, and a black crane hook. He has blue translucent windows (purple would have been better!) and blue headlights, like Grapple, with a gunmetal-painted front bumper.

Transformation is the same as Grapple, of course. This is the corrected version of the mold with shorter pegs to connect the head assembly to the feet in truck mode, so minimal risk of breakage there.

Robot mode is lime green with black parts. They went with a two-tone look for the upper legs, like Grapple, rather than the solid color that Kingdom Inferno has. The head is based on Grapple's helmet but has been famously (or infamously) redesigned, and now has a screaming face portrait. (His head is hollow, and you can actually see the green mushroom peg connector inside his mouth.) Many fans have been vocally upset about this, because of course they are. They've done this sort of thing before many times with the Masterpiece toys, of course, but usually you have the option of being able to swap faces. When they do it with a mainline toy like Skywarp or Dirge, you're kind of stuck with it. The helmet is cast in the same color of plastic as his body, like Grapple, but it's painted entirely black this time.

There's a curious goof on Road Hauler's packaging, in which he's depicted equipping both his gun-arm as well as his claw-hand at the same time. At first blush, it looks like they plugged the gun barrel into the center of the claw, but there's no peg-hole to accept the gun barrel. I think what actually happened was that they loaded both pieces on the CGI model simultaneously, so he actually has both of them plugged into his wrist socket at the same time, and the gun barrel is clipping through the center of the claw. Oops!

I imagine this guy does a lot of things that Grapple doesn't do, like having two hands, or using his crane arm when he's in robot mode. Anything to differentiate the two a bit, you know?

There seem to be a lot of fans (particularly on Twitter and Reddit) who are accepting this as a toy of Hauler from "More Than Meets the Eye" part 1 and are putting him in dioramas with Cliffjumper and Hound and such. Which is fine. I guess everybody celebrates Transformers in their own way. Even if it's wrong. Ahem.

Something tells me that, on a long enough timeline, we're going to get all the eHobby characters as neo-G1 toys eventually. I'd be okay with that. Overcharge, Sunstorm, bring it on. Let's do it.


Zob (my daughter is only ten years old and is already angry at the world... I'm terrified of what she's going to be like as a teenager)

[Gustavo Wombat, of the Seattle Wombats]

On Friday, September 2, 2022 at 4:09:51 PM UTC-7, Zobovor wrote:
> I could have owned this toy one month ago, if I'd just bought it at Walmart the first time I saw it. But, I'd already placed a pre-order with Hasbro Pulse, so I assumed they'd be fulfilling it in a timely manner. (They still haven't fulfilled my Velocitron Black Convoy pre-order, either. Any day now, I'm sure...)

I think they claimed September 30th in a "we're running late!" email to me.

> Takara has written a bit of fanwankery retconning this guy as being the same character as Hauler, the orange Grapple-like crane who popped up for basically one scene in the "More Than Meets the Eye" part 1 pilot episode. Since the Constructicon color scheme was a flashback, it takes place before the pilot, ergo he was a former Constructicon who defected to the Autobots, and therefore this is a previous, older version of Hauler and not his "current" self (which would basically be identical to Grapple).

It's a disappointing bit of wankery, in that it needs time travel. I want Grapple to go back in time, accidentally kill Megatron, discover this has terrible consequences and than paint himself green and help build a new Megatron (I think this would happen after the events in The Secret of Omega Supreme, when Megatron converted the Constructicons to evil using the Robo-Smasher).

He takes the name Road Hauler just so no one realizes that there are two Grapples. Eventually, when Grapple trips on whatever and goes back in time, Road Hauler just repaints himself orange, and steps into his original life.

If you're going to do ridiculous, just do ridiculous.

> The eHobby version of this character from 2003 sells for many hundreds of dollars now, so this version is much more readily accessible at only thirty bucks or so.

Wow. He seems like such a non-entity. Who wants him that much?

> In vehicle mode, Road Hauler is a bright lime green color, with yellow-and-black hazard stripes that reminds me of the consumer-applied stickers on G1 Hook or Bonecrusher. He's got green-painted rear hubcaps, gunmetal-painted outriggers, and a black crane hook. He has blue translucent windows (purple would have been better!) and blue headlights, like Grapple, with a gunmetal-painted front bumper.

I like the blue windows. I basically reject the former Constructicon thing though.

> Robot mode is lime green with black parts. They went with a two-tone look for the upper legs, like Grapple, rather than the solid color that Kingdom Inferno has. The head is based on Grapple's helmet but has been famously (or infamously) redesigned, and now has a screaming face portrait. (His head is hollow, and you can actually see the green mushroom peg connector inside his mouth.) Many fans have been vocally upset about this, because of course they are.

I don't see how anyone could be upset about this. It's his best feature.

> They've done this sort of thing before many times with the Masterpiece toys, of course, but usually you have the option of being able to swap faces. When they do it with a mainline toy like Skywarp or Dirge, you're kind of stuck with it.

Neutral faces generally work better. I liked the Beast Wars grimaces, but generally neutral faces are better.

This one is great though.

> I imagine this guy does a lot of things that Grapple doesn't do, like having two hands, or using his crane arm when he's in robot mode. Anything to differentiate the two a bit, you know?

Scream. That's what he does that Grapple doesn't. And he never stops, although sometimes his vocoder overheats and everyone thinks he has stopped, but he is still screaming silently.

> There seem to be a lot of fans (particularly on Twitter and Reddit) who are accepting this as a toy of Hauler from "More Than Meets the Eye" part 1 and are putting him in dioramas with Cliffjumper and Hound and such. Which is fine. I guess everybody celebrates Transformers in their own way. Even if it's wrong. Ahem.

That was just Grapple in MTMTE Part 1. It's the simplest explanation. And then he deserted the Autobots for a year or so.

> Something tells me that, on a long enough timeline, we're going to get all the eHobby characters as neo-G1 toys eventually. I'd be okay with that. Overcharge, Sunstorm, bring it on. Let's do it.

Some of them get repetitive, but I will just skip those ones. They are bound to be someone's favorite.

> Zob (my daughter is only ten years old and is already angry at the world... I'm terrified of what she's going to be like as a teenager)

I hope that she does not scream forever like Road Hauler. That would be tiring.

Q: Why is Road Hauler screaming?
A: Why aren't you? Look at this world! How can any rational being not scream?

[Gustavo Wombat]

Zobovor <zm...@aol.com> wrote:

> Road Hauler is a little different. While he's not based on a Diaclone
> color scheme, he does have a single canonical appearance in the G1
> cartoon series. There's a scene during the Matrix flashback in "Five
> Faces of Darkness" part 4 in which the Autobots and Decepticons are shown
> living harmoniously together, and we see a couple of
> Constructicon-colored vehicles. One is Grapple's crane mode animation
> model, and the other looks like Scavenger but with a lattice-style crane
> arm instead of a steam shovel bucket.
>

I’m assuming that Hook’s crane arm can be seen somewhere in Alpha Trion’s
lab when he’s rebuilding Orión Pax into Optimus Prime. Obviously this crane
arm would be orange.

We should make this happen, photoshop it in, add video degrading, etc.
Claim it was how it aired in France or something.

Plus we already have a toy for orange Hook. Need to create a story that the
G2 constructicons were orange because of that scene, with that cel layer
that was only on the French dub.

[Travoltron]

Went to Walmart in a vain attempt to find Cosmos. There were TONS of
Road Haulers on the shelves. He seems to be the shelfwarmer of the wave.

[Gustavo Wombat, of the Seattle Wombats]

On Friday, September 9, 2022 at 12:51:31 PM UTC-7, Travoltron wrote:
> Went to Walmart in a vain attempt to find Cosmos. There were TONS of
> Road Haulers on the shelves. He seems to be the shelfwarmer of the wave.

There are reports of single figure cases for Road Hauler and Override, so it is possible that you are seeing poor distribution, rather than natural shelf warming.

I would be a little surprised if he was the shelf-warmer, as he looks a *lot* better in package that Override (who is packaged without the missile/engine thing attached, and has a mediocre vehicle mode). Yes, Override is a new mold, but most sales are still to kids/parents and the Inferno/Grapple mold hasn't been on the shelves in over a year, so I wouldn't expect it to get that skewed.

Now, if they made him light blue, and called him Cybertron Universe Mudflap... all bets are off. You know, Cybertron Mudflap was a really great toy that looked very bad in the packaging, and just sat on shelves forever. 2007 Movie Mudflap repeated the problem, but in bright yellow and as a store exclusive.

(I would buy both a Cybertron Mudflap and a 2007 Movie Mudflap from this mold.)

(And, screw it, if they found a way to do RotF Mudflap from this mold too, I would buy that out of morbid curiosity... I'm thinking a CW Gestalt Hand as an accessory to get a bit of the asymmetrical design, also just let children chew on the head rather than remolding it)

(Ok, Road Hauler looks ridiculous with giant CW hands, but they do fit nicely in place when pegged onto the sides of his crane mode)