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Zob's Retro Review: Autobot Pretender Vehicle Gunrunner (1988)
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Zobovor
Mar 1, 2023, 7:13:43 PM3/1/23
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By request!
The Pretenders concept was the newest and perhaps the most heavily-marketed Transformers gimmick in 1988. Hasbro clearly placed a lot of faith in the idea. In addition to the twelve (!) standard Pretender figures, there were four Pretender Beasts and even a couple of Pretender Vehicles—representing eighteen of the 60 new Transformers produced for that product year, or nearly a third.
The Pretender Vehicles were separate and distinct because the idea was to disguise the vehicle rather than disguise the robot. You thought you were dealing with a couple of ground vehicles, but then a couple of jets popped out of them and took to the sky. The Pretender Vehicles were also marketed as having the ability to transport other Pretender robots, though this worked better in theory than in practice.
Gunrunner's outer vehicle is a rugged, four-wheeled off-road vehicle that would have fit right in as part of the M.A.S.K. toy line. It's shaped a little like one of the Tonka GoBot Boomers, only smaller in scale. It's got a maroon body, a grey-colored chassis, and a translucent orange cockpit. It is equipped with a rifle that mounts on the hood, off to the side, two "energy plasma" missiles that plug into either side, and a huge set of dual electro-static cannons that mount to the top of the roof. The last of these looks suspiciously like a jet with the nose and wings folded up. This will become important a little bit later.
The outer vehicle's main gimmick is that, when you roll the vehicle on a smooth surface, the movement of the rubberized rear tires activates an internal geared mechanism near the rear axle, which in turn causes a gear on the toy's roof to spin. When the dual cannons are plugged in, the dual cannons will reciprocate, pom-pom style, as you roll the vehicle along. So, sort of like the gimmick for Seacon leader Snaptrap, only it actually works on its own without you needing to manually move a lever back and forth. The turret also has some limited movement, so you can turn it to the left or right and the gimmick will still operate. It's honestly really cool.
The inner robot, meanwhile, is a little less cool. Without accessories, he's about 4.5" in height, almost entirely a dull orange (think Swindle) with a black helmet, and upper legs, and shoulder connectors. His head can rotate, his shoulders can swivel, and his hips and knees can move in tandem, but his lower legs are a solid block of plastic. There's absolutely no indication of what he might transform into based on his robot design alone... mostly because all his vehicle kibble is an entirely separate piece.
He carries the black rifle, and the energy plasma missiles can plug into the side of each arm. (Is that anything like plasma energy? How does he manage to equip a weapon that makes any Transformer on the battlefield malfunction and die? I have no idea.) This extra equipment helps to bulk him up a bit, since he's honestly a little bit scrawny.
Transforming him into vehicle mode involves folding the legs at the knees. What does he look like when he's transformed? He looks like a folded-up robot. Still zero sign of any sort of true vehicle design. That's because you need to plug in his backpack. The dual-barreled cannon pops off the outer vehicle and connects to the inner robot, and now the reason for the folded-up wings and jet nosecone suddenly become apparent. Really, it's the backpack doing all the legwork here, serving functionally as all the important vehicle-mode parts. In fact, you could just take Gunrunner out of the equation entirely, and the backpack serves as a perfectly functional jet all by itself.
So, yeah. The jet mode is 4.0" long with a 4.25" wingspan. It's almost entirely black, except for that useless chunk of orange undercarriage plastic, with a white-painted cockpit. The jet is fairly aerodynamic until you plug in that pointless orange thing, which basically doubles the height of the jet. There are no landing struts to speak of—the only thing he can land on are the sides of the folded-up robot arms, and his damaged pride. The energy plasma missiles can mount under the wings. The reciprocating pom-pom guns still work, but without being connected to a gear system, you have to manually move them.
Is Gunrunner truly a Transformer if the robot is mere flotsam, and it's his accessory that does all the actual transforming? These are the questions we must ask ourselves. I mean, there are lots of G1 toys that lose some of their appeal if you're missing an important accessory, like Springer's helicopter blade or one of Starscream's wings. But, the Gunrunner robot can't turn into *anything* on its own except an orange block of plastic. It's kind of pathetic, really. Sure, you could leave the jet backpack on him in robot mode, but then he a) can't stand up on his own, and b) can't fit into the outer vehicle.
Well, anyway. Unlike Roadgrabber, the outer vehicle doesn't transform into a different configuration, but it does have other functionality. You have two different ways of putting the inner robot into the vehicle. Your first choice is to open the vehicle up, using a hinge at the back, and stuff the robot into an internal compartment. (The instructions for Roadgrabber claim that the vehicle can transport "any Pretender robot," but the Gunrunner instructions offer no such claim... perhaps because they realized it just wasn't true.) The other option is to open the cockpit up, swing down the spring-loaded panel, and stuff the robot into the cockpit, not entirely unlike the way you would stuff a Nebulan into a 1987 Headmaster vehicle. It's the first time a full-sized Transformers toy could actually ride in a vehicle cockpit, like a G.I. Joe figure, and we'd see this revisited in 1990 with the Action Masters.
Gunrunner never had any media appearances during G1. He wasn't in Marvel Comics, and he wasn't in the Japanese cartoon series. He showed up in his own toy commercial, and that was pretty much it. Decades later, he did finally show up in the IDW comics, and made a brief appearance in the REGENERATION ONE comic book.
This is, like, one of my favorite G1 toys and one of my least favorite, all wrapped into one. The outer vehicle is super cool, and it's got a fun gimmick. It's objectively a better toy than Roadgrabber, even considering the Roadgrabber vehicle's extra transformation. But, the inner robot is laughably pathetic, and I don't think there's any other Transformers toy in existence whose entire vehicle mode is a completely separate accessory.
There isn't a huge demand for Gunrunner on the secondary market. There's one on eBay right now, complete, for $120. I got mine in January 2020, and my notes say that I paid $65 for him. (The cockpit has some really bad scratches on it, though, so I'll probably need to replace that piece eventually. It's going to drive me crazy.)
Zob (and my horrible YouTube video about Gunrunner is also out there, if you really want to hunt for it)
The Pretenders concept was the newest and perhaps the most heavily-marketed Transformers gimmick in 1988. Hasbro clearly placed a lot of faith in the idea. In addition to the twelve (!) standard Pretender figures, there were four Pretender Beasts and even a couple of Pretender Vehicles—representing eighteen of the 60 new Transformers produced for that product year, or nearly a third.
The Pretender Vehicles were separate and distinct because the idea was to disguise the vehicle rather than disguise the robot. You thought you were dealing with a couple of ground vehicles, but then a couple of jets popped out of them and took to the sky. The Pretender Vehicles were also marketed as having the ability to transport other Pretender robots, though this worked better in theory than in practice.
Gunrunner's outer vehicle is a rugged, four-wheeled off-road vehicle that would have fit right in as part of the M.A.S.K. toy line. It's shaped a little like one of the Tonka GoBot Boomers, only smaller in scale. It's got a maroon body, a grey-colored chassis, and a translucent orange cockpit. It is equipped with a rifle that mounts on the hood, off to the side, two "energy plasma" missiles that plug into either side, and a huge set of dual electro-static cannons that mount to the top of the roof. The last of these looks suspiciously like a jet with the nose and wings folded up. This will become important a little bit later.
The outer vehicle's main gimmick is that, when you roll the vehicle on a smooth surface, the movement of the rubberized rear tires activates an internal geared mechanism near the rear axle, which in turn causes a gear on the toy's roof to spin. When the dual cannons are plugged in, the dual cannons will reciprocate, pom-pom style, as you roll the vehicle along. So, sort of like the gimmick for Seacon leader Snaptrap, only it actually works on its own without you needing to manually move a lever back and forth. The turret also has some limited movement, so you can turn it to the left or right and the gimmick will still operate. It's honestly really cool.
The inner robot, meanwhile, is a little less cool. Without accessories, he's about 4.5" in height, almost entirely a dull orange (think Swindle) with a black helmet, and upper legs, and shoulder connectors. His head can rotate, his shoulders can swivel, and his hips and knees can move in tandem, but his lower legs are a solid block of plastic. There's absolutely no indication of what he might transform into based on his robot design alone... mostly because all his vehicle kibble is an entirely separate piece.
He carries the black rifle, and the energy plasma missiles can plug into the side of each arm. (Is that anything like plasma energy? How does he manage to equip a weapon that makes any Transformer on the battlefield malfunction and die? I have no idea.) This extra equipment helps to bulk him up a bit, since he's honestly a little bit scrawny.
Transforming him into vehicle mode involves folding the legs at the knees. What does he look like when he's transformed? He looks like a folded-up robot. Still zero sign of any sort of true vehicle design. That's because you need to plug in his backpack. The dual-barreled cannon pops off the outer vehicle and connects to the inner robot, and now the reason for the folded-up wings and jet nosecone suddenly become apparent. Really, it's the backpack doing all the legwork here, serving functionally as all the important vehicle-mode parts. In fact, you could just take Gunrunner out of the equation entirely, and the backpack serves as a perfectly functional jet all by itself.
So, yeah. The jet mode is 4.0" long with a 4.25" wingspan. It's almost entirely black, except for that useless chunk of orange undercarriage plastic, with a white-painted cockpit. The jet is fairly aerodynamic until you plug in that pointless orange thing, which basically doubles the height of the jet. There are no landing struts to speak of—the only thing he can land on are the sides of the folded-up robot arms, and his damaged pride. The energy plasma missiles can mount under the wings. The reciprocating pom-pom guns still work, but without being connected to a gear system, you have to manually move them.
Is Gunrunner truly a Transformer if the robot is mere flotsam, and it's his accessory that does all the actual transforming? These are the questions we must ask ourselves. I mean, there are lots of G1 toys that lose some of their appeal if you're missing an important accessory, like Springer's helicopter blade or one of Starscream's wings. But, the Gunrunner robot can't turn into *anything* on its own except an orange block of plastic. It's kind of pathetic, really. Sure, you could leave the jet backpack on him in robot mode, but then he a) can't stand up on his own, and b) can't fit into the outer vehicle.
Well, anyway. Unlike Roadgrabber, the outer vehicle doesn't transform into a different configuration, but it does have other functionality. You have two different ways of putting the inner robot into the vehicle. Your first choice is to open the vehicle up, using a hinge at the back, and stuff the robot into an internal compartment. (The instructions for Roadgrabber claim that the vehicle can transport "any Pretender robot," but the Gunrunner instructions offer no such claim... perhaps because they realized it just wasn't true.) The other option is to open the cockpit up, swing down the spring-loaded panel, and stuff the robot into the cockpit, not entirely unlike the way you would stuff a Nebulan into a 1987 Headmaster vehicle. It's the first time a full-sized Transformers toy could actually ride in a vehicle cockpit, like a G.I. Joe figure, and we'd see this revisited in 1990 with the Action Masters.
Gunrunner never had any media appearances during G1. He wasn't in Marvel Comics, and he wasn't in the Japanese cartoon series. He showed up in his own toy commercial, and that was pretty much it. Decades later, he did finally show up in the IDW comics, and made a brief appearance in the REGENERATION ONE comic book.
This is, like, one of my favorite G1 toys and one of my least favorite, all wrapped into one. The outer vehicle is super cool, and it's got a fun gimmick. It's objectively a better toy than Roadgrabber, even considering the Roadgrabber vehicle's extra transformation. But, the inner robot is laughably pathetic, and I don't think there's any other Transformers toy in existence whose entire vehicle mode is a completely separate accessory.
There isn't a huge demand for Gunrunner on the secondary market. There's one on eBay right now, complete, for $120. I got mine in January 2020, and my notes say that I paid $65 for him. (The cockpit has some really bad scratches on it, though, so I'll probably need to replace that piece eventually. It's going to drive me crazy.)
Zob (and my horrible YouTube video about Gunrunner is also out there, if you really want to hunt for it)
Codigo Postal
Mar 1, 2023, 10:03:04 PM3/1/23
to
On Wednesday, March 1, 2023 at 7:13:43 PM UTC-5, Zobovor wrote:
> By request!
Much appreciated!
>
> The Pretenders concept was the newest and perhaps the most heavily-marketed Transformers gimmick in 1988. Hasbro clearly placed a lot of faith in the idea. In addition to the twelve (!) standard Pretender figures, there were four Pretender Beasts and even a couple of Pretender Vehicles—representing eighteen of the 60 new Transformers produced for that product year, or nearly a third.
I'm curious as to why they invested so much in the Pretenders as a new direction for the line, and how folks responded to it. Is there any nostalgia? In an era when we're getting ridiculously faithful updates, the Pretender concept has been entirely neutered or remixed (and the less said about the Alice Pretender in Revenge of the Fallen, the better).
>
>
> The outer vehicle's main gimmick is that, when you roll the vehicle on a smooth surface, the movement of the rubberized rear tires activates an internal geared mechanism near the rear axle, which in turn causes a gear on the toy's roof to spin. When the dual cannons are plugged in, the dual cannons will reciprocate, pom-pom style, as you roll the vehicle along. So, sort of like the gimmick for Seacon leader Snaptrap, only it actually works on its own without you needing to manually move a lever back and forth. The turret also has some limited movement, so you can turn it to the left or right and the gimmick will still operate. It's honestly really cool.
The car is pretty cool, and it's a gimmick that doesn't compromise the figure in a way that lights or sounds would.
>
> Transforming him into vehicle mode involves folding the legs at the knees. What does he look like when he's transformed? He looks like a folded-up robot. Still zero sign of any sort of true vehicle design. That's because you need to plug in his backpack. The dual-barreled cannon pops off the outer vehicle and connects to the inner robot, and now the reason for the folded-up wings and jet nosecone suddenly become apparent. Really, it's the backpack doing all the legwork here, serving functionally as all the important vehicle-mode parts. In fact, you could just take Gunrunner out of the equation entirely, and the backpack serves as a perfectly functional jet all by itself.
It's a shame the designers didn't take advantage of that freedom from the constraints of transformation to do something more with him. As it stands, he's completely surplus to requirements. The car/jet is doing all the heavy lifting.
>
>
> Gunrunner never had any media appearances during G1. He wasn't in Marvel Comics, and he wasn't in the Japanese cartoon series. He showed up in his own toy commercial, and that was pretty much it. Decades later, he did finally show up in the IDW comics, and made a brief appearance in the REGENERATION ONE comic book.
Missed opportunity for a character with the one of the best names of the franchise.
>
> This is, like, one of my favorite G1 toys and one of my least favorite, all wrapped into one. The outer vehicle is super cool, and it's got a fun gimmick. It's objectively a better toy than Roadgrabber, even considering the Roadgrabber vehicle's extra transformation. But, the inner robot is laughably pathetic, and I don't think there's any other Transformers toy in existence whose entire vehicle mode is a completely separate accessory.
I have a feeling that Hasbro is going to skip out on the Pretender updates. They've done some toy-only homages, like the Powerdashers, but I feel like media tie-in toys take precedence, which is why they've moved onto Armada and Cybertron homages. Instead of late era G1, it's possible that all future G1 homages will be rehashes of characters we've already seen. A shame really. I'd pay good money for some real Pretender updates.
>
>
> Zob (and my horrible YouTube video about Gunrunner is also out there, if you really want to hunt for it)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CuAKEVqoez8
> By request!
Much appreciated!
>
> The Pretenders concept was the newest and perhaps the most heavily-marketed Transformers gimmick in 1988. Hasbro clearly placed a lot of faith in the idea. In addition to the twelve (!) standard Pretender figures, there were four Pretender Beasts and even a couple of Pretender Vehicles—representing eighteen of the 60 new Transformers produced for that product year, or nearly a third.
>
>
> The outer vehicle's main gimmick is that, when you roll the vehicle on a smooth surface, the movement of the rubberized rear tires activates an internal geared mechanism near the rear axle, which in turn causes a gear on the toy's roof to spin. When the dual cannons are plugged in, the dual cannons will reciprocate, pom-pom style, as you roll the vehicle along. So, sort of like the gimmick for Seacon leader Snaptrap, only it actually works on its own without you needing to manually move a lever back and forth. The turret also has some limited movement, so you can turn it to the left or right and the gimmick will still operate. It's honestly really cool.
>
> Transforming him into vehicle mode involves folding the legs at the knees. What does he look like when he's transformed? He looks like a folded-up robot. Still zero sign of any sort of true vehicle design. That's because you need to plug in his backpack. The dual-barreled cannon pops off the outer vehicle and connects to the inner robot, and now the reason for the folded-up wings and jet nosecone suddenly become apparent. Really, it's the backpack doing all the legwork here, serving functionally as all the important vehicle-mode parts. In fact, you could just take Gunrunner out of the equation entirely, and the backpack serves as a perfectly functional jet all by itself.
>
>
> Gunrunner never had any media appearances during G1. He wasn't in Marvel Comics, and he wasn't in the Japanese cartoon series. He showed up in his own toy commercial, and that was pretty much it. Decades later, he did finally show up in the IDW comics, and made a brief appearance in the REGENERATION ONE comic book.
>
> This is, like, one of my favorite G1 toys and one of my least favorite, all wrapped into one. The outer vehicle is super cool, and it's got a fun gimmick. It's objectively a better toy than Roadgrabber, even considering the Roadgrabber vehicle's extra transformation. But, the inner robot is laughably pathetic, and I don't think there's any other Transformers toy in existence whose entire vehicle mode is a completely separate accessory.
>
>
> Zob (and my horrible YouTube video about Gunrunner is also out there, if you really want to hunt for it)
Zobovor
Mar 3, 2023, 4:16:43 PM3/3/23
to
On Wednesday, March 1, 2023 at 8:03:04 PM UTC-7, Codigo Postal wrote:
> I'm curious as to why they invested so much in the Pretenders as a new direction for the line, and how folks responded to it. Is there any nostalgia?
When I was growing up, the standard Pretenders didn't interest me as much, but I liked the ones that had transforming Pretender shells (Thunderwing, Crossblades, Skyhammer, Roadblock, etc.) Ironically, since I had so few Pretenders as a kid, they're a big part of my focus in collecting vintage G1 now, because I missed out on so many of them.
> I'm curious as to why they invested so much in the Pretenders as a new direction for the line, and how folks responded to it. Is there any nostalgia?
I mean, if Hasbro was intend on marketing a toy line of "robots in disguise," it was honestly a great pivot that was innovative and different while still remaining completely on-brand. By the late 80's, kids liked gross-looking, mutated creatures (Inhumanoids, Ninja Turtles, Toxic Crusaders, etc.) and thanks to Pretenders, Transformers could still capitalize off the robot craze AND the gross creature craze at the same time.
> the less said about the Alice Pretender in Revenge of the Fallen, the better
> It's a shame the designers didn't take advantage of that freedom from the constraints of transformation to do something more with him. As it stands, he's completely surplus to requirements.
> I have a feeling that Hasbro is going to skip out on the Pretender updates. They've done some toy-only homages, like the Powerdashers, but I feel like media tie-in toys take precedence, which is why they've moved onto Armada and Cybertron homages. Instead of late era G1, it's possible that all future G1 homages will be rehashes of characters we've already seen. A shame really. I'd pay good money for some real Pretender updates.
As for the Pretenders, specifically, Hasbro has admitted they're still not quite sure how to approach those characters yet. They've been trying different things, like the tiny PotP Decoy Suits, or the Legacy toys that integrate the Pretender shell styling into the robot configuration, but I don't know if the results have been wholly satisfactory.
One of the things about the vintage Pretenders was that they were, probably, really inexpensive toys to manufacture. In essence, a Pretender shell was two pieces of plastic, a front and a back. Snap them together and you've got a toy with no complex mechanical parts, no screw or springs required for assembly, and no die-cast metal parts or rubber tires to worry about. 1988 was a cost-cutting year, and Pretenders brought the goods in a way that the Powermasters just didn't. Problem is, what we as collectors probably want NOW is updated Pretenders who have fully-articulated action figure style outer shells as well as authentic transformable inner robots, and THAT would be an expensive toy to produce.
I think crowdfunding might be the way to go, honestly. They need to do a HasLab project in which they bring to life, say, six of the old Pretenders with new technology. If it funds successfully, they could do a second batch with another six, and then another, until they've covered all the heritage characters. It would completely bypass whatever concerns they might have about Pretenders doing poorly at retail, or concerns that consumers wouldn't respond well to the concept today. And, hey, if it didn't fund, for whatever reason, then it would prove the concept isn't appealing and they wouldn't have to approach it again.
Zob (can't really call them "legacy characters" now... too confusing)
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