Movie Protoform Ironhide

Allegiance: Autobots
Toyline: Movie Custom
Year: 2008

Ironhide was a captain in the Cybertronian army, serving under Megatron in the defence of their homeworld. Then the Decepticon movement arose and Ironhide followed his conscience, defecting to the side of Optimus Prime's Autobots. This ragtag group of rebels is gonna need his military expertise, he reckons, if they are to have any chance of surviving the coming war. His design may be outdated, his views might sometimes be simplistic, but Ironhide is a bot as uncompromising in his principles as he is unyielding on the battle field. Optimus Prime could not ask for a more dedicated and valuable soldier than this old warhorse.

Robot Mode: In the style of the two Movie Protoforms Optimus Prime and Starscream this custom figure here represents Ironhide in his pre-terrestrial form. And look-wise the figure performs very well. It's Ironhide, no doubt. The head, the arms and the legs have been taken from Fast Action Battler Ironhide and guarantee the resemblance. The torso was taken from Protoform Prime and thereby provides the non-terrestrial part. And Limey added a few additional pieces as well, such as the big tank threads on the legs.

Hand-painted figures often look better than those off the assembly line and Ironhide is no exception to that rule. Die paint job has that nice, worn and scratchy metallic look and fits the robot itself to a T. The added details, such as the plates on his chest, are nicely integrated and you hardly notice that they weren't supposed to be there originally. The only thing that doesn't fit a hundred percent are the big tank threads on the legs. They perform flawlessly in vehicle mode (see below), but are just a tad too large in robot mode. Doesn't matter much, though, and doesn't really hurt the figure much, either.

In terms of posability Ironhide is only slighty handicapped by the tank threads on his legs, but you can compensate for that relatively easily. As weapons he carries his two familiar cannons on his arms, one of which can fire a missile. The light blue plastic missile doesn't really fit with the rest of him, but whatever. Ironhide is still pretty decently armed and ready to take on any number of Decepticons.

So to sum it up, a very well done robot mode with only a few tiny little flaws.

Alternate Mode: We didn't see a whole lot of Ironhide's pre-terrestiral mode in the Movie. He dropped from the sky like a comet and immediately took on an Earthen guise. We only caught glimpses of his previous forms in the comic books. The series "Saga of the Allspark" showed us this picture of his alternate mode. That was pretty much it, though.

Limewire took part of his inspiration from that picture, but instead of a flying comet like the other Protoforms he recreated Ironhide as a tank. An unintentional homage, by the way, seeing as the thing bears a lot of resemblance to the old H.I.S.S. tanks used by the Cobra organisation in the G.I.Joe Cartoon series, especially looking at it from the back.

Ironhide makes for a pretty snazzy Science Fiction style tank and where the tank threads were a tad too large in robot mode, they work perfectly here. The front of the tank has a lot of resemblance to the picture from the comic book and all in all the tank looks big and powerful. Only from the back can you see that the parts don't align perfectly, but it barely shows. So all in all a pretty good vehicle mode with just one tiny flaw: Ironhide's head (really the head of FAB Ironhide, remember) is just a bit too large, so you need to take it off for the transformation, otherwise it doesn't work properly. Except for that, though: Well done.

Remarks: Ironhide is the first Custom Transformers in my collection. I never tried my hand at something like this myself and I don't think I'd be good at it, either. So I do have a lot of respect for people who do these types of figures. And Limewire put together a very nice Protoform Ironhide. Of course the parts don't align as perfectly as they (should) do on a industrially fabricated figure, but he did manage to take a jumble of different parts and put together a nice robot with a good vehicle mode and a very wholesome look about him. One that, to top it all off, I like very much.

One little anecdote at this point: When Ironhide arrived he was, thanks to some rough treatment of his package at the hands of the Post office, somewhat worse for wear. One of the chest pieces had fallen off and needed to be reglued. After that repair job, though, everything was fine and like I said, I like this figure quite a bit. So the bottom line is: A worthwhile addition to my collection.

Rating: B+