Dark of the Moon Skids

Prelude: I’m gonna out myself as a member of a very, very small minority: I like the Twins. Yeah, I said it, you can start hating me, I don’t care. I liked them in the movies and I like the toys as well (at least since I learned how to transform the midgets correctly – thank you Cybertroner!), so here comes Skids – Round 2.

Alternate Mode: Skids is still a Chevrolet Spark. Only this time the cool tribal tattoos have given way to an elegant black with extremely cool-looking neon green rally stripes. The car is also more realistic this time, meaning shorter. Where was it shortened? The doors. Also the windows are a good deal smaller. The alternate mode has no visible flaws and looks very solid. Even the controversial Mechtech gimmick was given a lot more thought here when compared to Crankcase. The Mechtech ports are on springs, so there is an almost smooth surface when the weapons are not plugged in. If you do plug in a weapon (or two), these sink into the roof. Nicely done. Still, the Mechtech weapons look out of place here, too, and can’t be stored in alternate mode. So points deduction for that once again.

Robot Mode: The most important thing first: Yeah, his feet are really big and no, there is no folding them to be smaller. No dice. The transformation is real easy when compared to ROTF Skids, done in two minutes or less and lots of fun, too. Nicely done, Hasbro. Normally I’d have expected this figure to be called “Night Ops Skids” or maybe “Shattered Glass Skids”. His paint job is a great match to that of HFTD Voyager Ratchet. The entire look fits together well and is pretty dark, which I like a lot. Skids does a good job of looking clumsy, too. He’s the specially forged klutz. Very nice. And the Mechtech weapons look great on Skids, a lot better than they do on Crankcase. Skids can carry a lot of them at the same time, too (without combining them, even), no less than 8 (while Crankcase can only manage 4 +2 of the older-style ports). Great!

That was it for the positive aspects, though. Now we need to look at the negative points. In robot mode Skids is barely more than Scout-sized. Arms and hands are a lot less posable, seeing as he misplaced no less than three joints. On the legs the entire lower leg is missing, the feet start at the knees. With a few slight modifications you can give him chicken legs (and you can hint at it even without getting out your screwdriver).

With posability thus restricted he’s the exact opposite of Crankcase. Wasted potential in my mind.

Gimmicks: The Mechtech gimmick is featured here as well, of course. Skids’ weapon looks a bit like an engine block, where the unfolding exhaust pipes become gun barrels. And once again we have a useless Automorph function included. So once again I got out my screwdriver to remove an errant spring, afterwards the weapon was fun. Especially if you mount it above Skids’ head (Human Alliance anyone?). Very nicely done.

Conclusion: I have mixed feelings about Skids. He looks extremely good, has a great amount of clumsy charme, but sadly he’s very stiff and very small. His brother Mudflap will probably be his mirror image (arms switched) with a new head and orange instead of green – I’ll get him, too. But a repaint of the ROTF version with a few added Mechtech ports would probably have done a better job, I think. Wasted potential.