Revenge of the Fallen Wheelie

Series: Revenge of the Fallen
Allegiance: Autobot
Categories: Deluxe
Year: 2009

Autobot Wheelie never really wanted to be a Decepticon. It's just that, when people start yelling at him, he tends to do whatever they say. He's easily startled, and simple to scare. His tiny size makes him an ideal spy, and even though he doesn't like or agree with the Decepticons, they scare him so much he doesn't know what to do except obey.

Robot Mode: Wheelie has the distinction of being among the tallest of the Deluxe figures ROTF has to offer, while having one of the smallest alternate modes. And being the smallest characters in the movie itself, of course (not counting Insecticons). Wheelie is a very broad robot, but from certain angles he looks like a loose collection of parts. He isn't, by the way. Everything about him holds together pretty well, it's just the way he looks.

Posability-wise Wheelie offers no room for complaint. He's extremely bendy. His legs, the almost mandatory multi-jointed chicken legs, give him a stable platform despite being very thin and by stretching or hunching down Wheelie can change his height by several centimeters. His arms are also very posable and each hand is composed of three claw-like fingers, each on a separate joints. Wheelie can easily grab hold of stuff and his shoulder joints are tight enough for him to hold them aloft without problems.

Wheelie can switch allegiances, as his chest can either display an Autobot or a Decepticon symbol. The only drawback here is that, in order to switch to the 'Con symbol, the tube that composes Wheelie's abdomen must be turned and the transparent panel at the end now sticks out forward, essentially giving Wheelie a fallus. It's not a big thing (wink!), but it kinda bugs me a bit. Depending on whether he's an Autobot or a Decepticon, Wheelie can also change his facial expressions (he can change them independent of his allegiance as well, of course). Much like Disney's Wall-E he can angle his eyes downward (looking kinda sad), parallel (neutral) or upwards (mean expression). I don't think there are all that many Transformers who can actually change their facial expressions (Masterpiece Starscream comes to mind), so Wheelie joins a pretty small club here.

There are no real downsides to Wheelie's robot mode. Whether you like his look is, of course, a subjective thing, but everything else (posability, stability, etc.) is pretty well done. So to me, a very good robot mode.

Alternate Mode: Wheelie folds together into a blue monster truck. In his case it's actually supposed to be a toy truck, not an actual one. This isn't used as an excuse for lack of detailing, though. Granted, Wheelie doesn't look quite as realistic as other Deluxe Transformers have managed, but he does make for a pretty convincing truck with quite a few sculpted details. Wheelie's face actually forms the rear of the vehicle mode, so you can sort-of see it when you look into his open rear. Doesn't hurt the vehicle mode any, though, just worth mentioning. So all in all a good vehicle mode without any flaws.

Remarks: Thinking about it, Wheelie was possibly the Transformer who had the most lines in the Revenge of the Fallen movie. But despite that, the scene most fans will remember him for is the one where he humps Megan Fox's leg. Leaving aside the question why a mechanical life form would want to hump an organic woman's leg, Wheelie pretty much disappeared from the screen after that infamous scene when the action shifted to Egypt, never to be seen again. Did he survive? Who knows, Michael Bay certainly didn't care to show us.

I still think Hasbro dropped the ball a bit here, as I would have liked to have a 1:1 scale figure of Wheelie, emerging from an actual remote-control monster truck. Sure, it probably wouldn't have been cheap, but considering that some fans dish out over a hundred dollars for a Devastator whose component robots can't transform, I think they'd have sold a few of him. Anyway, back to this Deluxe figure. There really is nothing bad one can say about Wheelie. Well, unless you don't like his look, but from an objective viewpoint, there's absolutely nothing wrong with him. Good posability, good design, fun features, everything clicks together well here.

I really don't like the character he's based on (though I don't detest him as much as I do the characters of Skids and Mudflap), but as a toy Wheelie is certainly near the top of the rather lackluster Deluxe line-up we've seen in ROTF so far. A very good figure, worth getting.

Rating: A-