Energon Ironhide

Robot Mode: Ironhide's robot mode is a perfect match to his cartoon appearance. Meaning he looks stocky, a bit awkward, his helmeted head makes him look dorky, and his feet give the impression he's walking around barefoot. Personally I think he looks better with the longer legs usually reserved for his powerlinx mode. Still, he does strike a powerful figure with his shoulder-mounted cannons and heavy gauntlets.

Alternate Mode: This mode is what caused Ironhide to be villified. It really doesn't look so much like a car, but rather like the kiddie toy version of a car. Non-transparent windows, bright blue exterior with very few details added, and the biggest goof of them all is that his head sticks out on top. You can slide his helmet down a bit, but it doesn't hide more than his eyes. That doesn't mean the car mode is all bad, it's just grates a bit that they didn't put more effort into correcting these flaws, because I don't think it wouldn't have been that difficult to clean them up.

Combiner Mode: Ironhide can combine with other mega-sized figures into a Powerlinx figure. Currently that means Jetfire and Cliffjumper, since I have these two to go with Ironhide, which makes for four possible combinations involving Ironhide. I'm not going to go into all four here, just some basics. Ironhide as a lower body looks decent, at least from the front. A lot of his parts fold to the back, meaning he shouldn't be looked at sideways or from the back. Still, he has a lot of posability in the legs, making for a good combiner part.

Turning into an upper body goes a bit more smoothly. Ironhide basically turns into a head, shoulders, and arms, the arms being his legs from the normal robot mode and look pretty big, but not as oversized as on some other mega-sized combiners. Depending on which lower body he goes on to, Powerlinx Ironhide looks pretty good.

You can see all possible combinations of Powerlinx Ironhide on my Powerlinx Combos Page.

Remarks: Ironhide is one of the more controversial Energon toys. Once you get past the kiddie-car vehicle mode and the dorky-looking head, though, you have a pretty decent toy that offers good play value, especially in the powerlinx combiner modes. While I wouldn't exactly recommend it as a stand-alone figure, it does come in handy in combination with others.

Rating: C