Crasher

Last year, when I tried to go an entire month without buying anything, it was a "Velocitron Speedia 500 Collection" black repaint that got me to finally break my streak. This year I was trying it again (in the shortest month, when the store shelves are mostly empty anyway), and the same thing happened! Crasher is tough, hotheaded, and stubborn. She will smash fenders with any bot on the racetrack who crosses her the wrong way. According to Hasbro's website, Crasher has a "Generation 2"-inspired design, based "on the character's appearance in the Transformers comics," but that's not even remotely accurate. Like, the individual parts might be true, but together they're incorrect. Befitting its place in the Speedia 500 sub-line, this is a race car. Some sort of Formula 1 racer, though not directly based on any real-world car. It has the narrow body, the wings on the front and back, etc. It's a recognizable look. The driver's cockpit is open, with two large air intakes right behind it and a steering wheel and seat sculpted inside. This is a repaint of Kingdom Mirage (which itself was a retooling of the Cybertronian Earthrise Mirage), given a mainly black chassis with a few red areas in the center and white in the cockpit and on the sides of the rear wing. All four wheels roll, and they feature silver hubcaps. To convert the figure, pull the air intake up, swing the halves out to the sides, flip up a little panel so you can riase the head, fold the rear wheels away, split the front of the car, flip the front wheels around to the inside, fold the side panels down, rotate the legs into place, and fold down the little feet. In 2007, the first Transformers movie was a huge merchandising success, with way more toys than characters that actually appeared in the film. Walmart wanted even more, so Hasbro took a few characters who were planned for the non-movie Classics line, slapped them in movie packaging, and released them as exclusives. One of those was a black repaint of Mirage dubbed "Fracture," though she really represented Crasher, a character from GoBots. Going back to what we said up above about the bio, there were "Go-Bots" in G2, those Go-Bots were different from the GoBots - Hasbro had acquired the name when they bought Tonka in 1991. And while Crasher has appeared in the comics, all those appearances were based on "Fracture," so all this is updating is a toy from 2007. The Siege/Kingdom Mirage had a head based on the '80s cartoon model, but there was an alternate tooled at the same time, based more on the original toy. That already appeared once on the "Holo Mirage" figure released in some Amazon-exclusive three-pack, but it's used again here. A great choice, since the vaguely shared head-shape is why Mirage could be repurposed as Crasher in the first place. Her face is pink, and there are black outlines around her yellow eyes, but they didn't give her red lipstick. The robot's chest is 100% faux kibble. It's designed to look like the front end of the car, but that gets hidden inside the legs, so this had to be completely faked. There's a lot more white visible in this mode, flanking the chest and covering the entire upper legs. We also get red scattered on the chest, and the entire pelvis matches. This version of Crasher is much blockier than her Classics/​movie incarnation, which may make you like her better or less, depending on your tastes. One thing we do miss, though? Having such giant feet back then meant you could pose her in a pretty dynamic stomping pose without worrying about her falling over. Crasher moves at the neck, shoulders, biceps, elbows, waist, hips, thighs, knees, and ankles. So yes, you can raise her foot to unleash her seismic attack, but she can't stand on her own that way. Sad! Still fun to play with, though. She's got two weapons, both of which are holdovers from Siege Mirage, meaning they both reference pieces that came with the 1984 figure. One is a rifle with flat wings sticking out at the back, the other is a missile launcher. Unfortunately, the changes in tooling made between Siege and Legends mean you can't plug the launcher into the shoulder like you should - the best you can do is have it behind her back. The "missile" part can be removed from the body, and they both have pegs that allow her to hold them in her hands. Guess it's a pistol now. "Fracture" was a Walmart-exclusive repaint of Mirage, and now, so is Crasher. How fitting! I didn't actually know this was coming: she's not in the comic (at least, she wasn't yet), so I was just checking the Speedia 500 section at Walmart because I'm stll trying to find a Cosmos for Sprocket; and I feel like this Crasher was only there because the packaging was partially crushed. But hey, some dumbass MOC collector's fussy loss is my gain. Geek layaway: making things available to smart people for over 20 years! It's nice that Crasher finally has her own name back; now if only Hasbro would stop being shy about the GoBots identifier. -- 02/21/23

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