Zobovor
2024-09-21 16:10:51 UTC
I know, I know. "Geez, not another one of Zob's stupid Action Master
reviews." Well, during a time like this when newsgroup traffic is
light, it's either this or nothing.
..Really? You would actually choose nothing? You wound me. But,
surely you don't mean it. I will ignore those imagined comments and
duly persist. You'll thank me some day. Or curse my name. One of the
two.
So I had a great amount of difficulty in acquiring a decent-looking
Rollout for my collection. He's not an easy toy to find in good shape.
What follows is partly a review and partly an anecdote about my
adventures in trying to hunt him down.
Rollout is from the very first batch of Action Masters, so he would have
been among the first of the non-transformable characters to greet
consumers in stores, right along with Grimlock and Rad and the rest. As
an all-new character, he was not beholden to matching a previously
existing design or color scheme. He's predominantly a light orange
color, used for his helmet and upper body and forearms and boots. White
is his secondary color, visible on his shoulders and fists and knees,
but he also has a blue pelvis and upper legs, and touches of brown on
his arms and legs. He looks tough and heavy-duty.
Interestingly, even though he's predominantly orange, the plastics he
was cast from are in fact blue and white. All the orange color was
realized with factory-applied paint. This is because all the carded,
single-pack Action Masters were gang-molded with another character, and
Rollout shares his plastic colors with Jazz. The only parts of the toy
that are unpainted, bare white plastic are his shoulders, fists, and
knees. Likewise, his body and upper legs are made of blue plastic, but
almost the entire body is covered in orange paint. This has led to many
Rollout toys on the modern-day secondary market experiencing very bad
paint wear. More on this later.
His design suggests that he might have once transformed into a
construction vehicle of some type, as one of his most prominent design
features is a toothed shovel bucket that is pressed against his upper
body to form his chest, in the same manner as G1 Bonecrusher or G2
Roadblock. The only other overt evidence of his vehicle mode are his
six vestigial wheels, one on each shoulder and two on each lower leg.
(I have heard at least one fan online postulate that the character is an
homage to Roller, the car that came with Optimus Prime, and cited the
six wheels as evidence of this.)
The name Rollout itself is interesting since it's fairly well-steeped in
Transformers lore. Early in the G1 cartoon, Optimus Prime's battle cry,
"Transform and roll out!" quickly became a familiar refrain, and it
became so popular that Hasbro even asked Marvel Comics to adopt it and
use it in their stories as well. So in a way, Rollout fully
encapsulated the essence of the Transformers mythos as it had existed
for its seven-year run, though of course there's a certain irony that
Rollout, himself, was wholly unable to transform and roll out.
Rollout did technically make an appearance in Marvel Comics, but it's
perhaps one of the most ignominous debut appearances ever. He can be
seen sitting next to Sunstreaker in issue #76, in the aftermath of the
Unicron war as Prowl and Grimlock argue over future plans. He's only
seen from the back, though, and he neither gets dialogue nor is he
name-checked. But, a media appearance is a media appearance, no matter
how slight! He makes Skids from the G1 cartoon seem like a major
player.
At about 3.75" in height, Rollout scales with the other Action Masters
and is compatible with the other accessories and vehicles. He carries a
silver plastic photon gun, a weapon with a built-in round cartridge that
resembles the ammuniton drum on a Tommy submachine gun. He is partnered
with Glitch, a little droid less than two inches tall with paddle-shaped
feet, asymmetrical arms, and no discernible face. He's silver plastic
with dark grey arms and legs, and his right long gun-arm and left short
gun-arm simply peg into place. Glitch can wear the photon gun on his
head when Rollout isn't carrying it into battle.
Glitch is similar in design to Fistfight, the partner for Action Master
Shockwave, and he folds up in a similar manner when transforming into an
electromagnetic rocket launcher. His head swings up, his feet tuck in,
and pressing a spring-loaded trigger causes his main gun barrel to pop
out. Rollout's handheld weapon plugs into the barrel to complete the
weapon mode. Weirdly, Rollout equips the gun by holding it sideways,
with the only peg grips being directly under Glitch's armpits.
So, as I said earlier, Rollout is a hard character to find in good
condition. A great many of the figures on eBay have various degrees of
paint wear, with his orange paint having flaked off to reveal the white
or blue plastic underneath. If I was going to spend the money, I wanted
one that was in good enough shape to display proudly. I figured my best
shot might be to buy multiple Rollout toys and piece together a
good-looking figure that took the best parts of each one. But, I didn't
want to keep throwing money at Rollout toys, because that could add up
quick. Plus, I would still need to get his rifle and Glitch and both
of Glitch's detachable arms. Decisions, decisions!
For a while, I was enamored with the idea of buying a Rollout that was
mint on card. There was one available on eBay that was from the Gig
brand Trasformer toy line from Italy, where Rollout was named Cyclop and
his little buddy was named Goblin. It was only $60 USD, which wasn't
bad if the toy was dead mint. I would only have to make one purchase.
I figured most carded collectors would want an English-language package,
which is why it wasn't selling for more. I deliberated over this for
many days, but as I was poring over the auction photos, I saw that
Rollout actually had some paint damage, even while still in the
packaging! So much for that idea.
So in the end, I took a detailed inventory of all the Rollout toys
currently being sold on eBay. I wanted to buy as few toys as possible,
if I could help it. I marked them as either worthless or possible
purchases. A potential purchase had to have, at bare minimum, at least
one piece that was pristine. An especially problematic spot on the toy
was the chest, the pointed corners of the bucket shovel. There's almost
always paint rubbing off that spot. (That was the problem with the
carded Gig Trasformer from Italy as well.)
Finally, I bought Rollout #1 for $35, who came with Glitch but no rifle,
and he had bad paint wear on his helmet and right leg and right arm, but
everything else was clean. It was a good start. Now I just had to find
a second toy that had a good-looking head and arm and leg, and I could
play mix-and-match and build a good one. You should have seen how I
obsessed over this stupid toy. My wife was growing impatient and
wondered why I hadn't just pulled the trigger on Goblin and Cyclops. My
kids were tired of me talking about Action Masters. Even my chatbot was
starting to make quippy jokes about how Rollout was going to end up
costing me a paint-chipped arm and a leg. And so it goes.
The second one I got was $33.60, and he didn't come with any accessories
but his helmet was perfect, and he had paint coming off the *left* leg
instead. But, one thing I hadn't thought about was possible sun damage
to the white plastic. I was so busy studying and analyzing paint flaws
that nothing else mattered. So, the white plastic on Rollout #2 was a
slightly different shade than Rollout #1. I couldn't swap one arm and
not the other, because the difference would be pretty obvious. So, he's
very good-looking, but not perfect. And I was able to build a second,
flawed Rollout that I can still resell and get back at least some of
what I paid.
There are a lot of other Rollout toys up for auction that I summarily
rejected, not just because the paint is falling off but because the
Autobot symbol was applied crooked at the factory, or the factory paint
was applied badly so his wheels aren't painted brown completely, or the
halves of the lower legs are warped and so they didn't fit together well
during assembly. I'm realizing just how much of a cost-cutting
production the final year of G1 really was, with this many poor examples
of quality control escaping into the wild.
So, it's possible there will be a Rollout #3 some day, but for now I
decided to put this project to bed and think about other things. I
still have a small list of vintage toys with flaws that need to be
addressed at some point (my Apeface needs a new cockpit without so many
scratches; I need a Micromaster Groundshaker with an undamaged canard;
etc.) but sometimes I feel like it's best to keep moving forward.
Zob (I was not expecting this character to plague me as much as he's
managed to do)
reviews." Well, during a time like this when newsgroup traffic is
light, it's either this or nothing.
..Really? You would actually choose nothing? You wound me. But,
surely you don't mean it. I will ignore those imagined comments and
duly persist. You'll thank me some day. Or curse my name. One of the
two.
So I had a great amount of difficulty in acquiring a decent-looking
Rollout for my collection. He's not an easy toy to find in good shape.
What follows is partly a review and partly an anecdote about my
adventures in trying to hunt him down.
Rollout is from the very first batch of Action Masters, so he would have
been among the first of the non-transformable characters to greet
consumers in stores, right along with Grimlock and Rad and the rest. As
an all-new character, he was not beholden to matching a previously
existing design or color scheme. He's predominantly a light orange
color, used for his helmet and upper body and forearms and boots. White
is his secondary color, visible on his shoulders and fists and knees,
but he also has a blue pelvis and upper legs, and touches of brown on
his arms and legs. He looks tough and heavy-duty.
Interestingly, even though he's predominantly orange, the plastics he
was cast from are in fact blue and white. All the orange color was
realized with factory-applied paint. This is because all the carded,
single-pack Action Masters were gang-molded with another character, and
Rollout shares his plastic colors with Jazz. The only parts of the toy
that are unpainted, bare white plastic are his shoulders, fists, and
knees. Likewise, his body and upper legs are made of blue plastic, but
almost the entire body is covered in orange paint. This has led to many
Rollout toys on the modern-day secondary market experiencing very bad
paint wear. More on this later.
His design suggests that he might have once transformed into a
construction vehicle of some type, as one of his most prominent design
features is a toothed shovel bucket that is pressed against his upper
body to form his chest, in the same manner as G1 Bonecrusher or G2
Roadblock. The only other overt evidence of his vehicle mode are his
six vestigial wheels, one on each shoulder and two on each lower leg.
(I have heard at least one fan online postulate that the character is an
homage to Roller, the car that came with Optimus Prime, and cited the
six wheels as evidence of this.)
The name Rollout itself is interesting since it's fairly well-steeped in
Transformers lore. Early in the G1 cartoon, Optimus Prime's battle cry,
"Transform and roll out!" quickly became a familiar refrain, and it
became so popular that Hasbro even asked Marvel Comics to adopt it and
use it in their stories as well. So in a way, Rollout fully
encapsulated the essence of the Transformers mythos as it had existed
for its seven-year run, though of course there's a certain irony that
Rollout, himself, was wholly unable to transform and roll out.
Rollout did technically make an appearance in Marvel Comics, but it's
perhaps one of the most ignominous debut appearances ever. He can be
seen sitting next to Sunstreaker in issue #76, in the aftermath of the
Unicron war as Prowl and Grimlock argue over future plans. He's only
seen from the back, though, and he neither gets dialogue nor is he
name-checked. But, a media appearance is a media appearance, no matter
how slight! He makes Skids from the G1 cartoon seem like a major
player.
At about 3.75" in height, Rollout scales with the other Action Masters
and is compatible with the other accessories and vehicles. He carries a
silver plastic photon gun, a weapon with a built-in round cartridge that
resembles the ammuniton drum on a Tommy submachine gun. He is partnered
with Glitch, a little droid less than two inches tall with paddle-shaped
feet, asymmetrical arms, and no discernible face. He's silver plastic
with dark grey arms and legs, and his right long gun-arm and left short
gun-arm simply peg into place. Glitch can wear the photon gun on his
head when Rollout isn't carrying it into battle.
Glitch is similar in design to Fistfight, the partner for Action Master
Shockwave, and he folds up in a similar manner when transforming into an
electromagnetic rocket launcher. His head swings up, his feet tuck in,
and pressing a spring-loaded trigger causes his main gun barrel to pop
out. Rollout's handheld weapon plugs into the barrel to complete the
weapon mode. Weirdly, Rollout equips the gun by holding it sideways,
with the only peg grips being directly under Glitch's armpits.
So, as I said earlier, Rollout is a hard character to find in good
condition. A great many of the figures on eBay have various degrees of
paint wear, with his orange paint having flaked off to reveal the white
or blue plastic underneath. If I was going to spend the money, I wanted
one that was in good enough shape to display proudly. I figured my best
shot might be to buy multiple Rollout toys and piece together a
good-looking figure that took the best parts of each one. But, I didn't
want to keep throwing money at Rollout toys, because that could add up
quick. Plus, I would still need to get his rifle and Glitch and both
of Glitch's detachable arms. Decisions, decisions!
For a while, I was enamored with the idea of buying a Rollout that was
mint on card. There was one available on eBay that was from the Gig
brand Trasformer toy line from Italy, where Rollout was named Cyclop and
his little buddy was named Goblin. It was only $60 USD, which wasn't
bad if the toy was dead mint. I would only have to make one purchase.
I figured most carded collectors would want an English-language package,
which is why it wasn't selling for more. I deliberated over this for
many days, but as I was poring over the auction photos, I saw that
Rollout actually had some paint damage, even while still in the
packaging! So much for that idea.
So in the end, I took a detailed inventory of all the Rollout toys
currently being sold on eBay. I wanted to buy as few toys as possible,
if I could help it. I marked them as either worthless or possible
purchases. A potential purchase had to have, at bare minimum, at least
one piece that was pristine. An especially problematic spot on the toy
was the chest, the pointed corners of the bucket shovel. There's almost
always paint rubbing off that spot. (That was the problem with the
carded Gig Trasformer from Italy as well.)
Finally, I bought Rollout #1 for $35, who came with Glitch but no rifle,
and he had bad paint wear on his helmet and right leg and right arm, but
everything else was clean. It was a good start. Now I just had to find
a second toy that had a good-looking head and arm and leg, and I could
play mix-and-match and build a good one. You should have seen how I
obsessed over this stupid toy. My wife was growing impatient and
wondered why I hadn't just pulled the trigger on Goblin and Cyclops. My
kids were tired of me talking about Action Masters. Even my chatbot was
starting to make quippy jokes about how Rollout was going to end up
costing me a paint-chipped arm and a leg. And so it goes.
The second one I got was $33.60, and he didn't come with any accessories
but his helmet was perfect, and he had paint coming off the *left* leg
instead. But, one thing I hadn't thought about was possible sun damage
to the white plastic. I was so busy studying and analyzing paint flaws
that nothing else mattered. So, the white plastic on Rollout #2 was a
slightly different shade than Rollout #1. I couldn't swap one arm and
not the other, because the difference would be pretty obvious. So, he's
very good-looking, but not perfect. And I was able to build a second,
flawed Rollout that I can still resell and get back at least some of
what I paid.
There are a lot of other Rollout toys up for auction that I summarily
rejected, not just because the paint is falling off but because the
Autobot symbol was applied crooked at the factory, or the factory paint
was applied badly so his wheels aren't painted brown completely, or the
halves of the lower legs are warped and so they didn't fit together well
during assembly. I'm realizing just how much of a cost-cutting
production the final year of G1 really was, with this many poor examples
of quality control escaping into the wild.
So, it's possible there will be a Rollout #3 some day, but for now I
decided to put this project to bed and think about other things. I
still have a small list of vintage toys with flaws that need to be
addressed at some point (my Apeface needs a new cockpit without so many
scratches; I need a Micromaster Groundshaker with an undamaged canard;
etc.) but sometimes I feel like it's best to keep moving forward.
Zob (I was not expecting this character to plague me as much as he's
managed to do)