Familial October - Skids and Mudflap

"Autobot Skids and Mudflap have always been close, but this is a little ridiculous. Equipped with experimental combination technology, they use their newfound ability to help the other Autobots hunt rogue Decepticons wherever they hide. Unfortunately, they have so much difficulty hanging onto each other in vehicle mode that they spend more time struggling to stay on the road then they do fighting."

Toyline: Revenge of the Fallen
Generation: Live Action Movies
Size Class: Deluxe (About Scout each)
Faction: Autobot
Strength: 4
Intelligence: 6
Speed: 7
Endurance: 4
Rank: 2
Courage: 8
Fireblast: 5
Skill: 3

Skids



Skids is a mostly pink robot with some white on parts of his limbs and on his back kibble. His chest is made up mostly of his vehicle mode front grill and leads to his head, which is connected to it by a ball joint connection. The head itself is sculpted with blue eyes with silver mascara, ears, nose, mouth, some hair tufts and two silver bucked teeth.
Almost the entirety of Skids' vehicle mode's front is folded up onto his back, including his front bumper and windows etc.

Skids' shoulders are made from his front wheel wells and therefore also feature his headlights as well. These shoulders are connected to the torso by a hinge connector, which leads to the upper arms connected by a pivot joint at the wheels. The lower arms are connected by a ball joint and hinge combination that allows the elbow created to move in all different directions. Skids' left hand is sculpted with four fingers and a thumb, whilst the right arm features a larger hand that features a pivot that allows it to fold inwards of itself by about 90 degrees, but is otherwise aesthetically the same as the other hand.

Skids' waist is connected to the torso by a pivot that allows it to rotate as far as needed (barring any obstructions). His upper legs are connected to the groin area by ball joints that allows them to move around as needed. His lower legs are connected to the upper ones by a knee joint created by a hinge and rotating pivot joint that allows him to sit down and rotate the lower legs somewhat. Skids' feet are connected to the bottom of the lower legs by a ball joint and hinge combination that allows them to e repositioned as needed. The feet themselves are pretty basic and look more like shoes than Mudflap's toed ones. Due to his smaller legs and larger upper body, Skids does have a tendency to topple over with the slightest breeze...so...be aware of that when posing him.




Mudflap



Mudflap's colour scheme is almost the inversion of Skids' colours, he has a white head compared to Mudflap's pink, his shoulders and white, unlike Skids' and so on, though it's not always the case.

Mudflap's torso is sculpted, very oddly with what looks like the headlights from his Deluxe Smart car toy, despite him playing the rear of the vehicle, and not even from a part visible from the outside. His Autobot insignia is found on the left side of his chest from a panel that originated from the back of his vehicle mode. His head is connected on a pivot joint which also forms his neck and collar area. This enables that part to bop forward and back as well. His head itself is connected to the collar area by a ball joint, allowing him to rotate his head to the side and nod forwards as well.
The head itself is white and silver with sculpted "ears", mouth, nose and blue eyes. His face has been given a demented look for some reason, along with Skids. Mudflap features a cape on his back created from a large chunk of his vehicle mode that can be rearranged by a ball joint connection up the top, behind the shoulders.

Mudflap's arms are connected to the torso by a ball joint that allows it to rotate as needed. His lower arm is connected to the upper arm by a rotating joint and a hinge that creates an elbow, and allows it to rotate fully. His right hand is simply sculpted with three small fingers and a thumb that is surrounded by a panel of his vehicle mode. His left hand is larger and features a small amount of articulation as it is able to fold inwards by about 90 degrees on a hinge.

Mudflap's upper legs are connected to his groin area by a ball joint that allows them to rotate as much as needed. His lower legs are connected by a hinge and rotating pivot joint that creates a knee and allows him to move them as needed. His toes are able to bend forwards and back as needed depending on the surface and are sculpted with four toes on each foot (I tend to make them bend downwards as far as possible to create an arch, but it's up to you how you do it honestly.)




Combined Alternate Mode



Skids forms the front of the Ice Cream Truck mode and features the front wheels, the headlights, front grill, translucent front and side windows, engine hood and blow-horn speaker on top. This part also features some sculpted features like door handles, some side vents on the engine area, his front bumper, left hand side mirror and his brand emblem on the very front as well.
The wheel areas hold the words "MADE FRESH FOR YOU" above the wheels themselves, and the wheels feature a pink stripe around the hubcaps (which fits the colour scheme of the vehicle too). If you look closely enough as well, behind the wheel wells on the doors you can see some sculpted rust marks that are sadly not painted, so it doesn't come up that well.



Mudflap forms the rear of the Ice Cream Truck mode, which actually forms the majority of it. This part features some rear sculpted doors and the side windows (where the kiddies would go to to get their ice creams etc), some sculpted rear lights and bumpers and also features a large ice cream façade on the top. The wheels feature the same pink strip along the hubcaps and he has some unpainted sculpted rust marks across his vehicle mode, but other than that there's not much else to talk about the features.
This half of the vehicle mode features a picture of an whipped ice cream in a cone with a 99 Flake in it on both sides. On the top of either side he has the words "Creamy ICE CREAM" written in red and blue (with Creamy being in red cursive). And finally he has an upside down Autobot insignia just above his left hand rear door.



The combined alternate mode is of an old rusted white and pink ice cream truck. It features all the parts mentioned before, but in a combined format.
He can roll across a smooth surface with no issues or undercarriage issues.


My Thoughts

Over all I think this toy is quite good. The two individual robots look nice and relatively screen accurate, my only real issue with them is that they are much smaller than the rest of the on screen characters from the ROTF lines compared to how they look on screen (though then again they do have the Smart Car versions for that instead). Of course due to this toy being Deluxe Class, it's about the same size as Bumblebee in vehicle mode, when the actual Ice Cream Truck should be much larger than a car.

One rather odd thing about this toy is that the Skids part uses translucent plastic for the windows, but the Mudflap uses painted plastic, rather than translucent plastic like his brother.

This toy seems to be an evolution of the Micromaster Combiners where they can form the front or back of a combined vehicle mode, which seems perfect for a Twin set, especially one where the Twins are so insanely close like these two are shown to be.

Skids and Mudflap retain a gimmick from his earlier toys where they each have a larger hand than the other on opposite sides to one another. Mudflap's mega-hand is on his left arm, whilst Skids' one is on the right.

An interesting difference in these toys to their Deluxe counterparts is that in this set Skids is much shorter than Mudflap, whilst everywhere else (including the other toys) has them pretty much evenly sized, this is obviously needed for this toy, but it still sticks out a bit as odd.