DOTM - Wheeljack

Name: Wheeljack

Faction: Autobot

Continuity: Live Action Movies

Toy Line: Dark of the Moon

Strength: 4

Intelligence: 9

Speed: 8

Endurance: 6

Rank: 8

Courage: 9

Fireblast: 5

Skill: 10

Robot Mode

Wheeljack's robot mode, I have to say, is one of my favourite Movie-figure designs, he has a good symmetrical look, has all his limbs, and doesn't look too generic. His body is mostly grey with his blue car-parts being incorporated as body armour, and also featuring some gold, silver and light blue parts for highlighting.

Wheeljack's torso is one big lump of plastic that seems to be molded to look like his engine parts and also features his car-mode hood on his back (the hood part also features a clip so you can keep his spear latched onto his back too). Wheeljack's right-hand chest plate features his Autobot insignia. His chest also features 2 clips that can hold 2 C-Joint connected things (designed for his power tools, but you can put anything that'll fit in there if you want)

His head is connected to the torso by a small ball-joint connector that gives it some articulation. The head itself is sculpted with his screen-counterpart's famed features (spectacles, moustache, eyebrows etc). The sides of his head feature some wire-hair light piping ports that work as an alternative to the head-fins used by his G1 counterpart. The top of his head is noticeably large, most likely denoting his greater intelligence than most others.

Wheeljack's arms are connected to his torso by a ball-joint connector taht allows him quite some articulation in his shoulder area. In order to hide his ugly shoulder connector however he has his vehicle mode headlights and front doors to the car. His upper arm sections also feature his front wheels at the elbow points. The upper arm is connected to the elbow part by a rotating joint that leads to a connecting joint to enable his arms to flex and turn as needed. His lower arms are single pieces which feature sculpted mechanical details, peg holes on their outer fore arms (to hold some MechTech weapons if desired, and culminate in his hands with sculpted open fingers, surrounding a hidden peg hole for his weapons and tool box to go into

His groin is connected to the bottom of his torso by a pivoting joint that allows it to rotate fully, His legs are connected to his groin at the sides by connectors with ball joints that again allows them full articulation. The upper legs also feature some pivoting joints in the middle for a bit mode posing potential, but this is mostly hidden by his leg-decoration. The upper legs also feature some side-panels with his vehicle mode rear wheels attached. His knees are simple joints that allow them to bend back or forth as needed (unlike real knees of course). The backs of the knees also feature the rear parts of his vehicle mode, so you may need to re-position the rear-parts for bending backwards, otherwise there may be tears. His lower legs are made of most of the roof and rear of his vehicle mode, but folded out. The windscreen is used in this mode as a type of back-support as well, giving him some good balance too, along with his wide-enough feet (so basically he shouldn't fall over too much)

Vehicle Mode

Wheeljack turns into a blue Mercedes-Benz E550, or in other words, a thing of beauty, he has tinted black windows that hides all the robot bits inside and, being licensed, he is detailed with all the things you'd expect to find on the exterior of this make of car, including the badges, headlights, door handles, license plate area, and rolling wheels with silver rims and 5-pointed star hubs. The roof of the car mode features 2 push-down holes for the tool-box (or any other MechTech weapon) to be inserted into, and yeah, why wouldn't you want to put a giant green toolbox on top of a beautiful blue car? 

Accessories 

Wheeljack comes with four accessories, a spear and two guns/power tools that feature C-Clips to connect to his various connection points, giving him the look of just having all his equipment hooked onto him at all times. He also features a tool box with 3 legs to stand on, and a hand (which of course fits into his hands). This toolbox also features a gimmick, where you push on a button at the back to release a briefly spinning buzzsaw, so you know, he can saw up any pesky Decepticons and humans who get in the way of his building work!

My Thoughts

As you may be able to tell from the review itself, I love this figure, he looks great in both modes, he's very screen accurate, comes with some great accessories, and is just great as a figure in terms of play-value in general.

My only real gripe with this figure in terms of design is the legs...they are extremely fiddly to transform, and just one missed step can mean it won't transform properly, and you end up with a vehicle with a weird roof, or a robot with balancing issues. So, just make sure you read the instructions for how to transform the legs properly a few times, but the rest is pretty easy.

The only other issue I possibly have with this figure is the availability. He was a main character in Dark of the Moon, but like several others, his toy was cancelled last minute, meaning he wasn't released in the west, and has to be bought by the fans from Takara, or the Hasbro Asia market (mine came from the magical land of Ebay). Still I guess it's great he got a proper toy still, unlike poor old Mirage/Dino.

All in all though, I think this is a great figure, and would urge anyone who likes the Movie toys/characters to buy this awesome fella :)