Transformers Generations Legacy Deluxe Decepticon Wild Rider

Wild Rider is a great toy in both car and robot modes. He's not gonna win prizes for the most brilliant transformation scheme or anything, but he's a cool figure to fiddle around with and does what he's supposed to do: be a sports car, be a lithe robot that sows terror in his enemies by going *pew pew pew* and sit upside down behind Menasor's leg. 😋

Combiner Wars was a turning point in the history of the Transformers Generations line, pumping out almost every combiner known to the franchise. A few still hold up to this day, most were hit and miss, but some where downright awful upon release. One such combiner was Menasaur, mainly plagued by the awful torso the voyager Motormaster became. But as disproportionate and floppy it may have been, it did give us one thing: the "Dead End" mold.

The combiner wars Dead End mold is incredibly influential in the world of deluxe transformer engineering, with the unique way the legs worked still being used in a modified form for deluxes even up to this day. But Legacy Wildrider goes beyond and flat out entirely copies the transformation of its predacessor, and is now living proof that not everything improves with time.

Where to begin? Let's go possitive first. The vehicle mode is not only incredibly close to how it looked in the 1980's The Transformers cartoon, but the details on it are also very close to the real life car that inspired the very first toy of the character in the first place. The only main difference that sticks out is what appears to be a thruster on the back of the vehicle. A reference to the port the original toy had to connect either the combiner hand or foot into? A nod to Batman's Batmobile? Or just a fun little detail? You decide, I suppose. The only real negatives of the alt mode are it's iffy ground clearance due to the robot feet not entirely pegging in properly, and the mismatched wheels.

And... Well that's it really.

Transformation is nearly identical to the old Combiner Wars version, but now every single joint feels too tight, more limited, and too fragile. Stress marks became seen on the joints of the legs after my very first transformation of the figure, and sure I handle these figures with a bit of force, but given that these are children's toys they should absolutely be able to handle roughhousing worse than what I can do. The main difference with the transformation is the feet, head reveal, and the dreaded front of the car work differently. The feet are now separate parts from the shins, the only improvement this figure seems to make over it's old counterpart. The headed folds into the cavity where the combiner joint once was. And the hood has extra hinges in it. These extra hinges DONT allow the backpack to compress and become less of an eye sore, no, they make the backpack BIGGER. Supposedly it's a cape, but it doesn't look like a cape, and it leaves the entire front bumper just floating above it's head. But hey, you can just not use these joints and just have a fairly bad looking backpack instead of an awful one, but oh my friends it gets worse from there.

The proportions on the robot mode are so horrifically bad that I am genuinely surprised this figure actually share it's transformation with the combiner wars toy. The torso is far too long, mainly due to a weirdly long crotch. The entire figure is far skinnier than his appearance in the show, EXCEPT for his shins just below the knee which seem to be as wide or wider than his torso. The figure is also missing key details, such as the front wheels being in the shoulders like the cartoon.

This is certainly no improvement over the Combiner Wars version, and even then this figure just does not match up with other modern deluxes. The build quality is bad, the transformation is unfun to do, the robot mode looks dreadful, and the car mode is simply just good. This is certainly not worth the money.