Ironhide

"When are we going to start busting Deceptichops?"

Name: Ironhide
Allegiance: Autobot
Function: Security
Motto: "High tech circuitry is no replacement for guts."

Profile: "Go chew on a microchip," is Ironhide's calling card. Never the sort who likes to be told what to do, he prefers action to words. He refers to what he considers excessive talking as "leaking lubricant." He's the oldest Autobot, probably the toughest, most battle-tested and certainly the orneriest. Due to his defensive capabilities, he is usually in charge of safekeeping anything or anyone of importance, and sort of acts as Commander Optimus Prime's personal bodyguard. His gruff exterior hides his kind inner soul; his concern for the protection of life, whether mechanical or biochemical, extends to the lowliest gasketroid or smallest sparrow.

Abilities: Ironhide's skin is made of a trithyllium-steel alloy impregnated with irradiated carbon fibers, giving him immunity to most forms of artillery and electromagnetic attacks. He is the most nearly invulnerable of the Autobots. His main weapon is what he playfully calls his "water gun." It can shoot a stream of any number of liquids up to 1,000 feet. His choices include super-cooled liquid nitrogen, super-heated liquid lead, and a petro-chemical fluid that ignites upon contact. He also has sonar, radar, and a radio-wave detector.

Weaknesses: Ironhide is the slowest Autobot. Due to his advanced years, he breaks down the most. His presence breeds dissension among some of the younger, less compassionate Autobots who consider him an antiquated old heap whose contributions do not outweigh his liabilities. Optimus Prime does not share their view.

Strength: 7; Intelligence: 7; Speed: 3; Endurance: 9; Rank: 7; Courage: 10; Firepower: 7; Skill: 7

G1 Animation Model

Robot Mode

Alt Modes

Alternate Versions 

G1 Marvel Comic

G1 Toy

Official Images

Takara Tomy MP-27 Ironhide

Takara Tomy MP-27 Ironhide

Takara Tomy MP-27 Ironhide

Takara Tomy MP-27 Ironhide

Takara Tomy MP-27 Ironhide

Takara Tomy MP-27 Ironhide

Takara Tomy MP-27 Ironhide

Ah, Ironhide. Along with Ratchet this poor guy had one of the worst G1 toys, so far removed from his animation model as to be almost unrecognisable. As you can see from the image above, it amounted to little more than the cab of a Nissan Cherry van with arms loosely hanging off of the sides and a stickered 'face' behind the windshield! It was a monstrosity! Of course this is because the toy was originally designed for the Diaclone line, which weren't sentient robots from another planet, but rather transforming vehicles piloted by humans. I've waited over thirty years to get a decent version of this character, but even now the results are somewhat mixed.

Okay, so as indicated above I actually have the KO version of the figure, albeit the Takara Tomy branded one. It has a few issues - some of which are present on the official figure, some of which are not - but on the whole it's actually a very high quality knock-off. I acquired mine second hand, so it has a couple of scuffs here and there, but the paint apps are generally very good and I think most people would be hard pressed to tell the difference between the official and the knock-off.

I've read reports that at least one of Ironhide's face sculpts is a little 'off' compared to the official release, but neither looks bad to me. To be honest I'm just happy to have a version of the character that has recognisable human proportions and somewhat resembles his animation model! With that said there are a few things I don't like about the design that have nothing to do with it being a KO. For starters, those hip skirts are an eyesore. I have no idea why Takara thought that leaving the doors hanging there like that was a good idea, but given that third-party mod companies have come out with ingenious ways to not only move the doors, but to use them to better fill out the chest section of the bot makes me wonder if Takara got a little lazy... The skirts bug me so much I actually ordered the Shadow Fisher upgrade kit from China to remedy things (more on that below).

Another problem is the design of the legs. Putting aside the limited outwards movement because of the skirts (another thing the upgrade kit resolves), his bulky lower extremities mean that he can't stand with his feet together and is instead forced to adopt a permanent 'cowboy' stance. It's not as big of a deal as the hip skirts, because I like posing my figures dynamically, but it's still worth mentioning.

The final problem - one that apparently affects most versions of the figure, KO or official - relates to the shoulder ratchets, which are the wrong way around. When viewed from above in robot mode the teeth for the ratchets are visible at the top of the shoulders. Ratchet (the Autobot, not the, um, ratchet) doesn't have this issue, despite being an almost identical mould. Now this is probably something that you either don't notice or care about, but I actually took my figure apart to swap the pieces over, so it now has nice flat shoulders without any visible ratchet 'teeth'.

The rest of my issues with the figure probably relate to it being a KO, so don't take them as a criticism of the official product. They're mostly minor, but still irritating. Firstly and most annoyingly, the grill on my copy - which is supposed to swing down to reveal a silver piece in robot mode - would not budge. Because of the positioning and clearance it was very difficult to apply force without feeling as though I was going to break the figure, so in the end I removed the bumper and had a look at what was causing the issue. I deduced that the very top of the piece was too high to slip under the adjacent piece of plastic as it was rotated, so I began using a craft knife to carefully shave it down. This did of course remove the red paint, but as it would be covered by the bumper I wasn't too bothered about that. However, as I was very near to completion the knife slipped slightly and stripped some of the paint just below the area I was shaving down. Unfortunately this particular section of the grill is not covered by the bumper and so this damage is slightly visible in alt mode. Now while this irritates me it's probably something that would go unnoticed by most people unless they were closely scrutinising the affected area, and to be honest I consider this minor paint damage a fair trade for being able to rotate the grill into the correct position in robot mode. Even so, it serves as a reminder to be very careful when attempting fixes.

Other than that, the left ankle tilt on my figure didn't work without a fair bit of force. When I eventually managed to move it I realised this was because the screw had not been tightened enough, so it was catching the plastic. That took about thirty seconds to fix with a screwdriver and the minor damage to the plastic caused by the screw is not visible under normal conditions. I also had issues with a couple of the accessories, particularly his radar dish. Actually it's probably more accurate to say that the holes in his arms aren't big enough for the piece to peg in fully. Mine actually got stuck and broke when I was trying to remove it, so I had to glue it back together (although you can't tell). It's a pity, but it's more of a novelty accessory anyway so I doubt I'll be using it for display. I had a similar issue with one of the holes on the jet pack, which is too small for the flame to tab in. That was easily resolved by the careful application of a a knife. As with a lot of KOs, his guns don't tab into his hands quite right, but they are at least straight and I think some of it is down to the design of the hands and weapons themselves as I've read that people also struggle with the official figure.

Now all of this probably sounds like a lot of work, but when you consider it probably only took me twenty minutes to do all of the mods/fixes it's not that bad, especially given that I paid less than half of the regular price of the official MP-27. I won't get into a morality debate about the ethics of buying KOs, but for me the official MP-27 just had too many design issues to warrant a full price purchase. At least at the price I paid I don't feel too bad about spending another £15 on a kit to fix Takara's sloppy engineering... In fact, I've decided I'm also going to go down the KO route for Ratchet, although I've heard it's not quite as polished as the Ironhide KO. Even so, if I can get it for a reasonable price and then hunt for the Shadow Fisher upgrade, I'll be happy. Speaking of the upgrade, here are some shots of my KO MP-27 with said kit applied.

In vehicle mode the new panels align fairly well (as do the decals) and the colour is a good match to the original red. The new pieces are missing the trim detail at the very bottom, but to be honest I didn't notice this until it was pointed out in a forum post. Besides, it's the robot mode that really benefits from the Shadow Fisher kit, as evidenced below.

Now doesn't that look a whole lot better? The removal of the hip skirts really does bring MP-27 closer to his animation model and give him much better proportions.

The chest really does look much improved with the panels moved to the sides and while the silver colour match where the kit plugs into the hips isn't exact, it's pretty close.

The butt wheels are still in full effect, but at least they're now the only really ugly things on the mould. As a side note, the right hip skirt on my particular figure was hiding a scratch which is now visible in robot mode, but I'll take that trade-off.

As an added bonus the kit also improves the proportions of the chest when viewed head on, so while I was relatively pleased with Ironhide even with the design issues, when modded with the Shadow Fisher upgrade he really starts to shine. For what it's worth I think Ironhide (and by extension, Ratchet) are a little too tall in robot mode based on the scale chart, but only by a head or so and as such I can live with it. I'm just glad to have a version of the character similar to the one I grew up watching on TV and reading about in the Marvel comics, even if I did have to perform a lot of modifications to get it there.