Ratchet

"No more backtalk, or I'll short your mouth circuit!"

Name: Ratchet
Allegiance: Autobot
Function: Medic
Motto: "You break it, I'll remake it."

Profile: Ratchet was known as the best tool-and-die man on Cybertron. In his work-area bay, he can fashion anything from a pin to a cruise missile and repair most of the Autobots and their specific parts, given the right materials. His rough language and manners belie his gentle touch on the operating-assembly table. He knows how to have a good time despite his involvement in a combat group. "When does the party begin?" is his usual query after he's completed patching up his latest fallen comrade. He's more prone to giving his leader, Optimus Prime, a lot more backtalk than the other Autobots, but does his job as well as anyone.

Abilities: Ratchet has an assortment of laser scalpels, arc-welders, electron microscopes, electrical circuit sensors and fluid dispensers (both lubricating and super-cooled) at his disposal.

Weaknesses: His preference for partying to anything else sometimes interferes with getting his job done. Otherwise he's only limited in doing his work by time and materials available.

Strength: 4; Intelligence: 8; Speed: 4; Endurance: 5; Rank: 7; Courage: 8; Firepower: 3; Skill: 10

G1 Animation Model

Robot Mode

Alt Modes

Alternate Images

G1 Marvel Comic

G1 Toy

Official Images

Takara Tomy MP-30 Ratchet

Takara Tomy MP-30 Ratchet

Takara Tomy MP-30 Ratchet

Takara Tomy MP-30 Ratchet

Takara Tomy MP-30 Ratchet

Takara Tomy MP-30 Ratchet

Takara Tomy MP-30 Ratchet

Takara Tomy MP-30 Ratchet

Takara Tomy MP-30 Ratchet

Takara Tomy MP-30 Ratchet

After recently picking up a second hand KO release of MP-27 (Ironhide) from a Facebook group I decided to take a chance on buying his mould 'twin', Ratchet, directly from a Chinese eBay seller. It took a little under two weeks to arrive and to my surprise it had the official Takara Tomy branding rather than the more common Takasa Tony or Robot Formers names most often associated with KOs these days. Now I'm not the sort of guy who has a particularly strong viewpoint when it comes to the morality of buying knock-off products, but for me the official releases of both Ironhide and Ratchet have too many issues to warrant the asking price.

Of course, as with Ironhide the original G1 Ratchet toy was among the very worst to be released. Similarly, Ratchet's Masterpiece incarnation is leaps and bounds ahead of said G1 toy, but it is still afflicted by all of the issues with the mould. The unsightly hip skirts are still present (although they're actually less distracting here, thanks to being the same colour white as the rest of the figure) and still limit outward leg movement, the  chest isn't filled out enough, and the legs are sculpted in such a way as to make it impossible to close them together. Most of that could be remedied with Shadow Fisher's add-on kit, but that seems to be harder to come by for MP-30 than it does for MP-27 these days, so for the time being at least Ratchet will remain unmodified (*Update* I now have the kit. See below.).

As for the quality of the KO, well it's a real mixed bag. On the plus side the majority of joints and tabs are good (the chest grill rotates just fine on my copy), the shoulder ratchets are correctly assembled, the face sculpts are good, the weapons tab into the hands correctly, and all of his accessories are present and correct. The downside is that my figure has a number of paint chips (relatively minor, thankfully), missing chrome on the headlights, some very tight tabs that make it difficult to separate certain parts, arms that untab a little too easily from the shoulders and, worst of all, the floppiest legs I've ever encountered on a Transformer, Masterpiece or third-party. More accurately, the hip joints are incredibly loose when moving the legs from front to back, so Ratchet won't be performing any high kicks any time soon. I took the crotch piece apart to see if I could find out what was causing the problem, but nothing obvious leapt out. It's possible that it's just a case of the tolerances being slightly off, with either the slots or the pegs being too big/small respectively. I'm hoping that the application of something along the lines of clear nail polish will increase the friction so I can pose him a little more dynamically, but we shall see. (*Update* Clear nail polish did the trick, yay!)

In the cartoon  Ratchet has big red crosses on his shoulders, but for some reason the stickers that come with MP-30 have red squares in each of corners of the red cross (I'm guessing it's some kind of copyright issue, but why a KO company would care is anyone's guess). I used a craft knife to remove the red squares and return the crosses to their toon accurate appearance, and while the results aren't perfect when viewed up close they are certainly good enough under normal conditions. Thankfully the factory applied Autobot insignia is central, straight and of good quality.

The first shot below illustrates the lack of chrome on the headlights of my KO MP-30, particularly on those on the right hand side of the figure. Aside from the floppy legs this was my biggest bugbear, as it's very noticeable due to the placement of the headlights. Having read about the Molotow chrome pens I decided to order one in the hopes that it would be a good match to the factory chrome and improve the overall look of the figure.

This 'after' shot below shows the the results of the Molotow pen. The chrome isn't a perfect match, looking as it does slightly duller than the factory chromed pieces, but it's a big improvement over the spotty mess that greeted me when I first examined the figure. I used a 2mm nib pen, which was a good size for applying the chrome to small pieces, and left it to cure in a display cabinet for a couple of weeks so as to avoid fingerprints. I've read that the finish can dull if handled, but thankfully I'm unlikely to be putting my fingers all over the headlights so I'm hopeful that it will hold up for the foreseeable future.

I also recently managed to get my hands on the Shadow Fisher upgrade kit, which was a surprise given that it has been sold out everywhere for months. I actually stumbled upon it quite by chance when looking for something else and even though it was quite pricey (almost as expensive as the KO Ratchet figure itself!) I knew I'd regret passing it up. I enlisted my little boy's 'help' in performing the modification, which was a breeze after having done it once for Ironhide. Here are a few before shots.

Here're a few pictures of Ratchet in all of his skirtless glory. I forgot to fold his chest grill down after I reassembled him, so he looks a little off.

As with Ironhide, the kit makes a really positive difference to the overall profile and silhouette of the figure. The red of the replacement hip connectors isn't an exact match to the red of the figure (it's slightly darker), but it's close enough so as not to distract. Thankfully the white panels are a very close match and you'd be hard pressed to tell them apart from the originals (although the lack of moulded detail at the very bottom of the doors is a giveaway if you know what to look for).