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Series: Legacy Evolution
Allegiance: Autobot
Categories: Deluxe
Year: 2023
Prelude: Drop a few Autobots on a planet filled with junk, make them watch 1980s television from Earth, and what do you get? Junkions! Transformers that look like they watched too many reruns of Mad Max movies. In Legacy Evolution, we’re getting a whole bunch of them and for once only one of them becomes a motorcycle. This here’s Crashbar, mustache and all. Let’s say go!
Robot Mode: As mentioned above, among the various Junkions we’ve gotten in the Legacy Evolution series, Crashbar is probably the most classic-looking. The original Junkions from the movie and the third season of the G1 cartoon all transformed into motorcycles and resembled Wreck-Gar. Well, so does Crashbar.
The robot itself has the classic Junkion look with the orange, yellow, and beige coloring, a somewhat asymmetrical design (especially the legs), the various spikes, and, of course, the mustache. Most Junkions wear mustaches, you know? Crashbar is on the smaller side for a Deluxe-class figure, but makes up for that with lots of sculpted detailing and color accents.
Articulation is pretty good. His knees can only bend so far before the bike wheels in his lower legs get in the way, but otherwise he can bend very nicely and has twisting wrists and ankle tilt, too. The figure also features quite a few 5mm holes so you can attach all sorts of extra parts from other Junkions or weapons.
Speaking of weapons, Crashbar comes with two weapon pods he can attach to his forearms or hold his hands as guns, as well as two curved handlebars that can serve as both ornamentation or weapons. Finally, one of his wheels can unfold three blades, somewhat resembling the wheel-shurikens of Animated Prowl. You can also combine the weapons in various ways and, with the option to add more Junkion parts from other figures of the line, there is very little limit to what you might end up with.
Bottom line: Crashbar is my favorite of the Legacy Junkions in terms of looks and the robot mode offers no real room for complaint, either. Cool robot, cool weapons, no reason to detract points. Very nice.
Alternate Mode: Crashbar transforms into a Mad-Max-style motorbike. The transformation is not terribly difficult, but not entirely easy, either, and requires a bit of finesse here and there to get everything tabbed together correctly. The orange handlebars become exhaust pipes, the weapon pods become saddle bags, and one robot foot stands out a bit awkwardly on the back. I guess it’s supposed to become a sort of back rest, but it still very much looks like a robot’s foot.
Visible robot foot aside, the rest of the bike clicks together very nicely and there are no other visible robot bits. Well, you can see the robot face peek out on the underside, but that’s canon since the Bumblebee Movie, I guess. The bike is big enough for other Transformers figures to ride (Deluxe work best, I think). One weird feature: you can move the front part with the handles to the side, as if you were steering the bike left and right, but it’s only the upper part that moves, not the wheel below. That’s fixed in place. Also, no kickstand, but the orange bars work well enough to keep the bike more or less upright.
So bottom line for the vehicle mode: not quite as nice as the robot mode with some minor problems, but still a pretty good Junkion bike in my book.
Combinations: After Weaponizers, Modulators, and Fossilizers, the Junkions are the next line of figures made to fall apart into various pieces and recombine with others. The main change is that you don’t have to disassemble them in order to transform. Crashbar can combine with other Junkions (or any other figure with 5mm ports, really) in various ways. See pictures 13 through 17 for just SOME of the options. I am sure there are plenty more.
Remarks: Legacy was supposed to have its own cartoon on Netflix at some point, but I guess after War for Cybertron nobody wanted Netflix to give it another try. So there is zero media presence to Crashbar apart from a very brief cameo in one of Takara’s New Legends comics. Of course it’s easy to imagine him as part of any given Junkion crowd, so there is that.
I’m a big Junkion fan in general, just got a bit tired of most of them being retools of Wreck-Gar. Thankfully the Legacy Junkions are their own bots. Still, despite the fact that Crashbar is the one to most resemble Wreck-Gar, he is my favorite among the Legacy Junktions. Mostly because the robot mode, which is near-perfect. The bike mode is okay, but with some limitations.
So if you’re a Junkion fan like me or simply enjoy the many, many combination possibilities of these figures, Crashbar is certainly worth a good look.
Rating: B+
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