Name: Dion
Series: e-Hobby exclusives
Allegiance: Autobot
Function: Freight Handler
Alternate Mode: Cybertronian Car
CAR MODE
Height: 2.5cm Length: 6.5cm Width: 3.5cm
A rounded pale yellow, off white and cobalt blue car with a transparent blue canopy on top, along with transparent tyres, Dion is an awkward mix of colours. The yellow is primarily at the back, the off white around the middle and blue at the front. The colours are laid out to work in robot mode, so here they end up all over the place. Dion is based on a bit part character of the same name from the episode War Dawn, and this Wheelie repaint is vastly different from the alt mode Dion has in that episode, which is some sort of cargo truck. There's a rubsign on the front, along with an indent - both are lost amongst the jumble of colours. Dion sports a small Autobot logo sticker just behind the rubsign, which makes the rubsign rather redundant, but the indent's presence demands a rubsign.
There's not really much point to this mode, to be honest. Dion has clearly been colour mapped for robot mode and doesn't fit this alt mode at all. The transparent blue is just plain odd here and I really would have preferred the rubsign left off - even taking into account the indent. For the record, Dion as we saw in War Dawn was an eight wheeled truck with a dump-truck like tray at the back.
This mode looks like Dion's collided with a paint palette, and came off worse. For the most part this was necessary but the transparent blue plastic - which reveals the robot face - really caps off a bad colour map. The vehicle itself doesn't match the cartoon, which makes this mode irrelevant, which makes the horrible colours easier to accept.
TRANSFORMATION TO ROBOT MODE
Fold down the legs underneath then swing then down into place - there's a compound waist hinge. Fold the back of the car down to form his back, swing down the arms and flip up the panel to reveal his head.
ROBOT MODE
Height: 9cm Width: 3.5cm
Again pale yellow, off white and cobalt blue, but this time there's method to the layout madness. Dion has yellow upper arms and groin, off white forearms, head, thighs and waist and cobalt blue boots and torso. The colour layout works a lot better, although it's not quite as logical as on the animated Dion since the bodyshape is quite different. The transparent blue canopy sits above his head and looks stupid there (just as it does on Wheelie), and Dion lacks the shoulder pylons of the animated version. Considering how diverse the two forms are, this is a fairly well done paint mask. The eyes are painted blue, which is a lot better than Wheelie's unpainted eyes.
Colour layout is the only good point here. The bodyshape is awful - Dion's head sits on the front of the torso, while his shoulderjoints are _behind_ the chest, giving him a severe hunchback. The fliptop panel above his head looks ridiculous while his arms are long and ungainly things. The hands are simple lumps stamped on the inside - which is worse than most Minicars. While the colour layout is well adapted, this toy still fails to really look much like the animated version.
Dion is slightly more poseable than most Minicars - the arms swing while the feet and hips are independently hinged. None of this is much use, mind you - he looks gimpy no matter what pose you put him in.
The scariest aspect of this robot mode is that it's the focus of this repaint. The bodyshape sucks and doesn't really fit the character, while the transparent blue plastic lid really hurts the overall effect. The colour layout makes this the better of the two modes (as a repaint), but it's far from good.
VARIATIONS
A limited repaint, most likely limited to a single production run. As mentioned he is a repaint of Wheelie. Dion comes in a bundle with Orion Pax, a Kup repaint. There is a much stronger, later, toy, using a repainted Universe 2.0 mould.
OVERALL
A mediocre repaint of a very bad Transformer, Dion was pretty much doomed from the beginning. He's part of a limited eHobby set, which is in turn a repaint of the Kup & Wheelie reissue set - the Dion character was chosen to match Orion Pax rather than this mould, for which it is completely unsuitable. Considering the odds stacked against this toy, it's about as good as I'd expect it to be, but this doesn't make Dion a good toy. He's more focused than Wheelie but is trying to do a lot more. Unless you're a hardcore fan of Dion this repaint isn't really worth worrying about - the only reason I got it is because it comes with the much stronger Orion Pax (who is worthwhile) - 2.5/10 (slightly higher than Wheelie since the concept is a little more ambitious)
|
