Generations Power of the Primes Tailgate

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Generations Power of the Primes Tailgate

In 1986 five of the 1984 Mini Autobots, inherited from the Microchange toyline, were remoulded and redcoed to become new characters: Brawn, Cliffjumper, Gears, Huffer & Windcharger became respectively Outback, Hubcap, Swerve, Pipes & Tailgate. Of the 1984 Minibots only Bumblebee missed out on a redeco primarily because he was still available in the 1986 cases. This makes the decision to paint the similarly moulded Cliffjumper yellow as Hubcap look even more odd but evidence exists that Hubcap should be white and Tailgate yellow which is how things have remained. We missed out on a white repaint of RTS Windcharger, he instead gets coloured black as Wipe-Out during Transformers United. So when Tailgate gained in popularity after the launch of Transformers: More than Meets the Eye it was no surprise to see Tailgate released first during Generations Thrilling 30 and Windcharger become the redeco during Combiner Wars. The problem here is the T30 Tailgate is strongly modelled on his More Than Meets The Eye appearance, and not his 1986 toy or briefly seen cartoon appearance and Windcharger inherited those characteristics leading to a toy many were not satisfied with. That lead to Power of the Primes Windcharger in Legends Wave 1 and since a toy/cartoon style Tailgate is an easy redeco it quickly followed in Wave 2 to avoid any possibility of money being left on the table rather than in Hasbro's bank account.

So this is nearly a straight colour swap: red plastic and paint turn white, grey turns a greeny blue. A new head appears to mimic Tailgate's original. It's cast in the blue green plastic with white paint on the head surround and silver on the face plate. Silver is also used on the chest to make it look more like the original Tailgate's. I had thought from the photos that it was a new chest but something looked a little odd about it. In hand I can see it's the same and I can also see why it looks odd on him and Windcharger: It's an amalgam of their chest designs with paint and decals used to bring out different details here, but ultimately it doesn't look 100% right on either toy.

Transformation and articulation is the same, there isn't a lot you can say to describe it other than this is a repainted Windcharger with a new head. Ultimately if you want the MTMTE character, this isn't the toy for you and you should track down the T30 version. But if you don't care which Tailgate, or specifically want the toy/cartoon version than this is the toy for you.

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Future Repaints

Repaint Tailgate in black as Wipe-Out from Transformers US #27 please!