The Most Hated Transformers Toy

you also forgot to mention how easily Ironhide and ratchet broke...

I'd love to see a Missing Link Ironhide, it'd be either hilariously blursed or the most jaw-dropping, awesomely subversive feat of TF toy engineering ever.

This would've been the perfect candidate for an upgrade to a headmaster. You can have both looks, while still retaining the diaclone play features.

I recently learned that Bumblebee does not turn into a VW bug. He turns into a Penny Racer toy car! You'll never unsee it.

My boy, he had a rough childhood, but grew into a true hero.

There are some things worth unpacking here. Firstly that hole in the crotch isn't weird, it's weapon storage for the turret on the battle sled. It's something I only stumbled upon when I got curious a few years back. Yes that means that Ironhide and Ratchet do in fact have underslung weapons in vehicle mode. What I've learned over the years, and Blaster (specifically his gun) was my first lesson with this, is that if an early Transformer has some weird hole in it, it probably served a purpose in Diaclone, microchange, et al, which wasn't carried over into the Transformers line. It also means that Ironhide was the earliest example of a Transformers figure mold, which featured weapons storage in vehicle mode. Given the mold was only the 5th Transformers figure mold to be created, it shows that weapons storage, and especially functional weapons storage, in an alt mode, occurred far earlier than meny transformers fans might have realised. Secondly, the play value in mech mode is far better than than the pilot merely riding in what is essentially a precursor to an AMP Suit in Avatar - both the Launcher and the turret feature cockpits for Dianauts, while the readout screens which line the sides, allow for additional play options. If you draw a parallel between Dianauts and Minicons, then this is essentially the oldest ancestor of Armada Optimus Prime. Thirdly, I think you misunderstood what I was saying about MC-18. I wasn't merely saying that the head for Ironhide came from MC-18; I'm saying that Ironhide ORIGINALLY WAS MC-18. We know that at some point, the decision was made by Hasbro to make the Autobots cars, and the Decepticons devices, military vehicles and weapons. However we know that there were other design choices at play and that not all of them would have come after that. Now bear in mind this is pure speculation on my part, but Occam's Razor lends credence to what I'm saying. I believe that in the initial stages of planning out the rebrand and amalgamation of the line, not long after 1983, there were a few initial concept character outlines for different toys, back before creative efforts were filtered out by marketing execs about what toys "will shelf-warm" (air quotes intentional on both sides of the argument). For example, robots who turn into jets are going to be soldiers. A robot who turns into a cassette player and robots who turn into tapes, will naturally be paired together and will serve in the roles of communications and intellegence gathering (storage media literally collect data. However what about a van, a family vehicle to get children from a to b screams out security? Transport, sure, but security????? However a robot which turns into a padlock - well that absolutely screams out being a robot whose role is security, as it LITERALLY secures things as its function. To that end, while the name may not have been ironhide at that time, I am saying that it is almost certain that the red and black security robot that we came to know as Ironhide was originally MC-18 in its entirety. Another thing which I think backs this up, is if you look at not only the head, but the rest of the body of the animation model of Ironhide, the design silhouette matches up perfectly with how Bob Budiansky would have stylised the design of MC-18 for an animation model. I think these designs were done as part of a marketting pitch - not every single member of the 1984 cast, but enough of them for a proof of concept. So what do I think happened? I think there were 3 things at play here. The first is the decision for the Autobots to turn into cars, whilst the Decepticons turned into devices. Additionally, the warmer colours, the reds, the oranges, etc, as a rule, became the Autobot colours, while the darker and colder colours, such as the blacks, the purples, the blues, etc, tended to become the Autobot colours. Even the decision to give the Autobots blue eyes and the Decepticons red eyes, matches up with this. Additionally as a bad guy, how much of an evil cool factor does a padlock have, besides next to none. Guns, and jets are a no-brainer. A camera and tapes to spy on people with, sure. But a padlock? I think what happened was that Ironhide the toy wasn't originally on the list to be a Transformer and MC-18 was originally meant to be the Autobot Security chief. However when marketing stepped in, plans changed and they needed another toy to fill the slot. I think the Onebox Cherry Vanette was sitting around unused and it was decided that the animation model for MC-18 would be completely reskinned from the neck down, into what we now know as Ironhide, whilst retaining MC-18's head. The added bonus of this of course, was that it gave them either a working animation design, or a far better animation design, than what might have existed for the Onebox Cherry Vanette Ambulance, which we now know as Ratchet. While we may never get a definitive answer, this strikes me as the most likely scenario for how we wound up with the animation model and toy design for Ratchet, differing so wildly. One other thing, whilst Ratchet and Ironhide might be the most hated early G1 toys out there, I believe any assigning to them of the worst G1 toy ever is misplaced. As someone who owns both MC-21 and G1 Blaster, I can unreservedly say that the worst G1 toy ever, in terms of how the original Pre-Tf toy was handled, is none other than G1 Blaster by a country mile. Not only did they gut the incredible working radio gimmick, which is amazingly executed, but they even removed working switched and dials, when in some cases, all it required was using a plastic part that was already there on the toy - the tuning dial next to the tape deck being the example of this. Meanwhile the gaping hole in Blaster's Electro Scrambler, which is designed to work with a crystal radio earpiece, was never filled in, despite the crystal radio earpiece being removed. In fact if you have a crystal radio earpiece with a 2.5mm plug, it will combine with the gun of any reissue of G1 Blaster, to this day. Meanwhile Blaster gets a free pass, when it should be thoroughly panned as a mold reuse (in fact it should be considered a cheap knockoff of MC-21 in comparison - no matter how officially licensed it might be), whilst the Onebox Vannette mold cops nothing but hate because Hasbro chose to cram a square peg in a round hole, with their choice of mold usage for certain characters. Make it make sense.

When I finally got Ironhide in the 80s I thought I was missing parts because it didn't have a head until I noticed the stupid sticker at that point I was really disappointed

I have never had a issue with the mold. As someone who prefers toy accuracy to animation accuracy, I thought the toys were pretty good. Still do. There's a lot you can do with them that you can't do with, say, SS86 Ironhide or Ratchet. And I like those too.

I really would want detailed video going over why cartoon models deviated from the toys. Like one pattern I noticed is eye color change with Optimus, Soundwave, Perceptor and Blaster from yellow to blue and red. And why the helicopter triple changed never became a transformer.

I hate that thing as much as I LOVE the SS86 Ironhide

I got Ratchet as a kid, and was totally in denial about it missing the cartoon head. I kept on double checking the box!

Can’t help but think it would’ve been a more reasonable decision to just keep Ratchet and Ironhide as mech suits and just have two human characters with the same personalities. I mean, if you can have Spike, Sparkplug, Chip, and Carly…then some human characters could actually directly participate in the fighting, which I imagine would’ve pleased a lot of kids.

Only saw one at a babysitter's house I can't remember if it was Ironhide or Ratchet.

I had Ironhide as a kid. I absolutely loved that toy, even if it didn’t match the tv show. Pulled all of my G1 toys out several years ago, and he’s still one of my favorites. 🤷‍♂️

In early 1983, I witnessed my first transforming toy -- a dune buggy in the GoBots line code-named "Buggy Man." Later that year, I began to see advertisements on TV for "Diakron" (the American name for Diaclone) three vehicles that transformed into cars. I got one of them for Christmas that year (DK1, the Lamborghini Countach), but I never got the pickup truck (later released as "Trailbreaker") or the van. So when the Transformers line finally came out in 1984, my first Autobot car purchase was Ironhide. I loved that toy, and I never regretted it, not even for a second, because I had some Diaclone figures to put in his cockpit, which was awesome. Thank you for posting.

Ironhide and Ratchet were fine in their vehicle mode, but they're transformation to robot was just goofy looking. I can't remember if I every got either of them as they weren't on the top of my want list.

I just wish they’d release the original jetfire again.

"Iron Hide and Rachet were horrible! Megatron was a bit gay too, but.....:-/ !"

Never hated the mold, not once. I actually loved the van mode and the bot mode, while not toon accurate in any way, i still liked it. The sled was cool to me. I even bought the Encore reissues when they came out.

Would have been interesting if, in the show, they weren't Ironhide and Ratchet, but humans in mechsuits using their tech.