Blurr

Height: 18cm to top of antenna; 14cm (vehicle overall length).

Articulation: 25 total points - Double-jointed neck; 3 points each arm: Ball joint shoulder, pre-elbow swivel, ball joint elbow; Swivel waist; 8 points each leg: Ball joint hip, mid-thigh hinge, hinge knee, swivel ankle, double jointed toe, double jointed heel.

Colors: Molded green-blue, smokey black, clear blue, black, dark blue; Painted dark blue, black, white, red, blue-green.

Accessories: Shield/energy saw

Release Data: Released January 2009 in the United States at a suggested retail price of US$10.99.

Gallery: 14 images.

Author: ExVee



Blurr never stops moving. It's a habit he's gained over centuries of working as an undercover agent for the Autobot Elite Guard. Constant mobility is the best way to avoid detection by Decepticon agents. He is used to remaining in vehicle mode for months or years at a time - as long as it takes to complete his mission, learn what he needs to know, and escape. Unfortunately, because he spends so much time alone, he's not really used to talking so others can understand him.

When memory of a character from an old cartoon is typified by a distinct voice or speech pattern, Transformers has a few likely suspects. Foremost in the hazy memories is surely Soundwave, the Tape Player Guy With The Cool Voice. Maybe not quite as frequent in people's recollections is Blurr, who Sounds Like The Guy From The Old Federal Express or maybe Micro Machines commercials. Of course I mean John Moschitta, Jr. who did and still does voice a Blurr. In his few speaking appearances in season two of Transformers Animated, Blurr is voiced by The Micro Machines Man. He might sound a little slower these days, but it's probably both the loss of G1 Blurr's repetitious way of speaking, as well as intentionally slowing down a bit to make sure the dialogue can be easily understood.



Vehicle Mode

Vaguely resembling the Mach Five, and probably a Batmobile variation or two, Blurr makes for a really nice looking future-retro-sportsy-race car with a touch of the abandoned Transtech Cheetor design for seasoning.

Blurr is of the more solid vehicle builds in Animated, transformation engineering making even humorously deploying an arm practically impossible. This does lead to Blurr's vehicle mode being very stable, though it may take a little coaxing to get everything to seat just right so all four wheels end up in contact with your table or desk at once. When you do have it all pressed into shape just right, it's not going anywhere.

To look at the vehicle mode from behind, there's a pretty big hollow space, though it's mostly intentional. The rear wheels don't have typical hubs, so with the empty rear section you can look straight into one back wheel and see clear through the other side. It's futuristic because the wheels have no hubs - they're floating! Okay, not really. To fall back into accordance with the laws of physics, the toy is designed with a narrow strip down the center of the wheel's width to be free-rotating within the rest of the tire. Being that these have a great deal more surface area in contact with what they're attached to, they don't spin nearly as smoothly as the front wheels. I'm not even entirely sure if both of them do even spin when pushed along a smooth surface. Looks pretty cool though, especially with the blue-green painted edges making them look like they have glowing "white-walls".

Blurr has one moving part in vehicle mode, but it's probably not really intentional. Push the button right behind his Elite Guard insignia and tip the car back a bit and an energy saw blade flips out from the underbody. More nod to the Mach Five, intended or not.

For safety concerns, Blurr has a couple areas of rubbery soft plastic in vehicle mode. What you'll probably notice first is the little antenna on the rear. Not standing out quite as much is the dark tips on the fenders, which are soft plastic glued into the rest of the structure. A better choice I think than rounding off the edges, this helps keep the awesome, awesome lines of Blurr's vehicle mode intact. Just don't look at it from underneath!


Transformation

I think in the cartoon it needs to come up in conversation that Lockdown copied his transformation off of Blurr. The two toys have pretty similar basic engineering, even down to a chunk of the car's hood becoming a shield/weapon piece. Blurr has a lot more spots where parts are pegged and tabbed together, though, so it'll probably take a few tries before you memorize what has to come loose in what order. It's actually a pretty cool process once you get it down. Just remember to rotate the ankles, or the toy will be way less stable. One final neat bit is that the vehicle mode's antenna is actually the crest on Blurr's robot head.


Robot Mode

Following the pattern with Lockdown, Blurr unfolds into a tall, skinny robot. But that's about where the resemblance ends. Just as the vehicle mode is made to look like a high performance sportscar, Blurr's robot mode is designed with a mind to speed. The head is made to look like the streamlined helmets worn by competitive cyclists, at least aside from the antenna. Although the helmet tapers upward into a point, which probably ruins some of the aerodynamic qualities, it's a nice thought. The head has a good range of motion between its ball joint and the hinge meant mostly for transformation. He's very good at looking disapprovingly downward at you, which goes perfectly with the expression on the toy's face.

The body shows something of a runner's build, aside from necessary car elements. I doubt the weight or drag from the fender shoulders are adding anything to his sprinting speed. The shoulders are meant to be pretty stable in robot mode, though in my case one of the tabs doesn't seem to lock correctly, leaving the shoulder held up and in place by the friction of a lower hinge. Under normal conditions, though, the large shoulders tend to run afoul of the car junk on the back if you go too far, and most any attempt to raise the arms out to the sides will give Blurr a good bump on the head. In the continuing effort to get away from standardized or even useful holes in the fists, Blurr is not capable of holding anything. But, I'm willing to forgive this, just for the fact that Blurr does one of the more convincing arms-crossed poses I've seen on either Transformer or nearly any similarly priced toy.

Part of the car roof folds over Blurr's back, providing a spot to store his weapon. The panel may not seem like it's meant to fold all the way down against the back, but it'll get past that somewhat uncomfortable point with no problem. Without the shield attached, the panel only covers the upper part of the back, and the canopy/windscreen is fully visible. As are some ugly holes the sheild mounts to. The waist articulates, though as the torso becomes an elongated oval shape, the waist has the ever-unsightly result of the edges of the pelvis sticking out when turned.

The legs are fairly free in movement. The transformation joints are wisely made to be stiffer than the regular articulation, reducing the likelihood of bending the middle of the thighs while trying to pose him in mid-stride. One bit lacking here is that the knee is only a single hinge. However, it has been found this can be fairly easily corrected with minor modification if it end up bothering you that much. Possibly the most distinctive feature of this toy is the hollow-wheel ankles. Naturally, the same trick that supports them in vehicle mode is at work here. And this is just a second portion of the homage to Transtech Cheetor. While undoubtedly very cool looking, it does end up requiring the actual foot parts to be comparatively small in order to blend into the vehicle mode. I noted in the transformation notes you need to be sure to rotate the ankles, but even doing so only adds so much. Thankfully the lean build of the toy means there's not a lot of oddness with the center of balance, but it's something to keep in mind when posing. One benefit though is that the 'toe' and 'heel' are both attached via ball joints, so it is possible to open the stance quite wide while keeping the admittedly tiny footprint still fully on your tabletop. I am however saddened that there's no way to bring the wheels in direct contact with a smooth surface, since Blurr seems like a perfect candidate for the tire-skating trick Bumblebee and Optimus have used in the cartoon. Shame.


Accessories


Sometimes I wonder if the header title isn't a little inaccurate sometimes?

Anyway, Blurr just has the combined shield/energy saw formed from the hood in vehicle mode. The shield-hood element of course is a nod to the original Blurr toy which used the same sort of cheat trick to dispose of a portion of the car's mass for robot mode.

As I said, Blurr can't hold anything in his fists, so the shield pegs into the forearm. The shield peg is not standard sized, either. The connection is solid, and even kind of clicks together. Either that or I'm on the verge of cracking plastic someplace...

In fact, as a shield the piece serves just fine since it doesn't even look distinctly car-like. The energy saw is where we start to have little complaints. One in particular is the hair trigger for flipping out the saw. It takes almost no pressure to release the catch, so you're very likely to pop a sawblade even when casually handling the vehicle mode, to say nothing of pressing the shield into the forearm. On the other hand, a premature launch seems like something you'd expect with Blurr...


Closing Remarks

Blurr is a nice, middle-of-the-road kind of toy. His ambition has not gotten the better of him, nor is he so plain that he entirely fails to be interesting. Like most of the modern toys with skinny builds, you can get some really interesting poses out of the largely typical levels of articulation. It's a bit of amusement for me to have a toy that calls back to one of the more peculiar design features of an abandoned toy concept, too. Not sure how much that's worth to you, though.

Blurr's a Very Good toy, and I can't imagine you won't be satisfied with it.

-ExVee, 01/22/2009