Monday 9 September 2013

G1 GEARS 1984

Gears is one of the more obscure characters in G1. He is also one of these characters which has kind of been forgotten. He has only had two official toys at  this time.
Gears in the cartoon is the Victor Meldrew of Transformers. He is really grumpy and grauchy and basically a miserable old git. He does not do an awful lot. He goes around and makes the odd comment about Bumble Bee being late again to a  meeting. He moans about everyone and he is also anti-social which they depict well in the cartoon such as one time when all the Autobots are playing in the snow and Gears is sitting  inside with Optimus. .He does not have any specific ability other than he has headlights which have an infared settings.
He does not have much patience with the young Autobots but like most minibots he does get his own spotlight episode which was called "Changing Gears" Gears gets captured by the Decepticons and it is not really known why as he did not have anything they wanted. Their plan was to build this giant tower to drain the power from the sun and convert the solar energy into Energon but this process would enevitably cause the sun to go Supa Nova and take out the whole Solar stystem.
It turns out Gears is not actually the grumpy old fart that we thought he was as he has a key card in his circuitry which makes him grauchy because otherwise he is such a nice guy and would do anything for anyone so to change his personality the Autobots put in this card at some point.. he would be a securuty risk otherwise as he would tell anyone anything or do anything for anyone.
The Decepticons ripped out this key card and he changed into a nice guy and was then a slave to the Decepticons.
You have to see the plot holes here. The Decepticons built this giant tower which they were going to get this mountain of energon from and they obviously did not want the Autobots knowing about this so why did they go and capture one of the Autobots and bring them to the tower  that before the Autobots were completley cluless about. Surely it would have make more sense to take the Autobot prisoner to the other side of the planet away from the tower so the Autobots would no nothing about the tower until it was too late. they used Gears for a goffor. It is not like they needed a hostage to stop the Autobots from attacking or anything they already had a perfectly good forcefield for that. It is not even clear how they knew about his key card. It was not a random capture but they set out specifically to capture gears and set a trap to capture him. It does not make any sense. In the end Gears does help the Autobots as they tell him too. The solar tower was distroyed and the Autobots considered whether or not to leave the key card out of Gears but they decided to put it back in him.
that was the end of "Changing Gears" and all its plot holes
You don't really see Gears after this episode

I am not sure if you see Gears in the G1 movie but I think he is killed like so many other Autobots.

In the comics I don't think that he did that much either but right at the beginning of the Marvall comic he was a sidekick for Spiderman. Just a little cross over thing they did once  and hopfully they will not do it again. As I don't read the comics that is the most signifiant thing he did

G1 is really the only time you run into Gears. The only other one is Revenge of the Fallen and he was only in one issue of the comics. he just stood there and did not do anything.he was a repaint of Movie Stockade and he was not painted in the right colours and did't even look like Gears.


 
FUNCTION; transport/reconnaissance
 
MOTTO; Nobody wins a war-somebody loses
 
BIO; gears is anti-social, a self proclaimed misfit. Finds fault in everything and everyone. Acts this was to help cheer others up as they try to cheer him up. tremendous strength and endurance. Totes heavy loads long distances. Launches to height of 20 miles, floats down on compressed air. Becomes an easy target due to limited maneuverability. Can detect infared.
 
SATS; Strength 8, Intelligence7, Speed 6, Endurance 8, Rank 6, Courage 9, Firepower 1, Skill 7
 
 
Car mode side
 
 
Car mode front
 
 
Robot mode
 
 
Gears has to be my favourite G1 minibot. He is not fiddly like Brawn or clunky like Huffer and not weirdly proportioned like Bumblebee and Cliffjumper
He is a dinky little vehicle. He is solid and looks good. I wish the back of the vehicle would stay together a little better especially the left half. It moves up and down a bit too easily.
Other than that I don't have any real problems with him.
 with his very nice blue and red colour scheme.
He has chrome on his legs and front grill which uis a nice touch
He has really big studded tyres meaning you can roll him on some pretty hard surfaces such as carpet
He is a generic off road truck
He has some nice detailing and a very simple
transformation. All you have to do is fold down his legs and pull out his arms and there you have him.
I can't help liking his robot mode. He is very solid and his colour scheme is still very nice in robot mode.
He does not  have much articulation as any G1 wouldn't and
he bends at the knee in a weird bend as the rest of his leg is static.
His only other points of articulation are his arms and they can move up and down meaning the only pose you can get him into is a Frankenstein impression.
I quite like his face but it is a visor and mouthplate. In the cartoon he has actual facial features but I still like it none the less.
Overall I think gears is a fun and dinky little toy and if you are a G1 fan  I think you should get yourself a Gears. There are not many Gears toys out there and you can't go wrong getting the original. I don't think you will regret it.
I think five pounds is good to pay for him. Do not go overboard unless you really like the character.
 
He was only repainted once into Swerve. They did him a maroon colour
He was a completly different character who did even less in the cartoon.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 



 

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