Transformers Toys Studio Series The The Movie Core Ironhide Toy,3.5-inch,Action Figures for Boys and Girls Ages 8 and Up...

He's core class, so he's small, but still quite posable!

Awesome

I like the core class bots. They are easy to transform and look good on my shelf.

Cool transformer!!

As a huge fan of the the Core Class size of Transformers, I was glad to see that Hasbro finally got around to doing Ironhide in the Studio Series line. He is a redeco of Ratchet from last year, with all the same strengths and weaknesses. If you have Studio Series Core Class Ratchet, this is probably all you need to hear, but if you missed out on Ratchet and are on the fence with Ironhide, read on. Ironhide is a pretty faithful recreation of his appearance in the '80s Transformers cartoon. As luck would have it, Ironhide's design in this show was highly blocky and monochromatic even by G1 standards, meaning it translates well to a simple Core Class design. In robot mode, I'd say he's about as you could get at this price point, with the colors being spot on and the molded detail on his chest and head being perfect. He's also quite poseable, with balljointed knees, hips, elbows, and shoulders giving him a fair range of posing options. The joints are firm too, and he balances well in odd poses as you can see in my "taking the bullet" image. However, his solid robot mode does come somewhat at the expense of his van mode. While the front half the van is good, it all goes downhill in the back, with ugly unpainted windows and pronounced joints and seams standing out way too much. Additionally, much like the larger Voyager Class Ironhide from the same line, he lacks the yellow stripe in van mode, a detail which is sorely missed. To round out the long list of the van mode's weaknesses, the very panel-heavy nature of his transformation means that it's often difficult to get the tabs in van mode to stay together properly, so you will often have noticeable gaps, as shown in my pictures. However, in all honesty, the so-so van mode doesn't bug me. Frankly, I basically only display Transformers in vehicle mode as part of theme-heavy dioramas anyway, and I don't expect absolute perfection and detail out of my $10 3 inch figures anyway. For a Core Class toy, Ironhide isn't perfect, but he is very good, and as a Core Class enthusiast, he's an excellent addition to my collection.