This is the final part of our week long look at the Turbomasters cars, although you can expect a recap and group shots at the weekend. By now, you don’t need to read the next few paragraphs, but for those of you who came in late, a little house-keeping:
They are firmly G1, sometimes known as Euro G1.5 and occasionally mistaken for G2 figures. Some people know a few of the molds from Machine Wars and even the Universe line of repaints, but not all the molds have been re-used.
The Turbomaster Cars for instance, were released in 1992 in Europe by Hasbro, and they were also released by Takara as part of the Operation Combination series in Japan later the same year, but they never saw release in the United States, ever, blah blah blah why are you reading this for a fourth time? Skip ahead, and to date have never had any repaints, retools or reissues.
The gimmick for this series (other than Transforming, of course) was missiles! Lots and lots (and lots, seriously) of missiles. Their rivals are the Predators (sometimes called the Predator Jets, who we will be looking at next week) also has the same gimmick, but with much more generic – and fragile – launchers.
Hurricane
Hurricane, or Tempest as he is sometimes known, is my least favourite of the Turbomasters. In robot mode, he feels a bit too flat and 2-dimensional, possibly because of his flat-chested approach to bonnet-chesting. Given that the majority of his alt. mode is cast in clear-pink plastic and painted white, it’s not uncommon for very obvious paint wear on his most central feature in robot mode, and because of the nature of white edged stickers on white plastic, it’s very easy for his chest decal to look aged very quickly. The way his arms transform mean you have to line them up real good, as they don’t clip in and sort of float in place, leading to arm-sag as in the photo above.
His alt. mode is actually pretty cool looking as a Le Mans styled Porsche analogue, and probably his best feature, although having his weapon point and fire the opposite direction to the rest of the team is a bit odd, but I guess he’s 
handy in a chase. His robot mode is also very, very obvious under that pink plastic. Still, he is a charmingly fun toy, even if the end result isn’t quite to the level of the rest of his team. His decals are quite flashy, with a zig-zag flash on his chest and lightening bolt flashes down the side (conspicuously absent on my clean unstickered version), with all the FLASHES you’d think maybe they’d pick another name for him, like, oh, I don’t know… FLASH?
Hurricane was released in Japan as Checker Road, alongside Moon Jet, a repaint of Predator Talon. He was completely unchanged, but to me, these twin-packs are the coolest way of collecting these amazingly fun subsets, as resealable box packaging with Earth killing polystyrene beat out card-backers that tear up all the artwork when you open them, and as such I’m still tempted to invest in a second set of some of my favourite characters.
Like the rest of his Turbomaster brothers, Hurricane has very little fiction going for him. Booooo! I always love to see my obscure favourites get some love and attention, so maybe I will bug Roche and Roberts about this at TFNation this year.
Japanese side of packaging
