Japanese G1 Month Continues with C-349 Roadfire!

Here we are in our second week of the month-long G1 Japanese celebration! For this week I was able to find a very nice and apparently hard to acquire Roadfire! I snagged this guy off eBay a couple weeks back on a whim. He wasn't on my immediate "get list" but he was available and I had the cash so I figured why not?

Roadfire is technically my first original Zone figure since Metrotitan is essentially just a Metroplex repaint. By the time Zone came around the popularity of Transformers was waning even in Japan and they were scrambling to come up with more gimmicks for the figures. Roadfire here is a true brick due to what I assume is his main play feature: the base mode. But, he also has a really cool push-button feature that activates the base mode and shoots his little Micromaster partner (Drillbuster) out the front. This was totally unexpected and unknown to me prior to buying this figure. I'm hoping Sonic Bomber and Dai Atlas have similar features since they were the other main characters in Zone. It will be exciting to discover once I purchase them.

He's a tank? Future tank? I think?

The cool feature which launches Drillbuster! (Activated from vehicle mode only)

I must admit, if this guy didn't have the Transformers name on his box, I probably wouldn't have been interested in him. He bears little or no resemblance to any prior Transformers and his aesthetics have more in common with Micro Machines or the Brave line than they do with Transformers. I mean there is absolutely no nostalgia factor at all with this guy in any way, shape or form. Zone is one of those series that is just so far away from the American Transformers that I grew up with it is hard to reconcile. That being said, I do still really enjoy the toy for what it is, and I am very glad it is part of the Transformers line. And being the slave to completion-ism that I am, I obviously had no choice but to purchase him.

Awesome "city" scene on the back of the box with the three Powered Masters looking on.

I do look forward to combining him with Dai Atlas and Sonic Bomber to make the super "Big Powered" (I love these names) base/spaceship/whatever mode. And of course, building Micromaster cities with these guys is always fun.

See also:
The Metrotitan Awakes