Trailbreaker is another recently released figure from Hasbro’s Transformers Combiner Wars series. The figure is another remake of Trailbreaker, one the original Generation One robots, but this time around he’s a combiner and can transform into a robot, car, or arm/leg.
Trailbreaker is another one of those great Transformers from the ’80s. He was an off-road 4×4 Toyota Hilux Camper. For those you that might need a brief history lesson, 4WD, or four wheel drive trucks, were all the rage in the ’80s. You could see them jacked-up, pimped, and customized. Every car manufacturer was making 4WDs, and along with the Datsun 720 Japanese trucks, they were quite the rage. And so were campers; every kid wanted a ’78 GMC RV, or a camper that could fit on the back of a pickup truck. The Toyota Hilux Camper combined the 4WD truck with a camper and was one of many killer vehicles of the ’80s.
Transformers picked up on this popularity and released Trailbreaker. Every kid could now live out their fantasy of owning their own camper truck and drive around pretending to go on cross country travels with their camper truck that transformed into a bad-ass robot. And Trailbreaker is a bad-ass robot, at least in the More than Meets the Eye comic from IDW he was.
The figure is another reworking of an already released combiner, Offroad, and it’s okay. Like many of the toys in this line, the number of repaints starts to make them all look generic, losing any “individuality” of character. The previous release, in Generations (called “Trailcutter”), has an individual look. Granted, Hoist steals the look, but then, he did in G1 too. The Combiner Wars version just looks likes a block of squares put together painted black and red with a new head. But it could be any one of 1000s of Transformers.
The vehicle mode is better than the Generations version. The Combiner Wars version looks more like a regular everyday truck, where the Generations version is bit more militaristic in design. More than likely one’s taste will depend on where Trailbreaker is being placed: on Earth or on the Lost Light out in deep space.
The final bit is the combiner part: On the packaging, Trailbreaker is shown making an arm and that’s how he is represented here. All the transformations are easy enough and there is little problem going from Robot to Truck to combiner piece. Trailbreaker comes with a foot/hand for his transformation into an arm/leg. The piece can also be transformed into a gun for the robot mode or truck mode.
This isn’t a horrible representation of Trailbreaker, just generic. The car mode is the real win, but for anyone wanting a unique character version for their collection, stick with the Generations version.
You can still pick this figure up at
