Review – Transformers Duocon Flywheels

Line: Transformers * Manufacturer: Hasbro * Year: 1986 * Ages: 5+

“Another in a series of Shockwave’s experiments to create a Transformer with three modes, Flywheels is the least stable of the surviving Duocons. His personality components are split between his two vehicle halves, and each one has its own level of sentience and opinions. Unfortunately, unlike Battletrap, Flywheels’ two segments rarely agree on anything, despite his attempts to be upbeat and keep things together.”
— from More Than Meets the Eye Volume 1, The Transformers Official Guidebook

Battlechargers and Jumpstarters both featured a pretty good auto-transform feature where all you had to do was pull the toy back, let it go, and watch as it raced across the floor and then transformed (even if the Jumpstarters sometimes had problems landing on their feet). As a kid I owned one of each of the two types of auto-transforming Transformers, but when the new auto-transform toys — Duocons — hit the shelves I never added one of them to my collection.

Though they didn’t appear in the Transformers cartoon, they were animated in the toy commercial. Check it out:

I picked up Flywheels at a pretty good price on eBay recently, and he came complete with his weapon and instruction booklet (no box, which is unfortunate but not terrible since all I would do with the box is pack it in the closet). I love the old Transformers instruction booklets; the art really brings back memories of my youth when I would sit down and draw up my own imaginary transforming robots, complete with their own instructions. I doubt my designs would have actually worked, but it was fun to work out ideas with pencil and paper. Who knows, maybe in an alternate life I’m a professional toy designer. Not in this life, though.

Checkout that art! It’s mechanical more than it is illustrative, but I still love it.

Vehicle Modes

As a Duocon, Flywheels actually has two different vehicle modes, a jet and a tank. According to Mark Bellomo’s Transformers Identification and Price Guide Flywheels is the more popular of the two Duocons because:

“His alternate modes (fighter jet and assault tank) are considerably more military-based than Battletrap . . . “

Personally, I disagree that Flywheels is the cooler of the two Duocons. After all, a better “disguise” for “Robots in Disguise” has got to be Battletrap’s helicopter and truck vehicles, since those are a lot more likely to be seen on the road than a fighter jet or tank is.

Flywheels’ jet mode is about 5-inches long and 3-inches wide and fits in pretty well with the other small jets, like the Aerialbots. Coming from a later series in the Transformers line, it’s not really a surprise that Flywheels’ jet is a chunk of plastic without any real details beyond what’s molded in. (If this had been a first series release I bet that the jet would have had a separate canopy, retractable landing gear, and missiles. As it is, though, he’s a solid piece of plastic with some stickers taking the place of metal components and paint.) It’s an okay jet, but not great. It does hold together very well, though, and doesn’t accidentally transform (a problem with some of the other Transformers toys).

His second vehicle, the tank half of the design, weighs in at about 4-inches long and 2-inches wide and, like the jet, is made up of plastic pieces. The only real difference is that the tank’s cannon is molded in a different color, and it elevates, which really helps the toy look better. One serious flaw is that there are no wheels, so the tank doesn’t roll across the floor (though it will slide on the right surface).

Flywheels’ only accessory, his gun, can fit on either vehicle; in the image above you can see it mounted on the front of the tank. There’s also a place under the jet’s nose where the gun can be mounted, but it doesn’t look nearly as good there as it does on the tank.

Robot Mode

Flywheels changes to robot mode by placing the jet on the tank and then pressing down on the center of the jet at which point he “pops” into shape. Swing out the arms, stick the gun in his fist, and he’s ready to go at about 4-inches tall and a blocky design. It’s a neat trick and works fairly well. In a review at www.cliffbee.com, the author agrees with me that it’s a neat trick; his closing line reads:

“Well, it’s an interesting concept, and to give credit where due, Flywheels’ gimmick of snapping two vehicles together to reveal one robot works quite well. Neither component nor the robot mode are much to write home about, but the gimmick is really the point of this toy, anyway.”

As an action figure, Flywheels — like most Transformers toys from the eighties — is pretty lame. His arms kinda move in and out, swinging out from the tank half, and that’s it for articulation. He’s a decent toy, if only because he can be used as a jet, a tank, and a robot, but he’s not gonna stand up to any of the modern Transformers toys so don’t expect to give him to a kid and get a lot of thanks. And he’s not even going to excite any but the most diehard of Transformers fans, because he’s a minor character who missed out on the cartoon.

No, Flywheels is definitely a toy for the hardened collector with a love for obscure releases. Like me.

In the two photos above you can see that Flywheels looks better from the front than he does the back, but he actually doesn’t look as bad as some Transformers toys do from behind. The only really ugly part is that block on the tank that exists solely for balance; the upper section, the jet part, looks great from behind.

Closing Thoughts

He’s relatively inexpensive (when compared to most other Tranformers toys from the eighties), has two vehicle components, and has a great auto-transforming feature. And hell, he even looks better in robot mode than either the Battlechargers or the Jumpstarters (even if he has less articulation than the Jumpstarters).

I wouldn’t recommend that you go out of your way to track down Flywheels, but if you can find him for $10 or so I say grab him. He’s got a fun transformation gimmick and he looks cool on the shelf with other Transformers.

For another look at Flywheels, check out this review at TFArchive. I disagree with the reviewers assessment — “I enjoy gimmicks as much as the next, but this one falls flat.” — if anything, I think this is a pretty cool gimmick.

For a video review of Flywheels, and to see the auto-transform feature at work, take a look at this:

Philip Reed never owned a Duocon when he was a kid but he remembers thinking the toys looked cool. Today, though, he’s lucky enough to have both Flywheels and Battletrap in his collection. It may have taken over twenty years, but the Duocons are now in their rightful place.