Medix the Doc-Bot "Rescan" (2016)

It's no secret that people everywhere are thinking about things related to the medical profession these days. I'm no exception, and so have decided to focus on a few medical-profession Transformers characters that I haven't featured before for the next couple of weeks. For this entry, I'm focusing on the "Rescan" version of Rescue Bots Medix.

Over the years, there have been several attempts to bring the Transformers franchise to preschool-aged children. Of these, the Rescue Bots line has inarguably been the most successful. Beginning toward the end of 2011, toys related to the line have been available ever since, and the original Rescue Bots cartoon (which started at about the same time) actually holds the franchise record for the longest-running cartoon, both in terms of episode count (104 episodes) and in number of seasons run (the only series to be produced for a full fourth season).

As the word "Rescan" probably suggests, the figure I'm featuring here is not the original figure of the Medix character, but one that came a few years later. I can't actually find the word "Rescan" on any Rescue Bots packaging (although I confess that Rescue Bots is largely a blind spot in my knowledge of Transformers history), but it seems to reference a change in the line about three years into its existence, when original Rescue Bots characters were given new-mold toys, often with totally new alternate modes. "Rescan" Medix seems to have retained his ambulance alternate mode, but this toy does use somewhat different colors than the original toy.

In any event, if the original toy was simple enough for preschoolers to convert, this toy can hardly be any less so. All you need to do to change from ambulance to robot mode is pull out the sides of the vehicle (which become the robot mode's arms), and the head automatically pops up and the legs separate. That's it! To change the toy back is slightly more difficult, as you have to push down on the robot head while massaging the arms and legs back into place, but I'm still confident that a young child can figure this out on their own, even without instructions.

I picked up my Medix at a flea market for a very reasonable price some months ago. If you're interested, I'm sure that you can find a similar specimen without too much trouble, although I certainly don't recommend flea markets just at the moment. Either way, please remember to keep washing your hands and maintain a healthy distance from others for the time being!