Bulletbike (1995)

While the period of Transformers history we now consider the Generation 2 line (even though the actual words "Generation 2" had already been dropped by this time, at least in the United States) was ending in this country, there were a few toys released in other parts of the world that never made it here at all. Perhaps most well-known among these are the Power Masters. Power Masters (not to be confused with the "Powermasters" of 1988, which included the first update of Optimus Prime since the original, as well as Joyride) were essentially similar to the Throttlebots, in that they were fairly simple toys with pull-back motors. The main difference in the Power Master gimmick was that you couldn't just let go of the toy after pulling it backward and expect it to shoot forward. Instead, you had to insert one of its weapons into a slot on the toy (which was the same in both robot and vehicle mode), which acted as a key to unlock the mechanism that held the motor in place. Only then would the toy roll forward.

The Power Masters are famous... or perhaps I should say "infamous," for their robot modes, which not only lack articulation (which had already become fairly common by the end of the G2 era), but often it's difficult to discern just where their arms even are. Bulletbike, seen here, is a fairly representative of the line at this point (FYI, you can see a fist hole where the weapon might be placed just above the side-mounted weapon in the image to the right, as well as on the corresponding space on Bulletbike's opposite site), although to be fair, at least Ironhide's arms did have some articulation.

Bulletbike transforms into a motorcycle with a sidecar, and actually has what is arguably the most complex transformation among the Power Masters, since you actually have to do an extra step to bring the motorcycle part over to the left, above the sidecar part, after swinging the front of the motorcycle upwards. Even so, this is about as simplistic as they come. The gun seen on the left in the image here is placed in Bulletbike's activation point, whereby you would let the vehicle zoom across the floor. It's a novelty mostly for it's fairly unusual place in Transformers history, but definitely not worth spending a large amount of money on to add it to your collection. Look for deals.

Please come back on Sunday to catch the next episode of Not Your Father's Autobot: A Transformers: Generation 2 Comic Book Podcast. We'll be talking about issue #7.