Recently, I purchased two Detolf shelves from Ikea. I won't bore you with the details on how I got them, but suffice it to say that I have them and I'm loving them. Thanks to the Detolfs, I had to take down quite a few shelves and do a lot of rearranging to my collection and in the process of moving my Minibots, I realized that I was still missing two of them from my collection - Bumper and Hubcap. Bumper is a down-the-road purchase, but Hubcap, Hubcap was an immediate need.
Finding a good condition Bumblebee/Cliffjumper/Bumper/Hubcap figure at a decent price is not an easy task. I've actually been on the lookout for Hubcap for over a year, and it's been a slow process. I'd find one at a good price, but the arms were loose, or the head wouldn't stay up, or the back piece would be scratched to kingdom come. When I'd find just the right specimen, the seller would want an arm and a leg. Then within a span of a week, it all came together. First, a Hubcap showed up with tech specs. The seller had a "Best Offer" option, so I offered him an offer of $26, which was $10 off his "Buy It Now" price. Admittedly, it was a bit of a low-ball offer, but I was expecting a negotiation, like every other "Best Offer" I've ever done. The seller rejected without a word, so I upped the offer to $30. Finally a response "Sorry, the listing was actually wrong, this doesn't actually include the tech spec." But, there still wasn't a counteroffer. Still, $36 for just the figure is a steep price, so I opted to just drop it. The next day, an auction appeared for a Hubcap with the instructions cut out and the tech spec. That, that I won. For a heck of a better price than the other one.
I'd love to talk about all of the awesome things that Hubcap has done in the cartoon and the comics, but that's an impossibility. He was never featured in the cartoon, not even any of the Japanese series. I thought that he may have been in
Five Faces of Darkness, but that isn't the case. This guy literally just had a few cameos in some comics and that's it. He's had more involvement in the
Transtech comics, but I don't think many actually read that series. So, the con man has conned himself out of the fiction.
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| Behold! The totality of Hubcap's fiction dialogue! tfwiki.net |
Ever own or been around Bumblebee or Cliffjumper? Congratulations, you know how Hubcap transforms. He's Cliffjumper without the spoiler and a new head. He's the same color as Bumblebee.
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| No, not Cliffjumper |
I actually never noticed that he was a slight retool of Cliffjumper until I read his
TFWiki profile. Then again, I've been known to be a little dense. There isn't anything remarkable about the Porsche mode, other than the fact that unlike Cliffjumper, there isn't a spoiler. There are those who have confused him for a yellow Cliffjumper.
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| Front |
The only interesting thing about Hubcap is his head mold.
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| Robot mode |
There are a couple of scratches on the face, but I dig the head sculpt. Really, I'm just thankful to have a penny-racer without horns on it's head.
There really isn't much to say about Hubcap. He's an unremarkable toy, which is befitting an unremarkable character. But he is a Minibot, and I'm now done with collecting them. Except for Bumper, red Bumblebee and yellow Cliffjumper.
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