Here we have all three bullet trains together. Kept in scale with each other and beautifully recreating the real world equivalents of a 500 Series Shinkansen, 700 Series Hikari Rail Star (no nothing to do with that gooner bait gacha crap), and an E4 Series "Max" bullet trains. The color schemes on each not only go perfectly with the realism, but they also have their own uniqueness from each other beyond the general design traits. My favorite has to be Railspike due to the indigo and white combo, while Rapid Run looks decent if a bit plain, and Midnight Express being somewhat ugly and almost resembling a duck at the front (though that's how the altmode looks irl). I'm not familiar with the model train scale these are compatible with, but HO seems close. For anyone wondering, the Takara versions do not have their windows opaque given they are translucent plastic, though they are said to have poor QC. Early Hasbro copies had unpainted white windows, but they later had metallic blue ones instead.
The trains each utilize their weapons as couplers so they can all be linked up as a single unit, which is always neat to see when you got all three of them together and want to play with them in their vehicle modes.
For anyone wondering about a size comparison, they're roughly Deluxe size in height but being trans, the Deluxe you're using varies from the area or size associated with a specific figure. And of course, this is way out of scale.
Transforming Railspike is pretty straightforward; split the front in half, straighten the arms down, extend the legs, rotate them 180 degrees, and form feet and chest. The resulting robot mode looks mostly interesting in terms of color scheme and the general concept of design, but the shoulder spikes are as wide as they are hollow. His lower legs are super thin yet they are super deep like he's walking on cereal boxes. His bulbous chest also totally isn't any major combiner piece don't pay attention. Still, for a combiner piece made super early in the 21st century, it's hard to knock him when he's balancing his role as both a combiner component and an individual Transformer better than what we got before.
His hair sculpt is similar to Wedge's where it's a smaller version of the combiner head, but colored differently. He could use some silver to make the face stand out better given how soft the white plastic makes him look. His articulation consists of neck rotation, shoulder rotation, outward arm movement on the swivel where the screws lie, double ball elbows, ball jointed hips, hinged knees, and rotation below the knees.
The gun is not a missile launcher but instead uses an LED to light up the barrel...which makes no sense if the former is red and the latter minty green a la Energon Megatron. Using cell batteries, this thing had to be cleaned out to remove any corrosion given it's 25 years old.
For a size comparison once again, here we have him with Jazz, showcasing that the TBT members are somewhere between the average Deluxe and Voyager. Again, keep in mind this varies from line to line in addition to the size they had given production costs = later shrinkflation. Hasbro once said that given they didn't have Takara's flexible pricing for dedicated figures, they either had to use the Deluxe or Mega size; the former was too low for their cost while the latter made them insufficient for the price.
Transforming Rapid Run is a little more like a normal car former (front section becoming the chest and all that), but rather than shoulder pads that stick out very far, his chest will easily give Warpath a run for his money. He is the more balance out figure, and I like that Hasbro replaced the yellow with gold, as it fits better with the grey and black. His legs look a little more defined than Railspike at least.
His head sculpt feels eerily familiar to another Japanese robot not from Transformers but I can't quite put my finger on it. Articulation is mostly similar but his shoulders are on ball joints while his elbows and hands are on hinges. He also has a baton style weapon from his coupler as well as a shield made up from part of the altmode.
Though mostly reserved for Rail Racer, this can double as a missile launcher. Thankfully, the accessory isn't bent like a banaenae.
Transforming Midnight Express is fairly asymmetrical, due to the face that his bot mode is mostly built from the side of the altmode rather than it be facing forward. I will have to take points off for how easy the shoulders come off given they're less secure than the tabs and slots used between the legs and the flaps. This is due to him serving as the legs of the combined mode, but boy does he look clunky. Between the thunder thighs, tiny torso, lanky limbs, and nearly nonexistent noggin, he comes across as goofy as Titanium Soundwave only with flaps for shoulder pads. Still, if his legs are meant to be all-powerful, why would he be a fusspot when he could stomp his frustration on any Cons? Thankfully a skirt flap is used to break up that side section so he looks a little more like a proper robot. However, be warned that his pelvis and lower legs are on sliding joints for extensions, meaning that age will make them collapse unless you tighten with screws. For as uneven as my copy's feet are, at least he doesn't need to stay upright by sticking a foot out like he's too cool for school. That being said, given the phrase "shooting oneself in the foot" existing, who's to say that the weapon storage results in him being a literal victim of the idiom?
His head sculpt may be small, but it's the most painted of the set, from the use of blue and yellow to the grey face paint and the pink eyes. Articulation consists of ball joints for the necks and shoulders, double jointed elbows, ratchets for the hips overall, thigh rotation, and hinged knees. His gun is made up of the coupler base, the barrel and the missile.
Now it might be tricky to remember which robot has which weapon, so here's a rhyme I totally didn't steal from Thew.
Railspike is the one with the light!
And Rapid Run, well, he has the one that's not much fun when used as a gun.
Midnight Express can press button and yes the yellow thing can will fling like a wing.
And the captain goes boom.
You can't hide your slurs, Thew.
Chimminy-chim-chim-cheroo!
Combining them together is thankfully intricate and easy to understand despite the 3-man nature of similarly sized robots and the unusual nature of these designs. While their roles are balanced 2/3 (Railspike and Midnight Express are thankfully present while Rapid Run is barely visible from the front), they do at least transform uniquely into the specific components they turn into. Railspike splits from the waist down to become the torso and arms, while Rapid Run fills in the back and at least forms the midriff; Midnight Express is already halfway there but hey, the legs and skirt panels are convincing enough. The resulting combined mode manages to be surprisingly sleek and robust; whether it's due to the 3-bot approach having better engineering than Landfill being made up of 4 robots or just the general designs of Team Bullet Train, this somehow feels like he carries the best elements of all 3 characters and fuses them into a taller, better version of the individual characters. The swift and nimble nature of Railspike, the sturdiness of Rapid Run, and the admittedly robust legs of Midnight Express all merge into a robot that, at first glance, is a single character who can turn into a train by himself. And of course, we have the Autobot insignia facing every side possible while being oriented right side up, even on R&R where it's upside down in robot mode. The "wings" on the back tend to either point upwards or downwards, and while I prefer them facing up, they're down for accuracy sake. The train front end for a butt is funny, though.
His head sculpt, much like with Landfill's, feels like a powered up version of Railspike's, and it only makes sense given he forms the upper body and would therefore have the head. It's larger, more detailed, and has the clear plastic to make it more like the proper windows while adding a "layered" look to him. His articulation is similar to all 3 members, but given this is an entirely new mode, let's instead cover what he has. His head is still on a ball joint, shoulders rotate front and back while what were the hips on Railspike now move in and out for the rest of the shoulders. He rotates above the elbows, while they bend given they were also his knees. New to this mode is finger articulation, while the legs work the same as with Midnight Express. While Rapid Run's shield can still be used as such, the guns for Railspike and Midnight Express are able to combine into a larger gun.
For a super robot size comparison, here we have Rail Racer alongside Ruination, Landfill, and Omega Prime. These multi-bot combinations each have their own traits and influences, from Ruination's Scramble City heritage as a repaint of Bruticus to Landfill's rotary-based limb mode swap motif, and Omega Prime starting the trend of Optimus combining with an equally sized robot when his super mode isn't enough. I find Rail Racer to be the best combiner of the quarter; Ruination does have the versatility of limb mode options, especially if he has land and air configurations depending on who's an arm or leg, but being an old G1 toy doesn't do him many favors compared to the then-new molds with higher articulation and engineering. Landfill does have those attributes that the Decepticon set lacks in addition to his aforementioned option to switch between different arm set ups, but posing him can be tricky given the position of his joints on the link system, and you either get symmetrical Hightower/Heavy Load legs with crappy Grimlock arms or a pair of decent arms but Grimlock is stuck being an equally crappy leg. Omega Prime is the nicest example due to his chrome, high articulation, and the addition of lights and sound gimmicks to make him fun every time Optimus and Magnus ar together, but he isn't that stable given the weight of the two toys versus the pressure applied to the joints. Rail Racer has his own issues, mainly with the possibility that age could cause the legs to collapse at the sliding joints, but he manages to be more stable than Omega Prime, looks just as nice as him even without the chrome, and has an underrated design that feels like a true extension of his individual members. Overall, Rail Racer is the best combiner from the original Robots in Disguise line, but he will not be an affordable one to get. Granted, a lot of RID2001 toys are far from the easiest to get, especially if they're complete let alone MISB, but not only will you need to have all 3 characters together, but make sure they have their accessories to boot. Railspike and Midnight Express almost work without their weapons, while Rapid Run needs his shield given it forms part of the altmode. I don't know if we'll see them get a Generations update, but if we do, REFRAIN FROM MAKING IT A HASLAB THAT COSTS MORE THAN IT DESERVES!
Final ranking: ⭐⭐⭐⭐ and a half out of ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
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