A clearance-quicky review, this RID Tow-Line is a Target-exclusive repaint of Legacy Scraphook with a new head.
Found Tow-Line on clearance for $8.39 and apparently the mystery is solved, that’s the price I’m willing to pay on this one. Actually, I would have paid $12ish but my only other clearance sightings were $21 and $17, Target is silly.
Anyway, this is my third purchase of this mold, each one is a vastly different experience due to the deco. Tow-Line was one of the RID figures I really liked the experience of, the transformation felt like it was really doing something despite you just lifting one part, and the Mystery Machine colors helped elevate mold, so when this Legacy figure was announced, I knew I would get it.
Vehicle mode is the same Mad Max-ish tow truck as Scraphook, but this deco is a very different interpretation, it doesn’t feel nearly as post-apocalyptic with these color choices thanks to the metallic green. It also holds together better than Scraphook, the tab locking the chest to the waist works here perfectly where on Axlegrease it’s a tight fit and on Scraphook just rejects it outright. The vehicle is no longer a semi tower, instead a car tower, so it loses some of the silhouette — one of the things that always made Tow-Line stand out to me in vehicle mode was the exhaust pipes, this mold’s pipes accessories are bent but can be put right behind the cab in a decent look.
Transformation holds together a little better than my Scraphook copy, but it’s still frustrating to get the rear end together without parts coming off. The front third on my copy is very tight going together, developing a big stress mark on the bigger peg, but it seems like it’s not degenerating.
Robot mode further loses the silhouette and the colors become more of a mishmash, so the deco and the new head do a lot of lifting, but it’s not a bad fit for the character. The mold feels no worse than previous uses, the elbows are just as loose as the original but no looser. All the same accessories as Scraphook and they can go a ton of places, of course; and he can break apart into various bits that other figures can wear.
Overall, this is still a flawed design in some ways, but this Tow-Line is a unique and fun interpretation of the design for a character who we likely weren’t going to get a unique mold for. While more unique parts than just a new head would have been nice, the deco at least does a lot of heavy lifting to make this figure feel individual.