One of the oddest things to come out of my on-going cataloguing efforts further reinforced the fact that I seriously need this chance to sit down and reacquaint myself with my collection.
Earlier in the year, I purchased the Monster Truck Patrol Micromaster squad mint-on-card for a ridiculously good price.
It wasn’t until I received it and read the packaging that I discovered that it was actually the French/Dutch release.
Though I’ve had Transformers with bi- or even tri-lingual packaging, I believe this is the first one that I’ve had where none of the languages is English.
Though I rarely keep any toys on the card or in the box, I held off opening this set and had it on display on the card instead. It was a combination of the novelty of the French/Dutch packaging and that I already owned one of them loose… or so I thought. As I was inputting the bin with all of the Micromasters into my spreadsheet, I realized that the one I thought I already had, Hydraulic, was actually Mudslinger. Or vice versa. The details are a little fuzzy now.
I am not he, he is not me.
In my defense, Mudslinger and Hydraulic are two orange and blue robots that transform into trucks with monster tires. Granted, the differences are more pronounced in robot mode, but they are still very similar.
Brother from another… assembly line?
These guys were always going to get opened eventually, even if it was just for the three I didn’t think I owned, but there’s no time like the present, right?
As themes go, the Monster Truck Patrol is fun but a bit nonsensical for a group that is given the task of “Ground Transport”. More often than not, their alt modes are described as being used to literally drag robots; either to or from the battlefield. The moral of this story is don’t make the tiny, little dudes your ground transport. Speaking of alt modes; despite having four different colours in vehicle mode, the members of the Monster Truck Patrol actually have a colour scheme going on within the team.
Heavy Tread and Hydraulic share the orange/blue scheme while Slow Poke and Big Hauler trade off yellow/green. Ultimately my cataloguing project has been educational which is mostly a good thing. For instance, in my subsequent research into the different language versions of the Micromasters I was lead to this little factoid:
Hydraulic’s name in Italian is Bum-bum.
I’ll just leave you with that.
'Til All Are Mine 
I’ll be they’re both Gears’ illegitimate children.