Skids (ROTF)

The name or term "Skids" refers to more than one character or idea. For a list of other meanings, see Skids (disambiguation).

Skids is an Autobot from the Revenge of the Fallen franchise in the live-action film continuity family.

Look, it's that robot child actor that grew up and robbed a convenience store.

The dopey-looking Skids spends a lot of his time arguing with his twin brother Mudflap and trying to outdo him in crazy stunts, all while believing he's the responsible, level headed one. In his own mind, everything dangerous and dopey he does is simply making him a better warrior. And that means one day, one glorious day, Optimus Prime will notice him! Prime even looking in his direction makes him babble, fall over, and generally fail to make an impression, but that won't stop him trying! Underneath it all, he harbors a secret fear that Mudflap is actually the superior warrior of the pair... which is probably true.

Skids' hyper-reactive optical imaging scanner allows him to process tactical information faster than anyone (except his twin). Add that to his supreme firepower and his unpredictable actions, and he's a pain in the aft for any Decepticon who wants to counter him! And that's only if they spot him. He changes alt-mode so much it's hard to keep track of him. On Earth, he's already been part of an ice-cream truck (combining with his brother), and more recently a Chevy Beat, but that's unlikely to last very long.

“	This is what you call blendin' in wit' the landscape... like a ninja.	”
—A less-than-successful Skids tries to conceal himself, Revenge of the Fallen

Fiction

IDW Transformers movie comics

Skids is the one in front.

Skids and Mudflap arrived on Earth as part of Autobot reinforcements that Optimus Prime requested. They both chose the combined form of an old, beat-up ice cream truck. The newly-arrived Autobots joined the human-Transformer military alliance NEST and began training in earnest on Diego Garcia, but soon had to be deployed to Shanghai, China. Alliance #4

Titan Magazines Revenge of the Fallen comics

Skids first met Bumblebee when they were about to be thrown into a smelting pool. Dogfight! He and his twin are well known for tall tales and messing about, enough so that people have stopped believing their claims. Learning Curve

You know what? You tell him he looks dopey.

Skids and Mudflap happily stayed on Cybertron, going through intensive training (which totally wasn't goofing off) and having extreme-sports contests. Neither wanted to leave their homeworld, and they were the only Transformers on it until Starscream turned up with a Decepticon army. When they heard him mention a star harvester, they realised they should tell someone...but Skids worked out the fastest way to do that would be in person, meaning they'd have to leave their homeworld.

The decision was made for them when the Decepticons attacked. Skids angrily blew away some of the jet-drones when they shot his brother, using an impressive missile barrage, and used transform-and-shoot moves to keep their pursuers away...but he realised this was delaying the inevitable. They fled the planet, with Skids remembering to head for Earth, the site of Optimus's message. Training Day

...actually, no, tell him to put some clothes on JESUS.

The twins made it to Earth soon, crash-landing in Toronto, Canada. On the way in, Mudflap hit a big tower, but Skids felt it wasn't that big a deal. They swam their way to Ball's Falls, where they picked up Earth alternate modes and set out to try and find local Autobots and warn them about the solar harvester.

Driving along the wrong side of the Interstate (Skids wanted a challenge!), the twins were attacked by the Seeker Ransack, trying to kill them on the Fallen's orders. While Skids dissed Ransack's retro alt mode, he pursued them across open countryside. With their energon levels low, the airborne enemy kept up with the twins, and Skids soon collapsed, unable to run any further. He and his brother would've both died, if not for Bumblebee arriving and forcing the Seeker into retreat. Dogfight!

"I hear you're racist now, Father! How'd you get involved in that sorta thing?"

Now living at NEST's Californian base with Bumblebee as their minder, Skids and Mudflap repeatedly asked to deliver their info to Optimus Prime—and only Optimus, much to Ironhide's annoyance. He was more annoyed when they ambushed him (Skids tipping crates on him!) to get to Optimus...who, as it turns out, was away on a need-to-know mission anyway.

After this defeat, and with Ironhide having bluntly told them nobody believed them, they desperately asked to join in a NEST op in Las Vegas...getting turned down, because they were too crap to get involved. Annoyed with this, Skids went along with Mudflap's suggestion to go to Vegas and show Ironhide just what they could do! What they could do, it turned out, was screw up a successful mission by freeing a captured Decepticon by trying to "shoot him down". Skids was left mortified. Ironhide, recognising what they were trying to do, told him that maybe they could work on training the twins not to jump in without looking, and that the trick was to learn from mistakes. The twins claimed they'd try. Learning Curve

They soon wished they hadn't, as they were condemned to NEST's Orkney Islands base for days of sim-com (simulated combat) training under Sideswipe. Skids had a nagging feeling this was just an excuse to keep them away from the main action, and both protested to Sideswipe that they could handle Decepticons. Him pointing out their failure with Grindor shut them up. However, the training was interrupted when a huge metal cat monster broke into the base, KOed Sideswipe, and tried to eat the twins!

They transformed and fled, drawing the creature into a trap where Skids used his weaponry to bring the roof down on it. When that failed, he deferred to and helped Mudflap carry out his plan of trapping the beast in a sim-com session on maximum setting. With that done, and with it revealed that the creature was sent after them by another Decepticon, they tried to fill in the revived Sideswipe... except the creature had gone, leaving their instructor with the view that they'd knocked him out in revenge for their training. Between that and Grindor, he thinks they're up to something... New Tricks

The twins were later taken to Diego Garcia, and ecstatic to learn Optimus was coming there! Sideswipe stated he didn't know about their info and wasn't here to talk to them, cutting off Skids as he attempted to mention the "dude they call the F-". While their trainer told them how they weren't to see Prime, the twins cunningly drove off when he wasn't looking and headed for the base's runway. The mood soured when Skids noticed Mudflap was planning to pinch the credit for their intell, and soon the two of them were having a big fight and slagging match on the runway...

And so their first meeting with Optimus Prime was to be yelled at for conduct unbecoming of an Autobot warrior. (Mudflap started it!)

That was when Scorponok made his attack, blasting at the distracted Prime. Skids made the situation worse by accidentally tripping over Optimus, preventing him from taking control, and so Scorponok liberated the prisoner Sideways. Sideswipe, watching from a distance, believed Skids had done that deliberately, and convinced Prime that the twins were traitors: they must have helped Scorponok get here and now assisted him in his mission, on top of freeing Grindor and attacking him at Orkney! Skids and Mudflap protested they were being set up because they knew too much, but it fell on deaf ears as they were taken into custody. Reversal of Fortune

The car picks the driver.

Following this, the decision was made to exile the twins into orbit. A disgruntled Skids remarked they should've minded their own business and ignored the Fallen, but help was at hand... from the Decepticons? Freed by a Decepticon attack, an angry Skids realised they'd been framed again and now the Autobots would think they're massive traitors. The two went underground to clear their names, and hit on the foolproof plan of abducting Sam Witwicky from his house and pleading with him to tell their story to Optimus. All this did was cause Bumblebee to launch an attack to rescue Sam. Skids spat out the kid, remarking he'd need to clean his seats to get the organic off them, but that didn't stop Bumblebee holding him at gunpoint...

...until Soundwave arrived, gunning down the Autobot and offering the twins sanctuary in the Decepticons. Skids quickly agreed Outlaw Blues, intending to get into a position where they could whallop a Decepticon and hand him over to the Autobots to clear their names. After some fun times of annoying the other Decepticons, the twins were despatched to bring in an AWOL member; Skids was annoyed to find Mudflap didn't know they were just pretending, and hoped Soundwave would be sending a minder (either Grindor or Sideways) they could ambush.

Two of these things are not like the other...

The AWOL member turned out to be Ransack. Skids quickly lied to him, saying they'd totally been sent by the Fallen to bring him in from the cold. This deception worked, until the Decepticon minders attacked... both of them! Skids ordered Mudflap after Sideways while he launched suppressive fire on Grindor and dodged each shot. Unfortunately, the chopper bugged out with Ransack held captive. While the twins had captured Sideways, Skids wasn't satisfied: he was tired of taking the fall and being pushed around. He decided they were going to go gunning for Soundwave and bring down his whole conspiracy! Turnabout

Revenge of the Fallen movie

Voice actor: Tom Kenny (English), Tomokazu Seki (Japan), Michael Pan (German), Vladimiro Conti (Italian)

When the kiddies hear my bell, they all know to run like hell...

Skids and his brother were part of a taskforce deployed in Shanghai to root out Decepticon activity. In their combined ice cream truck alternate mode, they rolled through the evacuated zone, taunting and trying to lure out the Decepticons in the area. When the Decepticons did show themselves, they gave chase to the escaping Sideways. However, their slow and ungainly choice of vehicle could not keep up with the fugitive, and they rounded a corner too sharply, tearing their combined form in half. Even though Mudflap took the blame for the separation, Skids still berated (and smacked) his brother for his failure. Skids reminded his brother that they were in a combat situation and wondered what was wrong with him.

Yipee! It's Mister Whippy!

Upon arrival at Diego Garcia and NEST headquarters, the twins received new, separate alternate modes. A fight broke out between the two of them over which vehicle they wanted, and Skids "called" the Beat, resigning Mudflap to the form of a Trax.

Later, the twins, along with the other NEST-allied Autobots, were dispatched to look for Sam Witwicky when Decepticons were detected heading towards his college. After Optimus Prime was killed by Megatron, the twins helped the Autobot force fight off the Decepticon leader and Starscream, allowing Sam, Leo Spitz, Mikaela Banes and Bumblebee to make good their escape. Skids and Mudflap met up with Bumblebee and the humans, and together they fled to a remote location. After teasing Leo for a while for his panic attack, Sam inquired whether one of them could interpret the Cybertronic symbols he had become obsessed with, but the twins claimed that they couldn't read the ancient Language of the Primes, and weren't much into reading, anyway.

"Yousome people gonna die??"
"Yep. Wesa screwed."

With the help of the Decepticon Wheelie and former Sector Seven agent Seymour Simmons, the group made their way to the Smithsonian, where the humans reactivated the venerable ex-Decepticon Jetfire. He teleported them all to Egypt before telling them the tale of the original Primes, the Solar harvester, which had the potential to destroy all life on Earth, and finally, the Matrix of Leadership, the key to activating the harvester, and possibly the only thing that could bring Optimus Prime back to life. When the Matrix could not be found at the ruins of Petra, the twins began arguing with each other over why they were following Sam, which soon escalated into physical violence. As their brawl nearly crushed the humans, Bumblebee picked up the twins in each hand, slammed them together, and threw them outside the ruins, which Skids considered to be just rude. Fortunately, their bickering created a hole in the wall where the Tomb of the Primes lay, and with it, the Matrix.

Making their way back to the Pyramids where NEST waited with Optimus Prime's body, the group came under attack by Starscream. Mudflap, Skids, Leo and Simmons acted as a decoy to lure the Decepticons away from Sam and Mikaela. Unfortunately, they attracted the attention of the Constructicons, who combined into Devastator and attacked by vacuuming up loose objects such as sand, cars, and Mudflap. As Skids mourned the loss of his twin, Simmons realized that the safest place to be was directly under the giant. But Mudflap had survived being vacuumed up by Devastator, and to escape he had blasted a hole through its head. To buy the humans time to escape, Skids clambered up Devastator's right forepaw to assist Mudflap. Skids threw a cable to Mudflap, who grabbed it and swung off Devastator's head onto his arm. However, once they landed, Mudflap accidentally shot Skids in the face, knocking them off the arm and knocking out Skids gold tooth in the process. At Megatron's command, Devastator continued onto the Great Pyramid of Giza. Revenge of the Fallen

Toys

Revenge of the Fallen

Legends Class Toys

File:ROTF-toy Legends Skids.jpg

For some reason, Scrapper has no interest in making him into a chair anytime soon.

• Autobot Skids (Legends, 2009/2010)

Legends Class Skids is a simple, affordable small-scale toy. Amusingly, just like his brother Mudflap, the kibble on his arm actually works as his big deformed hand, only grossly oversized.

Deluxe Class Toys

File:ROTFtoy-SkidsDeluxe.jpg

Kids, never try to deflect a fusion cannon blast with your face.

• Autobot Skids (Deluxe, 2009)
  • Japanese ID number: RA-10

Skids was released as part of the second wave of deluxe class Revenge of the Fallen action figures. He transforms into a green Chevy Beat Concept car with black stripe designs on either side and a black hood. His vehicle form features transparent blue windows. In robot mode, Skids features a "Mech Alive" gimmick that makes the fenders on the sides of his chest push out and his head move forward when the front grill is pushed inwards. Moving the head up and down through this gimmick may suggest it's meant to make him appear as though he is talking, but the packaging only says "Moving Armor Panels".

Skids's right arm is larger than his left, just like his movie counterpart's. It features a small cannon that, when pressed, both makes the cannon stick out in a position more suitable for firing and activates Skids's "Punching Robot Fist" action. Despite this, his right hand is surprisingly poseable.

• More information on Skids at TFU.info

File:ROTF Deluxe Skids&Mudflap toy.jpg

Hey look, it's the robot child actor who grew up and became a convenience store.

• Autobot Skids And Mudflap (Deluxe, 2009)
  • Japanese ID number:

This two-pack of the twin Autobot brothers can combine into a single, old-fashioned ice cream truck. The vehicle splits in half right down the middle of its chassis (similar to how it does in the film) to create the two small robot forms. Other than the transformation, the toy features no gimmicks.

Mudflap's heels are too thick for his feet to fold up properly in vehicle mode, though this can be fixed by trimming them. Also, this toy may be the first Transformer to feature the typeface Gill Sans, which is used to write "MADE FRESH FOR YOU" across both front wheel hubs. But that's on Skids's half, so Mudflap is partly absolved here.

Both Skids and Mudflap have sculpted rust detailing all over the Ice cream tuck, but for some reason, they are not painted.

Hasbro has reported that this figure has been shortpacked, and will be re-released in later waves.

• Desert Version Skids (Deluxe, 2009)

This version of Skids has a sandblasted deco to closer match his onscreen appearance during the scenes in Egypt. It is only available in Japan with purchase of the Revenge of the Fallen DVD.

• Shanghai Showdown (Multi-pack, 2010)

The twins in this set have additional decals (save for the "suck my popsicle" slogan) and painted rust for the ice cream truck mode. They come with a repainted version of Demolishor

Fast Action Battlers

That's not going to pick up any cowgirls any time soon.

• Missile Blast Skids (Fast Action Battler, 2009)
  • Japanese ID number:
  • Accessories:

Fast Action Battlers Missile Blast Skids is quite similar in transformation engineering to Plasma Punch/Plasma Blast Bumblebee, and even has a similar gimmick in having one arm being a spring-loaded projectile launcher.

• Offroad Skids (Fast Action Battler, 2010)
  • Japanese ID number:
  • Accessories:

A redeco of Missile Blast Skids with different details, such as silver on the back of his car mode, Autobot insignias on his doors and his name on his windshield.

Human Alliance

Then again...

• Autobot Skids / Arcee / Mikaela Banes (Human Alliance, 2009)
  • Japanese ID number: RA-25
  • Accessories:Missle,Mikaela Banes figure,Arcee figure.

This incredible version of skids is able to have Mikaela fit inside him. his mech-alive gimmicks feature a firing missile and a moving mouth when you press on his hair peice.His head pops off real easily,so be gentle with him.

Gravity Bots

From car to novelty trash can in the blink of an eye!

• Autobot Skids (Gravity Bot, 2009)
  • Japanese ID number: ???

An extremely simplified version of Skids with a small tab on the bottom of his feet that when he placed on his feet will automatically transform him to robot mode. There is also one on his back side that when placed upon will transform him to his vehicle mode.

Robot Replicas

• Autobot Skids (Robot Replicas, 2009)

Merchandise

Revenge of the Fallen

R.P.M.s - Robot Powered Machines

Battle Series

I ran myself over!

• Mudflap vs Autobot Skids (R.P.M. Mini-Vehicle, 2009)
  • Number: 04 of 08

Number four in a series of eight Robot Powered Machines Mini-Vehicle versus packs, Skids is packaged against his twin, Mudflap. He's an untransformable Hot Wheels-like car, unless you count his robot mode being sculpted and painted onto the underside of him.

This toy is also available with the Devastator Showdown track set.

Track Set

• Devastator Showdown (R.P.M. Mini-Vehicle Track Set, 2009)

A Mini-Vehicle of Skids also comes with this Devastator-themed race track set.

Robot Heroes

• Autobot Skids and Megatron (2009)

Robot Heroes Skids is a super deformed figure with limited articulation in his neck and shoulders. He came in a two-pack with Megatron.

Give me your fac—oh wait, wrong article.

• Desert Devastation (Multi-pack, 2009)

Both Skids and Mudflap are sculpted in their vehicle modes for this box-set that also includes Devastator and William Lennox.

Pink smoke? Should probably get that looked at.

• Shanghai Shootout (Multi-pack, 2009)

Shanghai Shootout replicates the opening action scene from Revenge of the Fallen, featuring figurines of Mudflap and Skids in their combined ice cream truck mode, Sideways (vehicle mode), Optimus Prime, Demolishor, and Sideswipe (vehicle mode). Demolishor is a slightly-oversized figure and the centerpiece of the box set.

Notes

• The ice cream truck is apparently based on a heavily customized 1930s Chevrolet truck. Ben Procter apparently lifted the color scheme and deco for his early concept design for the ice cream truck directly off a photo of an Australian ice cream truck that had been added to the Wikipedia article for "ice cream van" in February 2006, down to identical placement and design of the fonts and graphics. The details were later slightly tweaked for the final design that can be seen in the movie... but only very slightly so.
• One of the decals on the ice cream truck's side that was created specifically for the movie reads "(Decepticon insignia) suck my popsicle." Classy. Too bad the toy does not. (Because, you know, for kids...)
  • A "censored" version of the movie supposedly exists with the aforementioned text edited out, with the somewhat nonsensical result of a Decepticon symbol, followed by a long black space and then the word "popsicle". This version was shown in some international markets (even though other theaters in at least some of those same markets apparently got the uncensored version), and apparently also in some theaters in the USA. Another explanation for this would be that different theaters simply used different lightings settings, which effectively rendered the words "suck my" (which were written in dark red on a black backdrop to begin with) invisible, with no actual intention of "censorship" behind it.
• The Chevrolet Beat, Skids's upgraded alternate mode, goes into production in 2011 as the Chevrolet Spark.
• The Twins have been accused of being derogatory racial stereotypes of inner-city African-Americans. Writers Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman claim to have followed Michael Bay's lead with the characters, while Bay says voice actors Tom Kenny (Skids) and Reno Wilson (Mudflap) came up with their schtick on their own. Reportedly, Wilson (who is African-American himself) was sad to learn his way of speaking was apparently offensive to himself. Orci and Kurtzman said the twins' portrayal was not in their script, that they were disappointed in the characters and admitted that they could understand if others were offended by the characters. Bay has admitted the idea was that they were intended to be a caricature of white people pretending that they're black ("wiggers")... which is difficult to convey when they're colored red and green.
• The twins are less slangy in the comic adaptation and Titan comics, which could either indicate it was a last-minute voice actor decision or Simon Furman just didn't want to try writing ebonics.
• Amusingly, Hasbro's Battle Bio for Skids lists his arch-enemy as... Mudflap.