Patrol Guardian

VooV is a little known and under-appreciated toy line by Bandai. It’s aimed at actual kids, so it probably flew under most collector’s radar. The line features matchbox-sized cars that transform into… other matchbox-sized cars. But occasionally there are cool sets that do a little more with the gimmick.

VooV stands for “Variable Outfit Obversion Vehicle”. The Japanese love their acronyms, however nonsensical they may be.

The Patrol Guardian set consists of 5 VooV vehicles and a 6th core component that ties all the vehicles together.

It comes in an attractive yet busy outer box that shows all the components and their features. I notice that there is a lot more text on these kid-focused box as opposed to the more design-centric collector boxes.

First up is the Patrol Car (パトカー), which looks like an un-assuming Japanese police car. Some stickers need to be applied to this vehicle, and all other vehicles in this set. I actually really enjoyed sticking all the stickers on, it reminded me of putting together old Star Wars toys.

Flipping up the sides, rotating the body, and then putting the sides back in results in transforming into the Patrol Hedder (パトヘッダーに), a futuristic police car.

Next up is a licensed Mazda RX-8. This transforms into a futuristic vehicle called th Path Tracer (パトレーサー)

The yellow car is called Japan transportation taxi (日本交通タクシー) and supposed to be based on a car called a Nissan Cedric. It features authentic taxi markings and even has the NIHON KOTSU TAXI markings along the side.

This becomes a futuristic taxi called Patrol Hire (パトハイヤー).

The colorful box truck is an Isuzu Gigamax (いすゞGIGAMAX) which is indeed a real truck.

This transforms into the Patrol Roader (パトローダー). In this mode there are small round holes on top that can be used to mount weapons.

Finally, the white truck is a real truck called a Hino Ranger (日野レンジャー). This truck has a large BLP logo on one side which stands for Bandai Logipal – Bandai’s very own logistic’s company.

Transformed, this becomes a truck called Patrol Carrier (パトキャリアー)

The vehicle that ties all of these together has two distinct modes. First up is the base mode called Penta Station (ペンタステーション). Lets be honest here – this is a stretch. They needed a central component to tie the parts together into a robot, so they had to do something with what is basically the robots torso.

You can subtly rearrange some parts to form the Penta Cloud (ペンタクラウド). This mode features wheels on the back so it can roll around. The dual Guass Cannons on the front will eventually become the robots feet.

To transform into Patrol Guardian, its about as easy as clicking each transformed car into their appropriate spots. Some have to be modified slightly.

For the feet the cabs of the trucks need to be flipped out and the Gauss Cannons attached to the back of the feet.

The front of each car opens up to reveal hands, and the head flips up from the Patrol Header and the helmet ship goes on top.

The result is a really fantastic looking robot mode. I think the entire unit goes together very well.

Whats great is that the toy holds together even in dynamic poses. There are a lot of functioning joints hidden in the toy which make movement fun and easy.

It just screams quality and has a high level of play value. I love it.

There is also a secret, that sadly I forgot to photograph. If you remove the Patrol Headder there are Mugenbine style joint connectors that aren’t used in this form at all. It’s quite possible they are there to allow for further expansion or combinations between sets.