He is a cheating fuck, a popular kid Mary Sue who flaunts the rules and gets away with it. I have a toddler and thus have been subjected to every episode multiple times, and after seeing the same story play out enough you start to scratch away the sparkly surface paint to the darker rust of injustice beneath. For example:

– Blaze almost ALWAYS wins every race. Nearly every time. None of his friends get to win, nobody else gets a chance, the best they can hope for is if he ALLOWS them to tie (and even then he’s usually slightly in the lead). The ONE TIME Crusher got to win, it was handed to him magnanimously by Blaze. That must have been some sour oil to swallow.

– Crusher gets shit for cheating, but tell me this: How many other cars besides Blaze get Blazing Speed, that literally is an I Win button for every race no matter how far back he is? Who the fuck is qualifying these racers that gives this shit a pass?

– He keeps a black child as a pet. He doesn’t need a driver, none of the cars do. AJ is there just to give Blaze someone to show off to – like a dog or sidekick. AJ doesn’t get to have his own goals, plots, dreams. He’s there solely to go “Yay Blaze” for the 200th time when Blaze uses his cheating powers to win again.

– While we’re on the subject of humans in the show, they have a slave girl mechanic that gets passed around the community. She doesn’t get to do anything that isn’t ultimately for the benefit of the cars. She is there to fix cars and make things to improve the cars, period. This is a horrifying glimpse into the car-centered dystopia of the world. Humans have been overthrown, the cars rule absolutely – humans are kept as novelties or servants, as long as they’re useful and young (hence, impressionable and controllable).

– Blaze doesn’t just cheat at his own class of car races, he can transform into anything to cheat at other types of races too. These other spaceships, airplanes, etc train their asses off to be in this big race and here comes the magical Mary Sue transformer to piss on their fair competition and steal the culmination of their life’s efforts, just for a lark.

Now I know Crusher is the “villain” of the series but honestly all he wants to do is win a fucking race, and who can blame him? He’s childish and selfish and greedy yes, but look at his role models? All the other cars who mock and ignore him, despite his having an INCREDIBLE ability that nobody except God-Emperor Blaze can even come close to matching. He can literally build any complex autonomous device he can imagine from the nano-factories in his tool boxes. That is unreal, the tech could change everything for the cars and the humans alike. But no, fuck Crusher – let’s laugh at the emotionally stunted genius and get our resident smarmy asshole Pickle to prank him constantly and break down his self-esteem further.

My favorite episode was where Blaze lost his precious cheating engine and had to rely only on his personal transformation powers to win the race yet again. I was rooting for Crusher the whole time, hoping this would finally be the end of that red fuck’s dominance, but no here comes Blaze to ~~win~~ steal the day right at the end as always.

Fuck that pompous prick, and fuck his enabling community of sycophantic slavers. The day when Crusher shall claim the birthright due a vehicle of his incredible powers will come.