Dave's Combiner Wars Rant: Hot Spot and Defensor

[Dave Van Domelen]

Dave's Combiner Wars Rant Voyager Wave 3

Protectobot Hot Spot (rescue truck)

Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Gen/VHotSpot

Cyclonus, the other half of this wave, already reviewed at
http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Gen/VCyclonus

They finally got their acts together and released all the parts of a
combiner at once. Limbs already reviewed at
http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Gen/DeluxeC3 and I'm hoping I can find Viper
before reviewing the Legends wave that includes Groove, but I do have
Groove.

It's worth noting that this mold is getting two retools that I know of.
Onslaught will be an extensive retool, while the name-not-yet-revealed core
of Victorion will be a minor retool, probably just a head swap.


CAPSULE

$25 price point.

Hot Spot: Good robot mode, okay vehicle mode, solid transformations,
best designed combiner mode so far. Recommended (still has some issues that
prevent me from going all the way to Strongly Recommended).


RANT

Packaging: Same as others in this series. Continues to have trading
cards packed in.


AUTOBOT: PROTECTOBOT HOT SPOT
Component: Torso
Altmode: Rescue truck
Transformation Difficulty: 17 steps
Previous Name Use: AoE (without "Protectobot" it has been used more)
Previous Mold Use: None
Weapon: Fireball Cannons
Function: Protectobot Commander
Motto: "Winning the aftermath is as important as winning the battle."

The duty of the PROTECTOBOTS does not stop when the battle is over. Hot
Spot and his team of heroes will come to mankind's defense whenever danger
threatens.

Interesting aside, the Protectobot Hot Spot that came with the recent
redeco set (specifically, a Generations Grappel/Inferno frankentool) is red,
but this one is back in classic powder blue, closer to the G1 color than the
2012 Asia-and-TRU exclusive Inferno redeco. Blue is an uncommon color for
fire vehicles, but not unheard of.

Packaging: 8 ties on the robot, two on the combined rifle. Trading card
taped behind the blister tray. The trading card shows Hot Spot hauling
Rewind to safety in a fireman's carry. In package, Defensor's head was just
sort of sitting there on the backpack hoping you ignore him, and the
instructions hide the solution in the torso mode steps. Probably also best
to fold the black "cape" panels to peg onto the ladder end to keep it stable
in robot mode.
The box, as usual, has the combined mode on the side panel.

Robot Mode: Elephant in the room first...the ladder in back is a major
issue, probably THE major issue with this mode. It's on a strut and can be
moved around, but it's still something that needs to be worked around. That
aside, though, it's a pretty good robot, and largely follows the G1 animation
model with elements borrowed from the toy here and there. The proportions
are much better than the Inferppel versions, closer to the 6" Titanium series
Hot Zone. I can certainly see this working as a female with minimal tweaking
(and some clever use of color) for Victorion.
Some interesting mold details include combiner sockets on the
shoulderpads, a very Optimus Prime-like head (even moreso than usual for Hot
Spot), and what appear to be springs built into the forearm armor for
absorbing impact. That, or they're electrical coils and Hot Spot has a
secret lightning attack. The lightbar halves from vehicle mode end up as
kneepads, and the windshields are the tops of the feet. The fireball rifles
are almost mirror images, but only one has a 5mm peg on the back for
connecting the two together. There's struts molded into the exposed
interiors of the cab pieces that form the toes, a nice touch.
6.75" (17cm) tall, predominantly powder blue, black, and bright red.
Powder blue plastic is used for the head, torso, chestplate, shoulderpads,
forearms/fists, boots, and toes. The ladder itself, on the back, is white
plastic. Everything else is black plastic, including pretty much all of the
hinges and struts.
The fronts of the shoulderpads have pipe-like detailing painted silver,
covered in diagonal hazard bars that are painted red. The chestplate is
painted red on front with black fake windows (a comic and cartoon feature of
the design not found on the G1 toy), plus more pipe detailing in silver
covered by diagonal hazard bars. The robot eyes are also red, as are the
light parts of the lightbars on the kneecaps. There's also gloss black paint
on some belt details. The faceplate is medium blue. The sides of the boots
have detailing intended for combiner mode, including black fake waist
sections and more silver pipes with red hazard bars. The feet are dominated
by the black window paint and silver front grille paint. A small red on
silver Autobot symbol is printed at the center top part of the chestplate.
The head is on a restricted ball joint, the waist does not turn. The
shoulders are ratcheting swivels and can lift up on ratcheting transformation
hinges, plus there's a smooth lift-to-the-sides hinge connecting the upper
arms to the shoulderpads. Smooth upper arm swivels just above soft-
ratcheting elbows. No wrist articulation. Universal joints on the hips
ratchet in both directions. The thigh swivels tend to pop apart on mine,
annoyingly, but that may be a result of some mold flash that needs clearing.
Smooth hinge knees, no meaningful foot articulation. The ladder is on a
hinge and can be used as a third support for posing.
The hands can hold 5mm pegs, and there's peg holes on either side of the
ladder housing (used for weapon attachment in vehicle mode) if you want to
store the guns on the back. Each fireball cannon is a single piece of black
plastic 3.25" (8.5cm) or 3.5" (9cm) long, differing in the slotted peg in
back. They have longer 5mm pegs at the rear as grips, shorter ones on the
side even with the grip for attachment in vehicle mode. Some sort of feed
pipe or cable for ignition is wrapped around the barrel, with the spiral
direction reversed on the two guns. The barrels have 5mm inner diameters,
both smooth. The rear gun does not have stabilizing slots inside its muzzle
the way the Ultra Prime guns do. The combined gun is 6.25" (16cm) long, but
fairly loose.

Brute Mode: Because of how the combiner sockets are positioned on the
shoulders, arm-mode Protectobots can be placed onto them while Hot Spot is
still in robot mode, allowing for an Energon-style Brute Mode.

Transformation: Stow the head inside the chest (chestplate flips open)
and lift the arms above the head to connect together as the rear wheels, but
be sure to get the root of the ladder between them first! The legs caused me
some hassles, due to both the previously mentioned popping thighs, and also
the fact that the knees stay locked in place really well and have to collapse
like many combiner limbs, rather than folding over as I initially thought. A
bit of folding for the ladder is also necessary, but not too hard to figure
out. The fireball cannons peg on either side of the ladder root.

Vehicle Mode: Yes, much has been made of assembling the Defensor head in
this mode so he's spewing water out of his mouth to put out fires. The
clever bit, though, is that this Hot Spot doesn't just hide Defensor's head
in the root of the ladded. The head splits open so that the lower half
becomes an operator's bucket, complete with diamondplate molding on the floor
inside.
Anyway, this is an aerial ladder style of firetruck, with the same sort
of front end as DotM Sentinel Prime's vehicle mode, four wheels in front and
four in back. The weak spot is the middle, where you can not only see the
robot hips quite clearly, they also cut slits in the deck through which the
robot head is clearly visible. I suspect it was for "use less plastic"
reasons rather than structural or aesthetic reasons.
The chassis is 9" (23cm) long, with bits of the ladder base sticking out
behind the rear bumper. I estimate this to be 1:100 scale based on the
windows and the operator's bucket. Given that real aerial ladder trucks are
around 30-35 meters long for the more classic 6-wheel variety, I may be
lowballing that a bit, a 1:144 scale might be a valid guess as well.
The color balance shifts a bit towards blue, since the vehicle shell
parts are predominantly that plastic, and the ladder's white is more
prominent. In addition to paints described in robot mode, there's a thin red
stripe along each side of the front end, plus a "FIRE RESCUE" logo in yellow
text with red border partly covering the entry doors on each side. Above the
words is a red on yellow circle Autobot symbol trailing red flames.
The ladder can spin around 360 degrees on its swivel base, and elevation
is soft-ratcheting with stable positions around 0 degrees, 30 degrees, 60
degrees, and 90 degrees (well, it can go farther, but that's upside down).
The highest elevation that looks good is 60 degrees, placing the bucket's top
8" (20cm) above the surface. The bucket's root is also hinged, but smoothly.
There's a hinge in the middle of the ladder, but that's for combiner mode.
Not a lot of ground clearance, but it rolls reasonably well on a flat
surface.

Combiner Mode: This is a 1980s preppie combiner, he has a popped collar
and aviator sunglasses. Seriously, the panels on the sides of the head that
are there for vehicle mode are supposed to be angled at about 45 degrees to
either side, looking like a popped collar. Another nice visual bit is that
the halves of the lightbar are hip pods a la the classic 1970s/80s Iron Man
armor. The base of the ladder section unfolds into the chestplate, with Hot
Spot's chest now being on the back and largely covered up.
Defensor's head is black plastic with the face patined silver and the
lenses of his sunglasses painted bright blue. The new chestplate is black
plastic, with some more "red hazard bars over silver mechanisms" detailing on
it, and a small red Autobot symbol printed on one side, almost invisible.
The bars-over-pipes parts of the sides of Hot Spot's boots are now on the
fronts of the thighs, and the black-painted panels fake being a waist.
Anyway, putting this together is certainly interesting, especially how
the ladder wraps all the way around the body vertically. This does lead to
the bottom of the pelvis being bright white against an otherwise black
bodypart, which is a little weird visually. I had some trouble getting the
legs into the right positions without using the instructions, because it
looked like I should be turning the waist...which doesn't turn. Also, while
the head stays firmly in place once snapped down, getting the tabs to snap is
a challenge. Too many moving parts in the area. The chestplate locks the
robot arms down reasonably well, and once everything is in the right places
this torso holds together solidly. The only loose bit is the top of the
head, which opens a little too easily.
Unlike the other core molds so far, there's no awkward robot hands or
feet sticking out next to the limb sockets. Well, the robot toes do stick
out to the sides on Defensor's thighs, but unless you use Blades as a leg,
the toes blend nicely into the boots visually, rather than the awkward look
found on Ultra Prime and Menasor.
The hip articulation from Hot Spot is preserved here, and the head turns
on a swivel. Hot Spot's hands, which are now on the backpack, can still hold
things, and the chestplate has two peg holes as well.
On my copy, the combined Fireball Cannons don't really stay together,
but they do form a double length gun. The spirals around the barrels are
opposite directions, though, so it looks less unified than something like
Menasor's sword or even Superion's cannon.

Defensor: So, the Superion-mold combiners are well-proportioned but a
bit spindly. The Menasor-mold combiners are bulky, but badly proportioned
and somewhat floppy. Defensor is both bulky and well-proportioned. 10.75"
(27.5cm) tall at the head, total height depends on who's on as arms.
I'd worried that the way the thighs are set up was a case of Hasbro
throwing their hands up in surrender and accepting zero actual articulation
for the legs, but it turns out I was wrong. While the lack of side to side
ankle joints is still an issue, I was able to get Defensor to stand
unsupported in a variety of dynamic leg poses. The aesthetics are a bit
marred by the waist parts moving around, but it's still much better than how
Menasor looks when he tries to pose.
Note, if you dislike the lack of symmetry in the legs, it's possible to
lift up Streetwise's front end and get it almost the same height as First
Aid's. It's not completely even, and it's not exactly locked in place, but
it looks better IMO.
The combined fireball cannons don't make a great superweapon, I prefer
the look obtained by putting them individually in Hot Spot's hands as back-
mounted cannons. I'll stick with Groove as the primary weapon for Defensor.


Overall: A good robot, a decent vehicle, and the best overall design for
a combiner torso yet. The choice of limbs works well too, a Deluxe-sized
Groove would be kinda weird by comparison (but if I can get one for a
reasonable price, I will anyway). Almost a month passed between buying this
online and finishing the review, and I still haven't seen any in stores,
which is kind of annoying.


Dave Van Domelen, gonna Capsule some more last gasp AoE Power Battlers
next.

[Irrellius Spamticon of the Potato People.]

I feel the need to mention that the ladder is mis-assembled in the box. there are holes on the sides of the bucket that pegs from the chestplate plug into making it a pretty solid chunk staying together and pretty easy to move out of the way. These same holes in the bucket are the ones I use for the guns in vehicle mode, to mount the guns to the bucket as opposed to the base of the ladder as shown in the pictures.