Dave's Transformers Kingdom Rant: Core Wave 4

Autobot Hot Rod (sportscar)

Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Gen/CoreK4

Last new mold for me in War for Cybertron, and this will be re-released
as part of Legacy's first wave, continuing Hasbro's pattern of late by which
they avoid "No one can find the final wave of new molds" problems by always
reissuing the last wave in the new year's packaging. If you include
Buzzworthy Bumblebee, this brings the Autobots up to parity in Core Class
with the Decepticons.
Pictures of the Legacy packaging do not have a QR code.

CAPSULE

$11 price point.

Hot Rod: Decent design for the size, but suffers from some issues where
even a tiny manufacturing flaw can keep it from properly staying in vehicle
mode. At the upper end of mildly recommended.

RANT

Packaging: Same as previous Core Class, although there's an interesting
issue with the art. Normally, the package art is pretty good at getting the
toy right, even if some colors are inaccurate. But the sword held by Hot Rod
on the card front looks almost nothing like what the toy has. Last minute
change to save money? Or will they give the Legacy version a different
sword?

AUTOBOT: AUTOBOT HOT ROD
Assortment: WFC-K43
Altmode: Sportscar
Transformation Difficulty: 8 steps
Previous Name Use: Gen:TR (G1 was without the "Autobot" qualifier)
Previous Mold Use: None

Packaging: Two ties hold the robot into the blister, the sword is held
by just the blister shape.
The cardback render shows the face as silver, but it's light gray on the
toy.
The instructions not only don't show how the wingpack can be removed,
they fail to show the better way for the sword to attach in vehicle mode (the
cardback also only shows the awkward way).

Robot Mode: It looks okay, although there's a lot of panels folded up on
the backs of the boots, the forearms are stubby, the head is hollow ("True to
life," Kup grumbles), and there's the usual lack of paint on a lot of the
toy, notably the shins. Like most if not all updates of Hot Rod (or Hot
Rodimus, or Rodimus) they go with the red/orange/yellow color scheme,
ignoring the weird magenta and white thing the comics did.
3.5" (9cm) tall in the aforementioned colors. The snap-on wheels on the
biceps and boots are black plastic, everything else is red plastic. There's
two different kinds of red plastic, with a softer matte red plastic (that
glows orange under UV) used for the torso core, shoulder struts, backpack
plate, pelvis, knees, and some struts inside the boots. I suspect the
chestplate is the other red, but it was dipped in paint and has no accessible
unpainted bits.
Yellowish orange paint is what the chestplate was dipped in, and it's
also used for thighpads (in lieu of making the entire thigh orange). The
wing is mostly covered in bright yellow paint, and the energy blade parts of
the sword are painted gloss light blue. The face is light gray with gloss
light blue eyes, and the exhaust pipes on the arms and boots are painted
silver. The chest flames are printed in yellow, with a small red Autobot
symbol printed in the center. (The chest does not become the actual hood, so
the pattern is repeated on the folded panels on the backs of the boots.)
The head turns, the waist does not. Ball and socket shoulders on the
ends of shrugging struts, ball and socket elbows with way too short forearms.
The wing does tend to block the range of motion for the arms, unfortunately.
Ball joint hips and knees, plus some transformation hinges inside the boots
that can bend a little bit usefully without looking like someone broke his
legs. On mine, the knees were super loose, even cleaning them off didn't
help, so I had to add a layer of Pledge Future to both the ball and the
socket.
The fists can hold 3mm pegs, there's 3mm sockets on the undersides of
the forearms, and one in the small of the back. The backplate has a 5mm
socket on it. Between the backplate and the spine are another 5mm socket and
a 3mm socket meant to hold the wing piece sandwiched between them. The wing
itself has 3mm and 5mm pegs (the latter with a tab partway down to stabilize
it on the back, but it does make it shallow for actually holding in regular
5mm sockets) for going between the two, plus a 3mm socket at the bottom of
the wing.
The sword is a single piece a little over 2" (53mm) long, with a 5mm
diameter main haft and a small 3mm peg on the end so it can be held by either
kind of fist. There's a 3mm socket on one side of the blade root. There's
molded lightning bolt patterns on the blade, I might paint them a different
color.

Undocumented Feature: The wing piece can be removed and inserted into
the 5mm socket on the backpack's outside, there's even a notch there to keep
it lined up. This configuration isn't as stable, since the backpack is no
longer pegged in place, but it does provide room for the arms to move around
without running into the wing. The wing can also be attached to the
underside of either forearm as a shield or as something vaguely resembling
the bow that TF:Animated Rodimus used.

Transformation: Okay, almost all of the top of the car is folded up on
the backs of the boots, and the halves need to go around the strut holding
the backpack which folds to become the rear of the top of the car. A lot of
pieces in motion at the same time. The arms shrug up against the sides in
the only simple part of the transformation, it takes some practice to get all
the other panels in the right places at the right time, and then some
massaging to keep the roof piece from popping back up. The problem is that
four half-pegs need to simultaneously go into two rectangular slots and they
just don't have the Lego-level tolerances needed to pull that off. I tried
removing some flash from the hinge between hood and windshield in case that
was the problem, but it wasn't.
You don't need to remove the wing during transformation, just leave its
5mm peg attached to the socket.

Altmode: Slightly bigger than a Matchbox/Hot Wheels car, but definitely
smaller than Legends class vehicles from Prime Wars. And unfortunately, I've
only once been able to get the hood to not arch upwards a couple millimeters,
I can't reproduce what I did to get it to properly transform. So the car
looks slightly bloated. I have to press the front fenders together to create
enough friction to hold the hood down, I guess I'll put it in a vise
overnight and see if that helps. (Time passes....) Okay, 24 hours in the
CLAMPS seems to have done the trick, at least for now.
The main body of the car is 3" (7.5cm) long, it goes up to 3.5" (9cm)
long if you count the wing. No new plastic revealed in this mode. The
windshield and side windows are the same light gray as the robot face. The
hood is orange with yellow printed flames, and the engine poking out through
the hood is painted silver. Notably, no Autobot symbol on the real hood,
just on the fake hood in robot mode. The pipes along the side are painted
silver and connect up nicely. The pylons that rise up from the rear fenders
and try to connect to the wing are unpainted, and it's hard to get them to
properly line up, especially since pushing the back end together makes the
front end separate. More time in the clamps, perhaps?
It rolls okay on a flat surface, with a couple millimeters of ground
clearance. The wing has a 3mm peg on top and a 3mm socket in front, and
while the instructions and package show the sword attached via the peg, it
looks SO much better using the socket.

Overall: The roof issue is really disappointing, especially given how
much care was put into making all the other parts of transformation pretty
solid.

Dave Van Domelen, got Bulkhead during the time he was reviewing it, so
Legacy is off and running....