Oh, look, I went and got another slight update of a character I already have, despite trying to avoid buying into the Orobouros of Perpetual Updates. But in this case, I really had to.
Imagine I did an edit of the Simpsons “Do it for her” image, with a bunch of Hot Rod photos.
Here’s the thing. Hot Rod’s one of my favorite Transformers characters ever, maybe my singular favorite, if I had to pick. On one hand, it definitely comes from watching an old VHS of the animated movie compulsively as a kid. But if I might go deeper, let me paraphrase a little essay I once wrote about why I like them so much:
Forcing you to listen like
Hot Rod’s mostly known for their vices. They’re impatient, they don’t like planning, they’ll disregard instructions and barrel into action, they don’t often care about collateral damage, they have an almost reflexive disrespect for authority.
There was no reason for them to do this!
Intertwined with that is a desire for glory and recognition, tied into a sense of self-confidence that borders on narcissism. Typically when you see this type of character in fiction, when they’re not a villain, they require some sort of character arc to get rid of their vices before they’re narratively allowed to be the big hero. But the important thing about Hot Rod is they don’t need a redemption arc, because it’s made clear to the audience that despite their vices, they’ve got a fundamentally good heart.
A legitimately important character moment.
Whatever happens later in the movie, Hot Rod’s establishing character moment is babysitting Daniel by lake, while fishing. If the story was going to play the character type straight, some of Hot Rod’s first lines would have been complaining about having to watch the kid, or about how fishing is boring for someone who can’t stand waiting around. But instead, Hot Rod’s cheering Daniel up about missing his dad, because that’s what the kid needs. To me, that’s the character in a nutshell.
Also, they got to drop one of the hardest lines in all of fiction right here.
When it comes to plastic representations of Hot Rod, we already had a really good modern figure in the form of their Studio Series 86 Voyager, which I reviewed a whopping five years ago. At the time, one of my few complaints was that the figure was mainly red, when in the movie itself, Hot Rod’s a purply-pink coloration, something that, famously, Hasbro’s been reluctant to replicate in plastic form, because they’re cowards about boy’s heroes being pink, I guess.
Cowardly enough for the post-Movie cartoon to walk the pink back, too.
At the time, Hasbro designer Evan Brooks actually took to Instagram, to talk about the Studio Series 86 figure, and in the most polite corporate-speak way possible, basically said “we wanted this one to be pink, but the suits said no.” Well, five years on, I guess hell froze over, because they’ve repainted and retooled that old figure as a part of the MTMTE Collection, an ongoing line of fan-channel Studio Series exclusives, with this release carrying extra branding to celebrate the Movie’s 40th anniversary, and giving me a chance to revisit a figure I already loved.
Robot Mode
One convenient thing about having previously reviewed a version of this figure was that I got to go back and just re-take a bunch of my old photos.
I’d forgotten how *small* this supposed Voyager-class figure is. It’s not just that they made an undersized Voyager, they made something that’s an extremely normal Deluxe-scaled robot. But look, I’ll jump ahead and say that it’s definitely worth the extra money, between the extra engineering and accessories.
They may be short, but they’ve got moxie. Chutzpah, if you will.
Sculptwise, they pretty much hit the nail on the head when it comes to replicating Hot Rod’s cinematic animation model. This Studio Series version came after a long chain of official and third-party figures trying, and failing to get it quite right, so it was exceptional to just see everything as it was supposed to be. A properly tapered hood-chest, arms that were the right size, the compact boots, it’s all here, and it’s all accurate.
In 2D…
….And in 3D.
It’s a very clean robot, too, with basically no visible altmode parts that aren’t supposed to be there, save for some bits on the back of the boots. And after Kingdom Rodimus Prime’s scary boot transformation that existed to try and hide that part, I’m fine with what’s here.
One day, that face will be covered in lines from worry. But not today.
And that headsculpt! Sunbow Hot Rod had a very babyfaced look to them, which they nailed here. It really looks like it leapt off the screen.
If you think they just switched one color around, look closer.
So, let’s talk about the colors, which are the big selling point here. Obviously, all the red has been changed into a pinkish-purple. But here’s the impressive part: I would have been fine with a simple hue-shift. Instead, the deco artist went overboard, and made a bunch of tiny corrections to really dial into Hot Rod’s movie appearance. Bottom to top, there’s extra orange paint at their knees, to make the boots cut off in the right place, there’s extra yellow at their wrists underneath the orange, filling in a missing little bit of color, and there’s a bit of magenta on their “shirt collar,” which was previously incorrectly orange. On top of that, there’s a two-tone split in the shade of magenta on their pelvis, and on their helmet, replicating some shading that, again, the previous release didn’t bother with. As for other color changes, the dark gray boots have been slightly lightened, and the silver on their arm-pipes is now a more cartoonish light gray.
I say hell froze over, but I’m pretty sure the Retro Collection pink repaint of the G1 figure cleared the way for this one to happen.
Combine that with the orange, yellow, silver, blue, and the rest of the colors, and you have something slavishly faithful to the film design, while also looking great on its own merits. This is definitely one of those areas where the Voyager budget paid off, and I still felt that way on the older, less-painted version! The only bits that aren’t accurate are some components of the knee and elbow joints, and the backs of the boots, both of which come down to the needs of engineering, materials and transformation.
They’re so dreeeeeamy~
When it comes to build quality, let’s start with the positives: I got really, really, really lucky. The first batch of this version of Hot Rod hit the United States months ago, and immediately, people were reporting tons of quality control problems. Issues that I heard about included: Shoulders that were loose and floppy, misfired pins in the shoulders and boots, mismatched hands and forearm panels, missing wheels, and horribly mangled paint, among other problems. So, as I awaited my preordered copy, which, by the way, was intensely delayed, I was sweating buckets. Well, I don’t know if the delay had anything to do with it, but my copy has none of those issues. All the joints are nice and tight, nothing’s missassembled, all of the parts that are supposed to be here are here. If anything, the shoulders on this copy are oddly tight, but not to concerning levels. I did run into something very minor, but I’ll discuss it when I get to the transformation. I don’t know if I got lucky, or if the batch I got was fixed, but I’m grateful that everything feels good.
Also, they pass the “stand on one foot” test just fine.
Now, the negative: Something about the high partscount and complexity of this figure does lend it a certain fiddliness, a feeling of fragility that I rarely get out of Transformers. On one hand, I don’t think I’m actually in danger of breaking anything, at least in this mode (more on that later). On the other hand, my usual practice of putting a figure in my work bag to take with me to the office is something I don’t want to do with this one, unless I put them in a protective box, or maybe a bag. Basically, Rod feels a little less toy-ish than I’d like.
Peep the double-knees.
The articulation on this figure’s one of the places where they were definitely flexing the extra budget. All of the expected joints are here, with bonuses like omni-directional ankles, double-knees, wrist swivels, opening hands, and a ball-jointed neck with impressive range. There’s still one awkward bit of articulation, though, and it’s their shoulders. They have forward-and-backward swivels, and internal joints to let them “shrug” their shoulders inwards, but the shape of the arms limits that second bit of articulation the moment you move the first bit of articulation into anything other than an arms-down pose. To explain it like when I reviewed version 1.0, they can hold their arms in front of them, but they can’t spread them in a “the fish was thiiiiis big” pose.
“Well, at least my fish story’s realistic.”
It’s really the fault of the animation model that this figure’s slavishly faithful to for having arms that are a bit awkward in 3D space. I understand that the upcoming third attempt at a Masterpiece Hot Rod actually does solve this problem, via an even more ludicrously large partscount.
The closer you look, the more you realize how complicated the new Masterpiece’s shoulders are. Also, all of that partscount and budget, and it’s not even pink! Get with the times, man!
Okay, accessories and features. This’ll take awhile, because a) there’s a lot of them, and b) this is where the rest of the new stuff to this release is.
“Studio Series 86 Hot Rod comes with all that you see here!”
Let’s start with what’s built into the figure. Pop open their right arm, and you can flip their fist away to reveal a small welding torch.
When they get bored, they open their forearm and give it a good spin.
Something interesting about this is that they made the design of this torch up for the figure.
What we think we remember happening.
You’d think we saw it in the scene in the animated movie where Hot Rod fixes Kup, but in the actual movie footage, you can’t see what they’re welding with.
What actually happened.
Meanwhile, their left arm can open and flip around to expose a 5-millimeter peg.
For when you need to fling an entire Weaponizer around.
Speaking of that, there’s also a pair of ports on the backs of their boots, for a tiny bit of Weaponizing potential.
They only do this when no one’s looking, so no one can see their hollow head.
Uptop, you can open up their skull, to flip out a translucent blue visor, based on the “look, there’s a hole in the shuttle!” moment.
Right before they became a Darn Fool.
I’ll be a heathen, though, and say I would have preferred this in opaque blue, but that’s just me.
“Deal with it.”
Now, for the big pile of accessories, I’ll start with what’s returning from the previous release of this figure. We’ve got two laser pistols, based on the ones that came with the 1986 figure, complete with asymmetrical sculpts.
For that Duel-Wielding Action.
They’re cast in pink, but painted silver, and in an interesting twist, they have less paint on them than the first release, for a good reason. There’s tabs on both sides of each pistol that were silver on the original, and left unpainted here, so that they can slide into storage holes on Hot Rod’s back, without the paint rubbing, or the holes getting stressed and worn. It’s a little change that I really appreciate.
“Nothing’s Gonna Stand in Our Way” is a way better song than “The Touch.” Fight me.
Next, we have a silver and gray buzzsaw weapon, from the movie’s Squid Battle sequence. It fits on the 5-millimeter peg on Rod’s left arm, and the blade itself spins nicely, while also being sculpted to look like it’s spinning.
In this Squid Battle, they’re battling to protect the squids.
Finally, we’ve got the all-important MacGuffin, the Matrix of Leadership. There’s a number of different sculpts of this artifact floating around the mainline, but they remembered to give this one a 5-millimeter peg on the back. As for Hot Rod, their poseable hands mean that they’re more than capable of grabbing it by the handles, something a lot of mainline Transformers can’t actually do.
The criteria for who the Matrix chooses is actually just “can they hold it?”
One change with this release, though, is that the Matrix is totally unpainted, cast in unbroken solid blue. It might be that they’re aiming for the way it looked when Hot Rod accidentally grabbed it after Optimus dropped it. It may also be that they just needed the paint budget for the rest of the figure. Either way, I don’t mind, because like any collector of modern mainline Transformers, I have several other fully-painted Matrixes already. I even have another clear blue one, from Legacy G1 Optimus!
Clockwise from upper left: Studio Series 86 Hot Rod (Pink), Studio Series 86 Hot Rod (Red), Kingdom Galvatron, Studio Series Transformers One Optimus, Kingdim Rodimus Prime, Legacy G1 Optimus.
Speaking of clear blue things, this release of Hot Rod’s missing the blast effects of the older Studio Series 86 version, including a starburst for the Matrix, and two blasts for their guns. I miss them less than I thought, mostly because Kingdom Rodimus Prime has plenty of extras to spare, and taking them out in the name of the new accessories feels worth it.
Speaking of new accessories.
So, when it comes to what’s new here, first, we have a laser-sword and non-laser-shield, based on the little visual gag where Hot Rod was training against a drone in the movie.
I’m not allowed to say “cinematic parallels.”
The sword’s got a gray handle and painted yellow blade, and is one solid, unbroken piece, with the kind of flared handle that means only figures with opening hands can hold it. The fact that the blade’s solid yellow, as opposed to clear, and also kind of thick, honestly makes me think more of some kind of foam sword, or a Kendo training sword, which, given its use in the movie, is fair.
Hot Rod decided it was time for some serious training.
The shield’s a little more involved. It’s a medieval-looking thing, cast in gray, with yellow flames on the front, outlining an Autobrand. The 5-millimeter handle on the inside is on a swivelling joint, letting you raise and lower the shield, which I appreciate. It’s kind of funny how much the marketing for this figure emphasizes this shield and sword, considering how small of an appearance in any Transformers media they have, and especially considering the last accessory.
Time for an even mightier weapon.
Remember how important I said the scene with Hot Rod and Daniel fishing was? That’s why I’m thrilled that Hot Rod finally has their fishing rod, last seen on the second Masterpiece figure. It’s legit a huge selling point for me.
What else do you do when the fish are jumpin’?
The whole thing’s cast in solid gray, excellently sculpted, has a 5-millimeter port on one side of the handle, and fits nicely in their hand for some Real Fishing Pose Action (™). There’s not much else to say here, except that it’s really good to just have it.
They’re gonna have a fish fry later.
Now, on the previous release of this Hot Rod, I basically never used any of the accessory storage, because of that aforementioned problem with the tabs on the guns getting paint rub, but here, I can actually use it. And here’s the thing: It’s kind of ridiculous. You stick the guns on Rod’s back, and then you can slot the buzzsaw onto the top of them. On the other side of the Buzzsaw, you can slot the shield in, using the same double-tab connection. There’s then a dedicated tab on the inside of either side of the shield for slotting in the sword. Finally, since the guns at the bottom of this pile of stuff have exposed 5-millimeter pegs, you can pop the Matrix onto one, and the fishing rod onto the other.
At the end, you have this monstrosity.
On one hand, this makes Rod ludicrously overburdened. On the other hand, I like that it’s here, and a ton of effort was put into Tetris-ing this pile of stuff together.
Transformation
This is one of those ones that you’ve really got to learn the finer points of, if you want to have a good time, because it’s an extremely involved transformation, with a lot of little things that need to be just-so. To be clear, it’s nothing like the panel-hell shellformer-ing of some of the live-action Studio Series carformers, it’s not that difficult, there’s just a lot going on. One gimmick of it is that there’s a step where a big chunk of the upper torso spins around on a mushroom peg, to imitate how Hot Rod transformed in certain parts of the movie.
“Whoa, look at me spin!”
The real challenge of the transformation is making sure various things in the arms, legs, and torso are all correctly lined up and pegged together, otherwise the car will be gappy and misaligned. I’ll give you a little tip right now: When you bend those double-knees, make sure the joint inside them lines up with a specific groove sculpted on the inside of the knees, which I’ll show in this photo:
That yellow bar needs to line up with that sculpted groove at the bottom of their thigh, just like this.
Another tip: It can be hard to get those little headlight pieces to fit into the bot’s shoulders. The best way to do it is the opposite way the instructions suggest: Fold the little pieces out first, and then line the arms up to go underneath them, instead of the other way around. In fact, the order of operations in the instructions is the worst way to do this. I do the upper torso first, and save the legs for last.
Basically, do this, and then rotate the arms into position.
There is an actual trouble point, though: The pipes on their forearms, which fit into pipes on their legs, to make the altmode’s full exhaust setup. First of all, I did run into an actual QC error: The assembly on one of Rod’s arms that’s used to rotate the pipes into altmode configuration is a bit loose on mine, and prone to flying off during transformation. It’s not the worst problem, though, since the whole things pegs in securely in either mode, and frankly, I’m grateful that’s the only problem I have. The actual trouble spot is the connection point on these pipes. It’s the one instance of retooling here, to fix a problem on the original Studio Series 86 Rod, where the middle connector point on these three pipes would break, resulting in said pipes not wanting to properly connect. Sure enough, my old copy got hit with that after awhile. On the new version of the figure, the three connecting nubs have been thickened and strengthened.
You can see the broken middle connector on the old model, and the thicker pegs on the newer model. I’ll get to that paint scratch next.
And it…sort of works? What actually happened was the “lip” of the leg-pipe connection point actually scratched some paint off of one of the connectors (as you can see above), and then said thin plastic lip actually broke off. And then I went ahead and carved the lip off of the other side. And you know what? Thanks to the connectors being thicker, the pipe assembly still fits together fine. If it doesn’t, you’ve got something misaligned during the transformation. In fact, I recommend doing the same thing as Kingdom Blackarachnia and Cheetor, and just preventatively slicing that lip off.
Basically, that middle hole should look like this, and not have a plastic lip in it.
Don’t let this scare you off, I generally like this transformation, and I’ve owned this tooling for five years now, so it’s not hype speaking. It’s a lot of little things, but it’s not impossible, it’s better than your average Studio Series carformer, and it’s all in service of screen accuracy.
Vehicle Mode
Little pink non-Corvette.
Hot Rod’s swoopy retro-future racecar mode’s gotten a lot of good renderings in plastic form, and this is another good one. It’s streamlined, it’s dynamic, there’s the big spoiler in the back that doesn’t need any struts to support it, it’s all here.
There was a time when Hot Rod car modes needed extra struts on that spoiler.
Well, okay, there’s a ton of transformation seams in this mode, and visible folded knees at the back, but that’s down to engineering logistics. The most egregious ones are still those headlights upfront, which don’t quite blend smoothly into the robot mode’s shoulders. I’ve gotten good at smoothing them down as much as possible, but it can still be a bit of an eyesore.
This is as good as it gets.
You know what isn’t an eyesore anymore, though? The car’s roof. One of the big flaws of the 2020 release was a big, ugly chunk of yellow plastic on what was supposed to be an unbroken magenta roof, and somehow, they managed to sprue the plastic so that it’s not there anymore, and the roof is one color. I wasn’t expecting this to be fixable, and yet, they managed to.
One time when I’m happy to see less color.
The rest of the car’s deco is that same nice pinkish-purple magenta as robot mode, with orange, yellow, a silver engine block, light gray pipes, painted silver rims on black wheels, and a clear blue set of windows. Much like the visor in robot mode, I think they could have stood to make the windows less translucent, or even totally opaque, just because there’s no internal seat detailing in there, just the back of a robot head.
Having actual interior sculpting is something the G1 tooling actually has over this new one.
Also, the orange and yellow at the robot mode’s wrists is technically inaccurate in this mode, too, but I’d rather have too much deco than not enough.
Remember all those wierd cars everyone was driving 21 years ago?
For build quality, despite the complicated transformation, this is a pretty solid car mode, provided you got everything right during the conversion. That said, I do find myself squeezing the seams, especially around the pipes, so there’s some micro-instability. Plus, generally, there’s enough of a sense of fragility here that I’m still not going to cram him into my work bag in this mode.
In the intervening 40 years, they mastered Double Gun Technology.
For features, if you got the legs transformed correctly, the flat wedge of a car rolls nicely. And beyond that, well, it’s all about accessory integration. There’s two slots on the cart’s engine block to, once again, tab those two guns in, in a sort of advanced version of G1 Hot Rod’s single weapon mounting point. The slots that were used in robot mode, meanwhile, are also here, back on the roof. The instructions, once again, recommend overloading this mode with all of the accessories, in either one or two big piles.
It’s about to be a very odd camping trip.
It’s hilariously impractical, but it’s fun that they thought of it.
Overall
An important part of this 1986 Autobot Cast!
I’ve spent a lot of time with this figure’s original Studio Series 86 iteration, and this new version gives me a chance to look at it with fresh eyes. It’s still a favorite of mine, and not just because it’s the best-possible version of my favorite character, after a bunch of previous near-misses, though that certainly helps. There’s a lot going on here, between the engineering, articulation, and accessories, and it feels like the figure was a real labor of love, to try and make the most uncompromised animation-accurate Hot Rod possible, without sacrificing the fun of it. It may be a tiny Voyager, but you can see where the money went, beyond just the accessories.
Soak it in.
That said, while it’s a favorite of mine, it’s not perfect. The whole package is a tad bit fiddlier and more complicated than I’d like, with the handfeel being slightly too fragile, and the transformation a bit overly ornate. But, well, that’s the tradeoff for accuracy, and, despite my grousing, this doesn’t even scratch the surface of Transformers I’ve found too fiddly or fragile to actually enjoy.
And enjoy it, I do.
As for this new version, I would have been completely satisfied with a simple palette-swap from red to pink. But, once again, it felt like this redux was a labor of love, adjusting a bunch of tiny little things, in terms of both deco and tooling, to make a great figure even better, to say nothing of all the extra accessories, including the all-important fishing rod.
This is what it’s all about.
So, yes. If you love Hot Rod, or the 80s Transformers movie, I can’t recommend this enough, even if you have the old version. We could all use a little reminder that nobody’s perfect, but that doesn’t mean we can’t be good people.
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