Bot Reviews: Transformers: Studio Series Deluxe Hot Rod (The Last Knight version)

I’ve always been a fiction-first kind of fan, probably because I was watching Generation 2 reruns before I was ever aware there even were Transformers toys. While I’ve got space in my heart for blank slate characters to impress traits onto (like Lift-Ticket or Hauler), if something’s from the Transformers media that’s outright bad, it usually doesn’t translate into a figure I actually want. On that note, I was already kind of in-and-out of a Stockholm Syndrome-esque relationship with the Bay Transformers films, buying figures from them, remembering what the movies were actually like (usually after seeing one), and then selling them off, and after the Bumblebee movie came out and provided a much better baseline for what a good Transformers movie could be, I got rid of my last few Studio Series Bay-bots, and stuck to Bee-bots and 86-ers going forwards when it comes to that line. Well, I decided to make an exception for Hot Rod, one of my perpetual favorite characters.

Though, like many Bayverse denizens, Hot Rod’s appearance in The Last Knight didn’t really bear much recognizable resemblance to their standard self. They were now black and orange, had a French accent that they claimed was a malfunction, weren’t played as especially young or rebellious (instead, they were a long-time associate of the Templar-like human Order of Witwiccans) and, most importantly, had a special gun that could freeze time, or “stop the time.” It’s most important, because Rod verbally lets us know three whole times throughout the film that it can do that. I don’t think it was an intentional reference, but it sure did remind me of the original Marvel Transformers comics under Bob Budianski’s pen constantly having the robots remind us of what their special weapons could do.

Weirdly, despite being a fresh, marketable face with a fair amount of screentime, nearly all of Hot Rod’s figures in The Last Knight’s toyline were retools of different figures of Lockdown from Age of Extinction (only a little Legion-class Hot Rod minifigure was new). This made a certain degree of sense, since both characters change into Lamborghinis, but no amount of new parts could change the fact that their body-plans were really quite different from each other, and so most Last Knight Hot Rods didn’t really look like Last Knight Hot Rod. Most notably, despite how much Rod talked about it, none of their figures came with the Time-Stopping Time Stop Gun that Stops the Time, despite its (forced) narrative importance. Even the mainline Deluxe (which I did own at the time) had no accessories at all, for whatever reason, in addition to being really, really tall, for again, no clear reason.

So, yeah, the character was long overdue for a Studio Series do-over, something we had to wait until late 2022/early 2023 for, because with The Last Knight’s merchandise still warming shelves when Studio Series made its debut in 2018, no one was too eager to revisit that movie just yet (there was a Studio Series toy of Hot Rod’s World War 2 flashback form, though, because it was an easy Bumblebee retool). But, this new one’s here, and out of love for other versions of the character, I decided to see what a Studio Series Bayverse-Bot looks like, six years after the Bayverse died.

Robot Mode

Okay, so, the Transformers Wiki tells me that they goofed on this figure, and it’s actually based on a non-final design, and not the film’s CGI model. But, to be real, I really can’t tell. As long as the silhouette’s correct (which it is), it looks basically right. Much like the movies, the finer points of Bayformer designs kind of blend together in my head.

What we’ve got here is a humanoid silhouette, with a car hood squeezed onto the chest, and car doors hanging down off of a roof backpack, a kind of warped version of a Standard G1 Carformer. I will say, it’s a bulkier silhouette than the on-screen design, mainly due to all the folded panels on the forearms, and the wheels hanging off the lower legs, but to the designer’s credit, all of the details (and car parts) actually end up in the correct locations on the design, it’s just that they shrink down and compress to an impossible degree onscreen. But what’s here looks good to my eyes, and still manages to be really sleek.

And, if you want an even more traditional carformer look, it’s possible to futz around with the backpack a bit, so the door-wings are pointing upwards.

Speaking of complicated Bayformers designs, Hot Rod’s covered with their typical calling card: Tons and tons of tiny tech details sculpted in between what looks like shattered vehicle-mode parts. It all somehow looks like something from the future, yet also something a modern robotics company might be cooking up.

Hot Rod’s got an odd headsculpt, with a weird little mouth between cheek panels, and buggy round eyes, but hey, it’s extremely screen-accurate. And it seems to be wearing a pursed-lipped expression that reminds me of something from Zoolander, which is actually character-appropriate for them.

For colors, Hot Rod is black (or rather, various extremely dark shades of gray and brown, with some black bits), with bright orange highlights. The colors are one place where, even with the way Bay-bot designs kind of blur into themselves, I can tell they had to deviate from the screen design, because they definitely had a lot more orange on their arms and legs and backpack in the film. Though, looking at clips and photos from the movie, it seems like the CGI model just straight-up had black Lamborghini parts change colors to orange on the robot mode, so the designers *really* had an impossible task here.

And that’s to say nothing about all the tiny bits of tech detailing on their character model that the toy leaves unpainted gray. At this scale, at mainline price, though, there was no way it was going to have all that color. It’s the same problem I said way back in my Studio Series 2007 Optimus review: Bayverse designs just had too much going on colors-wise to do on a standard retail budget, and the best we can hope for is for the deco to hit the important highlights, which, luckily, Rod does. What’s here looks good, and sleek, and it pops nicely, especially the lone bit of blue on the eyes. It could almost pass for a homage to Dark Hot Rod, the rare exclusive G1 repaint, colors-wise, though I’m really reaching to find a homage there.

For build quality, the figure mostly holds together solidly in this form. The big pressure point, though, is that the wheels on their legs block the knees from fully bending back. Meanwhile, if you try to force the issue, or do anything complicated, the figure’s ball-jointed hips are likely to pop out of their sockets. I’ve heard this isn’t a universal issue, and I think it’s an anti-breakage feature, especially because those hips aren’t actually loose, they hold a pose just fine. They just like to pop off.

And you’ll want to pose it, because the figure’s nice and poseable, and has all the modern amenities. Rod’s ankles are on ball joints for a bit of side-to-side motion, and swivels for front and back posing, and they’ve got swiveling wrists, on top of the expected knees, hips, waist, shoulders, elbows, and head on ball joint. It combines with their impressive silhouette to create some dynamic posing potential.

And that’s important, because they’ve got to aim their patented Time-Stopping Time Stop Gun That Stops The Time.

It’s finally here, it’s cast in black, and its odd chamberted magazine has blue-painted “bullets.”

It fits a little oddly in their hands, though, thanks to the panels on the backs of said hands colliding with the magazine a little bit, so it aims a bit sideways unless you raise it up a little, but luckily not to Thrilling 30 Arcee levels.

It’s also got a couple of undocumented features, too: A tab on the left of the magazine lets you plug it into either of their hips, and holster it for storage, and the magazine itself can pop off of the gun.

Doing so lets you stash just the magazine at their hip, and fixes the problem with the gun colliding with the panels on the hand.

Transformation

One interesting thing about this transformation is that it has the same broad strokes as the original G1 Hot Rod figure’s conversion: Flip the chest-hood up, spin the backpack around, push the arms into the sides, and compress the feet. The biggest alteration is a waist-twist. Of course, once you go beyond the broad strokes, it’s the same kind of transformation as most Studio Series Bayverse bots: Moving around a ton of tiny little panels, and tabbing that ton of panels in.

To the designer’s credit, it’s not as shell-former-ish as this type of figure can be (looking at Studio Series Bumblebee), and it’s at least reasonably clear where everything goes. Still, get ready to do a lot of panel-massaging, and squeezing to make seams vanish. Oh, and those hips WILL pop out when you’re rotating the waist, as will a pair of small panels inside the feet that become part of the back of the car. On the positive side, unlike some examples of this genre of engineering, the connections all feel solid enough that I’m not worried about critical breakage, and after a transformation or two, I had it committed to muscle-memory.

I’ll also say that figuring out how the chest and abs comes together in robot mode gave me trouble the first time around, so maybe make a note of how it’s laid out before you start undoing it, or like, take a picture.

Car Mode

Hot Rod’s much more screen-accurate in this form, changing into a sleek black Lambo, with a little spoiler in the back. Granted, it’s a Lambo that’s absolutely riddled with seams and panel lines due to the transformation, but what’re you gonna do, it comes with the territory. I do find myself squeezing the seams below the door windows, though, in an attempt to make them more flush than they are.

The colors are a lot more accurate in this mode (and I wonder if it’s a licensing stipulation that it had to be.) It’s a simpler deco, too, since it’s all-black, with lines of orange along the bottom and doors, plus a little gold logo on the hood, and black and silver headlights. Granted, the film version had the orange bits at the bottom filled in, rather than just as lines along the edges, but ehh, close enough, and it still looks great.

Interestingly, I initially thought the rear headlights were unpainted, but watching movie clips has revealed that this model of car has weird narrow headlights, and those red lines on the back actually are them.

On the other hand, the car’s wheel rims are unpainted, but I honestly didn’t notice, since they go with the car’s body so well.

It does feel like it would have been a better call to tint the windows, or make them opaque, instead of totally clear, because the long, flat windshield on this particular car just give you a perfect, unobstructed view of a huge pile of robot parts. Though, what’s there reminds me of clockwork, appropriate for a character who’s very vocal about their ability to mess with time.

For features, despite what a low-rider this car is, it has zero trouble rolling, which is an unexpected surprise. It feels like the Time Gun should fit in a space near the back of the car’s underside, but there’s no actual way to secure it. Instead, you can clip it into the same hip-mount pegholes as robot mode, which are now located at the car’s rear, for an attack mode.

Overall

I’ve owned enough Studio Series figures of Bayverse characters to know you’ve got to grade them on a curve. They’re inevitably going to have overcomplicated designs that might not scale well to their size, paint jobs that can only hit the highlights of their ornate decos, and complicated transformations full of a lot of little panels and shellforming. And sure enough, all those things are present on Hot Rod, but in a form that the figure manages to wear pretty well, and mitigate as much as it can. The colors and sculpt look good in robot mode, the figure’s plenty poseable and has the one accessory it needs, it’s got a good-looking alternate mode, the transformation is complex but manageable, and outside of that, my only actual qualms are some panels and joints that like to pop out. It’s still one of *those* figures, but it’s an example of one of *those* figures done well, basically.

As for whether or not it’s got a place on your shelves, that depends on how much the ingrained Studio Series Bayverse quirks are an issue for you (though, again, this one wears them well), how you feel about owning a character from The Last Knight, and how well this version does (or doesn’t) fit with what you have.

But for what it is, it’s a strong example of this particular style of figure rendered well.

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