Originally written August 2020. This barely qualifies as Retro, but the original’s off the internet, and this is relevant content for my next review. Plus, I love this guy, and he was my #1 figure of 2020.
We all started somewhere, and with me, Transformers collecting began around 1993, when my parents bought me the Transformers: Generation 2 version of the Autobot Hubcap. I don’t have the original toy anymore, but I purchased another one years later at my first TFCon.
But let’s back up. Before he was a metallic red minibot in Generation 2, Hubcap was a nondescript yellow mini-bot in the third year of Generation 1, sharing his basic engineering with Bumblebee and Cliffjumper.
In terms of who he is, while his bio described him as a communications expert who also happened to be a smooth-talking, untrustworthy con artist, he’s mostly been notable for his absence. He didn’t show up on the cartoon at all, despite his fellow minibots at least getting cameos, and didn’t even have a longer Transformers Universe bio note published (though it was written, and uncovered years later). Combine that with the fact that he looks pretty similar to multiple more well-known characters (the Cliffjumper toy even had a yellow variant that looked really similar to him), and you have a textbook D-lister, something that’s only recently started to fade thanks to him finally getting some real exposure in the 21st century, as the star of a Collector’s Club novella (emphasizing the smooth-talker angle), and Nick Roche’s Sins of the Wreckers comic miniseries from IDW, (playing up the communications expert angle, pictured below).
Regardless of who he is, or how popular he is or isn’t, Hubcap is where I started collecting, so he has a special place in my heart. And thanks to the Generations Selects subline of the War for Cybertron trilogy, he finally has a modern update, available for on Hasbro Pulse, but also at EB Games in Canada. (the other two toys he’s gotten, in Machine Wars and Hunt for the Decepticons, were basically unrelated name-reuses). This new version of Hubcap uses the same base mold as Earthrise Cliffjumper, as per tradition, so consider this an unofficial overview of that toy, too. While I’d rather Hubcap was metallic red like the one from my childhood, I absolutely had to get me one of these.
Robot Mode
Ever since this tooling was released as Cliffjumper, there’s been a lot of fuss made about his small size for a Deluxe, thanks to the War for Cybertron trilogy’s commitment to classic cartoon scale. I’ll be honest, though, after hearing so many complaints about Cliffjumper being “a legends figure with some extra accessories,” Hubcap is bigger than I thought. He’s far shorter than any other Deluxe, for sure, but he’s bigger than the old Legends pricepoint, and he’s more on par with the old Scout class than anything else (Revenge of the Fallen Ransack is the only one of those I happen to have, so he’s at the end of these next photos, after Legends Swerve and Titans Return Bumblebee)
More importantly, though, Hubcap feels more substantial than any of the Legends or Scouts that I have in-hand. He’s denser and heavier, and has more joints, engineering, and articulation in him than either price point. In fact, he resembles a slightly scaled-down version of the first Masterpiece Bumblebee (I have the G2 version here for comparison).
He even weighs about the same! That’s no coincidence, as he seems to have more or less copied the sculpting and engineering of the Masterpiece figure’s legs wholesale, just shrunken down slightly, and mildly simplified (a single knee joint instead of two). What I’m getting at is, even without all of his accessories, this doesn’t feel like a glorified minifigure.
Speaking of the sculpting on him, this is your pretty standard Bee/Cliff/Hubcap/Tapout/Glyph G1 mini-bot, complete with hood-feet and a roof for a chest, just scaled up, and un-chibified, and with the wheels on the arms hidden, like the animation models of those mini-bots that had them. It’s really satisfyingly crisp, especially compared to the original.
I’m a big fan of Hubcap’s headsculpt. The original mold’s head was always a bit fuzzy and indistinct, and it’s weirdly satisfying seeing the exact same lines and features scaled up, and made clear and crisp. Between the head crest, the Prime-like sides, and the determined face, it looks sharp. On the original and G2 versions, his eyes were the same shade of orange as his face (one of the few unique things about the G1 toy), but here, they made them a slightly different shade of orange to help them stick out, and it’s a detail I appreciate.
For the rest of his colors, he’s mostly a bright, Sunstreaker-y primary yellow, with some black limbs and accents, and smokey black windows, with a small Autobrand on his foot. While it seems like he has a really simple deco, sharper eyes than mine picked out that a lot of his yellow is actually painted on, including his feet, chest, backpack and shoulders. While it looks nice, I’m not a fan of too much paint, as even the most carefully QC’d figure can smudge and chip it, and sure enough, there’s a few tiny scratches in places on mine, like the chest. In fact, if you look closely, transforming him repeatedly has made those little rectangular tabs on his shoulders start to flake. While I don’t know about the later Bumblebee and Bug Bite retools, it’s a problem he shares with Cliffjumper, since all of the same areas are painted on him, as well.
One of the big things Hubcap’s got going on for him is his articulation, which, get this, is actually superior to the old Masterpiece Bumblebee he cribbed some of his engineering from, because he a) has wrist swivels, and b) has incredible ankle tilts that can bend more than 90 degrees. Combine that with the expected head, shoulders, elbows, waist, and knees, and his big, stompy mini-bot feet, and he’s actually incredibly flexible and stable for a regular Deluxe, let alone something his size.
Another way of making up for his small size is his giant, multipart accessory, in the form of a big, deconstructable bazooka. The funny thing is, this is specifically based on a giant gun Cliffjumper used in the original cartoon’s pilot miniseries…
…yet every other upcoming version of this mold, including Bumblebee, is planned to come with this really specific accessory, solely because Cliffjumper came out first. Not that I’m complaining, it’s really neat. As it comes out of the box, it’s a combination of black and painted grey, has two different handles, and a pair of mounting brackets if you want to prop it up over a lookout point.
Hubcap’s capable of handling this giant weapon in a few different ways, thanks to how it breaks apart.
You can take it apart into two smaller grey cannons, an unfolding black thing (mostly meant for use in his car mode), and a pair of brackets, and do a bunch of stuff with them. The instructions recommend turning the two front grey sections into duel pistols, and mounting the black back section on his shoulder, like some kind of sheathed melee weapon (it has a small rectangular peg designed to fit in the joint cuts on his legs and arms). You can also unfold this black section, and use it like some kind of Whacking Stick, all the better for fending of ancient Decepticon revenants.
On top of that, his backpack can come out, and serve as a riot shield, for more kinds of configurations.
I prefer to leave it on his back, though, as I think he looks a bit thin and spindly without it.
Here’s a configuration suggested on Bug-Bite’s Hasbro Pulse product page, a smaller bazooka and hand-cannon combo.
And here’s a quick pair of fan modes I bashed out, involving a communications tower, since that was his job in his original bio. Or maybe it’s a gun turret. He seems like the type to insist it’s the first one when it’s really the second.
If you can’t tell, this pack of accessories for him is really fun. So many Siege and Earthrise figures are conspicuously bare when it comes to accessories, in what feels like an attempt to upsell Weaponizers, Battle Masters, Modulators, Fossilizers and other glorified weapons kits, so it’s refreshing to see a figure that feels like he has a whole play pattern included right out of the box. By the way, he’s still got regular War for Cybertron weapon ports on his forearms, and on the sides of his thighs. Oh, and on his back, when the shield isn’t there
Transformation
Much like the figure itself, there’s enough going on here to make this feel like a Deluxe-level transformation. It’s also not a straight copy of Masterpiece Bumblebee, aside from the legs. I’d say the most challenging part of it is getting the panels his car mode’s made out of to squeeze and pop together securely, but by transformation number three or so, I’d figured out a good sequence to line them all up where it wasn’t a real struggle. Aside from his size, the other major controversy with this tooling is that the transformation also involves partsforming, in that Hubcap’s backpack shield needs to be popped off, and placed on the back of the car in a different configuration, with no way to leave it on during the transformation.
It’s a personal sidebar of mine, but not only do I not mind this, I wish designers and fans were more willing to accept partsforming when it makes a figure simpler and more stable, as he’d likely have had to have a more complex transformation, and radically different body engineering without it. This way keeps it simple enough to be fun, and complex enough to be satisfying.
Vehicle Mode
Hubcap transforms into a generic yellow muscle car, albeit a tiny one.
A funny thing about the design is it feels wrong for the character at first, because like the rest of the G1 Minibots, Hubcap’s original vehicle mode was a squashed, chibified, stylized version of a real sportscar, meant to resemble a Penny Racer toy instead of a real car, so it takes a moment to accept him in a more realistically-proportioned car mode.
But it’s a sleek, clean car mode that fits together really well, with only a few panel seams across the body. One little detail I like is the sort of triangular indent on the left of the car’s hood, because it’s a bit of sculpted detail that he shares with the G1 altmode, further tying them together design-wise.
Just don’t look too hard at the fists in the back, his only major robot-mode parts visible.
For colors, Hubcap is still mainly yellow and black, and I’m pleased to say that his front and back bumpers and headlights are painted black and grey, and his wheel rims are painted silver, making him really look complete. The Autobrand on his hood is a new detail for him, but it’s appreciated for making his hood feel less barren.
For gimmicks, aside from rolling well, the fun is once again is all about how he interacts with that accessory kit.
Firstly, as suggested by the instructions, you can slightly modify the bazooka mode, and peg it on top of the car. It’s the second use that’s more interesting, though, as the kit breaks into pieces, and the attachments fit onto the bottom…
…unlocking a rocket-powered skiing car mode, loosely based on another Cliffjumper moment from Dinobot Island.
This is a clever configuration, in that it repurposes the cannon’s brackets as skis, and the unfolding end of the cannon as a third ski to make the car even. It’s such a weird, bonkers moment to translate onto the toy, much less a toy of a different character, but it’s a clever and fun configuration.
There’s less you can do with his accessories in this mode, owing to him only having connection points on the top and bottom of his car mode, but stock photography of the Bumblebee retool also offered this alternate way to mount his cannon, which involves popping the shield piece off and repositioning his arms, creating something that looks like the improbably large weapon emerged from a secret compartment.
And I still manage to finagle it into another radio tower/gun turret form, too.
While there’s a bit less you can do with them, it’s still really fun to mess around with his kit of accessories in this form.
Overall
I was always going to be inclined to like this figure, simply because it’s Hubcap, my first Transformer. But just taken on its own benefits, it’s a surprisingly strong figure. It may be small in size, but it makes me think of Siege Ultra Magnus, where it’s just so dense, with so much engineering going on, that it still feels like it lives up to the price point, before even getting into the big pile of accessories.
What we’ve got here is a good-looking minibot with a ton of Masterpiece-grade articulation, a fun transformation, a solid altmode, and a surprisingly robust grab-bag of accessories that he can interact with in extremely fun ways. The literal only negative I have to say is that I wish they went for a deco that was less slathered in paint, due to the likelihood of QC problems, and some chipping issues on his shoulders. Whether it’s this version, Cliffjumper, the Wal-Mart exclusive Bumblebee, or Hasbro Pulse and EB exclusive Bug Bite, I highly recommend picking up at least one iteration of this mold, because it’s worth the retail price, and is a lot of fun. Personally, I’m looking to grab at least the Bumblebee version myself (2021 note: See you Monday!)
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