Transformers: Energon & Beyond

[JediTricks]

Found him at Target yesterday, someone grabbed case-mate Downshift tho'.

TF:CY Cybertron Defense Hot Shot - (CDHS for short) Vehicle mode is a narrow armored vehicle with a twin-cannon turret on top, the main colors are Hot Shot's blue plus some black, dark red, silver accents, and a V-Autobot logo painted above the driver's top hatch -- no weathering though, but he doesn't need it the way CD Red Alert did, and CDHS's colorscheme seems police-authentic. Like CD Red Alert, CDHS's alt mode has open slots instead of windows for the front compartment and side doors in the middle. The overall shape is very much armored anglular, with plenty of sculpted details, rivets and vents and even hand tools, there's a minicon hardpoint on either side down by the bottom on some enginey-tech stuff, even the peg handle of the knife sticks out the angled back like an exhaust pipe, it's a pretty complete look all around. There's an odd open drawer shape on the left side, it looks like it should move but it won't, it seems to have no purpose but it holds the cyber key so closely (albeit horizontally) that I'm convinced this is its purpose. The turret is a cool addition, it can rotate, it's shape reminds me a lot of Armada Demolishor's upper body, this turret has guns which can rotate at the back, and it's hinged so it can be in the middle of the vehicle or right above the cockpit. Also, the front bumper halves can swing open to become cannons, and also reveals 8 mini-missile pods. The few small complaints I'd have are that the side doors clearly have something right behind them, the boxes angled off the back are not the best way to hide the feet (not that it looks kibbly though), the robot waist transformation joint won't let the middle of the vehicle close up that last tiny millimeter (barely noticable, but I'm a nitpicker), and on mine, the front wheels are symmetrical so both sides' tread bite towards the road, but the back wheels are identical so one bites away instead - a very easy mistake to make at the factory since they look nearly identical.

The key gimmick is one of the less interesting ones, insert the key into the turret and the tops of the guns flip up to reveal a bank of non-removable mini-missile pods, this reminds me of last wave's Thunderblast except even sillier since there you were trading 4 missiles for 1 big missile/cannon whereas here you're trading 2 guns for a bunch of teeny missiles. Luckily, CDHS's is not hampered by the "eh" gimmick.

Transformation seems simple when it's really not, just about everything is based on pulling pieces out and splitting, but there's plenty to pull out and do. The instructions make the leg/hip transformation seem more complex, but basically just pull out the back of the vehicle and it'll move the waist into position in the same motion. Pulling forward on the vehicle's front end is so short that it's easy to miss it actually moved; it's also easy to forget to extend the lower arms.

Robot mode has a tall feel from the overall shape plus with those high shoulders, but is actually the same overall height as regular Hot Shot while a head shorter for the actual body, so I guess this makes CDHS a small deluxe bot, yet I don't get that feeling from him. Robot mode takes a lot of visual cues from his previous incarnation, the chief details of Hot Shot's head and chest are played into CDHS in color and sculpting yet at the same time everything's different, such as the head with a longer, more "adult" face. If you look from the top of the shoulders, there is some empty space but it's easily forgiven here since it's not the pass-through kind. CDHS's colors are all the same except for the lack of translucent, the yellow paint on this guy is all fairly sloppy, and there's no Autobot logo, but the rest looks good. CDHS's articulation is good, but could be better - he has head, universal joint shoulders, hinged elbows, universal joint hips, and hinged knees - if there had been rotation above and/or below the elbow, that would have been better, same with the knees, but what he really could use is a ball joint for the shoulders instead of universal for the added range of motion (plus it would have been cheaper to make). The articulation and bot itself feel very solid, no weak hips or fall-off parts here; the range of motion allows a lot of character. Like before, there are kibble panels on the outside of the forearms, not as big this time but they do keep his elbow articulation from going past 45 degrees. CDHS has a long knife tabbed between his boots, it can fit in his hand or be pegged into a hole on the front of his fist, and it looks good in both configurations. The turret can hang down at the small of his back where it's out of the way, but it is meant to be up behind his head so the turret can fold forward so its cannons flank his head, these are the only blasters he has here. Activating the gimmick does the same as before, and you can manually open the shoulder panels & the bumpers on the shoulders, and rotate the front of the shins around to reveal a total of 86 mini-missile pods including the 2 unpainted ones on either hip, plus with the gimmick activated and the bumpers open you also have 4 blasters pointing into the sky: Take that Starscream! Ok, so those skyward blasters aren't terribly practical, but still.... And except for the pods on the hips and the ones under the bumpers now facing up, all these pods are painted yellow.

Overall, Cybertron Defense Hot Shot does for me what this line's original Hot Shot didn't, CDHS is exciting and cool. Yes the range of motion could be better and he could have more weapons, but this is a pretty tough Autobot with a solid vehicle mode, nifty weaponry, and a very cool bot mode. I like him a lot, I'd definitely recommend him.

[Adam]

There is an image floating around from the new club mag that show Alt Mirage in color. Alt mode too. Also first look at 10th Primal and Megs outside of Botcon, as well as the Red Alert repaint named Cannonball we saw via art on the club's website awhile back.

Megs look hawt. Can't really get a good idea on Primal, the pics angle is throwing me off. Cannonball is... interesting. Mirage looks like a winner.

I also just noticed the little blurb and apparently, Cybertron's 2nd half subtitle looks to be "Primus Unleashed!", like Unicron Battles was to Armada and Powerlinx Battles was to Energon.

[El Chuxter]

Any word if we could get a figure, albeit way out of scale, of Primus/Cybertron as shown in the DK Visual Guide (to my knowledge, the only picture ever of Cybertron's robot mode)?

[Tycho]

Alternators:

Sunstreaker - bought
SKids - skip due to weak character
Blaster (repaint) - Buy when available. Blaster is cool! Silver's a good color.
Optimus Prime - skip because 20th Anniversary is more traditional and I have it
Mirage - Buy when available. Mirage was always cool!
Rumble - skip due to senselessness of making a former cassette tape, this (Decepticons are largely jets or military vehicles, some construction machines)


Possible repaints: Rumble might do it - but repainted as an Autobot most likely. Maybe just maybe I'll track down all the Stunticons, but I'm not too keen on Dead End (I have Sideswipe and now Sunstreaker and I don't typically buy repaints, but they are brothers).

Swindle looks cool, but seems like a waste of time since I doubt they ever do Brawl, Vortex, and especially Blast Off traditionally. I've heard rumblings that Onslaught will be a Hummer, but this would be more acceptable to me were it Megatron (with a military cannon attached).

I'm still really waiting for an even $70 Starscream to Alternator scale and I'd buy the repaints as Thundercracker and Skywarp!

[JediTricks]

Here's the scan: http://www.villagephotos.com/viewpub...4295&selected=

Alt Mirage looks very decent, first Alt I've been really excited about in ages.

Megs and Primal look good, but they're deluxe-sized so I'm not really sure about them.

Cannonball does look pretty iffy, they should have put new stuff on top of the car and given him a new head. Decepticon Pirate indeed.

Any word if we could get a figure, albeit way out of scale, of Primus/Cybertron as shown in the DK Visual Guide (to my knowledge, the only picture ever of Cybertron's robot mode)?

You mean other than this Primus figure that's coming out later this year?
http://www.e-hobby.co.jp/cgi-bin/omc...T&code=primus#
or am I misunderstanding you? (btw, I think e-hobby mistransformed the robot mode.)

[Tycho]

Dang! Mirage has me drooling!

[El Chuxter]

Very cool indeed. I didn't realize such a figure was in the works. The coloration is different from the DK image, but pretty close otherwise.

Though the image I found on an online search has a background that makes me believe the image in that book originated in Dreamwave's More Than Meets the Eye miniseries....

[JediTricks]

A little update on Cybertron Defense Hot Shot... over on the BWTF forums, someone in reference to my review's questions about "the drawer" on CDHS mentioned that Remy had a photo of the knife clipped to the outside of the drawer. It turned out that the knife just slides right back off whenever you tip it back, but it led me to come up with a different way for it to hold the knife, so I made this page to explain:

http://www.geocities.com/jeditricks/cdhs/

[Adam]

Primal and Megs should be Mega's, not Deluxes. At least that's what I remember them being at botcon.

[Tycho]

In light of the "success" of the Star Wars Transformers, Hasbro is going to make a famous car line:

"In-Bred" will transform into the General Lee from Dukes of Hazzard.

"Bay Watch" will transform into KITT from Knight Rider. His repaint will be called "Speedo" and transform into KARR.

"Sucker" will transform into the A-Team van.

More will be announced soon.