Energon Hot Shot, Reflective Review

While trawling through an old back up drive, I managed to find a little project of mine that I worked on while in uni.  It was a basic and HTML programmed page for my own hosted Transformers review page.  Oh the chuckles I had while looking at this.  So, since I am still alive but sadly have less time for blogging, I thought I would post what I did there on here.  Slightly changed as I had a few text links linked to pictures, and it’s just easier to embed pictures in blogger.  So here we go.  Enjoy my naïve views of toys when I was a younger grumpy old man.  Enjoy the work of my wonderful 3.2 megapxiel camera when I had very little idea how to use it.

First Review I’ll post will be for (drum roll please)  ENERGON HOTSHOT.



Incidentally, that’s the style of the page I was going for at the time.

Function: Battlefield Superintendent
Alternative Mode: Yellow Sports car
Spark Location: Left breast

Hot Shot

Hot Shot from Energon is a continuation of the Hot Shot character from the Armada series. Whereas the Armada version was a bit of a rookie, this time he has grown and become a fairly important guy in the Autobot forces. Mainly canary yellow in colour, I really hated this colour, until I played him quite a lot in the Armada PlayStation game, then I saw through his looks and decided to bite the bullet and get one. He looks quite a bit better than the Armada version, which made me scream in horror when I first saw it.

Robot Mode

The robot mode of Mr Shot, as I hear he likes to be referred to as (not) is not bad. Like most of the Energon Autobots of this size, he has no forward movement from the hips due to his legs becoming the arms of the Superlinked mode. The arms have very limited shoulder movement, so much so that he can't put his whole arm above his head. This doesn't really matter that much, but it always looks like he has to keep his underarms covered at all times (stressed out maybe?). His calves are fairly chunky, but the feet are small and rather niftily have the spoiler from the car cover over the top of each foot making them look pretty cool. He has movement at the knee, but on mine, it is very stiff and hard to move. Don't really want to move the knee, as once I have, it looks kind of silly, as there is no other movement to add to the leg. The groin has some fancy molding that looks like a zipper and some red paint. His groin forms the shoulders for Powerlinked mode. Balance is good and he can still be posed pretty well, with appropriate arm movement.



His face has evolved from the Armada one he had nicely. There are still a couple of familiar features, such as the visor that doesn't move, but has become the forehead area. He has a couple of red dots on the side of his head that could be the hinges for the old visor. The visor area is moulded onto the head, allowing no movement, much like the powered up Hot Shot from the Armada. His face is well detailed with blue eyes, and identifiable mouth and chin. However his neck blends with the chest making it look like a double chin. Add to that the way the head is attached doesn't allow any head movement from left to right or up and down. The head is attached to the engine of the car and folds out on a long piece of plastic that clips into the parts that snap together for the Powerlink. There is a lot of character in his face, and I am impressed with the moulding of it.

Vehicle Mode

Originally I wasn't getting Hot Shot due to a hatred of yellow cars, especially sports cars, but after the Armada game I changed my mind. I am glad I did, as I have now come to like it. Even though it looks a little too fat for a sports car, it manages to pull it off. The front has a black plastic grill, and some clear plastic lights, which are cool, because they look like the halogen lights in modern cars. You can see the spark point in the window of the car and the doors can be opened, but the arms can be seen. Therefore from the front it can look cool, but on the side, not so. The top of the bonnet has some grills moulded in and they are painted silver, there are mirrors moulded onto the windscreen/roof plastic which are jointed to the legs (boot of car) by some innocent looking black plastic bits. Overall, the car mode is pretty good.

The part I was pretty impressed with was the moulded engine, which has itself an Autobot insignia located on it. The fact that this detail was included on a normal sized toy is pretty cool, as they could have well left it blank. Love Energon! The gun is mountable on the back of the car, and the viewfinder fits on the opposite side of the boot. This looks pretty cool and allows for some funky drive-bys. However, if this is the case, maybe all the Transformers should become tanks and such like. The head is located on the underside of the engine too which can be seen if the car is up-ended.

 

Powerlink!



Hot Shots Powerlink modes are average. The leg mode is decidedly crap. The only difference from the robot mode is his head is left inside the bonnet as if it is in vehicle mode. You can actually see Hot Shot's arms as well, but when he is powerlinked, these are normally hidden by the other robots bits and pieces. Therefore, the joining Autobot is sitting on the shoulders, giving the resulting Powerlink an extremely long groin and chest area. However, as Hot Shot is fairly high in rank, I think it is unlikely he will be used as legs often.



The torso mode is much nicer. The forearms look a bit heavy and there is no molding of some sort of fist, but the stiff leg joints allow the arms to be moved, and posed and they will stay there too! The head and shoulders don't look too out of size, and the bonnet of the car fits nicely at the back to not get in the way, like a lot of the other characters. His Autobot spark, is however upside down, I don't know if this is bad, but the Ruination team and Scourge from the RID series had upside down Autobot insignia's showing them to be "fallen angels" of a sort. I doubt this will happen, because when he is in robot mode, all is good and I am currently being silly.

Overall

Quite nice all round, except for the leg mode. A solid character that will feature heavily in the story I think. Good car and robot mode and a good Powerlink torso make up for a pleasing toy.

Score: 7/10.
Loses on the fat car mode and bad leg mode and the yellow.

Reflective thoughts:

I think I was trying to be clever with wording and making jokes, but didn’t quite pull them off.  As it is, I still quite like this toy and my love fore yellow sports cars…  Well, let’s not call it love as such, let’s say tolerance for them has improved quite a bit.  Being typed up in notepad, I found quite a few spelling errors. Ha ha ha.  If I were to do this again, I would drop the scoring and work out white balancing on the images.

I also managed to forget to add a picture of the entire robot mode to the page.  Nice work there Tets!  Quality journalism. Ha ha ha!