The Energon Pub

So, I found this listing on the 'bay (E, not Michael) for a Legends Class-sized Hot Rod that looked pretty sweet. It's apparently from Papa Toys, which is a company I know next to nothing about. I'm not sure if they do third-party stuff, or knock-offs of third-party stuff, or both, but either way this is the first time I had seen anything like this and I took the plunge and bought one, not sure what to expect. Almost a month later, I got it in hand.

It's a surprisingly good figure; somewhere in the neighborhood of 4.5 inches/11.5 cm, and very sturdy and well articulated for the size. There's wrist swivel, waist swivel, and both ankles and head on ball joints! The transformation is more complex than I expected, but not to the point of frustration (although the instructions aren't very clear, and do omit some obvious steps).

I only have the one photo, because it's literally been years since I posted pics on this or any message board, so once I get a decent image hosting situation I'll post more. Had to share it, though, because so far I've seen nothing about it around here.

Glarryg

More pics: first off, he comes with three different guns:



And here are some shots with PotP Hot Rod:



As you can see, he's more animation-inspired versus toy-inspired, but I don't own either version of MP Hot Rod for a better comparison.



He does have gun-in-engine-wielding capabilities.

He is a little backpack-y, but it doesn't throw off his balance very much:



The back view looks kind of like an upside-down rocket pack; if it could be flipped, that'd be great.



Glarryg

Wow, looks great for such a small package... Might have to search one out. From Papa Toys, eh?

I think so. I got the "no box" version, so I'm going by the only writing on the instruction sheet, which said "PPT-04 Flame Warrior" along with some Chinese characters (I recognized the first as meaning "fire," so it's probably just the Flame Warrior name in Chinese).

On the subject of the instructions, these were notably less helpful than most third-party product instructions, in that entire steps are very obviously left out, like rotating the back wheels into the lower leg sections and exactly when to rotate what in the chest section when going into robot mode. It wasn't too hard to figure out, though, and I'm guessing that there's a lot of shared engineering with one (or maybe both) of the versions of MP Roddy, but I don't own either so I can't say for sure.

Glarryg

4.5" isn't exactly Legends-size. It's more like Scout/midget Deluxe. Legends is around 3.5"