The Energon Pub

Defensor is part of the second Wave of Kreon Combiners, and only the second Autobot one (whereas the Cons are up to 5 already). The Autobots are outnumbered in the MicroChanger waves, too. Evidently, the Kreon design team are Decepticon fans. (I approve!)

First, some general notes (if you are already familiar with Kreon Combiners, you can skip this):
* Worryingly, the bottom flap of the box is not sealed in any way, no tape or nothing. That’s just asking for trouble.

* The instructions for the individual robot modes and vehicle modes are separated; i.e. it shows how to build Hot Spot’s robot mode, then Blades’ robot mode, etc., and then shows how to build Hot Spot’s vehicle mode, then Blades’ vehicle mode, etc..

* The stickers used for the set are, dissappointingly, semi-transparent. That is, a white sticker on a black part will instead appear gray.
Also, the Kre-O logo has it’s own sticker, if for whatever bizarre reason you want “Kre-O” slapped on something.

* Standard Kreon fare: decent articulation for minifigures (swivel waist/hands, ball-jointed shoulders/legs), prone to stressmarks. They still haven’t addressing the wrist issue...

* Each mode has a lot of leftover parts (including a full extra gestalt limb that has no use!). Save the box and/or grab a sandwich bag.


Interestingly enough, everyone’s got “Protectobot” as part of their legal tradmarkable names, instead of the usual “Autobot”… like Groove has. Poor Groove; bad enough being denied a spot in Defensor, he can’t even be a Protectobot anymore.


Blades


Blades is built like Spinister, just sans the giant gun barrels. The helmet is, strangely, a different, slightly darker shade of red than the rest of him. Pity.
A shot of the un-covered chest decal:

We seem to be getting a lot of blue-faced bots recently. Blades, Cheetor, Guzzle…


Blades, naturally, turns into a helicopter with a Coast-Guard-eque color scheme. Compared to his team mates, it’s terribly basic, little more that Blades lying down on top of his gun.

First Aid

Just look at all those techy greebles. Such amazing detail on these decals.

Translucent blue brick on top of another translucent blue brick....

Seems like nearly everyone with a mouthplate (even the “Megatron helmet” one) has this expression.

I’ve always had trouble getting this helmet off their respective heads, but First Aid’s comes off easily. Too bad he has neither a cool mouth like Soundwave nor a use as a more accurate gestalt head like Vortex.


First Aid gets rebuilt into an ambulance truck. The front is a bit gap-ish, and the fact that the hands are angled slightly --offsetting the wheels—makes him look a bit squashed, but a pretty decent vehicle for a Kreon.

Nice little mock-Red Cross there.

NO BLADES THAT IS NOT A HELICOPTER PAD!!

Hot Spot

Unlike seemingly every other G1 rescue vehicle Autobot, Hot Spot is neither predominately red nor white, but instead a lovely, camera-friendly tint of blue and black. And he comes with new guns! Well, new for TFs, not sure if any Joes or whatever already used these before.

I haven’t the foggiest idea as to what kind of gun this even is.

Technically, the ladder on the back is supposed to peg in one space further down. Whoops. This way looks more natural, anyways.

Loving the little stripes on the shoulders. Kinda wish his signature “fireball” decals got homaged somehow, but that’s forgivable (I'm not sure where you’d put even them).
If you like your Hot Spots to have a faceplate, conveniently there’s a Scour--- Nemesis Prime blindpack with such a helmet.


Hot Spot’s rebuilt into a fire truck looking thing, complete with semi-articulated ladder. Less gap-ish than First Aid, but still looking like he got stepped on.


Streetsmart

I’d have thought “Streetwise” would’ve been easier to trademark than “Streetsmart”. *shrug*
Not entirely sure how often we’ve seen a head cast in white. Arcee had one, I believe, dunno about anyone else. Nice to see we’re getting more variety in face colors.
Too bad he uses the same actual face design as Blades.

Interesting way to store wheels on the back.
Before I get into Streetsmart's vehicle mode, I must point out a specific brick:

See these small bits that kinda look like fists? They have been giving me a LOT of grief, as they to refuse to peg directly onto the 4-pegged “backpack” part … which is what they’re supposed to do for both car- and Defensor-modes. They peg into other bricks, such as the two-peg rectangle they attach to in robot mode, but inexplicably NOT the back-pack one. HARGHBLARGHARFFL!
Incidentally, this means the car-mode and Defensor are slightly mis-built.

Vehicle mode is, again, squashed-looking but a but more convincing than others. The grille and the hood (which doubles as Defensor’s chestplate) not flowing with each other somewhat breaks the illusion.

As the “backpack” part is placed over the legs instead of the chest, this mode may have a bit of trouble staying together -- that is, the back end (formed by the legs) may want to pop apart from the front (formed by the chest). I had to flip the legs upside-down to keep it together.

The “fists” are supposed to be under that dark gray bit instead of on top, but as I said above they REFUSE!
Why does a police car even need a gun sticking out of it for?


Oi, why was G1 so full of red and white Autobots?

I suspect these guys will look great with the Cityville sets.


Defensor

At last we come to the main draw of the set, the combined might that is Defensor! He kinda looks more like a super-mode Hot Spot, though, due to using the same head, helmet, and guns, and the blue showing up in the torso.
Notably, he's less wide than the original, due to how Kreon combiners work.
Do note that at this point I threw those fist-pegs out the window and instead used the “open-fist”/c-clip parts that serve more or less the same purpose, which is to make the chest look slightly wider (they’re on the sides of the chestplate).

Quick run-down of articulation:
- Swivel waist, ankles, wrists, shins
- Ball-jointed shoulders, hips, fingers
- Hinge elbows, knees, ankles
Kind of a weird set up, actually, which combined with the inability to balance on just one leg neuters a lot of poses.
And yes, those are tire buttocks.

One thing’s for sure, Defensor does NOT suffer from “Diminished Gluteal Syndrome”.

Another design oddity: the front end of a truck on what is otherwise a purely helicopter arm.
A further curio is that Defensor has two differently colored feet: Streetsmart’s is black and First Aid’s is red, though that better matches their respective leg-bots.

The chest decal and the ones on the limbs are pretty difficult to see in-hand, which is a shame since each limb has it’s own distinct decals to match the bots that form each limb (Hot Spot has two himself, actually, one for each side; weird). They really need to use more opaque stickers, or at least cast the limbs in something other than jet black.

Despite the eccentricities, Defensor does come across as repeating a lot of features of past combiners: Blades’ arm mode is similar to Vortex’s, Streetsmart’s leg to Swindle, Hot Spo’s arm to one of the Constructicons, helmet the same as Bruticus’ and Abominus’, etc.. The dual guns are an interesting touch, as is the First Aid leg, but not enough to stave off the sensation of déjà vu. The individual Bots don’t fare much better: Blades is similar to Spinister as before mentioned (and really, just about every other copter-bot), and Hot Spot will likely be compared to Inferno. Being yet another batch of red-and-white Autobot rescue vehicles doesn’t help (even if it’s G1-accurate). Still, Defensor looks pretty rad. I like the combination of blue/black torso and red/white legs; nice mix of uniform and patchwork. And he doesn't have much kibble that gets in the way like Abominus and Piranacon do. The separate Protectobots ain’t bad either, but three of them will end up blending in with the see of similarly-colored Autobots.

Verdict: Fun little set, not terribly distinctive from the others, though. Those fist-parts can go rot in hell.