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by **ZeldaTheSwordsman** » Sat Jun 19, 2021 12:44 am

I had been on the fence about Studio Series '86 Hot Rod for the longest time, due to my misgivings about the faux-parts chest (and I still think it might have been better not to go that route). But an argument with another reviewer, who is categorically not fond of this particular Hot Rod, pushed me to get him so that I could actually evaluate him for myself.

Hot Rod comes in a standard Studio Series Voyager box, which is rectangular as opposed to the "trapezoidalized rectangle" shape favored by the War for Cybertron trilogy. The front features Studio Series branding, The Transformers: The Movie branding, artwork of Hot Rod holding the Matrix of Leadership, and the "86" imprint accompanied by his number within that series (04) in small type.

The left-hand side of the box features an enlarged, albeit more cut-off, version of the box art and the number 86 (for those unfamiliar, this refers to 1986, the year The Transformers: The Movie came out) in large type.

The back of the box features renders of Hot Rod (you can tell by the smooth hood alignment and the absence of color in the clear parts), some short bits of descriptive text, the flavor text "Hot Rod lights the darkest hour!", and some standard Hasbro legal/safety boilerplate.

The right-hand side of the box features a closeup of Hot Rod's head from the box art, the Studio Series logo, and a larger printing of the "8604" numbering compared to the front.

Opening the box, we find Hot Rod and his accessories in the insulation tray, nestled in a backdrop as per all Studio Series figures. The backdrop in this case is, as advertised by the back of the box, the depths of Unicron where Hot Rod has his showdown with Galvatron.

A view of the backdrop, unobstructed by the tray. Apologies for the light washing it out a bit.

Let's begin by having a rotational look at Hot Rod against the back drop. Here he is seen from the front, dead-on. Screen resemblance is on-point.

And now a front-left angle view.

A left side-on view, showing the robot mode to be fairly tidy overall.

Back-left angle view.

Straight-on view of the back. Here, screen accuracy has had to make some concessions to transformation practicality, but the overall look is still right.

Back-right angle view.

Right side-on view.

And finishing out the rotational look with a front-right angle view. Overall, a fairly accurate Hot Rod. Aside from not actually being magenta, but HasTak refuse to do that even for the slagging Masterpiece toys, and this red is at least closer to magenta than all regular-retail Hot Rods that have come before. He also has substantially fewer mold hollows than the average figure.

With that general look over, it's time to get into more detail, starting with a closeup of the face. It's a good sculpt,very well-done. And unlike a lot of Hot Rod toys, the outer crest is actually painted a darker red.

Hot Rod's waist incorporates the boxy "belt" shape from his original toy and screen design, something the Titans Return toy sacrificed for ease of articulation. Power of the Primes Hot Rod has a simplified form of it, achieved via a (badly) hinged plate. The Classics toy meanwhile actually had similar hip construction to Studio Series Roddy here, but still discarded the boxy shape (one of many stylistic choices with that figure I take issue with).
Detailing-wise, it has a little bit of greebling, and the customary lines (albeit angular this time) that stem from Floro Dery's initial draft of Hot Rod's design using part of the windshield for his belt buckle (one assumes it was pointed out to Mr. Dery that this would be awkward at best to engineer).

One of SS86 Hot Rod's more premium features is having articulated hands. They open and close, and they rotate at the wrist. They're a screen-accurate gray, unlike the toy-based orange of both TR and PotP Hot Rod, and furthermore they're actually cast in gray plastic (so no fear of paint rubbing off).
Now, we have had 5mm-compatible hands with finger articulation on Deluxe-size figures before...

...but it involved decidedly chunkier hands.

Now, one complaint I've seen levied at SS86 Hot Rod is that his arm articulation is allegedly "severely limited"... but I can't say I agree with that in the slightest.

The outward articulation is certainly different from that of figures like SIEGE Sideswipe and Ratchet, since the hinge is in the torso rather than the shoulder itself (something necessitated by Hot Rod's shoulder tops being his car mode park lights), but that's a fairly common design choice and isn't really a limitation per se.

Especially since unlike several other figures with the same style of outward arm articulation (including Titans Return Hot Rod here), SS86 Roddy's shoulders don't interfere with him having a 90-degree range of motion on that axis.

I find it to be a rather useful situation of the joint, since for one thing it helps with getting around his wide chest.

The positioning is good enough and the shoulders low enough to prevent them from bumping against the spoiler, which as seen here is an issue for PotP Rodimus Prime.

Now, there are some limitations to upward/backwards rotation of the shoulder at certain outward angles, but overall these are fairly minor.

TR Hot Rod has the same limitations, perhaps a little moreso actually. But again, they're minor and SS86 Hot Rod's shoulder hinges actually have a rotation joint below them in the torso that does wonders to mitigate what little trouble these limits cause.

For a bit of perspective, here's how limited Power of the Primes Hot Rod's articulation is overall - about the only upside he has articulation-wise is double-hinged elbows and that... really doesn't make up for his limits.

For a little more perspective, Cybertron Hot Shot's range of upwards/backwards shoulder rotation while his arms are at an outward angle is limited by his backpack.

And to hopefully really put things in perspective... I present Cybertron Leobreaker and Armada Thundercracker. Take a gander at the limits of their arm articulation.

However, while we're on the subject of SS86 Hot Rod's arms, I think it's a good time to point out a potential QC trouble spot - the pieces of the outward hinge seem susceptible to having mold flash left.

Moving on from his arms to his legs, here's the sideways tilt range of his ankles. Not the most we've seen, but plenty decent.

Now, here's one area where I actually was disappointed by SS6 Hot Rod's articulation: the backwards rotation of the hips is almost as restricted as it is on PotP Hot Rod. I can't help but feel this could have been avoided.

That hitch aside, however, the overall range of motion is quite satisfactory.

He can even do stuff like this. This pose also makes it very evident that he has 5mm ports in his soles.

Between those and the ports in the backs of his lower legs, he does indeed have some degree of Weaponizer/Fossilizer compatibility. It's not the full range seen in most War For Cybertron Trilogy figures, as SS86 has fewer ports for the sake of a cleaner look, but it's more than nothing.
This also shows that unlike the Classics figure, SS86 Hot Rod's hands are 5mm-compatible.

And now it's time to discuss accessories.

Studio Series '86 Hot Rod comes with seven accessories:

Earthrise

The pegs for the Photon Lasers are unpainted, as is the norm. Some people are bothered by this, but I'm fine with it - not only are the pegs obscured from sight anyway when the guns are held, but the rubbing from being taken in and out of hands constantly tends to wear paint on pegs away relatively quickly (meaning it goes to waste), plus it can cause tolerance issues if it ends up on the peg too thick. I do wonder if perhaps they could have been put on the charcoal sprue, since unpainted charcoal pegs would contrast less with the silver, but the red does have an interesting effect.

The blast/flame effect parts can fit onto the exhaust pipes on Hot Rod's arms. They look cool, but they're the wrong color for G1 Autobot laser fire.

Comparison shot 1 of SS86 Hot Rod's Photon Lasers with PotP Roddy's.

And comparison shot 2. Both sets have their good and bad points as far as G1 accuracy is concerned. With PotP Roddy's set, the fatter gun has the "wings" in the correct shape and at the correct elevation; the "wings" on both of SS86 Hot Rod's Photon Lasers are higher up and more simplified because they're also used as mounting tabs. However, the PotP lasers have detailing taken from Rodimus Prime's Photon Eliminator Rifle (since they combine into it) at the expense of details from the individual G1 lasers, so the Studio Series lasers are more accurate in terms of overall detailing.
Neither is a match for the G1 toy's lasers color-wise; those were a slightly metallic dark gray, like the Titans Return toy's guns.

And here they are in Hot Rod's hands, looking fairly nice.

Hot Rod with the guns in a shooting pose, and showing confirmation that they're blast effect-compatible.

Holding the PotP Photon Lasers for comparison (and further proof that he's 5mm-compliant). They look decent, but with the positioning of the pegs and his relatively short forearms he can't manage their size as well as TR Hot Rod can.

A demonstration of how well Hot Rod's articulation can be used for shooting poses. Another reason I don't agree with the complaint that his arm articulation is "severely limited".

One of the specific uses HasTak had in mind for that arm articulation (and the opening hands): Holding the Matrix of Leadership. Looks pretty good.

And now, holding the Matrix with the glow effect attached. That also looks decent, and would allow for "Arise, Rodimus Prime" re-enactments.

Speaking of Rodimus Prime, here he is holding PotP Roddy's Matrix, just because.

And now it's time to demonstrate the final accessory, as well as one of Hot Rod's special built-in features.
First, you need to open the forearms up. On the reverse side of the right wrist, you can see a tool. On the back of the left wrist? A 5mm peg.

The tool is the welding torch Hot Rod used to repair Kup on Quintessa. The 5mm peg is used to mount the buzzsaw Hot Rod used to slice his way through the hostile tentacles of Quintessa's sea life.

Proof that the saw's blade rotates (note the position of the molded "2"). Now, it doesn't spin freely, at least on my particular specimen. But it does indeed rotate.

Hot Rod's weapons store on his back. The guns tab in, and the saw slots onto them. The slots on the saw are a little smaller than ideal, making it a tight fit, so be careful. This can also cause paint wear on the gun tabs, so watch out for that as well (might be good to hit them with some Krylon clear-coat).
This is where that interesting effect of the unpainted pegs being red occurs: being red means they blend into the back.

Hot Rod has another special built-in feature to him: The retractable visor from the Lookout Mountain sequence in the movie. You access it by opening up his head...

...and then very carefully (it is a small, clear plastic part) flip the visor down over his eyes.

Then close up the head, and ta-da! It looks quite nice, and it's awesome to have that sort of feature on a figure this size. But do be careful with it.

As is the standard these days, Hot Rod has a 3mm posthole in the back of his pelvis for connecting him to a flight stand. But before getting into that, this is a good time to talk about another point of contention I've seen: The joint colors not blending. I've actually seen this worded as "They couldn't even get the joint colors right."
But there are some important things to consider there:
1. Even on premium figures, the color of inner joint pieces ABSOLUTELY NEVER has priority when it comes to mold layout - understandable, because they're small pieces of little visual importance (and thus, easy to ignore if they don't end up blending or being quite the right color).
2. Anymore, HasTak like to use semi-soft plastic for those inner joint pieces because it handles the physical stresses both from being in a joint and from a joint getting knocked about better than the standard hard ABS does. The back piece of the pelvis isn't a joint per se, but making it semi-soft puts less stress both on it and on the clear plastic of flight stands.
** Relating to point 1, since inner joint pieces are of low visual importance it's more practical and economical to put them on the same sprues as more important parts that are also cast in semi-soft plastic for durability reasons. In this case, the hands (which are themselves sort of a joint piece anyway thanks to the finger articulation) and the spoiler (which is on a screen-accurate single central strut, so if it wasn't made from semi-soft plastic it would snap off like a dry twig. And even the original toy used a semi-soft plastic for it, though not quite as soft)

** This semi-soft plastic is also unpaintable with the industry standard paints, much like Armada Thundercracker's eyes, so the parts can't be color-corrected that way either. This is also why the finial of Hot Rod's spoiler isn't painted.

So, yes, the inner joint pieces of the arms and legs aren't the orange promised by the renders. But there are good reasons, they're small so it's easy to dismiss them, and the yellow of the leg parts harmonizes well with the orange thighs anyway.

Anyway, the flight stand compatibility does indeed allow for some cool poses. Such as jump-attacking with the saw.

Now, before we get onto the next part... My Titans Return Hot Rod is obviously customized. The bumper tuck has been modified so that most of the hood stays on the chest, the engine block flips away in robot mode, and he's heavily repainted. So, he's not entirely an accurate comparison.

So here's photos of unmodified TR and Legends Hot Rod so that you can keep in mind what the vanilla versions look like.

Front view comparison with Titans Return and Power of the Primes Hot Rod.

Side-view comparison.

And rear-view comparison.

I'd say he comes out looking pretty good. He's a lot more elegant than Power of the Primes Hot Rod, and doesn't have the screen-inaccurate spoiler-hiding high shoulders or chest-issues (The Hasbro version tucks away too much of the hood and doesn't hide the engine, and on the Takara version the chest doesn't tab in) of the otherwise-excellent Titans Return design. It does admittedly involve faux-parts, but still looks good.

Bonus comparison with Cybertron Hot Shot, because Hot Shot is a major-league design homage to Hot Rod; he even transforms similarly to the G1 Hot Rod toy and has a faux-parts Hot Rod chest.

And now... buckle up for a ride because it's time to transform him to car mode. It's an involved process, and I'm mostly going to let the pictures do the talking.

Time for the first note. Due to the clearances, you have to fold the legs up one before the other...

...and close them up one before the other.

[img]https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/c32b4c02-5aaf-4b9d-86d0-856d6c09651d/dellzq1-d37ec3e4-047b-4dd1-a75a-6f3ddcf4a954.jpg/v1/fill/w_800,h_425,q_75,strp/ss86_hot_rod_review_074_by_zeldatheswordsman_dellzq1-fullview.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9NDI1IiwicGF0aCI6IlwvZlwvYzMyYjRjMDItNWFhZi00YjlkLTg2ZDAtODU2ZDZjMDk2NTFkXC9kZWxsenExLWQzN2VjM2U0LTA0N2ItNGRkMS1hNzVhLTZmM2RkY2Y0YTk1NC5qcGciLCJ3aWR0aCI6Ijw9ODAwIn1dXSwiYXVkIjpbInVybjpzZXJ2aWNlOmltYWdlLm9wZXJhdGlvbnMiXX0.MBMMxS5Uws1ON7Zw_a-rUmu3t5G_R2VmCJGZLGwfbE8
Pay careful attention during this part...

...there's some small tabs to deal with in a bit of a tight space.

Here we can see the joint color thing that probably irritates people the most, but again it's understandable why it wound up that way (they would have had to make a separate red semi-soft sprue just for these parts). And out of the box, Titans Return/Legends is in a similar boat.

And at this step, it's time for a pause to discuss something important.

The rotation joint for the arm pipes is a potential point of failure. The tabs on the peg are small and on the delicate side, and on mine one tab on the peg for the right arm pipes was broken out of the box. I have to wonder if perhaps they could have made this a pinned joint instead, to remove the need for the flimsy tabs... In any case, be very careful with the arm pipes.

Likewise, you might want to be careful when clipping them to the pipe sections on the legs. I say might because, well... I question the clips even being there. There are other factors in place to keep the arms secured in position, and the pipes being clipped together gets in the way when getting the panels that cover the hands tabbed in. So breaking the clips that link the pipes might actually improve things - not 100% sure, so think carefully before removing them.

And ta-da, car mode transformation complete. Like I said, rather involved and a bit fiddly - not quite on the same level as Revenge of the Fallen Leader-class Optimus Prime, but closer to that than you'd expect of a figure like this. Thankfully, the instructions are clear and don't have any dodgy decisions with regards to order of operations. You're probably going to want them the first couple of times you transform the guy.

The car mode looks fairly decent overall. Probably the most screen-accurate shape-wise we've gotten in a retail toy and the overall look is fairly nice. The paint on the windshield/canopy is matched fairly well to the body plastic, the orange paint on the headlights is applied well... There are, however, some alignment issues, particularly with the outer front ends of the hood. But at least getting things aligned well enough for all four wheels to roll is reliable.

A front-top view, again looking very nice.

Right-hand side view.

Back-right angle view. And here, you can see an issue if you hadn't noticed it already.

This right here is the single biggest failing point of Studio Series '86 Hot Rod: The rear end of the car mode is exposed knee joints. I seriously have to wonder if something more could have been done here had they either given the car mode a straight front end (as per the G1 toy), or compromised slightly on robot mode screen accuracy, so that they could eschew the faux-parts chest... That might have freed up money and plastic.
There are at least molded taillights, although like every regular Hot Rod so far they're not the screen-accurate circular shapes.
Hot Rod is overall a premium figure, but trying too hard for extreme cartoon accuracy in both modes hurt him on this score.

Back-left angle view.

Left side-on view.

The blast/flame effect parts can also be attached to the vehicle mode tailpipes. The blue color might not be right for Autobot laser fire, but it still works for an exhaust effect.

The vehicle attack mode. The guns tab sideways into slots in the engine block, similar to the Titans Return toy (although unfortunately they're not long enough to mount the TR guns on this figure) instead of it having a posthole. The upside to this is that both guns can be mounted at once. The downside is that they can't act as swivel turrets like with mounting a gun to the G1 toy, and nor can you mount SIEGE Firedrive. This is another instance where I find the unpainted pegs being red helps camouflage them visually. Not to the same degree as the previous instance, but still.

The guns can also mount/store on the roof, using the same slots used for storage in robot mode.

A couple of front-side angle view altmode comparison shots with Titans Return and Power of the Primes Hot Rod. Studio Series '86 Roddy looks pretty good comparatively.

And now the rear-view comparison. We already knew that SS86 Roddy didn't fare too well here, but neither does PotP; he may not have the exposed knee joints, but there's a lack of detailing and a bit more of a visible gap up top. TR Hot Rod is the only one who looks particularly good - the knees double as rear vent grilles, the light details are prominent (although not painted on a stock figure; remember that mine is a custom[/i]) and there's even a central tailpipe.

Obligatory bonus appearance by Cybertron Hot Shot.

Comparison with some other Generations Autobots in car mode.

A little maneuver that can help with transforming him back to robot mode; it's also a good idea to make use of the elbow hinges.

Height comparison with unarmored SIEGE Magnus as a proxy for comparison with WFC Optimus Prime (who I don't own and don't plan on owning). In any case, it's a decent height relationship.

Group shot with my other Generations TFTM Autobots, minus alternate versions of himself. He looks pretty good with the group, and sizes well with them too.

In conclusion... I think that overall, Studio Series '86 Hot Rod is a good although not perfect figure; he's premium-but-flawed.

He's not a Voyager per se, obviously. He's in fact a bit light on mass compared to contemporary Deluxes.

But he is [b]not a scam, nor is he some harbinger of doom of HasTak selling us Deluxes at Voyager price if we're foolish enough to encourage them by buying him :roll:

What he is, is a use of a Voyager's development and engineering budget to try and create as premium a Deluxe-size Hot Rod as could be managed at retail (because Hot Rod was the protagonist of the movie). And in many respects, he succeeds - especially in robot mode. The car mode does suffer a bit, because he's a bit too ambitious at trying to juggle super cartoon accuracy for both modes, but the rest of him is definitely premium.

Having bought him, and owned him for a little over a week at the time of writing this, I have to conclude that while he's certainly got his flaws... some of the complaints I've seen (especially those about the arm articulation) are people allowing the fact that he's deluxe-size at Voyager price to warp their perception of him, hyper-exaggerating his flaws while dismissing or outright denying his good points and his engineering complexity (comparing him to contemporary Deluxes... there is just no way in hell he could have been done like this with a Deluxe's development budget. End of story).

I can't wholeheartedly recommend him like I did with SIEGE Astrotrain, but there's a lot to like about him. And I don't regret getting him, or feel ripped off - I definitely feel like I payed a premium price for a premium (if still flawed) figure.