At about 9pm on New Year’s Eve, one of my friends sent me a text that said, “Do yourself a favor and step outside for a second. You don’t want to miss this. I have something for you.”
Well, what could I do but step outside for a second? And on the back patio was this box:
Just a couple of days earlier, this same friend and I had been talking about the new Transformers: the Movie (1986) Studio Series figures, and I mentioned that I think I had to pick up the Hot Rod. And then he got it for me. That was a REALLY nice way to end 2020.
I then spent the next couple of hours transforming and posing him. Seriously, this is easily the best Hot Rod action figure ever made. He’s got his flip-down visor:
And there’s some plug-in blast effects for his wrist cannons to recreate the moments where he’s shooting at the Decepticon-infested Autobot Shuttle from Lookout Mountain.
Inside his right forearm, he’s got the blowtorch he used to repair Kup while they were on the twisted planet Quintessa in TFTM:
And in the left arm, Hot Rod’s got a peg that allows you to plug in his buzzsaw from that same scene:
And he comes with an Autobo Matrix of Leadership that his hands can open up and grasp onto, complete with a plug-in glowing effect for said accessory:
And the insert of his box is a background painting from the movie, from the scene where Hot Rod battles Galvatron inside Unicron’s belly and unleashes the power of the Matrix.
I personally still prefer the non-transforming R.E.D. Series figures for their poseability (because I never keep my TFs in their alt modes anyways) but for a Transformer that lives up to the brand name, this Judd Nelson-voiced, turbo-revvin’ young punk is way past cool.
‘Til All Are One!