If you’ve been following G.I. Joe news recently, you’ve likely heard that the Loyal Subjects are reinventing their G.I. Joe vinyl figure brand in pretty exciting new ways. More on that in a bit…
For now, though, they’ve also produced a pretty hilarious video putting their Transformers and G.I. Joe vinyl figures together with pretty great results.
They have three episodes planned, with the first one now on YouTube. Check it out below, and keep watching LoyalSubjects.com for the latest info!
Two more Protectobots reviews come your way this morning, courtesy of Entertainment Earth! Today we look at the leader of the team, Hot Spot, as well as the combined gestalt, Defensor.
Hot Spot transforms from fire truck to robot, and Defensor stands tall with the combined might of all five Protectobots behind him. Check out my Transformers Review section, or click the links below to see what I think.
The combined form of the Protectobots team stands against the Decepticons! To date, I’ve had some mixed feelings about the actual combiners within the context of the Combiner Wars, in some cases the result feeling like less than the sum of its parts. While I love Superion, Menasor left me a bit high and dry to the point where I wasn’t sure I was even going to get the Protectobots.
As a kid, I enjoyed the combiner teams, and was a massive fan of the Aerialbots and Stunticons, so I felt a certain nostalgic attachment to getting those updates in the Combiner Wars. The Protectobots, not so much.
But a constant flood of peer pressure from my so called “friends” (you know who you are) convinced me to put the Protectobots on my Father’s Day “wish list” and my lovely wife grabbed me a few of them. I filled in the gaps pretty quickly, and I’ll be honest, I’m very glad I did. Defensor is straight up awesome.
He’s easily a match for Superion in my Combiner Wars love fest, and a good deal above Menasor. The combined form stays together nicely, is aesthetically pleasing, and moves well without completely falling to pieces with every slight motion.
Hot Spot as the torso is a fantastic first step. The way the ladder swings up underneath and plugs Defensor’s head into his shoulders is inspired and works amazingly well. I also love how the framework of the ladder separates into a great looking elaborate chest plate, leaving Defensor looking pretty great even without Groove (who I will get eventually, but don’t own yet).
I chose to go with the Hasbro recommendation for the limb arrangement, which is Blades and Rook as the arms with First Aid and Streetwise as the legs. If you go by the G1 iteration, Blades and First Aid would be arms with Rook (replacing Groove) and Streetwise as the legs. Either way, the “Scramble City” format allows for a bunch of customization. Personally, I like the Hasbro suggested design. Both Blades and Rook function very well as arms with good range of motion and some nice bulk, especially with Rook on the left side.
First Aid and Streetwise are both great looking legs, too, transforming in much the same way as their Stunticon predecessors. The beauty, of course, remains in the torso, since it provides great hip joints to allow for stable poses, unlike Menasor, whose clugey hip joints almost single handedly bring that figure from great to “meh” in my mind.
Defensor’s head sculpt is fantastic, and the combination of color schemes blends really well, looking very “combiner-esque” but also creating a pretty nice flow of colors from one part to the other. Hot Spot’s two laser weapons plug together to form a somewhat rudimentary larger weapon, and the end result is one heck of a great looking Combiner that happens to be made up of some equally great individual figures.
I find it hard to believe that I was going to pass up the Protectobots only a month or two ago, but I’m really glad I let myself get pushed around by friends, as this team is fantastic and was a joy to put together.
Combiner Wars Defensor
Character
Articulation
Robot Mode
Transformation
3.8
Summary
What happens when you put five great individual figures together into a single combiner? You get a terrific update to Defensor that looks awesome and poses great. A very clever transformation gimmick for the torso adds some much needed stability to the core, and the scramble city style limbs look nice in various different configurations. He’s a great combiner and a lot of fun in all the different modes.
As leader of the Protectobots, Hot Spot holds a key place within the Transformers mythology, though like some other characters, he’s one I haven’t had much attachment to, even back in the 80s.
It’s a familiar theme. The original fire truck, Inferno, was a pretty key character to me back in my childhood, and as such, I never paid a whole lot of attention to Hot Spot. He was a part of a combiner team that I didn’t have any other figures to attach to, so unlike the appealing Stunticons and Aerialbots, the Protectobots all got left on a store shelf and I never really formed that attachment. Unlike First Aid, though, Hot Spot hasn’t played any especially key roles in recent comics, so I still don’t have a firm allegiance to him as a character. That doesn’t do a whole lot to diminish how I feel about him as a toy, though, and as a toy, Hot Spot is pretty good.
The Combiner Wars voyagers to this point have been somewhat hit or miss, though mostly hits. I love Silverbolt, and I like Motormaster okay, though his failure as a central piece to Menasor left me feeling a bit cold after using him for a little while. Hot Spot doesn’t have any of these drawbacks.
In vehicle mode, he’s a powder blue fire and rescue truck, a color that isn’t seen very often, but it seen from time to time. The long form of the vehicle looks nice, and the sloped front and back make him look sleek and quick, even as a potentially lumbering fire truck. He has six wheels, and a lot of play value, with a working ladder. The Defensor head even flips back to reveal a bucket for a tiny figure to stand in. I like the colors (even though the blue doesn’t match a whole lot of other Protectobot vehicles closely) and the design is pretty good. The mid-section of his vehicle mode is a bit thin, looking a lot like robot legs barely covered by a closed shell. It kind of resembles an elongated ladder truck, but not really, and that does take away, just a bit, from the vehicle mode.
His transformation works nicely and even as a newly tooled Voyager, I found it pretty straight forward and quick to get him from fire truck to robot. Separating the rear to create armored arms, and the front to create his large feet works nicely and the end result is a fairly sleek looking robot.
At least until you look at his back. Hot Spot is a great looking robot, especially head on, but before long you do notice quite a bit of ladder-based kibble strapped to his back, just kind of hanging off. I understand why, I mean it’s difficult to do a ladder truck without having this obvious slab of ladder hanging from the figure, and full credit to the design team for making it less visible from the front. I really like the large, wide shoulders, and the small spring-details in the forearms. In robot mode, there’s a lot more red to tie him into the rest of the team than he has in vehicle mode, with a nice allotment of blue and black, too. His head is somewhat reminiscent of Optimus Prime, I thought, but still looks individual enough to work. He stands tall among his teammates and looks really nice leading the team, with his dual laser weapons and impressive stature.
Combiner Wars Hot Spot
Character
Articulation
Vehicle
Robot Mode
Transformation
3.5
Summary
As the leader of the Protectobots, Hot Spot stands tall and proud among his teammates, weilding dual lasers and a great looking head sculpt. In fire truck mode he has a working ladder and a great look, even if some unfortunate robot kibble takes away from the overall look. In robot mode, if you can get over the ladder hanging off his back, he’s a well articulated and impressive looking Voyager scale figure ready to lead the Protectobots against the Decepticon onslaught and give their lives for the Autobot cause.
Rook is a nice change of pace in the Combiner Wars line for a couple of different reasons. First and foremost, he’s an entirely new figure, rather than a modification or reshelling of an existing figure, and secondly he’s a totally new character, so I don’t have to try and relate any past nostalgic attachment to his Generation 1 iteration. Many fans lament the fact that Rook apparently has replaced Groove (at least at the deluxe scale, considering a Legends Groove does exist, and works with Defensor in his own way) but my lack of attachment to past versions of these characters has allowed me to not care a whole lot about that.
With that in mind, though, the fact that Takara is producing a Deluxe scale Groove to work with Defensor makes me whimsical that we might see him stateside at some point, which I love just for the sake of getting a new toy, and not necessarily as a replacement for Rook. Honestly, Rook is cool enough that I don’t feel like he really needs replacing.
Where most of the Protectobots vehicles are very clearly rescue based, Rook is completely about defense and offense. As an armored SWAT vehicle, this new Protectobot certainly seems like the brick house of the bunch, a strong and powerful warrior as opposed to someone focused on rescue. His alt mode is pretty fantastic, with six wheels, a tough looking armored hide, and excellent transformation. There is no real visible kibble, and panels all fit together extremely well, leaving a solid tank-looking armored vehicle ready to stand strong against a Decepticon onslaught.
His transformation works well and contains a lot of similar mechanisms to other Combiner Wars figures, from the extending, flip down legs, to the pull apart arms. Everything flows nicely, and even though he is essentially a completely different toy than any others before him, I found the process as straight forward as others, which is appreciated to a Transformers fan with limited capacity for mechanical engineering.
In robot mode, Rook still exudes a sense of strength and stability, with exceptionally broad chest and shoulders. I love the fact that his tires are embedded in his chest, and the armored hide of the SWAT vehicle makes for some really huge looking shoulder pads. His arms are really short and stubby, with nice elbow movement. I do have some issues with the arms, though. The flaps hanging off his forearms that make up side panels on the vehicle look somewhat out of place in robot mode, though they could make for some great protective shields. Also, while part of me absolutely loves the built-in cannons in his fists, another part of me wishes he had some normal hand holes for weapons. His legs are surprisingly sleek and very well articulated, with great ball joint hips and very bendable knees, He stands well and looks very imposing, even at a somewhat squat Deluxe scale. Rook looks really great in either mode.
From a color perspective, Rook takes some nice blue elements from Hot Spot and Streetwise, with a healthy dose of black in his torso and white trim throughout. His complete lack of red does separate him somewhat from the other Protectobots, but even with that, I find him to be a great part of the team look and feel.
If I have any complaints, I’m not especially sure what to do with this weapon. He’s got some sort of forked prong that doesn’t seem to support his position as a thick and strong bad ass. I would have loved for him to come with some nasty looking chain gun or other weapon that might better support his place among the team.
Really, that’s a minor complaint, and along with Streetwise, Rook is my favorite Deluxe team member, and perhaps my favorite Protectobot overall.
Combiner Wars Rook
Character
Articulation
Vehicle
Robot Mode
Transformation
4.3
Summary
Stout and strong, Rook is the apparent powerhouse of the Protectobots team. As a replacement for Groove, he brings strength and raw power to the team, blasting away from his hand-mounted cannons, then transforming into armored vehicle mode and slamming through Decepticon defenses. He is a great figure in robot mode and vehicle mode, with a nice and easy transformation, and a solid armored bulk in both renditions. A totally new figure, and a great one to boot.
It’s times like this that I wished I was a more hardcore Transformers collector over the past several years. One thing I’ve always loved doing with my G.I. Joe reviews is doing team shots or comparison shots, and when it comes to Streetwise, there’s nothing I’d love more than to do a shot with him and Transformers: Generations Prowl standing side by side or back to back. I think this character and Prowl would work really well together (if you can ignore the fact that Prowl is kind of a dirtbag in the current IDW continuity).
Streetwise has a lot of fun elements that tie to his fellow police officer, from the red trim on his great new head sculpt to the black and white echos of color in his sleek sports car alternate mode. Granted, in car mode, he has much more blue trim than black, but in robot mode, the black and white offsets definitely lead me to think back to Prowl. We’ll see Prowl in Combiner Wars form soon enough, but honestly, I have more nostalgia for the classic look. Maybe I’ll get him some day.
Putting the focus back on Streetwise, he’s another great addition to the Combiner Wars brand featuring a really fun looking sports car police car mode, again leveraging the tooling from a Stunticon – this time Dead End/Brake Neck. There’s enough new tooling on the outside that the police car itself looks nicely different from the other two vehicles, and I am in love with the white and powder blue paint scheme. The transformation works really well, and leaves no robot pieces visible, looking like an excellent speedster police car, capable of chasing down any rogue Decepticon.
Like Dead End and Brake Neck, the transformation is relatively simple and quick, which is a piece of these Combiner Wars figures that I love. While some folks might complain that too few core figures are being used with a lot of re-shelling, I love the fact that so many figures share the same essential transformation mechanism. It makes it really easy for n00b’s like me to change modes.
In robot mode, Streetwise has the great black and white color scheme, with a nice helping of red mixed in, which helps tie him to some of the other Protectobots well. The team based color scheme has always left me scratching my head a bit as we see reds, whites, blues, and blacks, with no real unifying color pallet tying them all together. Streetwise probably comes the closest to using the majority of these colors together, and the result is a very appealing looking robot. His articulation is fantastic, too, with a ball-jointed neck, shoulders, and hips, along with very nicely poseable elbows and knees. In fact, the elbows are double jointed, which enables him to reach some very cool poses in robot mode.
In spite of really knowing nothing about Streetwise as a character, this figure is a ton of fun, and one of my favorites of the Protectobots team. The vehicle is sleek, the robot is fun, and the transformation from one to the other is quick and seamless. I also really love this silver shotgun, it suits the character quite nicely.
Streetwise
Character
Articulation
Vehicle
Robot Mode
Transformation
4.1
Summary
A sleek and powerful police car, Streetwise hits the streets in defense of his fellow Autobots. A great black, white, and blue paint scheme reinforces some great design aesthetics and a really fun robot mode. Even as a reshelling of two other Combiner Wars characters, Streetwise shines!
