TransFormers (Movie) Hardtop (Target Exclusive)

There are times when I really don't understand Hasbro. Their strategy with the TransFormers brand generally seems pretty haphazard, their strategy with specific toylines often seems not to be fully thought through... but their strategy for store exclusives can be utterly baffling. The only consistent thing is their inconsistency.

When the first TransFormers live action movie came out, the new toys featured novel and impressive engineering, the likes of which had genuinely never been seen before. It may not have been perfectly accurate to the on-screen CGI, but the movie toylines were the first step in a quantum leap in toy engineering than continued over the next few years.

And yet, for a set of Target Exclusive, movie branded Scout class figures, Hasbro mined their back catalogue for repaints. The selection was, somehow, very Energon-centric despite the clear disparity in aesthetic. Then again, the other line selected was Cybertron, which generally wasn't much better. Hardtop - a repaint of the Cybertron figure of the same name - turned out to be the best match, at least as far as his vehicle mode was concerned, since it's not a million miles away from Landmine.

Vehicle Mode:
So here we have the Cybertron Hardtop mold in a colourscheme which could almost be described as vehicle- and context-appropriate. Like Landmine, he's one of the Sector 7 attack buggies, and so molded in a very desaturated light blue, a super-dark grey... and olive green. OK, so it's not a perfectly well-judge combination, but at least everything looks reasonably military.

The paint pattern seems to be broadly similar to the Cybertron figure, albeit with a few omissions (the roll cage being the most prominent) and alterations, as well as a few additional applications specific to this version of the mold. One feature of the paintwork that I particularly appreciate is that the colour used for the bullbars on the front of the vehicle has been extended from the blue/grey plastic down onto the olive plastic making up the underside. This paint has also been used to match up the two halves of the footplates on either side of the driver's compartment, despite the disparity in plastic colours being not half as glaring on this version. For a bit of real-world authenticity, the headlights and roof lights have been painted silver, with the casings for the latter painted olive - though it's a very different, desaturated shade compared to the plastic colour. He also, bizarrely, has yellow and black hazard markings on the rear of the vehicle's roof, to the side of the weapon mounting.

Rather than featuring any Decepticon insignias in this form, Hardtop has Sector 7 insignias on each side of the vehicle, just behind the driver's compartment. Something I didn't notice on Signal Flare or Landmine is that the way the logo is printed is technically wrong: this specific design would normally be printed in white or silver on a dark/black background, as the righthand face of the cube should be black, with the lefthand face being red on the standard version of the logo, or uncoloured/transparent on this single-colour variant (see Stockade). This is probably just my technical background in Publishing getting a bit nit-picky due to boredom, particularly since it's taken me thirteen years to notice. Nevertheless, it is somewhat frustrating, in retrospect, that Hasbro's art department didn't produce two versions of the single-colour variant, so the appropriate version could be used depending on context/background colour.

Naturally, the weapon included is the same as the Cybertron figure's accessory, molded in the dark grey plastic and with the key slot decorated with a few touches of the flat olive paint, the arrow painted yellow, and its raised frame painted silver. The key itself is the standard Cybertron/Galaxy Force Decepticon key, rather than the Earth key packaged with both the original Hardtop and the Swindle repaint. It's molded in completely opaque black plastic, with the frame painted flat olive, the raised hexagonal detail painted silver on top, and another Sector 7 insignia stamped in the middle in silver, and thus appearing correctly compared to the version on the vehicle.


Robot Mode:
Well, if Hardtop didn't seem to fit the Cybertron/Galaxy Force aesthetic, there was never any chance he'd look right in the movie line. He's mostly made out of featureless flat panels, boxy limbs and a far too humanoid noggin. The colourscheme works, his overall build is OK... but there's no way he's suited to the hyperdetailed and intricate look of the movie toylines.

The paintwork helps about as much as one might expect - which is to say, not much. Weirdly, the use of yellow paint on the chest and the visor is identical to the Cybertron release, and both have silver faces. Meanwhile, the silver paint on movie Hardtop's 'ears', chest and shins basically copies the placement of black on the Cybertron version. Having silver paint on the central chest panel almost gives it a skull- or insect head-like appearance, which is all the more strange on a movie toy that is in no discernible way a Beast Wars reference. The Cybertron figure's extensive coverage in gold paint on the arms has been omitted here, but that does help this version look more consistent than its predecessor.

Since the included weapon is the same as the Cybertron version aside from its colour, there's not much to say... but, like vehicle mode in general, a transforming weapon is at least slightly appropriate to the idea of this being from the movie universe.


It's been so long since the event in question, but I believe Hardtop was one of the set of three I bought - the other two being movie repaints of Energon Signal Flare and Arcee. These three were the first of four waves of Target exclusive Scout class movie figures released in the US, and I think I must once have held this mold in much higher regard because, presented with the set of three, I had only wanted to avoid Signal Flare...

I can kind of understand Target wanting to be able to present a set of movie figures not available anywhere else... and I can almost understand them wanting the smallest size class available at the time, if only to limit their risks... but I cannot understand the recycling of such unsuitable molds as tie-ins to the first TransFormers live action movie, even if they did get decent, real-world paint jobs and camouflage patterns. That said, I was more than happy to pick up another version of the Energon Arcee mold, despite that same aesthetic mismatch, so there's a clear double-standard at work in my own collection.