Or, at least, that's what I thought at first. Upon closer inspection, it turned out that Takara Tomy had used their slightly modified TF Legends Targetmaster Hot Rodimus mold. While I'd already acquired Hot Rod before Hot Rodimus even appeared, I did - briefly - entertain the possibility of picking up Takara Tomy's version as a replacement, as I have the Targetmaster version of G1 Hot Rod, and the translucent plastic flame pattern on his chest, along with the overall better colourscheme, were quite appealing.
In the end, I decided to get the Reprolabels set and make do with Hasbro's offering, so getting my hands on this mold via the Street Fighter II crossover set seemed like an unexpected bonus. He's packaged along with Arcee/Chun Li, and she turned out pretty cool... So, without further ado, let's see what Takara Tomy made of Ken.
Vehicle Mode:
Titans Return Hot Rod surprised me with is rich red plastic - an unusual thing with a Hasbro toy these days, as they've tended toward more muted reds - but, other than that, it was remarkably bland in terms of its paint job. This one, sadly, takes that to a whole new level as the paint job amounts to blacking out the headlights, reducing the bonnet decoration to a black arrowhead - with the exposed engine painted black - yellow hubcaps and spoiler, but literally everything else is a dull, flat reddish colour. I'm almost at a loss of adequately describe this colour - it's somewhere between old bricks and a dark, salmony red, but not quite either, and it probably comes from a sampling of the highlights on Ken's default colour gi in the game. The absence of a painted flame pattern on the bonnet (even though it's there as sculpted linework!) substantially reduces this car's essential 'Hot Rod-ness' in my eyes. It did strike me that Takara Tomy could just as well have painted the whole flame pattern in black, considering how it ends up in robot mode... But perhaps Capcom were concerned that'd look more like Zangief's chest hair?
As with Hasbro's version, the spoiler is very thickly painted, but the yellow used on this version is warmer, and actually makes the yellow Hasbro used a little acidic by comparison. Given that it's on an uneven, panel-lined surfaced, the tampographed SFII logo came out crisp and clean, particularly in the subtle bit of halftone gradient between the colours used. It's interesting to note that the yellow portion of the logo is paler than the background yellow which, along with the built-in black drop shadow, helps the logo stand out better against the warm yellow background.
The exhaust pipes are molded in black plastic, like the wheels, and the canopy over the cockpit is molded in a much lighter, less vibrant, more translucent blue than the original. The canopy itself is painted properly - which is to say, the sculpted framework is painted red to match the rest of the car - unlike Hasbro's, which completely ignored the sculpted framework. The lack of variety in colour might suit the videogame character, but it really harms this toy - even the vents either side of the afterburner at the rear are painted to match the rest of the car, despite having been molded in black plastic. A bit of paintwork on the afterburner or the tail lights would have had zero effect on robot mode, but would have provided a modicum of visual interest to the vehicle.
The remolded parts are all at the front of the vehicle. The central bonnet section is a single piece on this version with the headlights extending slightly further toward the centre, while the grille and the frame around the 'bonnet' have been remodelled slightly. All of this is in place of the hinged section on Hasbro's version which, in robot mode revealed a separate belly section (the underside of the car, which remains unchanged here) and filled in the chest cavity. Conversely, the exposed engine block - part of the bonnet mold on the Hasbro version - is a rotating section that folds in for robot mode. While I understand that all this red and black is in homage to Ken's appearance in Street Fighter II, the fact that both the exposed engine and the car's headlights are painted black really don't do much for the vehicle's appearance, though I'd imagine the resculpted parts were all very effective on Takara Tomy's TF Legends TargetMaster Hot Rod.
The real downside to the use of this mold is that it was reworked with the TargetMaster weapon in mind, not the two combining pistols packaged with the Titans Return version. Consequently, while the Hasbro toy can accommodate the individual pistols in the 5mm sockets just behind the front wheel wells or combined and pegged into the exposed engine block as a turret for another Titan Master, the remolded engine block on this version can only accommodate weapons via a 5mm socket. Thus, it can only make use of the combined weapon by plugging it in sideways., which looks pretty ridiculous. It's a huge waste of weapons that have been painted with a shiny, super-glossy metallic red. If only the entire car had been painted that way!
Robot Mode:
The lack of colour variation was bad enough in vehicle mode, but in robot mode, this version of Hot Rod looks dangerously like a knockoff - like one of those cut-down TransFormers repainted to resemble a superhero for no obvious reason. The crossover gimmick of applying skin tone paint to the robots is arguably at its worst here, with the pink paint applied to his arms not only failing to follow any of the sculpted detail effectively, but cutting off awkwardly around where a human's shoulders would be, leaving the upper shoulder bulk bare red. Similarly, it cuts off at the cuff, to give him the appearance of having boxing gloves like Ken's (albeit red rather than brown!), but it's a fairly arbitrary cut-off, which runs right through the middle of sculpted trapezoid details, and then the backs of the hands are unpainted pink plastic, where Convoy/Ryu had red paint to complete the appearance of 'gloves'. The legs are completely unpainted, but then his feet are covered with the skin tone paint, even on the undersides, which is bound to scuff over time.
Things are barely more interesting on the chest, which has a virtually featureless panel of skin tone paint front and centre, on the reverse of Hot Rod's engine block. Surrounding this is a tapering frame of black paint pointing down to his groin, featuring a black Autobot insignia about halfway down. Two little notches of black - the ends of the resculpted headlights - poke in from the sides, and then there's black paint around the waist and down the sides of the groin to represent Ken's obi.
Personally, given the changes to the sculpted detail on the bonnet - and particularly the addition of linework for Hot Rod's traditional flame pattern - I'd have been tempted to paint the entire flame in skin tone paint, and the remainder of the raised bonnet black... but, given that Ken's gi doesn't actually have black hems, there was no need for any black paing here in the first place. His Autobot insignia would have been better placed on the flat panel, since the expanse of featureless pink looks daft. At least on the TF Legends Hot Rod figure, this panel was painted to match the bonnet, and sat above a translucent orange flame pattern on his chest.
Placing the two metallic red guns in his hands is about the only way to add any visual interest to this figure... but, to be honest, they don't even suit him as they're too flashy and decorative. Maybe that's suitable for Ken, in the games, but it doesn't work against the dull red and pink used for the rest of the figure and, again, I'm left thinking how much better it would have been if the entire figure - or as much as possible - had been painted to match the guns.
The head sculpt is the basic Hot Rod mold, with the helmet painted yellow to represent Ken's mop of blond hair, while the curved crests over his eyes are now black... Presumably as a homage to Ken's bushy black eyebrows? Naturally, the face is painted skin tone, while the eyes - like those of the other two Autobots - are black.
HeadMaster Ken:
Curiously, Hot Rod's Titan Master figure, Firedrive, makes for quite an excellent mechanised mini-Ken figure - the bare red plastic doesn't matter as much here as he's so much smaller, and there's so little room for applying paint. The arms have been painted as if they're bare flesh, but at least his gloves are handled better, with only the fingers and thumbs painted. The head is painted much the same as the larger robot's albeit with the entire visor painted black. Not sure if that's intended to suggest sunglasses, or just emphasise Ken's eyebrows.
Since there is a minor difference between this mold and TR Hot Rod, it's worth noting that his chest pegs in more tightly, but the lack of the fold-away nose to the car means (a) the sculpted detail of the belly is covered over and (b) there are ugly great gaps in the sides of his chest - and another just in front of the head - that show through to the cavernous interior. This was used to facilitate light piping of the translucent chest on the TF Legends toy, with its cool tile pattern sculpted on the inside face. The remolding of the nose also means the front of the car doesn't inhibit his waist rotation, while leaving TR Hot Rod's front end unfolded means the chest can't tab into place at all and would present an obstruction to the waist rotation if it did.
In the end, and despite the meagre paint job on Convoy, I think Hot Rodimus-as-Ken has ended up being the most deeply frustrating of the four crossover figures. It doesn't make the best use of the mold, in my opinion. Cutting Hot Rod's already limited palette down beyond even Hasbro's meagre paint job and replacing the funky translucent chest of the Takara Tomy mold with and even more bland, desaturated, opaque red - all in the name of matching the videogame character's appearance - was a bad enough decision, but then it doesn't even do a particularly good job of representing him. I get that Ken is wearing a gi, much like Ryu, but Hot Rod is still a robot so, as with the other three, variations of metallic paint would have been preferable.
Making matters worse, where TR Hot Rod suffered from floppy hips, this version's minor improvements there are counteracted by awfully floppy knees. The right knee is the worst of the two but, given the lack of poseability in this mold's feet, just about any action pose in my photos required an awful lot of patience and persistance to achieve without him tumbling over backwards. The hurricane kick shot needed not only a display stand, but a cocktail stick to hold up his extended leg.
If I'd had the option of buying SFIIXTF Arcee alone, I'd have gone for that... but, sadly, she's only available with this bland repaint of TF Legends TargetMaster Hot Rodimus, which doesn't even come with the TargetMaster weapon it was designed to make use of. As such, it's really not a particularly good set.
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