Since I was closest to completing the Protectobots, I made a point of trying to obtain the two missing components - Streetwise and Hot Spot - as soon as it became practical. Both are reasonably easy to find on eBay, but the former is frequently broken, while the latter is normally missing some, if not all of his accessories - particularly the 'arms' for his base mode. I got lucky eventually, though, and even managed to get my hands on Streetwise complete with his packaging and a Hot Spot who was complete apart from missing stickers...
Still, Defensor is as good as complete, so let's now - finally - take a
look at... The Protectobots!
Blades
Vehicle Mode:
One of the odd things about the early years of TransFormers is that
many of the vehicle modes were so old fashioned. The Diaclone-derived
cars were understandable as they had originally emerged years before Hasbro
created the TransFormers brand but, by 1986, they were creating wholly new toys
for the brand. Meanwhile, the Bell UH-1 Iroquois/Huey family of helicopters
was first introduced in 1959... and Blades diguise looks very dated, even
compared to the other Protectobots. His specific model of Huey is the one
modified for medivac use, so the colourscheme is reasonably authetic within
the bounds of the mold breakdown, and assuming civilian rather than military
usage.
Sculpted detail is a little fudged, a few panel lines, elevator fins on the
tail, but with the engine casing given a very general shape and a large
transformation hinge sticking out on top of the cockpit. The back end of the
main body is significantly chunkier than on the real thing due to the the simplicity of the design and robot
mode's unfortunate need for feet. His landing skids are
equipped with four pinned wheels, while his two-part rotor blades and the tail
rotor are also pinned in place, and all offer free rotation. The main rotors
have teeth at the hub intended to keep them together and in line in their vehicle mode
alignment, but making the joint loose enough to (a) spin and (b) transform to
the robot mode configuration has also made them loose enough that they don't
stay together particularly well. This could have been fixed by replacing a couple of the angled teeth with a square peg/slot, but this is how things were done back then. While all the windows are painted in, the two
rectangular windows on the sides of the cockpit have a weird dome-like
protrusion which cuts into the painted area, seemingly due to the robot's shoulder joints. The only stickers visible in
vehicle mode are silver stripes down the white sections of each side, Autobot
insignias on each one, with another on the nose. Since rubsigns appeared on
TransFormers toys the year before the Protectobots arrived, Blades has a
fourth Autobot insignia on his roof, just in front of the hub of his rotor
blades.
Weapons-wise, a large peg on either side of the rear section is there to accommodate what his Tech
Specs describe as "twin 'smart' rocket launchers" which, for the time, were
quite well-sculpted. They're also surprisingly solid - far more substantial
than the average, hollow-sculpted accessory you get these days. It's also a
marked contrast with Combiner Wars, where each figure came with a single
hand weapon supplemented only by the gestalt hand/foot accessory.
Robot Mode:
Even back in 1986, a robot mode like this was a disappointment. So much
of his vehicle mode is an afterthought, and the transformation basically
amounts to extending chunks of helicopter away from his central mass to reveal limbs. His upper and lower legs are single conjoined blocks, he
has no upper arms at all, while his forearms are parts of the vehicle's side
panels. The helicopter's tail is folded up the outsides of his lower legs, the
nose is folded over onto his back, while the rotor blades just get kind of
wedged up against it... All the more remarkable because his Tech Specs make
specific reference to the fact that he prefers to use them for slicing up
Decepticons rather than flying. That said, there is one fairly ingenious
aspect to his transformation: the elevator fins are the tabs that slot into
the sides of the lower legs to make a secure connection.
Robot mode features stickers on the chest, hips and knees, but they're
basically all silver with patches of red and some black outlining - not very much
of interest, and the closest they come to tech detailing is the vent designs
on the chest stickers.
Due to the dodgy construction of his arms, his gun attaches to his
hand on the side, via an L-shaped peg. While this means it doesn't clash with his landing skids, it also means he can only wield the gun effectively with his right hand. It'll fit in the left, obviously, but ends up underslung, and looks pretty daft. His rocket launchers can remain attached to the
sides of his knees as they can be rotated just enough to give the tail section
clearance to fold around. The handgun is quite nicely designed and,
considering the recycling of weapons we see these days, it's refreshing to see
that each of the Protectobots' weapons are unique, just like those of the
Stunticons.
As with all the G1 gestalt limb toys, the head sculpt is a vaguely-detailed cubic connecting peg, though Blades at least rated a proper face - vaguely humanoid eyes, nose, mouth - though the chin is basically just a small block and the jawline is indicated only by the uneven borders of the blue paint used to cover his face.
Given the age of the figure (35 years old!), it should come as no surprise that much of his white plastic has yellowed. It's most evident on the lefthand side and top, though the head/combiner joint and upper legs are also affected. Strangely, the underside of the lefthand launcher remains almost pristine, particularly at the back, while the righthand launcher matches the rest of the figure in the extent of its discolouration.
First Aid
Vehicle Mode:
Considering there was already one ambulance in the Autobots' character
roster, it seems a little strange in retrospect that the Protectobots include
not just another ambulance, but one seemingly intended to be of exactly the
same Cherry Vanette model as Ratchet, just of a fraction of the size. Thus, we
have a very familiar-looking vehicle, but the transparent windows are gone in
favour of paintwork (for the front windscreen and the first two windows on
each side) and stickers (for the rearmost side windows). The rear windscreen is
unpainted, but it's also broken up by the 5mm port for attaching First Aid's
weapon... and the robot's exposed knees. There's also a large, unsightly void where
the lower part of the hatchback and the rear bumper are absent due to the
necessities of transformation.
First Aid has minimal paintwork beyond the windows - the front bumper and
headlights are painted silver, while the lightbar is painted red. Stickers are
also pretty minimal for this mode: a red stripe with 'EMERGENCY' lettering
running down most of each side... The front section of these stickers additionally features an
insignia of some kind, made up of a red triangle sitting in a cyan circle, as well as
black linework representing the doorhandles both for the cab and, seemingly, a
sliding door on each side. Like Blades, First Aid's rubsign is on his roof,
supplemented by a standard Autobot insignia sticker on the rear section of the
roof. This seems like strange placing, since the front of the vehicle is
largely featureless white space. While the sticker provided may be a little
oversized, I suspect it would fit... Though having markings on the roof is
fairly common for emergency vehicles...
First Aid may be an ambulance but, like the other Protectobots, he comes with
a weapon specific to his vehicle mode - described in his Tech Specs as "dual-barrelled de-crystallizer cannon". This attaches via an L-shaped
connector to the back of the vehicle, and can rotate a full 360° above the roof due to its
round connector. It's nicely detailed, and stretches pretty much the full
length of the vehicle.
Robot Mode:
First Aid cuts a fairly slender figure of a robot, albeit with a
massively broad chest compared to his tiny, cuboid head. That's a pretty small
recommendation, though, as the overall design feels not only basic, but lazy.
His arms are just sections of the vehicle's sides that pull out and, while he
does have fully-sculpted arms, unlike Blades, he also has extra vehicle panels
growing out of his forearms, with a small trapezoid section extending over the
forearm. This appears to be to ensure the stability of vehicle mode, as these
trapezoids slot into the narrowed waist section of the robot's torso - without that,
the lower part of the vehicle's midsection may have been liable to bend or
break.
Easily the ugliest part of First Aid's design is that the entire front end of the vehicle - from windscreen to bumper - is simply folded over onto his back, where it sticks out, almost doubling the depth of the figure. The whole thing looks like one of the really bad Robo Machines/Gobots that predated the G1 gestalts.
On the upside, his stickers are rather more colourful than those on Blades - red, yellow and blue appear within the black linework on the same silver background, with the uppermost stickers on either side of the chest featuring all kinds of simple tech detail.
First Aid has a leg extension joint which appears only to be necessary for the transformation process. He's about a head taller than Blades and Groove when it's collapsed, and extending the legs adds maybe a couple of millimetres to his height. Perhaps even more curious than that, the rear end of the vehicle is made up of two halves, as if there had been plans to allow the lower legs/feet to separate at some point during his design process.
First Aid's dual cannon becomes unusable in this mode as the only connection point is now on top of his conjoined knees. This feels like a bit of a missed opportunity, as a second port, either behind his head or on the inside of the flap, would have been concealed in vehicle mode, but available to plug the cannon accessory into for robot mode, though this may have needed a slightly longer connection piece. The handgun is nicely designed and molded in black plastic. Its handle is basically a flap with a tiny peg on one side, so it can only really be wielded properly in his right hand but, as with Blades, it can be underslung on his left.
The head sculpt is one of the fairly bland, battlemasked kind, though it's
interesting to note that First Aid is the only one of the limb-bots to have a
full battlemask - all of the others have a proper face, to one degree or another.
The basic details of the helmet are quite similar to those of Blades, albeit
molded in red plastic, and with the entire face - eyes and mask - painted
white.
Groove
Vehicle Mode:
The proportions of the Protectobots are exceedingly dubious, with only
First Aid and Streetwise scaling properly with Hot Spot, while Blades is far
too small and Groove is far too large. Had the articulation been up to the
job in those days, any one of the other Protectobots would have been able to
ride him. Making matters worse, Groove doesn't gain any detail due to his
larger size - if anything, he's less detailed... Though this could be because
the style of bike he's based on - an actual Police motorcycle manufactured by
Honda - wasn't exactly intricately detailed in the first place. It has the typical large, upright
windscreen over the front wheel, built-on panniers and a cargo box behind a
seat large enough to accommodate a passenger as well as the rider. They even
went to the trouble of sculpting in the additional cargo rack on the top of
the petrol tank... though it's raised so marginally, it could easily be
intended to represent an additional section of dashboard unique to the police
version of the bike.
In a lot of ways, Groove's vehicle mode is superficially similar to the GoBot Night Ranger, though this one perhaps looks like an updated version - based on the more elegant front end - and generally makes for a less convicing model motorcycle.
However, where the bike features vaguely-sculpted recessed headlights,
corner-mounted indicator lights as well as the raised 'piping' details on the front
tender and panniers, there are no indicators sculpted onto the rear panniers.
The closest he has is a marginally raised rectangle between the two uppermost
pipes, which lines up with a curved detail on the back, and it may be that
both are intended to represent lights, albeit those of a different model of bike. On
this specific model, the Gold Wing GL1200, the tail lights would fill the area between
the lowermost pipes starting at the rear corner, wrapping around the back, with an additional light
across the bottom of the cargo box.
Furthermore, while there's some quite intricately - and asymmetrically -
sculpted engine detailing, including very shallow representations of the
rider's footpegs, none of it accurately reflects the real-life motorbike,
which tended to have slightly more of the sides covered over. Due to
transformation, the cargo box isn't even complete - there's quite a bit of
empty space either side of the black plastic parts that form the seats (and
the robot's feet). While he doesn't have a (working) kickstand, there are
protrusions from the undersides of his exhaust pipes (sculpted but unpainted on the underside of the panniers) which don't quite reach ground
level, but are long enough to prevent easy toppling... Though his wheels are
wide enough that that shouldn't really be a problem anyway.
The only official stickers visible in Groove's vehicle mode are the Autobot
insignia on the front of the front fender, the two 'police star' icons on either
side of the petrol tank and the rubsign embedded in the windscreen. I ended up
supplementing the packed-in stickers by clipping some spare metallic orange to
fit the front indicators, but never got round to improving the rear. I also clipped a
couple of silver circles to go into his sculpted dashboard dials, and another
strip of orange that sort of resembled a fuel guage... Basically, while the front face of the windscreen and the headlights are painted silver, Groove pretty much
relies on his chrome to look anywhere near decent in this mode.
Curiously, Groove's vehicle mode weapons are described as "twin vaporators,
which shoot mists of oxidizing, freezing, and corrosive liquids"... which
seems a remarkably poor choice of armament for a motorcycle. They're
traditionally mounted for forward-firing, which would then place the operator
at just as much risk as the intended target, though it's conceivable they're
supposed to be mounted for rear-firing. Like Blades, they attach to pegs
which stick out of the the sides - on the cargo box, in this case - rather than
making use of the 5mm port on the back of the seat/feet. His handgun can be
mounted using the same sockets as in robot mode, but it will butt up against the pannier on one side, and the ground on the other.
Robot Mode:
Easily one of the weirdest-looking Autobots ever in the history of
TransFormers... and further proof that motorcycles are not ideal vehicle modes
for transforming robots, particularly with the level of engineering available
back in the mid 1980s. Where other gestalt limb 'bots from this era had
conjoined legs, Groove basically doesn't have legs... the entire back end of
the motorbike stays as it was in vehicle mode, and the only difference is that
he now has a pair of feet. He also has the entire front of the motorbike
hanging off his back, while the chromed sides are somehow supposed to
represent arms. As strange as Night Ranger looked, even his robot mode looks more like a robot than Groove.
Like the previous two Protectobots, he looks a little more lively in robot mode thanks to the additional stickers. The chest gets a pair of vague tech detail stickers identical to Blades' but for the application of red within the black linework, the waist gets a bar of red featuring what looks like a flowchart or circuit diagram, while the 'pelvis' gets a couple of silver blocks, each featuring three bars of red. Just for fun, there are also stickers on the internal, structural white plastic that could be generously described as 'the tops of this thighs', since there's a groove (see what I did there?) down the centre of his rear wheel, intended to indicate where the body - such as it is - separates into two legs. Weirdly, he also has strips of red down his arms - all the way from 'shoulder' to 'wrist' - which are literally just blocks of colour, without even a hint tech detail to suggest the presence of an elbow.
Another interesting feature of this figure is that his torso panel is die cast
metal, where Blades and First Aid are made wholly of plastic. It almost seems
a shame that so much of this metal is covered with stickers, but there wasn't a
lot of sculpted detail to it - about the most interesting feature is the sort
of 'Picture-Within-Picture' icon in the middle of his chest, directly below
his 'neck' stalk/combiner connection.
Groove is the third - and, thankfully, final - Protectobot whose pistol is wielded via an L-shaped peg going into a lateral hole through his hands but, unlike Blades and First Aid, he can wield his gun in two different ways in either hand because the hole passes all the way through. It still only looks vaguely convicing in the right hand, since that places the gun on the inside of the arm... but I honestly can't see why the hole wasn't made from top to bottom: it's not even as if there's any sculpted hand detail to work with. Like Blades, he can also make use of this vehicle mode weapons, since there are no moving parts that might clash with their mountings. The idea of 'vaporators' makes a bit more sense here, but the idea of a weapon that sprays out any kind of mist still isn't a great fit... particularly since they're essentially mounted at his ankles.
The head sculpt has much of its blocky design in common with Blades and First
Ait, though the sculpt seems to indicate that he has angled crests coming out
of his forehead, somewhat like G1 Prowl/Bluestreak/Smokescreen, albeit not
highlighted with any kind of paint. The only paint here, as with the others,
is over the face. The entire area, from his eyes to his chin, is covered with
gold paint, which does wonders for the minimal sculpt. Where Blades and
Streetwise have more fully-detailed faces, and First Aid has an angular battlemask,
Groove has a weird hybrid, where the face is largely featureless, but the
mouth and jaw are a separate block at the bottom, giving it an almost
beak-like appearance.
Streetwise
Vehicle Mode:
Like Prowl, Streetwise's vehicle mode is a Nissan, albeit a later model
than that of the older, Diaclone-derived Autobot. Some of his curves and angles are
quite similar to Prowl - particularly at the back - but the front end has
rectangular, partially retractable headlights (though obviously not as a functional feature on a toy this size). In toy form, considering the
size, it should come as no surprise that none of the vehicle lights are either
painted or stickered, nor does he share Prowl's black paintwork, common to
Japanese police cars of that era. The lightbar on the roof is painted red, and
the doors feature two-part silver stickers with black police stars
incorporating the Autobot insignia, so Streetiwse looks a little more like a US
police car than Prowl did... Although that's not saying much, since the design of US police cars tends to
vary from state to state, if not city to city. His rubsign is on the front of
his bonnet, roughly where the Japanese police badge sticker was on Prowl, and
there's an additional Autobot insignia sticker on the roof, just behind the
lightbar. While the front and rear windscreens are painted black, all the side
windows are black stickers, though I believe these came pre-applied.
Due to the age of the figure as much as its weird engineering, the front half of the car can be a little loose, though it stays together well enough when he's resting on a surface. Pick him up by the back, and everything is OK, but pick him up by the front and the transformation hinge in the middle of the vehicle allows the back end to sag slightly under the weight of the die-cast core of the figure. This can be improved by squeezing the front and rear of the car together, suggesting the problem lies in the leg extension joint within. The most frequently lost or broken part of this toy is the front bonnet panel, which is clipped rather than pinned to its transformation hinge. That said, it's not remotely loose, so I'd have to guess its liable to break through mishandling... that, or people have a habit of removing and then losing that part.
Streetwise's vehicle mode weapon plugs into a 5mm port in the back of the
vehicle, part of the spoiler section, so he's very much like First Aid or any
of the Stunticons, both in the way it attaches and functions in vehicle mode,
and how it becomes useless in robot mode... So, while Combiner Wars may have recycled
its molds repeatedly, at least all the weapons could be used in both modes...
Robot Mode:
Even for the time, even for this particular slice of the G1 toyline,
Streetwise was a piss poor example of a robot. While he looks passable from
the front - allowing for the car bonnet to end up looking like an apron and placing his rubsign in a rather awkward position -
viewing him from the sides or the rear reveals his bizarre construction. The
legs extend (almost imperceptibly) from an orange plastic block that serves as Streetwise's protruding backside. This is then attached to the die cast core of the toy,
which incorporates the combiner connection peg and the transformation hinge
for the front of the car. The front of the car is mounted to the front of the
die cast core, such that his head and shoulders are about a centimetre forward
of his stubby thighs. Meanwhile, his lower legs are made out of the entire
rear of the car, and the lightbar ends up protruding only a little further
forward than the top of the windscreen on the robot's chest.
Even from the front, though, his proportions are awful - a small section at the bottom of the die cast core acts as his waist and hips, with his thighs being two square columns of orange plastic. It's not unusual for a TransFormers toy's lower legs to be substantially longer than its upper legs, but here it almost feels as though the bonnet should be hitched up closer to the windscreen. In fact, until I saw a few more photos of Streetwise online, with his legs properly extended, that had been exactly what I did. However, doing so only exposes the lateral slot in the die cast section that's designed to accommodate the car's bumper so that the bonnet can sit flush down his front.
Making matters worse, the arms extend from the torso on large, cylindrical stalks, and are essentially devoid of detail. They're also pretty much hollow until what passes for a forearm, which is only bulked up by the presence of the vehicle mode's front wheels. The hands extend from the inside of the wheel wells and it appears as though each hand has only two fingers and a very stubby thumb, thanks to minimal panel lining. Other than Hot Spot, Streetwise is the only Protectobot with properly-designed hands featuring a peg hole running top to bottom through the fist, and it does hold his photon pistol very securely, so I guess looks aren't everything. It's also worth noting that, in spite of his ugly, awkward construction, Streetwise towers over the other three limb-bots - even First Aid.
Since Streetwise's head is entirely separate from the combiner peg, the
designers really went to town on it, making it a unique shape and style among
the Protectobots. It's molded in two parts - one being an extension of the
white plastic behind the windscreen, the other being an extension of the
orange hinged part affixed behind it. Overall, the helmet has a more rounded
appearance than the other three limb bots, and his antennae are more
pronounced, since the top of the head hasn't had to be squared off. The face
is small and somewhat pinched-looking, with only a couple of touches of blue
to highlight his eyes. He doesn't appear to have a nose, as such, but nor does
he have a full battlemask... In a way, it reminds me of Optimus Primal from
Beast Wars, in that most of his face is basically smooth and mask-like, with the
addition of a protruding block of chin... but then there's a cutaway for a
separately-sculpted mouth.
Streetwise is one of those TransFormers toys which is really hard to find
complete and intact - he's easy enough to find on the secondary market, but is often missing the front
section of his bonnet and his weapons. I was thrilled to find this one on eBay
not just complete in and of himself, but also with the cardback and plastic
bubble. I generally don't care about cardbacks from G1 toys, even though the
only instructions any of these gestalt limbs had were printed on them... What
I do care about is having the Tech Specs card. It's possible I've shot myself
in the foot in terms of resale value but, since I have all the other Protectobot limbs' Tech
Specs, I clipped out Streetwise's Tech Specs card and chucked the rest of the cardback in the bin.
Hot Spot
Vehicle Mode:
Following on from Inferno in the previous year's selection of repurposed Diaclone vehicles, Hot Spot is a
similarly-sized fire engine (albeit approximately 2cm longer), but cast mostly in pale cyan plastic rather than red. The vehicle is reasonably well detailed and, I think, rather more complete and realistic than Inferno, not least because the older figure's arms were just slapped onto the sides of the vehicle, hovering unconvicingly over its midsection and pegged into the ladder's immobile base. The cab is nicely detailed with panel lines indicating doors, windowframes, etc. and even a step just behind the partially chromed bumper on each side. The main part of the vehicle has a few equipment boxes sculpted into the sides, but a lot of the details are seemingly random raised or recessed circles. Each side features a rolled-up hose affixed just behind the second wheel well, and a large, diamond plate panel behind the rear wheels, both appearing to be separate pieces of black plastic. The back end of the vehicle shows off two combiner sockets, but no real vehicle mode detailing... unless those odd two recessed rectangles are supposed to be tail lights. The ladder base features more of the same kinds of vague detailing, while the ladder itself is white plastic.
Not being a Diaclone-derived figure, he lacks such luxuries as translucent plastic for the cab windows and the emergency lights on the roof, instead having glossy black paint for the former, while the latter remain bare cyan plastic. That said, there's one significant improvement here - the base of the ladder can rotate, where Inferno's is fixed due to the the way it transforms. It's also very surprising to find that, while Hot Spot's ladder is much the same size, and extends to much the same length as Inferno's (28cm/11") it's an entirely new, unique mold, with all of its angled support bars alternating in orientation, where most of Inferno's are at the same angle. The tip of the ladder also has two identical protrusions here, where Inferno has two nubs of different lengths. One detail the two toys do share is the wheels - both the hubs and the tyres appear to be identical to those on Inferno, bar the colour of plastic used. This would have been an unusual feature by 1986, as Hasbro were gradually phasing out rubber tyres. Certainly, neither Onslaught nor Motormaster had rubber tyres... but they were made to a different scale, and their wheels were generally smaller than Hot Spot's.
As an added feature of this mold, by extending Hot Spot's legs, shifting the ladder base forward and attaching Defensor's chest plates, the fire truck becomes a vehicle carrier, able to accommodate any one of his limb-bot team-mates. It's not an especially useful feature, in my opinion, and it leaves his ladder hanging over the front of the vehicle, which probably wouldn't be very safe on the road.
His weapons can be plugged into either the midsection of the rear of the vehicle, via any of the five round ports on each side. His Tech Specs also make mention of his hoses, which seems strange considering they're immobile... It almost seems as though the arms for his repair bay mode are intended to be hoses in vehicle mode, but there's nowhere for them to attach.
This being a second hand figure, bought on eBay, there are a few signs of age and wear. The cab doesn't peg together at all firmly, and all but fireball stickers on the cab and the all-important rubsign were absent, with signs of some rough-handed cleanging where they had been. I also find it a little strange that, while the base is mounted on a hinged arm for transformation and yet still designed to rotate freely, it doesn't peg in securely in vehicle mode, so it's all too easy to lift the ladder section off the vehicle entirely when trying to extend the ladder. Then again, the back end of the vehicle doesn't peg together either, so quite a lot of it doesn't feel especially stable.
One of these days, I will get the Reprolabels set and re-do all the Protectobots' stickers, since many of those on my originals are showing their age. That said, I was surprised to find how few of the stickers originally provided with Hot Spot were for his vehicle mode - really, all that's missing in this form is a couple of Autobot insignias just in front of the rear wheels and a couple of emergency striping stickers on the back of the cab... Hot Spot seems woefully underdecorated in this mode, especially compared to older G1 vehicles, and even Motormaster, simply due to the Stunticon leader's greater variety of plastic colours visible in vehicle mode and the stripes down his trailer.
Base Mode:
Considering Motormaster's perfunctory 'base' mode had some of its features removed and exhibited a dearth of sculpted detail unique to that mode, I was actually pleasantly surprised by Hot Spot's tertiary alternate mode.
I mean, it's basically the robot mode doing the splits, with the arms angled forward without the hands deployed, and the ladder draping over the head's hiding place, but it also makes better use of both Hot Spot and Defensor's accessories. The two Defensor chest plates attach to the sides of the central mass, just above his outstretched legs, his guns can peg into sockets at his feet or ankles, and he has a couple of additional accessories, in the form of articulated repair arms, that are pretty much specific to this form. It's still a very basic, underachieving mode but, assuming it can be attached to Metroplex somehow, it may look reasonable as an extension to the original Autobot city-bot.
Robot Mode:
I'd have to say that both of the two original Autobot gestalt torso-bots got a raw deal. Silverbolt was a robot folded up on the bottom of a Concord, while Hot Spot transforms from a brick of a vehicle into a brick of a robot. Not to say he's not well articulated - due to transformation, his arms have surprisingly good range, though his legs only swing from side to side, both at the hip and knee - just that every part of him is basically just a box. Each arm is half the vehicle's cab, with a section of the front grille extended to become rudimentary 'hands', with some of the most basic sculpting I've ever seen. The torso is the central mass of the vehicle, virtually unchanged but for the relocating of the ladder base and the repositioning of the red chest plate to partially conceal a pair of wheels, while the legs are simply the back end of the vehicle, extended slightly and separated.
It surely doesn't help that mine is (currently) without its stickers, but there's barely any sculpted detail to him. There are raised bars on his 'forearms' and some fluting on his waist and shins, but most of the sculpting amounts to a few slightly recessed panels that are intended to accommodate stickers. All of the stickers designed for his limbs are just emergency striping, while his torso gets a set of five extremely random tech detail applications... The two that go on his pelvis look like reel-to-reel tape decks, while the one across his waist looks like the weird 'computers' you might see in 1930s Sci-Fi movies - all coloured lights and random spinny-things - and the two for his chest don't even line up properly with the minimal sculpted detail.
In stark contrast, the outer faces of his arms are black plastic rather than cyan, and covered with all kinds of indecypherable tech detailing, as well as the combiner sockets for Defensor's arms. They can also accommodate his base mode's arms, via the very same sockets, but he'd look pretty strange with them attached.
Hot Spot's hands are molded with square rather than the expected circular sockets. His guns fit quite snugly, all the same, and the excellent jointing of his shoulders goes some way toward making up for the lack of elbows. The two guns are completely identical, but well designed... though they do seem a touch too long for Hot Spot. I find it strange that the Protectobot leader, who transforms into a fire truck, carries a pair of fireball cannons... but, then, his Tech Specs paint him as some kind of Cybertronian gym-bro, fixated on being "maximally operational" at all times, so perhaps the writer of his bio was feeling ironic...
Hot Spot's head sculpt almost looks like an early draft of a Nemesis Prime, with a very familiar helmet style, a battlemask with a flattened-out front, and two very red eyes. The size of the head and fact that it's molded in black plastic means that what little detail is there doesn't show up very well except where it catches the light, but the angles - particularly of the eyes - make him look rather meaner than one might expect from the 'Heroic Autobot' leader of the Protectobots. There's no neck joint, and the head's deployment is spring-loaded, with a hook on the back of his head clipping onto a catch inside the torso.
Defensor
I'd have to say that Defensor is one of the best, if not the best G1 gestalt. With a mostly consistent colourscheme between his limbs and decent, but not excessive bulk, he ends up looking the most like a coherent single robot composed of partially-transformed vehicles. I put him together in his default configuration as, while they can be switched around, just like any of the other G1 gestalts, Streetwise and Groove make astoundingly poor arms. As it stands, I'm not sure why the front sections of either Blades or First Aid tend to be opened, as they would look better closed. Opinion seems divided on what the 'correct' configuration is but, admittedly, the artwork on the Defensor boxed set shows Blades' front end closed up, as if for his vehicle mode.
First Aid makes for quite a strange arm due to the kink in his legs (what could be considered the gestalt's elbow, were there a joint of any kind), and also because the soles of his feet have two offset ports for connecting a fist, rather than a single, central port. I guess this is designed to make it easier to attach him to either side of the gestalt, but it seems like an unnecessary extravagance. Additionally, being one of the tallest of the set, the only reason his arm mode appears to be much the same length as Blades (for example) is that his combiner peg folds out from further down his torso than any of the others. With his leg extension pulled out, he's a longer arm than any of them - even Streetwise, with his leg extension pulled out.
Similarly, Streetwise technically shouldn't transform at all when he becomes and arm - he just needs the combiner peg folded out from the underside of the car. His legs can be extended, but this makes him an odd length, exposes his own head, and gives him an awkward, somewhat loose, inward-bending 'elbow' joint just below the combiner peg's shoulder joint.
Regardless of which component robot becomes which limb, Defensor has rudimentary knee articulation, though the arrangement of the combiner pegs on each tends to make the precise position of the knee inconsistent. Given the varying sizes of the vehicles and robots, it's almost a surprise to see that they all somehow each end up the right size for the legs.
The way Hot Spot's arms plug into the torso to bulk it out, then the chest plates tab in over the top to disguise most of that connection, makes for a satisfyingly stocky - or should that be blocky? - torso. His legs reconfigure such that his lower legs become Defensor's thighs, with Hot Spot's thighs absorbed into the gestalt's pelvis, and it all comes together remarkably well. Even though the pelvic plate should technically be tabbed into the tops of Hot Spot's shins, there is still a little play in the 'knee' joints... Though I wouldn't go so far as to call it a point of articulation for Defensor. The only real downside here is that he has the entire fire truck's ladder as a pony-tail. That said, it has surprisingly little impact on his head's articulation since the hinge at the base lets it swing up slightly as it starts to clash with his shoulders.
On the subject of Defensor's head, it's notable that not only is he the sole G1 gestalt from 1986 with any head articulation, but he's the only G1 gestalt whose head was integrated into the team leader's body. It's cleverly stashed in the ladder's base, and simply flips up for the combined mode, while Menasor's was a mask plugged in front of Motormaster's head, and both Superion and Bruticus had complete helmets to slip over the heads of Silverbolt and Onslaught, respectively. The engineering of Hot Spot as an individual robot might be disappointingly simple but, if sacrifices were made in favour of making the gestalt work like this, I think they made the right decision. Defensor's face seems weirdly chill and friendly, with ginormously wide, red eyes, a small wedge of a nose and a mouth sculpted into what could be described as an enigmatic smile. Broadly speaking, the style of his helmet even matches those of his components, particularly due to the ridged 'dome' of his head. It's also quite similar to the head sculpt of G1 Inferno/Grapple, so there was some consistency retained within the robots, even as the vehicles and transformations became simplified after Hasbro exhausted the Diaclone line.
Additionally, Hot Spot's fireball cannons look much more reasonable in Defensor's chunkier, hollow fists... It almost seems a shame, in retrospect, that they didn't split a single fireball cannon into two smaller guns for Hot Spot. What's more, both Blades and Groove can easily retain their vehicle mode weapons in their gestalt limb forms, regardless of position, and it's just about possible to wedge First Aid's cannon in underneath one of Defensor's hands thanks to his second connection port.
One thing I find quite odd about the G1 gestalts is how utterly inconsistent they were. I know I had my complaints about Combiner Wars being consistent to the point of just being repetitive, but the way these toys were put together really doesn't make a lot of sense. Each gestalt seems reasonably consistent within itself but, while both Menasor and Superion showed their components' robot mode fronts on their shins, Defensor shows the vehicle parts and Bruticus was just a jumble. Defensor takes this inconsistency even further with a couple of robots who are discernibly taller than their team-mates, and also have leg extension joints of differing lengths. This probably bothers me more now than it would have done back in 1986, thinking about it...
I finally managed to acquire Hot Spot and Streetwise back in 2018 - a full 32 years later than the other Protectobots - and was thrilled to finally have a complete Defensor, albeit without Hot Spot's stickers. It surely says something that, even now, I feel a sense of pride in owning a complete set of Generation 1 Protectobots - perhaps more than I felt with either of the Decepticon gestalts I completed back in the day. Even in today's post-Combiner Wars world, G1 Defensor feels like a good, solid toy, and I am intending to fix him up with Reprolabels at some point. All I'll be missing then is a Tech Specs card for Hot Spot.
The fact that Hot Spot looks so dull in vehicle mode - with most of his stickers being for robot mode (or Defensor) - has got me thinking that I might trying embellishing all of them. The white plastic parts of Blades, First Aid and Groove have all yellowed to one degree or another, and there are signs of wear on the extremities of Groove's chrome, so I might be an interesting exercise to make the full set look a bit more like real-world emergecy services vehicles, and bring out what little sculpted detail there is with a bit of paintwork here and there. I'd already added custom stickers to Groove, after all, so the idea of cleaning them up and customising them fully is quite appealing... Though not something I feel compelled to undertake just yet.
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