Studio Series #75 Jolt

It doesn't surprise me in the least that it's taken seventy four other toys - most of more prominent or popular characters from the live action movie franchise - before Hasbro finally got round to their third attempt at Jolt. The character seemed to have been hastily edited into Revenge of the Fallen, as an afterthought, in certain shots only, had barely any dialogue (none that couldn't be attributed to another character), took no active part in any battles... and yet somehow became key to preparing Optimus Prime for his final battle with The Fallen. Without fanfare, Ratchet simply called out "Jolt, electrify!" and his whole raison d'être was made clear.

And this is the problem when your whole movie franchise is built on little more than deals made with vehicle manufacturers. If they have a car they want to promote, it'll have to be shoehorned in somehow, logic and narrative coherence be damned.

Nevertheless, he was in the movie... Hasbro's previous attempts at Jolt weren't great, so let's see if it's a case of "third time's the charm", or if this is just another forgettable robot, from a forgettable film, made out of a forgettable car.

Vehicle Mode:

Well, I can certainly answer part of that straight away. The Chevrolet Volt is a distinctly forgettable car. It's bland, largely featureless and utterly homogenous with cars of its ilk. Seriously, you could remove the Chevrolet badge and put it in a line-up with cars by dozens of other manufacturers, both American and worldwide, manufactured and sold in the same time period, and I don't think anyone other than the most enthusiastic of aficionados would be able to identify a single one. About its only distinguishing feature on the toy is the translucent roof, which is effectively just an extension of the front and rear windshields... and I don't even think that's accurate to the real life vehicle considering it was painted black on the original RotF toy.

And despite being 'Official GM Merchandise' with a QR code on the box for registration purposes, all this really is is a halfway decent rendition of a bland vehicle which, like the similarly underwhelming Pontiac Solstice, saw its production quickly discontinued.

So, we have a bright blue car with tinted windows and a wraparound sunroof. The front end is neither striking nor distinctive, the back end has a somewhat better paint job than average for a Hasbro figure these days. What's working for it is that the second Jolt toy was molded largely in an ugly pale blue/grey plastic and had a poorly-judged paintjob. What's working against it is that the very first Jolt toy was molded in a darker, sparkly blue plastic, had a more complete and balanced paint job, and featured the 'VOLT' branding on the back. This version is largely molded in a flat blue, mostly matte-finish plastic, in a far brighter shade than it should have been, and without any metallic flake. The headlights are painted with a pale metallic blue with no distinction for the indicators, the grilles and Chevy logo on the front are painted silver, but production photos of the actual vehicle suggest it should have been the other way around. The wing mirrors and hubcaps are painted silver, then the rear indicators are painted red, with a glossy black panel surrounding the rear-mounted Chevy badge. The numberplate is nicely sculpted, but entirely unpainted. It also looks as though some of the detail is incomplete, as there's a discernible gap in the bumper, the numberplate and its frame, even when the two halves are properly tabbed together. Whether this is a flaw in the design or just the molding isn't clear... but I'm tending toward the former. While the wheels feature both hubcap and disc brake detailing,  the tyres lack even the most basic tread sculpt.

Aside from the absence of anything to grab the eye on this toy, there are a few problems. The rear windscreen has four holes in it - two for transformation hinges, two for transformation sockets - there are a couple of large, flat pinheads visible at the back, as well as the robot's arms just below the bumpers. Admittedly, they could conceivably be car parts, the way they're sculpted, and the pinned joints at either end may be in approximately the right place to pretend to be exhaust pipes. On the downside, they're not the only parts that hang down from the underside of the vehicle. Jolt's upper body, pelvis and heel spurs are also visible from the side, and leave him with negligible ground clearance. It also seems, from some angles, as though the 'black' window frames are unpainted, and are just textured to differentiate them from the side windows. Mine additionally has a smudge of the metallic blue paint on the right side of the front bumper, between the main grille and the lower grille. The whole thing looks cheaply made and underwhelming... Which is funny, considering one of the questions Chevrolet ask if you happed to use the registration QR code is something along the lines of "does this item live up to you expectations of the Chevrolet brand". How does one even begin to answer that?

But the main problem - which will become painfully apparent in robot mode - is the huge warning sign that is very few broken panels in the car's shell... which is guaranteed to lead to large panels of car shell becoming an unsightly backpack.

I'm not sure it can be considered an upside, but Jolt's weapons - his electro-whips - can be stored on vehicle mode... but rather than do something sensible, like make space for them on the underside of the vehicle, they simply peg in to the car doors, like the rigid framework for some kind floatation pontoons. The decision to mold them as completely flat, straight pieces appears to have been made entirely in service of vehicle mode, but they look ridiculous. Even pegging them into the roof would have looked better.

Robot Mode:

Predictably, Studio Series Jolt is every bit as panel-tastic as the very first version and the Dark of the Moon remake, albeit in a very different way. Everything from the rear windscreen to the front bumper folds over onto the robot's back, with the bumper and bonnet splitting in half to create raised 'wings' not dissimilar to those on the original toy, and the side windows becoming much the same kind of trailing 'tails' as featured on the second version, albeit still connected to the car's roof, and with the front windscreen folded up and pegged into the inside of the rear windscreen between them. Where both preceding versions had reasonably unobstructed legs, awkwardly constructed though they were, this one has most of each side of vehicle mode tagged onto his thighs.

Still, from the front, SS Jolt actually looks quite good - it's a decent representation of one of the more interesting, yet barely seen robot designs to come out of the movie series. In fact, looking at this one in comparison to screenshots of the movie, they've done a remarkable job (aside from the mass of car panels on his back). Meanwhile, in comparison to the earlier toys, it's just as remarkable how wrong they were, while still delivering a robot that looked... kinda like what little anyone might remember of Jolt?

In a sense, Jolt's body-type appears broadly similar to Sideswipe, in that he has digitigrade legs, a segmented, angular chest, and wing-like panels on his shoulders/back. However, unlike Sideswipe, it looks like more of his inner workings are exposed on his torso, resulting in an application of silver paint that seems comparatively lavish on a Studio Series toy. This paintwork contrasts very well with the darker, vaguely metallic grey plastic of the belly and pelvis, but there should have been more paintwork on these parts, not least additional blue and red detailing around the groin. What's quite surprising - not to say stunning, on a contemporary Hasbro figure - is that the silver paint on the upper body doesn't end at the turbine-like details at the shoulder, it carries on around the sides, under the arms and behind the head. Additionally, while the groin is unpainted, it does feature a small additional piece of translucent plastic right in the middle. Paintwork on the legs is similarly mixed. The silver framing the translucent plastic of his thighs is incomplete, leaving a blue band just above the knee, and more around the joint on the inside, while the outside is unpainted grey plastic. There's a touch of silver paint at the ankle, but it only covers the front, and there's no paint at all on the feet. The arms, meanwhile, only have silver paint on the upper face of the forearms, though they still come out of this better thanks to the blue panels around the shoulders, featuring the red tail light details, and the differing shades of metallic grey used for the upper arms and the hands. The sculpting on the arms is every bit as good as the rest, and he doesn't suffer too much from having the car's rear bumper as saggy vambraces.

The fact that he relies on such unique - and specialised - mêlée weapons should theoretically make for a similarly dynamic character to Sideswipe. Somehow, though, this character barely appeared in Revenge of the Fallen, used his signature weapons once (not even in a battle) and was never seen again. Talk about wasted opportunities. While it's undeniably a pleasant surprise to see Hasbro making another attempt at him in the Studio Series line, and making his signature weapons the feature accessory is great in theory, the stock 'electro-whips' just look awful. When Takara Tomy released their RotF-ified version of the DotM mold, they replaced Hasbro's MechTech weapon with a pair of shorter, more elegant whip pieces, with the most subtle of curves to make them seem at least somewhat dynamic. These things are a fair length, but dead straight, as if under full tension. Making matters worse, rather than taking the sensible - not to mention screen-accurate - course of action and having them peg into the centre of his tri-clawed hands, these accessories require one of his digits to be removed. Going by their position, it looks as though his 'thumbs' become the clawed tips of the whips, which really doesn't make a great deal of sense... and likely leaves the toy's thumb pieces prone to getting lost, since the only viable storage point is the slots on the thigh-mounted door panels. Additionally, while the thumbs have rectangular tabs on the tips of their pegs, to keep them sat at the right angle, the whips don't so they're prone to swinging around to all kinds of weird angles, none of which helps them to look any better. It's nice that Hasbro tried... but if these accessories looked ridiculous in vehicle mode, they don't look a great deal better in the mode they're intended for.

Having based the head sculpt for the original toy on the wrong version of the pre-production concept art, it seemed strange for Hasbro to basically doubled down and make the same mistake again on their second attempt. Thankfully, this new version has a vastly more accurate head sculpt, though the paintwork is rather lacking. Molded in the darker of the two grey plastics, it has a bit of metallic paint on the central part of the face, which runs back through the valleys of his forehead, and the eyes are picked out in cyan, but are so small and deeply recessed, they barely register. A couple of dashes of blue paint have been applied to the horns protruding from the back of his head, but I'm pretty sure Jolt's head was supposed to have rather more blue on it... He has a weird sort of gremlin-ish face, kind of like a slimmed down Long Haul, but slightly more humanoid in its detailing.

SS Jolt's transformation is certainly less fussy than that of the DotM version, and feels substantially more sturdy than the RotF version... but there's something cheap-feeling and unsatisfying about the whole experience. In vehicle mode, he's basically lying down with his legs drawn up toward his chest and his hands folded in to the back of his chest, with the entire backpack unfurled and covering the body like a lid. For robot mode, the front wheels fold in under the feet, but leave the entire wheel wells on the outsides of his feet. They also stick out from the soles of his feet on the insides, making it difficult to find a stable standing pose. The long side panels that remain attached to his thighs are connected via a ball joint, but they seem to clash with the window 'tails' no matter what you do, and having the rear wheels fold into the inside faces just means they clash with the back of his thighs, thus reducing their range of movement even further. The way the upper body works is certainly novel, and reminded me a little of the way Unique Toys' Peru Kill dealt with its torso... but the fact that so much of the vehicle shell ends up hanging off Jolt's back is pure Hasbro/Takara Tomy wastefulness. I've seen reports of tabs on the back bumper breaking during transformation, but I can't see how that might happen if handled correctly, and it's possible that the gap in the rear bumper is to facilitate it flexing inward at the midpoint to free the tabs. Most of it tabs together reasonably well in both modes, though the main torso hinge has no real stopping points (giving him the option for a sort of loose ab crunch), and the backpack doesn't properly connect to his back - it pretty much just rests there, with the rear windscreen sockets refusing to grip the relevant tabs. Getting him back into vehicle mode can be a real pain as the legs and feet are very tricky to line up, the waist doesn't like to stay in position, and the side panels have to peg into the front wheel wells and the side windows at several different points. I've also found that one of the front bumper sections likes to pop off its joint.

With only a few caveats, SS Jolt's articulation is about par for the course within the line. The digitigrade legs have a decent range of bend at the knee and ankle, while the joint between them is - bafflingly - for rotation only. On mine, one was ridiculously tight to begin with, but neither is of any real benefit for posing purposes, and certainly don't need the full 360° freedom they've been given. The main problem is the feet, since the wheels fold flush with the base of the feet, which are molded for standing straight. This means that posing the legs at even the slightest angle leaves Jolt trying to balance on the edges of his wheels and his heel spurs, with the toes invariably lifted. The hips are ball joints with precious little rotation but, to be honest, any more would just end up being limited by the door panels on his thighs and the side window 'tails' behind them. He has waist rotation but, again, the panels on his legs and back oppose all but the most subtle of turns. On the upside, his arms are surprisingly good considering they have only a singly-hinged joint at the elbow and wrist. Their transformation requires the former to bend 90° backwards, and its arrangement allows far more than 90° forwards, while the latter only bend in one direction, which isn't really useful for posing. The main issue I had was that the elbows were incredibly loose, straight out of the box, but were improved slightly by the application of pliers. The shoulders are ball joints on little stalks which are hinged for transformation and, despite the tail-light panels draping over onto his chest, their range is more than adequate. One very poor aspect of his articulation - which seems to have been held over from the previous two Jolt figures - is his head. It's on a ball joint, but its design, coupled with the sculpt of the collar area, means its range us limited to the point where he can barely turn his head. Had the socket been placed only a fraction further back, or had he been given a pinned joint at the collar to allow the neck to hinge forward, this could have been greatly improved.

In a lot of ways, this version of Jolt really isn't any better than either of the preceding two Deluxe class figures, it's just different. Greater screen accuracy - it certainly feels as though the designers had much more accurate information to base the sculpt on - but bogged down by even more largely rigid vehicle shell parts hanging off his back and legs, and with far too light and flat a blue used for the primary plastic colour. The use of translucent plastic on his thighs is pretty cool, but the paintwork - extensive as it is - still seems basic and very much incomplete. He's also, overall, pretty tiny... albeit slightly more equivalent to some of the older Deluxes in terms of overall bulk (even if most of it does end up on his back).

Aside from the overall blandness of his vehicle mode and his wasteful transformation, my main gripe would be the weapons, since there's literally no way to make them look dynamic. The good news is that a short bath in boiling water makes them temporarily pliable enough to add a subtle curve, which can then be fixed by immersing in cold water... though the jagged edges make this process rather uncomfortable.

The bottom line here is that Studio Series Jolt is not a bad figure by a long shot, but the mold is desperately in need of upscaling, refinement and a Masterpiece-level glossy paintjob, just like the recent SS Sentinel Prime figure. However, while this isn't the greatest Studio Series toy, it's the best Jolt so far and, if nothing else, its a break from the seemingly interminable swarm of Bumblebees. After my initial disappointment over how panel-tastic it is and the crummy whips, I find that I rather like this version of Jolt.