Hybrid Style THS-02 Convoy

This probably should have been posted a little closer to the 40th Anniversary date, or at least to my write-up of Earthrise Optimus Prime - the most recent G1-style Prime toy in my collection to be packaged with a trailer... Then again, I should probably have got to this oddity - and its two mass-released contemporaries - far sooner than I have, since I bought it eighteen years ago. 

Hybrid Style was a very short-lived, utterly Convoy-centric line which aimed to be 'Miniature Masterpiece', but ultimately failed to find much favour among fans. Only two molds were created - a remake of Galaxy Convoy (because Galaxy Force was in full swing at the time) and this G1 version, because there always has to be a G1 version. Subsequent to this 'vanilla' version, two black repaints were released, one of which was only made available in China.

Given that I own G1 Optimus Prime, Takara's MP01 (and, later, the Hasbro version of MP10), it was pretty much a foregone conclusion that I'd acquire the Hybrid Style version of the original Autobot leader... Though I confess that I had some reservations from the start, due to its small size and some rather tepid reviews online at the time.

Packaging:
Convoy comes packaged in a gorgeous display box, covered - front and back - with photos of the figure showcasing its articulation and features. The front of the box uses silver foil for most of the text labelling and the 'Designers Operation' stamp in the bottom right corner. This flap opens out to reveal the figure inside, with more photographs on the inner face of the flap. The text on the inside of the flap and on the back of the box covers various aspects of the character and the figure, as well as the Hybrid Style line itself, with a small box-out on the back with some notes about the figure's designer, renowned mecha-designer, Shōji Kawamori.

The figure is contained in a clear plastic clamshell, with the instruction booklet and collectors' card. I was aware in advance that the figure would be small, but actually having this package in-hand was nevertheless a surprising experience. The collectors' card is the standard, laminated card type, but it's a very flimsy sort of card compared to some Third Party efforts. The front shows the artist's rendition of Convoy, as seen on the sides of the box, while the back shows the figure in robot at vehicle modes, with the trailer attached to the latter. His Tech Specs are listed in numeric form, matching his original G1 stats. The instructions, by comparison, are rather disappointing. They're printed in full colour, but the illustrations are essentially black and white, with the active part highlighted in magenta for each step. Print is clear and sharp, but the monochrome presentation is less than ideal.

Overall, though, this is a really nice package, and something I wish they'd done with the Masterpiece line, and especially the Masterpiece Movie figures. This kind of display box is a rare treat with TransFormers figures, but it shows a level of pride in the product that's been missing for most of the last 10-15 years.

One interesting feature of the box design is that the black background features alternating Autobot and Decepticon insignias in a very dark grey... which makes me wonder if there had been plans for some Decepticons in the Hybrid Style line. I can certainly imagine a Starscream (inevitably repainted as Skywarp and Thundercracker), but I suspect Soundwave was more likely than Megatron, even though that would leave the HS Decepticons without a leader.

Vehicle Mode:
In theory, there's really not that much room to make mistakes with a traditional, G1-style Optimus Prime vehicle mode... but reducing its size certainly seems to contribute a lot to that end. Given that the cab-over truck is essentially just a box with headlights, wheels, windows and smokestacks, this thing isn't exactly convincing. The silver stripe wrapping around the cab is discernibly smaller than the surrounding vehicle shell, making it look rather like a belt on an overweight truck. Furthermore, along with a curved cutout on each side, there's a large, squarish gap running through from one side to the other, in the middle of the silver stripe, and the end of the stripe on either side features incongruous detailing because it's the robot's bicep. The wonky proportions are further emphasised by the window section, which protrudes above the grille, headlights and bumper. This mismatch is exacerbated by the fact that the grill and front bumper don't actually fasten into place anywhere, so they have a tendency to rattle around entirely independent of the rest of the vehicle.

The robot's arms are rather more easily discernible that usual on either side of the truck, not helped by the brownish-grey plastic used for the shoulder transformation hinges, and then the back end of the truck is quite obviously just the robot's legs, dangling out with barely any transformation of their own. Granted, that's exactly how the original G1 toy did it, but the G1 toy didn't also have the robot's chunky backside coming out of the back of the cab. The rear section is far too long and wide for the size of the cab, and the thighs need to be angled down slightly to get the rear wheels to line up properly with the front wheels. And, when I say "line up properly", they only do that in terms of all being on the ground at the same time. The front wheels are inset due to the necessities of his transformation, so that looks a bit silly.

There are some nice callbacks to the G1 toy on the truck: the front grille, bumper, smokestacks, petrol tanks and wheels are all chromed; the wheels all have rubber tyres with minor tread detailing; the headlights and rooflights are nicely painted despite their small size but, while certain individual details are great, the overall picture is a vehicle mode that looks messy and incomplete. This is exacerbated by the visible grey-brown plastic of the shoulder joints on either side, and the panel the head is attached to in the middle of the roof. Is if that weren't bad enough, the smokestacks are easily knocked out of alignment, and the legs don't peg together very securely, more or less relying on the trailer's connection clip to keep them together. 

I'll cover the features of the trailer later on but, at this point, suffice it to say it looks fantastic - far better than the lazy, wobbly effort Hasbro churned out for Earthrise, or even the version that came with Hasbro's MP-10. The trailer hitch clips over the lower legs, just below the knee joint, and is articulated on the underside of the trailer itself, with plenty of clearance for cornering. The coating of silver paint makes it look far more authentic than almost any colour of bare plastic could, the striping is crisp and sharp and, rather than using the rear doors as a ramp, per the G1 toy, the doors open to the sides, and the ramp is deployed from above the bumper, via a spring-loaded mechanism. I particularly like that the jetpack accessory can be plugged onto the front of the trailer, to function as an air-conditioner unit. This is actually the only storage option, though - once the trailer is in combat deck mode, there's no longer anywhere to attach the jet pack.

Robot Mode:
There's nothing particularly groundbreaking about this interpretation of G1 Optimus Prime's robot mode, though the proportions are a bit on the wonky side. The upper body seems too large for the limbs, with the thighs in particular seeming too short. Serving to highlight both of these incongruities, he's also wearing an enormous robo-nappy. The wrap-around hip skirt pieces just about work for the body, but they make the thighs look even smaller, and the main pelvic chunk is absolutely enormous: from front to back, it's pretty much the largest part on the entire body.

In terms of sculpted detail, this is very much a figure of two halves. The upper body is fairly simplistic - other than the truck parts that remain visible, there's no particularly intricate sculpting on show. The sides of his waist are remarkably plain, the upper arms feature maybe a millimetre of new detail revealed by raising the shoulder shells, while the forearms have only perfunctory detailing. Curiously, though, while his back is largely a mass of exposed transformation joints, his miniscule backpack features more tech detail than almost any other part of him. This then carries over to the back of the hip skirts, which are far more intricately sculpted than the fronts. The thighs, while not as overly detailed as figures from the War For Cybertron: Siege line, are almost incongruously detailed compared to any other section of limb. Strangely, the fronts are almost curved, with a banded section close to the knee, giving them an almost organic appearance. While I'd tend to think of this has a massive improvement on the squared-off brick limbs we invariably get these days, it looks strangely out of place here, further emphasising how small this thighs are. The lower legs, meanwhile, are closer to the traditional, with all the familiar shapes sculpted into the shins and the block below the knee, and even hints of the vehicle's tail lights on his toes. One of the obvious flaws in making this figure so small is the hollowness of the lower back, where the brownish-grey structural plastic is exposed. Bad enough that the shoulder joints use that plastic - also exposed from behind in robot mode - but the entire lower back, with transformation hinges visible from the front, looks like a real mess.

Flawed and inconsistent as the design and sculpting might be, I cannot fault the paintwork, with just one caveat. The silver strip around his torso also extends down to his waist on either side of the chromed grille, and it's here that a flaw in the paintwork appears on my copy: there's overspray on both sides, but it's most apparent on his right side, where the corners are decidedly softened by the overspray. The chest windows are translucent blue plastic (perilously thin, by today's standards) painted over with red, but the colour matching with the surrounding red plastic is nigh flawless. On top of that, the dabs of orange paint on the roof lights add a touch of interest to the shoulder/collar area, which is all too often ignored. Silver paint is also applied to the biceps, thighs and the entire pelvis, on which it's supplemented by yellow paint on the front, and dark blue paint on the bottom, running round to the back. The die-cast parts of his lower legs use the same blue paint which, once again, is a great match for the blue plastic, while the shin/knee details are painted with a dark gunmetal. The little arrow details on his cuffs are, for some strange reason, painted brown/grey (possibly more gunmetal, to be fair, but the applications are too small to be sure) rather than the traditional yellow, so they don't stand out especially well... but those are small details, and not particularly important in my opinion. Dark gunmetal paint is also applied to the bulk of his backpack, which helps the tech detailing stand out, and then the chromed smokestacks and petrol tanks do what they can to give the figure a premium look. I should also mention that, as well as the rich red paint and plastic, I'm glad Takara Tomy used a dark Navy blue for Convoy's lower legs: Hasbro have an annoying habit of using lighter, Royal blue shades that often end up looking cheap. Navy blue not only looks classier, but harks back to the original G1 Optimus Prime toy.

Along with the standard weapon-grip hands, Convoy comes with three alternate hands for each side. While most figures that use interchangeable hands have them in pairs, this one has one unique style for each side: the right hand has a pointing variant, while the left has a second weapon-grip, set at an angle - more on which later. One of the pairs is fairly standard - fingers splayed - while the other is closed fists with cutouts that allow him to wield the Matrix of Leadership. The Matrix itself is another die-cast part, fully painted, and looks quite nice... but its weight and the looseness of its receptacle - behind the silver-painted flap inside the chest windows - means it's inclined to fall out rather too easily once the chest is opened fully. Plugging it into the dedicated hands is simple enough, but I've found it easier to deal with that before plugging the hands into his wrist sockets. I should also note here one other oddity in the paint job of THS-02: the Matrix chamber is mostly painted red, to match the external parts, rather than being painted either silver or gunmetal, to emphasise the appearance of the robot's internal workings. There are a couple of details painted silver, but they're mostly hidden behind the vehicle mode's bumper, folded up below the Matrix chamber.

Next on the list of accessories we have his jet pack (or perhaps Sideswipe's jetpack?), which has two very slender, rigid plastic straps. Fitting these over the arms takes a bit of fiddling, but then they fold in around the chest, and hold the jetpack in place quite successfully. The jetpack is very nicely detailed, though the more intricate sculpting appears on the inside. Paintwork is kept rather simple, with the central block painted silver while the outer modules, from which the boosters emerge, covered with the dark gunmetal paint. The boosters are ball-jointed for a touch of directional control, and there are sockets on the top and sides of the pack for mounting weapons. To complement this, the final main accessory for the figure is his display/flight stand. The base is an Autobot insignia with a red chrome finish on top, while the arm is unpainted black plastic with a rotating, hinged connector at the end, which plugs into the underside of Convoy's pelvis. The arm plugs into the large, triangular slot in the Autobot insignia's 'forehead' and, while it's perfectly sufficient, it's not exactly long, and the jointing of the connecting piece, coupled with the width of the arm, doesn't offer a great deal of clearance for the robot's legs.

As is traditional, this version of Convoy comes with an ion blaster as his main handgun. It's not only nicely sculpted but, surprisingly, has a touch of the dark gunmetal paint over the recessed details at the back. Since the weapon is designed to also attach to Roller, the main grip can fold back to reveal the small connection peg, but this version of the gun also has a secondary grip - mounted on a tiny C-clip - which allows him to wield the gun two-handed... if that's something you ever wanted an Optimus Prime figure to do. What's really crazy is that, even with both arms hinged forward to their fullest extent - both on their ball joints and the shoulder transformation/butterfly joint - this feature still required the inclusion of that dedicated, angled left hand to be swapped in as the default hands don't have a great enough range on their ball-jointed wrists. The other traditional weapon is the energy axe, here molded in translucent orange plastic. These days, more often than not, the axe would be molded in rubber, so it's interesting to see an older figure - and particularly one this size - using rigid plastic. There's nothing particularly exciting about this axe, except perhaps the 'rippling energy' effect of the sculpt, when more recent iterations have either followed the movie/TF Animated style of an energised blade popping out of a metallic framework, or leaving everything perfectly smooth and featureless. Rather than plugging into the hand, the axe itself has a ball joint to plug directly into the wrist, which makes it rather more mobile than some other iterations.

One curious additional feature of this figure is that it weaponises both the smokestacks and the petrol tanks. Each can rotate 90° such that the former look like individual gun barrels mounted on his shoulders, while the latter feature a Gatling-style arrangement of six small barrels, firing from just below knee level. In retrospect, it seems surprising that this trick has never been revisited - especially in the live action movies - but, equally, I don't think these additional weapons are a particularly clever or impressive addition to THS-02.

Most of the time, I'm all for new interpretations of an iconic character's head sculpt, and Optimus Prime/Convoy has had his fair share, many of which are thoroughly conventional, while others have been decidedly out of the ordinary. In fact, it's only been this year, with Legacy's Deluxe class 'G1 Universe' Optimus Prime toy, that we've had a truly G1-style head again. I'm not quite sure what it is about this head sculpt, but I really don't like it. It's unremarkable, in that it hits all the expected notes: the antennae, the central crest on the forehead, the battlemask... but something about it seems off. Perhaps it's the battlemask being too large and too flat, with tiny, beady eyes, but it just doesn't look right. The rest of the helmet is OK, with all the usual details sharply sculpted, and even a touch of the gunmetal paint inside the central crest. The antennae are at a slight angle relative to the sides, and there's even a fair amount of detail sculpted into the back of the head, considering there's a screw holding it together and a large cutout to enable the head to tilt back almost a full 90°. Oddly, Takara provided two alternative heads for this figure along with THS-02B - the G2-style black repaint - both of which were more in the style of the G2 comics... but, if anything, they're even worse.


Trailer/Combat Deck & Roller:
Probably the most immediately impressive part of the package, this thing is almost entirely painted silver, with good, clean striping sculpted and painted in blue and white down each side. The inside of the trailer is covered with all kinds of tech detailing, making it rather a shame that silver was the only colour of paint used, since none of the individual sculpted features are in any way highlighted. Gorgeous as it is, then, it's rather monotonous, and doesn't even feature the two little stations that MP10 had for its included Spike mini-figure. Toyhax make some stickers for this trailer, largely based on those from the G1 toy, but even they aren't particularly inspiring.

Each half of the trailer's shell is geared such that, as it's opened out, the stabilisers automatically swing out from below to support the sides in Combat Deck mode, in addition to the single leg that folds out from just behind the trailer hitch. This is a great feature in theory, but the stabilisers have a habit of rattling about, and it's all too easy for them to skip a gear, such that they either don't fully open or don't fully hide away. There's a little switch on one side of the trailer which, according to the instructions, should deploy the loading ramp once the Combat Deck is fully open... but the tab that's meant to hit the switch isn't large enough to do so unless the sides are pushed further than they're meant to go. Thankfully, there's also a more accessible button molded onto the switch, which can be used to deploy the ramp even when the trailer is closed up. It might seem like a small thing, but having a dedicated ramp makes the trailer far more authentic and allows for a longer ramp with a far shallower angle. Personally, I think this arrangement is better than the trailer packaged with MP-4, which folded its ramp up inside the trailer doors, leaving it rather too short, and so at an awkwardly steep angle when deployed. The trailer's rear doors are entirely separate, and open sideways, despite seeming to fasten in much the same way as the G1 version: a protrusion from the top of each door clips up against a protrusion from the trailer's roof.

While the ramp is spring-loaded, Roller's launcher from the G1 toy has been removed, though the buggy retains the two protrusions at the back, which were to line him up and lock him in place on the original toy. In place of this launcher, there are protrusions from the floor of the Combat Deck that the instructions indicate are for attaching Convoy, to hold him in place below the repair drone when the Combat Deck is standing up on its end rather than on its wheels and stabilisers... but they seem to be misaligned, as they suspend him well above the ramp, when it's just as easy to simply... stand Convoy on the ramp.

As well as housing Roller and the repair drone, there are sockets for attaching Convoy's gun and axe, the pump accessory for Roller, and a couple of fold-away storage bins for Convoy's spare hands. What's conspicuous by its absence, as previously mentioned, is somewhere to attach the jet pack. Given the attention lavished on the THS-02 set in almost every other way, this is an astonishing oversight.

Like the G1 toy, the repair drone can be deployed with the trailer closed by feeding its hinged stalk through a convenient hole in the roof of the trailer, though there's no corresponding cutout in the front of the trailer here, unlike on the G1 toy. What it has over the G1 version is that there are a couple of fold-out handles on the underside of the drone, which allow Convoy to hold onto it and actually direct its guns, as one might expect from something referred to as a 'Combat Deck'. Whether it was the intention, I don't know for sure, but this brings it more in line with the weapon incorporated into the trailer of G1 Rodimus Prime. The repair drone cockpit can open up, just like both the G1 original and MP10, and it has both the hinged arm and the 'radar' arm, but lacks the spring-loaded missile launchers of the original toy.

Roller itself is nicely sculpted, as far it that goes, even on the underside. It's always been a fairly nondescript sort of buggy, though. Like the trailer, it's fully painted silver, with the seats painted blue and his headlights painted yellow. At the back, flanked by a pair of sockets for Convoy's accessories, is a translucent red 'light' which can also hinge backward to present a third accessory socket. The two protrusions at the back seem to have been reimagined as exhaust pipes and, while that's a neat callback to the G1 toy, they're set too far apart to slot in between the pegs rising from the floor of the trailer, so there's no way to secure Roller in place inside. The most impressive feature of this cute little buggy is that the front and rear pairs of wheels are both hinged and linked, such that turning one pair of wheels causes the other to turn counter, for tighter cornering. This is easily the smallest wheeled toy vehicle I've ever owned with such a feature.


Given the size of the figure, you know you're not getting Masterpiece-grade engineering. In particular, the legs do virtually nothing: the feet fold down, the thighs compress down - ever so slightly - into the lower legs, then the lower legs peg together (sort of) and the rear wheels flip round along with their mudguard. Most of the transformation happens in the upper body, and it's quite the fiddly chore. There's also a non-zero chance of the waist ball joint disconnecting, since you have to pull the upper and lower body apart to complete the transformation, and the socket isn't one of the tightest. In some ways, it's a simplified form of MP-01's transformation, with some terribly inconsistent joint tolerances. Some parts flap about during transformation, other parts really have to be forced to move, and there's precious little room to manoeuvre on a figure this small. One of the most frustrating joints is the hinge that flips the headlights up and down, revealing or concealing the hands. Since the 'hinge' is just a nub on either side of the forearm, it's all too easy to pop the headlight section off during transformation. Aside from that, pegging the arms into the sides of the vehicle mode can be tricky, as the part they're supposed to plug into is kind of loose, and lining it up with the peg on the forearms takes a lot of finessing. I also have some trouble getting the head stowed inside the torso, as there's precious little clearance between it and the backpack's hinge.

The joint tolerances also have an effect on his poseability. The shoulders' transformation joints are insanely loose, slipping out of the torso and swinging around and the slightest touch, while the actual shoulder is a ball joint for full 360° rotation and a hint of upper arm swivel. That leads straight into a hinge, which allows the arm to swing out a little more than 90°. Pulling the transformation joint out, that plus the ball joint offer almost 45° of butterfly, to facilitate wielding his gun two-handed. The elbow joint is also the bicep swivel, but attempting to bend the arm or move the forearm can often pop the headlight sections off the underside of the wrist as the nubs holding them in place are nowhere near as secure as the elbow joint is tight. The waist ball joint offers a full 360° rotation and a touch of sideways tilt, while the small range of ab crunch can be increased slightly by lifting the socket up, as if for transformation, as there's a slight cut in front of the socket's frame. However, moving the waist often leads to the sides of the torso becoming displaced, because they don't really tab into place in robot mode, relying on their transformation double-hinge which, itself, is fairly loose. While the hip skirts are individually articulated via their own ball joints, they nevertheless get in the way of the hips, limiting them to about 45° swing out the the sides, though they can swing through a full 180° from front to back. Unfortunately the hips themselves are a little loose, possibly because of the sheer volume of die-cast in the legs, which can be detrimental to any flight or jumping poses that make use of the stand. His thighs can rotate almost 180°, the knee is double-jointed and, with the hinges right at the back of the leg, the lower leg can swing almost all the way back against the thigh. The ankles can tilt down for transformation, but also - unusually - tilt up almost 45° for some quite dynamic crouch posing, and there's a small amount of sideways tilt, in either direction.

One thing you have to admire about Takara Tomy is the risks they are willing to take. Many of them don't pay off: Hybrid Style had only two molds in its entire run, and this one got two repaints. In a lot of ways, Hybrid Style reminds me of Alternity, with its smaller scale causing problems with its part die-cast construction and wonky joint tolerances... Although Alternity had the additional complication of licensed vehicle modes, and THS-02 has no such excuse.

At the end of the day, this thing's vehicle mode has to be among the worst interpretations of Optimus Prime's traditional truck mode that Takara Tomy has ever produced... At only 9cm/3.5" long by 3.8cm/1.5" tall (including the smokestacks), it's not much larger than the more recent Hot Wheels version of Optimus Prime... yet that at least managed to be an accurate downscaling of the original G1 toy. This is far too complicated for its own good and, renowned as Shōji Kawamori may be, he made some very questionable decisions, unworthy of the guy who designed the VF-1 Valkyrie, of Macross fame. Robot mode bears its share of the brunt of those decisions but there, at least, there's a sense that it could have been better had only the joint tolerances been improved.

The trailer is excellent for its size, and is certainly more fully-featured than the trailer eventually packaged with MP-04, even if it lacks some of the features of the later MP-10 trailer and, of course, the MP-44 trailer. It's leagues better than the shockingly wobbly waste of plastic packaged with the Earthrise toy, but that's only to be expected.

Hybrid Style, and particularly THS-02, is one of Takara Tomy's more interesting oddities. Scaled up, and without the die-cast parts, it could have been a decent mainline toy... As a collectable in a line of its own, I'd have to question who it was targeted at, especially considering the only other unique mold - THS-01 - was a shrunk-down version of Galaxy Convoy, seemingly just because Galaxy Force was the main toyline at the time Hybrid Style was launched. This is very much its own interpretation of G1 Convoy: its design is neither toy-accurate nor animation-accurate, though its colourscheme skews closer to the former. I know that Japanese fans tend to have a soft spot for Optimus Prime/Convoy figures, but a line of nothing but Convoy variants seems a little too niche.

Then again, you can take that with a pinch of salt, considering I bought not only THS-01, but THS-02B as well!