G1 Protectobots/Defensor

Back in the days of Generation 1, I wasn't very successful in completing gestalt sets. I picked up all the Stunticons, Terrorcons, and all of Piranacon's limb-bots, but only acquired Snaptrap comparatively recently, on the secondary market, having already bought the Collectors' Club's boxed set back in 2008... On the Autobots' side, I didn't manage to obtain a full set of Protectobots, and didn't even start the Aerialbots or the Technobots.

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!

Combiner Wars Streetwise

Back in the days when Generation 1 toys were available in the shops, Streetwise was the only one of the Protectobot limbs that I was unable to acquire. Looking at that toy now, it's a complete mess - most of the gestalt limbs showed terrible signs of the compromise between vehicle, robot and limb modes, but the way Streetwise was built left him perpetually leaning forward, with his chest and shoulder line about level with his 'toes' and his back stepping gradually backwards as it dropped toward his legs due to the weird transformation jointing. He also had a weird collapsing-bonnet-belly-flap (seemingly quite fragile, given how many on the secondary market are without it) making the torso look very awkward, though it's not entirely clear whether it's meant to be collapsed for robot mode, or just when Streetwise is functioning as Defensor's leg.

Let's hope there's none of that with this new Combiner Wars version...