Jolt

Allegiance: Minicon
Size: Mini-Con
Difficulty of Transformation: Very Easy
Color Scheme: Light red, gunmetal gray-blue, and some black
Rating: 6.9

    Vehicle mode is a helicopter. This mode is pretty nice, especially in the mold detailing department. Panels and "bolts" can be found molded throughout. And the rotor spins very nicely, too, and for quite some time if you give it a good thwack with your finger. However, this toy suffers from a severe lack of paint detailing. More paint should have been added besides just the engines and the windows. Makes this toy look almost like an unfinished prototype, really. And the robot mode arms are VERY clearly visible on the sides of the helicopter, detracting from the look quite a bit. Also worthy of note is that Jolt has not just one Minicon port on the bottom of the helicopter, but TWO- one in the bottom middle and one in the bottom of the tail end.
    In robot mode, Jolt looks pretty cool, if you ignore the lack of good paint detailing. He can move at the hips, knees, and shoulders, which is decent articulation for a Minicon. The insides of his feet are hollow, though, which doesn't exactly make him the most stable Minicon. And another complaint; the tail-end of the helicopter, which becomes the chest piece in this mode, doesn't have any peg to plug into, so it just sorta hangs off Jolt, instead of staying in a set position. Meh. One thing is that Jolt's face looks very much like the old G1 toy Powerglide's, which is kinda cool.
    Jolt has looks going for him, and has some excellent mold detailing, but he needs more paint detailing, and his arms in vehicle mode stick out quite a bit. Otherwise, he's a cool little guy.

Hot Shot

Allegiance: Autobot
Size: Super-Con
Difficulty of Transformation: Easy
Color Scheme: Yellow with a neonish tint, light black, sparkly dark sea blue, bright red, gunmetal blue-gray, and sparkly silverish sea blue
Powerlinx ports: 4 (1 gimmicked)
Rating: 6.3

    Vehicle mode is a sportscar, almost realistic in its design, but still with a bit of a futuristic feel to it. The headlights and the front bumper especially help bring out this "futuristic" feel. This mode is pretty nice in its design- very curved, with nice paint detailing. The only extra in this mode is if you look straight-on at the rear, you can see the top of Hot Shot's robot head. Other than that, pretty flawless in its design.... Or at least, it WOULD be if it wasn't for the HORRENDOUS colors. The yellow is waay to bright to be such a major color, and the bright Playskoolish red in the middle of the otherwise gunmetal blue-gray and black tires doesn't help much either. It just screams, "I'M A TOY", and doesn't really LOOK very good in these colors. The mold detailing is also very sparse in this mode, adding to the "kiddish" feel. As for gimmicks in this mode, Hot Shot cheats a little. He doesn't have a Minicon-activated gimmick; rather, by attaching his engine to the empty space on the front hood, two little grabber claws flip out on the front bumper. Um, whee? Kind of a weak gimmick, since it can't really be used for much. And what especially cheapens it is that you can DO IT YOURSELF without the help of the engine, and it's needed for part of the transformation process. And you can't place the engine on Hot Shot without the grabber claws popping out, which also gets a bit annoying. If you attach Jolt to Hot Shot's back bumper as shown above, he gains a sort of "flight mode". It's alright, but it's nothing spectacular. And it's certainly not a brand new "mode". As for Powerlinx points, Hot Shot has three in this mode- one on the top of the rear end of the car, and one on each side of said rear end. His Autobot symbol is rather poorly painted on the left back panel between two of the Powerlinx ports.

    Hot Shot's robot mode is.... not good. It looks way too chunky and Playskoolish for my tastes, and the colors obviously don't help. Hot Shot's upper body is especially bad, as it's all just detailing on the front of the back third of the car mode. And the arms look especially nonconvincing, due as much to their odd position as the fact that they only move out and in on the shoulders. The elbow articulation is also very weird. It moves inward at a point that it shouldn't, so no sideways posing of the arms there. And the fists are molded to the sides of the car window panels, something I'm not too fond of either. Hot Shot's face also looks too chunky, and he's actually got a sort of smile-grin going there, which I don't like, as it also exemplifies the Playskoolish look of this mode even more. On the upside, though, you can flip down his helmet visor to make him look cool there. Also on the upside is that the mold detailing on the robot parts is very good, even though the vehicle mode parts still lack enough. However, I'm not fond of the "seat belt" crossed over Hot Shot's chest. It looks... goofy. You can plug his car engine into his chest, and it helps the look some, but not much. Hot Shot's lower body is alright, though, if you ignore the colors. Nice ball-joint articulation on the hips and knees, although the feet are kind of on one side of the leg, and don't look quite right. As for this mode's gimmick, it's actually very cool. Well, except for the location of the Powerlinx point, that is. Plug a Minicon into Hot Shot's...er...butt, and...er... push... up, and a huge axle-cannon of DOOM swings up and fires a missile, all in one smooth motion. VERY cool, especially if you've got Hot Shot's visor down. If you do it carefully, you can activate this gimmick without using the Minicon powerlinx point, but it involves being careful with a couple of switches, so you're better off just using the Minicon.
    Hot Shot has a wonderful main gimmick and vehicle mode design-wise, but his color scheme and robot mode are pretty bad. As of this writing (12/02), Hot Shot remains my least favorite "large" Armada toy.

Review by Beastbot

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