Heatseeker's alternate
mode is a heavy-duty 4WD SUV. In this mode he's fairly proportional, with
two exceptions. First, the windows and roof don't "rise above" the front
hood area of the vehicle as much as they should. Second, he seems just
a bit too long in comparison to his width, but this latter point is relatively
minor. As far as robot mode extras, his robot feet are pretty darned obvious
sticking out the back end-- in fact, beyond those feet he really doesn't
have a back end in this mode, beyond juuust enough on the sides to have
his taillights molded in. The mold detailing in general on this toy is
slightly above the RID2015 average, and since this is by far Heatseeker's
largest toy, we get to see some more details beyond the basic angled windows
and large bumper details. There's some smaller angular lines on the sides
of his grill, and some smaller vents near the top. His wheels are well-detailed
with treads, and there's some minor lines along his roof. There's some
rectangular bumps on the sides of his car doors that are probably there
to give more mass to his arms in robot mode, as they kinda cross over and
ignore the car door lines themselves. His main color by far in this mode
is a very boring milky gray, with black wheels-- not exactly an eye-catcher.
There is some moderately dull red paint on the front and side windows (but
unfortunately not the back), along with some jagged red lines on the car
doors and some dark metallic purple paint on his headlights. He really
needed some more paint in this mode-- on the front grill in particular--
to help break up all of this blah milky gray. There is a port on the top
of the toy where you can plug in a Mini-Con Weaponizer (or a toy with a
similarly-sized peg) to give Heatseeker some firepower in this mode.
To transform Heatseeker
to robot mode, you do the now-familiar detaching of the roof and swinging
it up and behind the toy, pegging it into the backside of the robot mode,
and then fold down the arms at the shoulders. Everything else auto-transforms.
As with other 1-steps that use this transformation, this means Heatseeker
has a pretty substantial backpack in this mode made of the entire roof
of his vehicle mode-- and in his case, the underside of the side bumper
pieces, too. It stays in place, but it sticks out behind his shoulders
and especially behind his lower body and legs, almost all the way down
to his feet-- it's rather difficult to overlook. However, that said, the
"core" robot looks pretty good for a 1-step, with a pretty proportional
chest, arms, and legs, though there's fairly substantial bits of vehicle
side on the sides of his lower legs (that said, that's present on all of
his toys). His arms have the expected fists molded in on the bottom, with
what
look like little mini-guns on the sides of the lower arms, and with dark
purple faux headlight-missile pods on his shoulders which give him his
name. (The ones from his vehicle mode are actually on his back in this
mode.) His chest looks like the RID2015-typical faux compressed vehicle
front, with a small red line at the top meant to be his "front window"
while there's some silver edged details further down that look like sides
of his grill angled up. He's got a fairly standard black waist, and his
legs are a bit small as far as the upper parts go, but his lower legs have
some nifty pointed red kneecaps, along with some standard angular boots
for feet. His headsculpt is pretty nice, with a fairly large "helmet" with
swept-back pieces on the forehead and a small bit sticking out of the top
of the head. His white mouth and face are normal, but he has one normal
(black) eye and one "targeting reticle" (blue) eye, which of course I assume
makes him better at aiming his shoulder missiles (which are heatseeking
anyways). With the extra added paint apps, and with black on the waist
and shoulders, it does help break up his light gray a bit more, though
there's still far too much of it (and some more paint would've been appreciated
on the legs, still). For articulation, Heatseeker can move at his shoulders
at two points, though if you lift them up outwards you'll undo part of
the "lock" that keeps him in this mode and his other arm might come un-done.
If you want a Heatseeker
toy that isn't tiny, this 1-step changer is pretty much your only option.
That said, he does have one of the better 1-step transformations out there,
with a fairly solid vehicle mode (minus the obvious feet) and a decent
robot mode, if you can look beyond the huge panel on his back. Of course,
he has little articulation, and not enough paint, but that's the norm for
1-step changers. If you only get one version of Heatseeker, I'd ignore
scale and get the Legion version instead.
Review by Beastbot