Heatseeker (1-Step) [RID 2015]
Vehicle ModeRobot Mode
Allegiance: Decepticon
Difficulty of Transformation: Very Easy
Color Scheme: Light milky gray, charcoal black, and some moderately dull red, dark metallic silver, moderately light blue, dark metallic purple, and glossy white
Rating: 6.4

    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

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