So when the largely middling Netflix Cartoon based on the War for Cybertron: Siege toyline aired, Siege proper had ended and Earthrise was already a thing, prompting a run of exclusive toys. These featured alleged more cartoon accurate colour schemes, although it's probably more accurate to describe them more enthusiastic paint jobs. These doubled-down on the grime and wear motifs that many had disliked about Siege, and this premium paintwork was the justification for a higher price. These exclusives varied from the desirable to the unneeded, the very obscure, i.e. today's subject. As exclusives go, they weren't super hard to find, scalpers notwithstanding, as a retailer in each major region carried them. Today's subject is the Japanese version, and the phrase "Japanese Exclusive Transformer" has historically been the subject of much fervently irrational desire. Not so much this case; Takaratomy does still occasionally do its own thing, like masterpieces, but mainly they just re-release stuff. Apparently, not everyone got the memo, as this was reduced from 55 to 25 quid by a specialist toy supplier. Good if you're a completionist, I suppose. Or if, like myself, you saw an inexpensive indulgence, and a chance to try something you passed on at the time. As to whom Hotlink is, and why he is? Well, he's a Seeker, one of the army of Starscream repaints that were used to fill crowd scenes in the 80's cartoon, and subsequently named in later fiction. Hotlink appeared in episode 1 and while he had a gimmick I'll get to, he's a blank slate. I suspect the only reason why he's here is that they were saving the Coneheads for Earthrise, and they'd done the similarly obscure Rainmakers as a three pack. He had a Botcon toy under similar circumstances and a few appearances since, but as lore goes, he's a niche within a niche. He didn’t even have a name until decades after the fact. Even the paint job here is taking liberties, as Hotlink more of a uniform purple and grey on screen, whereas this toy edges into Skywarp territory. I’ve seen at least one person repaint this into Skywarp because that toy is harder to find. On a conceptual level then, this is largely harmless exclusive; its not taking a popular guy out of circulation, Earthrise, I’m looking at you, and as its so obscure, it can afford to mix things up a bit.
Now, the siege Seeker mould got some well-earned criticism at the time due to its engineering. Its basically a shellformer, where robot form balls up, and is concealed by the backpack. I'd compare it to something out of the Gundam franchise, one of its function over form mecha where the transformation is about adding utility, rather than passing for a jet. Something along the lines of the Gundam Airmaster, perhaps? My example was also suffering from some spotty QC which prompted the use of a craft knife to ease a transformation joint and general touching up. Not great, but also not unexpected given the price and inevitable mould degradation. I have mixed feelings about this design approach, as I have pilloried certain Earthrise toys for doing similar, and objectively it's flawed. The difference is, I suppose, is that it feels actual creativity was used to catch the spirit of something, rather than simply a lack of imagination. If you're gonna cheat, cheat to create an alien attack polygon. Don't cheat to create a car. Visually, the jet has a lot of moulded detail, and many have made the comparison with the Colonial Vipers from Battlestar Galactica. Its certainly got that 80’s, real model, universal greebly vibe going on. What’s specific to Hotlink is the colours, a transition of black to purple to lavender, with orange highlights. There’s multiple tones going on, with both plastic and paint, putting me in the gentle use of an airbrush. Its a good scheme. Functionally: the tetra-jet isn’t doing too much, but you can have fun with blast affects attached to the thrusters, and you end up with a total of 6 under-wing mounts for the null rays.
The robot mode attempts the same trick, but its not as unified, and generally comes across as darker in the extremities. This draws the eyes to the torso, with his orange faux not-cockpit and lavender codpiece, which is a sentence, but the overall affect is pretty good. This is also where the base mould starts to shine, because there’s numerous little touches that suggest the time they saved on engineering to make things a little nicer. There’s notably good movement at the shoulders and knees, with two points of articulation for each wing. If you get a flight stand for this chap, he’ll look great, and he’s fully in the Siege play pattern, so he can carry a lot of guns. The general sort of Underbase Saga, real model, greebling also continues, and the eyes are light-piped red. I acknowledge the backpack as the beginning and end of all this toy’s design problems, but they did kinda nail the robot mode, with good posability and presence. I don’t think I would army build this mould, but I will say its got more appeal than I thought.
We now come to the unique selling point of both Hotlink and the set in general: flamethrowers. Hotlink’s one claim to fame is that in the first ever episode of the Transformers cartoon, he tried to trap Wheeljack and Bumblebee in a ring of fire. It didn’t work, but, I say again, flamethrowers. He’s got two little battlemaster chaps to represent this, Heartburn & Heatstroke, so, yes, he dual-wields flamethrowers like a goddamn Redemptionist. Both are recolours of the Blowpipe mould, and are functionally identical, and by omitting half of the blast effect, they now spurt fire. As my tone may have implied, I find this rather fun, but possibly the execution isn’t great. In what I assume is an attempt to more closely match that one scene, both are in a light blue, which doesn’t really work. Maybe they would have been better in some other tone, but this mould was used 7 other times, so maybe all the good colours were taken…
My point? Only that Hotlink etc are something that exists. And, sometimes, a mould can surprise you.
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