Still not personally interested in buying this toy, but I had a fiddle with someone else's today. I'm really impressed with how they're able to cram a lot of the vehicle mode kibble into the torso. MP9 does it too, but MP28 does it at a greater extreme. MP9 still incorporates a fair amount of the vehicle into the legs, and while I think it does it reasonable job, there are still bits of kibble like pipes and tyres visible at certain angles. MP28's legs do not incorporate vehicle components into it -- they're just legs. The upside to this is that they look just like Hot Rod's legs do in the cartoon, totally devoid of any vehicle parts which have magically disappeared. The challenge is that, of course, parts cannot really disappear on a real life toy. And herein lies the fun in this toy; much like with toys like MP Bumblebee and Ironhide, TakaraTOMY have done an impressive job in attempting to create the 'illusion of mass-shifting.' A greater amount of the vehicle is now absorbed into the torso. This does give MP28 a chunkier looking body, but not necessarily in a bad way. They've done an impressive job in trying to make Hot Rod look as slick as possible while concealing a lot of the vehicle into the body.
The articulation on this toy is insane. I was surprised to see that, just like with MP9, MP28 also has double-jointed knees, allowing him bend his legs completely (and thus assume this pose). He could also sit in Seiza, although Hot Rod never actually did that in canon (only Rodimus Prime). But what surprised me is that his arms are also double jointed!Furthermore, if you do nothing with the upper arms, they end up looking like this with the tyres on the back, which indeed the official transformation fort his toy. But the upper arms are also able to reconfigure with the tyres facing the front, so that it looks more like Rodimus Prime, and I didn't actually try it, but it might also be possible to have the tyres facing out to the sides, which would be toy-accurate. Would someone else care to try this on their MP28 to confirm or deny if this is possible? If so, then this is a really neat feature, as it doesn't seem to serve any other purpose other than to achieve this look.
I don't understand why Hot Rod comes with a Matrix Chamber.Yeah, it's a neat enough gimmick... but it doesn't seem to canonically make sense. This is Hot Rod, not Rodimus Prime. <shrugs>
I can see what people mean about the really low undercarriage clearance. You've got to make sure that all the tabs are pushed in all the way to allow the vehicle to roll without the bottom scraping. Hot Rod's primary weakness is now speed humps.If you experience scraping then flip the toy over and see which tabs you haven't pushed in far enough. Also... the chrome!
Anyway, that's all I can remember about my brief encounter with this toy.Still not convinced to buy it though, as nice as it is, my Hasbro MP9 suits me fine, but I can definitely see the appeal of this toy.
Just such a shame about the crappy chrome though.
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Originally Posted by Sinnertwin
