Legacy Evolution Armada Hot Shot Official In-Hand Images & Design Notes

[BaCon]

Hasbro's @markclonus has the Armada sailing with an official in-hand look at the Transformers Legacy Evolution Armada Hot Shot figure. He's posted official in-hand images of the figure along with his design notes that gives us some concept designs and details on this Armada throwback character. Check out the full behind the scenes that follow below. - Read the Full News Story

[Gates13]

I honestly can't wait for this guy.Armada got me back into collecting Transformers. It's got a special place in my heart even though I'm a G1'er.

[Grahf]

He looks really good.

However this design showcases the major limitations of using a large amount of translucent plastic. The paint isn't going to match normally but since it's yellow it's going to be worse. Then the paint is over tranlucent blue plastic which only compounds the matter of the yellow paint. But most egregious is that the windshield just ends up as chunks of kibble since there's no hinges in them. So as a workaround they put the chunks on ball joints so that they can be moved from one place to another in order to use the articulation. If you have to do that then it should tell you to maybe not design it like that. If the windshield had been made of standard opaque plastic then it not only would've saved on paint since there's less paint needed for the windows but only just on this design but it would've allowed them to work in some hinges to have the parts fold flat against the sides of the legs. Or they even could've reused some of those design tricks from PRiD deluxe Vehicon to flip and compress some of those panels to fill in the lower legs.

It's just so odd that they haven't gone back to that design for anything. It was a really good design and hid what would've been big panels of kibble otherwise as seen on the first edition Vehicon into the actual parts of the robot while also maintaining accuracy. Most Studio Series figures would greatly benefit from the PRiD Vehicon's design. It really was an amazing way to design and deal with those pieces. The Dreads especially now that we really see just how incredibly bad those kibble pieces are on Hatchet as hiding that kibble on his back means putting them right out in the open as he's a quadruped and not a biped. It's cool that he's reusing the same shell pieces to give them all the same alt mode but damn if it wasn't a bad design to begin with though.

The Transformers design teams at Hasbro and Takara should have certain figures visible everywhere in their offices to draw inspiration from while working. Just so that they can look up and remind themselves on how they already solved the problem they're working on now years ago better than anything they can design now seemingly. Prime Robots in Disguise deluxe class Vehicon is one of those figures. It is a masterclass in design still. 

Again though, I really like the look of Hot Shot. The kibble isn't too bad but it just could've been done so much better and made the figure damn near perfect in the process. It's just so close and then kind of falls apart needlessly.

[BaCon]

PrimeVsPrime drives off with another early leaked preview of the Transformers Legacy: Evolution Armada Hot Shot figure. - Read the Full News Story