Dave's Transformers Armada Rant: Deluxe Powerlinx Set 1 Powerlinx Thrust Powerlinx Hot Shot Cheetor I decided to pass on Powerlinx Cyclonus. The bright green and dark gray color scheme really didn't grab me. I picked up the other three at three different stores, and don't remember the exact prices (I think it was $8.76 at Wal-Mart for Thrust, $9.99 at TRU for Cheetor, $9.76 at Wal-Mart for Hot Shot). Here's my reviews of the originals: Thrust: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Armada/Deluxe4 Hot Shot: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Armada/Deluxe1 Cheetor: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Phase2/DTMet1 CAPSULES Powerlinx Thrust: Decent G1 Dirge colorscheme (a G1 Thrust scheme is apparently coming), the backpack unit is a lot looser on this than on the original. Recommended if you don't have a Thrust mold, neutral if you already do. Powerlinx Hot Shot: Great color scheme, tighter joints, much better remolded face and redesigned launcher gimmick. Still has many of the mold's problems, but is a big improvement. Recommended even if you already have the first Hot Shot. Cheetor: Okay recolor (would be better without the safety orange parts) of Transmetal Cheetor, with remolded thrusters that are Powerlinx hardpoints. Cliffjumper (recolored Ransack) was a good choice, as it's one of the few Mini-Cons who can connect to Cheetor's hardpoints. Great mold redone reasonably well. Strongly recommended. RANTS Packaging: Standard Unicron Battles carding, each with sticker cards. Cheetor obviously has new art, and Hot Shot also has new art due to his remolded face. Thrust's card has the old art recolored in the G1 Thrust red and black. The co-sells on the back are for the other three in the set. Thrust is consistently shown in the red and black color scheme, suggesting that the Dirge colors were a last minute change. The others are pretty accurate, allowing for weird lighting problems. DECEPTICON: POWERLINX THRUST MINI-CON: INFERNO The main color of this version is a dark tan, with dark gray stripes and accents. The leading edges of the wings and tail are silver, as is the VTOL fan in the center. The missiles, front nosewheel and the center of the robot chest are dutch blue. The cockpit (and its image on the robot's forehead) is orange. The robot face is white surrounded by dark gray, with yellow eyes. The shoulders are white, as is most of Inferno. Inferno's launcher is dark gray, and his legs, shoulders and connector are blue. Inferno's face is painted blue, a bit sloppily. The Decepticon symbols are applied carefully, so that the lines between pieces aren't also painted in purple. The dark gray plastic doesn't seem to hold in as well as the green plastic on the original. The legs are a little floppy, and the backpack (where Inferno sits in jet mode) pops off with almost no force. The knee launchers are still safety-linked and unremovable without the use of cutting tools. Essentially, the only real reason I picked this up was that the first place I saw with Powerlinx Deluxes just had Thrust and Cyclonus. I might get the red recolor if it does end up coming out in this country and I see it in the store. AUTOBOT: POWERLINX HOT SHOT MINI-CON: JOLT Or, as I think of him, Rod Shot. In a rough sense, Rod Shot is red where Hot Shot is yellow, and vice versa, but not quite. Rod Shot's spoiler is still the same yellow as Hot Shot's, and with yellow hardpoints instead of red. Rod Shot's hubcap centers, upper elbow joints (which are red on Hot Shot) and upper legs are a sparkly black (little metallic inclusions), and he has black paint on his pelvis (the hubcap rims are gold). Where Hot Shot is blue-gray, Rod Shot is that sparkly black. Rod Shot's taillights are silver, his face and forehead are light gray (which is an error, the forehead is supposed to be red and may be in later shipments), he has silver paint apps on his shins, bronze chest straps, gold headlights, and yellow Hot Rod-style flames on his hood. I am told that early shipments had the old sloppy-style Autobot insignia, but mine is nice and neat with clean yellow lines between the red parts. The windoes in car mode are the same metallic blue on both, and the engine mount and front grille are silver. Jolt has sparkly black thighs and rotor, silver face, black windows, and is otherwise yellow. There is no paint on Jolt's shoulders, and no paint on the sparkly black engineblock gun. Rod Shot has two significant remoldings. The first is the head, which has a new face and has the visor molded solid into it. The new face has smaller eyes, a narrower nose, a closed mouth and simple lines down from the eyes instead of Hot Shot's weird ladder patterns. The visor also has a notch cut into the top. The other remold isn't as obvious. On Hot Shot, pulling down the hardpoint on his back caused the launcher to flip up and rotate around in a single motion. Now it only flips up, you have to pull the hardpoint down a second time to get it to rotate and fire. This is nice. Rod Shot still has somewhat limited posing in the arms, but the hips hold a bit better than on my Hot Shot. It's worth noting that Hot Shot's yellow and red are slightly lighter than Rod Shot's. The difference in reds is more visible, especially if you swap Jolts. While careful examination shows that Rod Shot's plastic doesn't feel any different than Hot Shot's, it looks a lot better. Most of that is because really light plastic looks bad with unpainted panel lines (something they apparently recognized with Powerlinx Cyclonus, since they paint-washed his lines). This not only evokes Hot Rod, it's a better Hot Rod than the original toy, in my opinion. Definitely worth picking up. And people seem to agree with my assessment, given how many stores I went to that had the other Powerlinx figures but not this one. AUTOBOT: CHEETOR MINI-CON: CLIFFJUMPER (Ransack recolor) Another chrome-less Transmetal repaint job. This oen has a mostly purple torso, legs mostly sparkly black and blue-gray, blue-gray tail, green eyes with red slits. There's red paint details on the back, orange on the legs. There's also some orange joint bits visible in the beast mode. His side panels are sparkly black and the thruster arms that fold out from them are blue-gray. The thrusters themselves have been replaced by orange hardpoints that can be pulled out and then spun to keep them from going back in. Only a Mini-Con with its connector at the rear of the vehicle and facing rearward will work well on these, which pretty much limits it to the Ransack mold (used for Cliffjumper) and Sky Blast. Robot mode is really marred by the decision to go with orange for the accent color. The orange upper arms/shoulders, orange face and splashes of orange on the chest really look fugly against the purple, black and blue-gray of the rest of the toy. Cliffjumper is almost all purple in vehicle mode (see review of Ransack: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Armada/MiniCon3), with black wheels and spare tire, silver windows, orange headlights and hook, green spotlights. In robot mode, his shoulders. thighs and chest gears are orange, and his visor is green. At least on mine, the suspension springs on the front wheels are a little better, and the toy can roll freely on the table without engaging the gear wheel (unlike my Ransack, which can't). I'm tempted to do some paint detailing on Cheetor's beast face and turn him into a Powercat (see http://www.k-state.edu). }-> It's a good mold, and aside from the orange bits they didn't really mess it up. Worth picking up if you didn't already have the original (or the Fox Kids recolor, or the Ravage remold). Dave Van Domelen, notes Rod Shot's instructions still refer to Hot Shot's mold.