Yeah, I still see Orion Pax as the same character as Optimus Prime. Again, it is just the much younger version.

You could argue that about any character in fiction, or any person in life. There are clearly defined height and personality differences- but it is down to age and maturing.

I don't see why Hot Rod or Rodimus are any different. Same character, just at different stages in their lifecycle. Much like when I was a kid I was a lot smaller and behaved completely different to how I do now. I am not s different person, I've just grown up which is what Hot Rod does in the movie, just owing to the power of the macguffin rather than time.

I wouldn't say an MP Orion Pax would be an Optimus redo because evidently they would be be completely different toys.

Hot rod is a bit different as Takaras MP 09 specifically is Hot Rod, as well as Rodimus Prime, and Hasbro released it as Hot Rod. This is a redo of a facet of MP 09, but not the whole thing. So I hope an MP Rodimus Prime update is on the cards later down the line too

As long as Takara keep churning out great figures they can do whatever they want  

 

Yup, the name on the packaging and the actual shots prove that too:



'Cybertron Protector'. He even has his Rodimus face on show. Doesn't look like they are selling Hotrod to me but maybe I'm missing something. Ppl will see/believe whatever they want to though and if they want to see MP Hotrod as a redo of MP Rodimus then that's their prerogative.

The difference is we don't mature/jump between old and young on the turn of a matrix. I get what you are saying and agree to a certain extent but these things can't be related to real life in that way IMO. Rodimus is like he is from the wisdom of the Matrix. Let Hotrod 'mature' without that influence and he probably wouldn't get to that point in his life. This is the differences in the chracateristics I'm talking about.

I do agree with the bolded part though  

EDIT - that box art shot.....imagine it all blacked out as a silhouette without any detail and that upper body would look huge compared to the legs. That's gonna be a similar detailing Hotrod has....albeit it smaller.

 

Springer is as tall as Optimus Prime.

Kup, Hot Rod, Blurr, and Arcee are around Ironhide size. Which is taller than Prowl and the other sports cars Autobot Cars but shorter than Starscream and the Seekers.

This isn't the case. It is for the 2006 Classics figure, but not the original design.

Randy

 

Arcee being taller than your standard car Bot would be weird to me. Prowl size would be ideal.

 

Good to hear you kept him! Hopefully Hot Rod will help you appreciate him a bit more, having a character that compliments him. Like I've said, I feel like one of the pics on the back of Hot Rod's box is going to be him in car mode loaded onto UM's trailer. I just hope Hot Rod's the more pink/magenta Toei used in the movie.

I hear you about the arm tire orientation. I was really thinking that if this figure ever became a reality he'd have to have those tires on the front of his arms like the toy and Japanese Headmaster animation. Glad I was wrong! To get his arms flipped around I wonder how close that step will resemble his transform scheme that was shown in The Movie after he fixed Kup on Quintessa.

Makes me even more grateful for the Appreciation thread, Cyclonus79. But yeah, this guy's going to look amazing. It'd be great if he turned out to be the exact opposite of MP-09 in terms of stability of qc, like MP Wheeljack tight and balanced. Be a good way for Kobayashi to say "take that, fuckers!"

 

Regardless of the packaging, he was clearly Hot Rod first and foremost - unless you think this is a good Rodimus Prime cab mode:



 

Actually, I'm sure the idea all along was a two-in-one, but they definitely decided to sacrifice the Rodimus mode in favour of the Hot Rod mode.

You're right that the figure works better as Rodimus Prime with the rebooted MP line, though (even though I still prefer the Hot Rod mode).

 

I'm wondering if Hasbro had anything to do with this? They've pushed for specific MPs before (MP-1 and MP-8), and with the 30th anniversary of The Movie in the West (wasn't released till '89 in Japan), I wonder if TT's releasing this guy in the spring so Hasbro can release him at the end of the year. Hasbro releasing MP Ultra Magnus and Hot Rod here next year would be a pretty big way of celebrating the anniversary.

 

I think that's the keyword. You're conflating people wanting what was intended with people wanting insane degrees of literalism. "No hip kibble" falls under 'intended' just as well. It certainly doesn't take insane degrees of literalism to not want hip kibble (something Ironhide didn't have at all) vs getting into the exact minutiae of how many millimeters long Wheeljack's left toe was.

I think the inconsistency and laziness of the show is the reason to fall back on the scale chart. The cartoon was often lazy and it was easier to change heights as needed, so the scale chart provides at least SOME consistency. As much as people joke about the scale chart being gospel, the scale chart is a general guide, it's not as if the animators were that super concerned with documenting heights perfectly.

At the same time we have to deal with the MP line as it exists, which leaves us torn between two different reference points: Optimus and the carbots. While Optimus is usually considered THE reference point, this is a line that has filled out quite a bit at this point, and there are a bunch of carbots who are arguably too small in reference to him. So what do we do now? Adjust heights a bit between the two? Or ignore that and just keep making a best effort to match height relative solely to Prime?

 

Man...I see both sides of the scale debate. When I just imagine Hot Rod in my mind, I see him coming roughly up to Optimus' chest windows which should be Ironhide height. That, however, likely means a very large car unless they can work some origami panel folding magic like Ironhide. Ironhide height also appears to be pretty much exactly how the actual movie scale chart depicts him (slightly shorter, but very close).

On the other hand, Yeled makes a compelling case for how Hot Rod would have been drawn were he in season 1\2. Him being within the carbot size would make perfect sense and it does seem very wrong for the hot-headed young 'punk' to tower over the mature Prowl.

Just from a practical standpoint though...do we really want a Hot Rod whose head comes up to the bottom of Ultra Magnus' crotch? That seems ridiculous to me. MP09 in 'Hot Rod' mode comes up to the bottom of Ultra Magnus' chest windows...which is perfect Rodimus Prime height to me, but a bit tall for Hot Rod.

I think ideally a compromise would be about a head taller than tracks, which is about two heads taller than Prowl and I would guess a head shorter than Ironhide. Kup and Blurr should definitely be Ironhide height and Hot Rod being a head shorter makes sense to me (though not entirely toon accurate).

What's truly the height (pardon the pun) of irony is that MP09 is the figure that set the current scale standard, as Hasui stated that MP10 was made to scale with him.  

 

Why? Because she's a fembot?

Anyway, Arcee never shared screen time with many of the Autobot cars because most of them were dead, so it hardly matters if she's taller. All of the new movie Autobots (except Wheelie, if he counts) were taller than the seasons 1 & 2 carbots.

 

You can't actually say it's Hot Rod that can turn into Rodimus Prime by shoehorning the car into a 95% already made and waiting Space Winnebago.

Put it this way....It's not Rodimus Prime, if it transform into Hot Rod

 

I think "hip kibble" falls under "constraints of real word physics in achieving an impossible cartoon transformation", although I appreciate that there are different ways of achieving transformations and respect the different opinions on this. I don't think I'm conflating anything, though, as the point stands that we are all inconsistent in what we want when it comes to translating the cartoon into MPs; the designers have a difficult job. I do agree with what you're saying in general, though.

Hot Rod is a difficult one, because he falls between stools in many ways. As Shiro1 says, a Prowl-sized Hot Rod is going to look awkward next to a towering Ultra Magnus, but I can't see them pulling an Ironhide and getting an Ironhide-sized 'bot out of a Prowl-sized car given Hot Rod's low, sleek, alt-mode, so I think people hoping for an Ironhide-sized Hot Rod are going to be disappointed (although I could be eating my words soon). He will no doubt look great on Ultra Magnus's trailer, though, and a Prowl-sized Hot Rod will hopefully be a lot of fun to transform and handle (and hopefully the transformation will take less than twenty minutes   ).

 

Of course we don't jump age instantly, but neither did Liono in the thunder cats yet clearly it is the same character. These are just ways for toy companies to quickly explain a transition of a character to sell toys.

During season 3 of the cartoon we see Rodimus struggling with the change, because he is still Hot Rod at heart and is adjusting to the huge change. Even when he turns back to hot rod you see him start to realise why he needs to go back to being Rodimus and develops some of the elements of maturity that he displays as Rodimus. So you can see some of the link there.

It is clearly not a different character though, there is nothing within him that suggest he is. It is clearly intended to be a more mature evolution of Hot Rod, which is foreshadowed throughout the movie.

I agree there are differences in the characteristics, but as I say that is the same with anybody.

If you watch Harry Potter 1, then jump to the last two there are things in harry Potters character and personality that have changed. Because he's got older.

Hot Rod to Rodimus is the same thing, but they just took out the passage of time to get him from one point to the other

It is an interesting discussion, and I can understand why people could view them as separate characters if they wished but personally I think it is pretty clear they are the same character as traits carry over between the two and only differ in the way they would if time had passed and Hot Rod had aged.

The colours and overall look of Hot Rod then being moved to Rodimus is a very visual way of them saying "same character, but more older and leadery"

 

No, he didn't.

He actually specifically stated that MP-9 is Hot Rodimus. In an interview in the 2010 Figure Oh Magazine he stated: "It was difficult to recreate Hot Rodimus and he's the core".


Also, if you look at the pictures in the MP book, Mp-9 is shown to be designed to Hot Rod(imus) with all the features and gimmicks for Hot Rodimus, and they thought up ways to make it a Rodimus Prime. One of which was turning the trailer into armor to make Rodimus Prime different from Hot Rodimus. In the end, they kept it to just a face switching gimmick, an extra joint in the hips and moving the spoiler a bit.

 

-1

 

Why do the rest of us have to read through this nonsense of an argument about what Takara intented(!) MP09(!) to be?Who gives a f*ck?They intented it to be both!Just like UM's all in one transformation,its the same thing!What were they supposed to write on the box?"MP09 Hot Rod/Rodimus Prime"?Him being able to be both was one of its selling points.What a meaningless argument jesus

 

All I'm going to say again is.

DEDICATED MASTERPIECE HOT ROD!  

(Carry on with whatever arguing or whatever...)

 

^^I'm not sure but I think they're trying to convince themselves that;
-No new Rodimus Prime is coming
-MP-09 is good enough to stand as Rodimus Prime
-This Hot Rod reveal means that Takara's plan all along was that MP-09 was always meant to be Rodimus Prime.

 

I honestly don't care at this point, I'm just excited that what I was told was a crazy idea over in the speculation thread is actually happening!!!

 

Heh heh, when you're right, you're right.   I cannot wait to see the full reveal of this guy. Fingers crossed for a good face sculpt. It's usually about a month between silhouette teasers and prototype reveals, if I recall correctly from Prowl, Wheeljack and Bumblebee, so hopefully we'll get to see some more of this guy in next month's magazines. It's a shame we don't have someone doing these reveals on Twitter like Hasui used to.