Cybertron Defence Hotshot (Galaxy Force's Exigeyser) is an upgrade of Hot Shot (Excillon) and maintains a lot of the colour scheme from the previous toy but this time on a new form. I think this is the first time a character has had 2 new shapes in a toy line since Smokescreen/Hoist in Armada,
CD Hotshot is an armoured car with a gun turret. The turret itself turns - instant plus points - and the gun barrels raise as well. The turret has 2 positions, one near the back of the toy, one near the front - moved by an arm underneath. Inserting his Autobot Cybertron planet key (#d1o4 on the Cybertron version of the toy) into the back of the gun turret flipping up a missile pod inside each gun barrel. The bumper at the front opens out to the side to become 2 gun barrels revealing another missile array. The vehicle itself has lots of moulded in surface detail which adds to the overall appearance. Mounted on each side of the vehicle are 2 Minicon posts - rejoice ! They are quite low down on the vehicles frame, but because there's nice large wheels there is sufficient clearance for virtually any Minicon to be mounted on it. Destruction Minicons add something of a nasty edge to the toy, while Military ones add to Hotshot's firepower. Later he'd almost receive his own team in the form of the SWAT team (repaints of the Emergency team scattered through the Cybertron Minicon vs packs) which are perfectly matched in form & colour and give him extra firepower to boot ! There's a Vanguard team - The Galaxy Force name for Cybertron Defence - symbol on the cab of the toy - an Autobot face on top of a letter V.
TF is almost the same as Hotshot - Pull the legs out at the back, fold the feet down and pull the shoulders and arms out to the sides from the front. The hips need folding forward, hip plates fold down, pull the forearms out and the head fold forward. His sword unclips from the inside of the lower leg.
Robot - fairly similar to the original Hotshot but in an odd way crossed with Armada Megatron - it's the large shoulders. Lots of articulation - head, universal shoulders, elbow, knee and ankle. There's a holder for the sword on his left leg. The sword can be held in either hand, and it's slightly flattened handle can be fit into a slot at the end of his forearm to project out in front of him. Sadly this hole is squeezed at the side to take the swords slightly odd handle so that these slots won't take any peg on a Minicon weapon. The Minicon pegs I was so keen on earlier have ended up on each wrist which is a HUGE plus point for me. This means that any of the weapon Minicons can be mounted there to good effect.
The gun turret ends up mounted on the robot's back. Again there's a higher and lower position which basically means do you have the entire gun barrel or just the silver tips protruding over the shoulders. These silver tips do have a little habit of popping off which can be slightly annoying ! The turret can also be rotated downwards to do a passable jetpack impersonation. From the higher position on the back the turret can be bent up behind the robot's head passing the gun barrels over his shoulders. From here the missile pods can be deployed using the planet key. The bumper guns can also be flipped up exposing missiles along the top of his shoulders. He has additional missile pods in robot mode - panels fold down on each shoulder, and the panels on each lower leg rotate as well.
Overall - nice articulation, nice upgrade, Minicon pegs mounted in the right places, lots of additional features with hidden weapons - in fact this must be the heaviest armed Autobot in proportion to it's size ever. Great toy, a must have especially if you're a Minicon fan and want something to work with them. Possible future repaints could include a Rodimus Prime version with red from the blue and orange for the red - or something involving black and/or green in a military colour scheme - possibly as a Decepticon.
Cybertron Defence Hotshot was sold in Japan as Galaxy Force toy GC-19 Exigeyser.
Springer swaps light blue for grey and red for pale green while keeping the black and altering the paint ops. While the vehicle mode is a bit of a stretch the robot mode seems much more appropriate with the head looking close to the G1 version and the figure bearing a sword.
Not the worst repaint the world has ever seen - but if you want a helicopter Springer you'll need to get the one of two Target exclusive Universe VS packs: Standoff Beneath the Streets pack with pairs a repainted Cybertron Evac as Springer vs Cybertron Sideways repainted as Ratbat. For the other VS pack see bellow.
My first problem with this pack is when I think Roadbuster green is one of the colours to come to mind which is also Springer's main colour. Roadbuster swaps the red of the cannons & forearms and the black of the panels & chest for an army drab green. The light blue becomes an olive green and the rest of the red becomes a yellow giving us a good military looking repaint. Unfortunately the original Roadbuster uses the olive green with orange and brown resulting in a recolour which misses the target it's aiming at. It's a very decent repaint that I'd buy if they came out here but for a G1 repaint I expect them to get the colours dead on rather than evoke the original toy.