Firebot is a fire engine with a cab mounted water cannon. He's got six wheel, two at the front and four at the rear. There's no ladder on this sort of fire engine. Firebot uses the same plastic as Prowl & Makeshift but in much smaller quantities to the other two toys and his major colour - red in this case - is independent of the other two toys. Firebot's lower rear is the same white as Prowl's back & sides. His water cannon and scope in weapons mode are the same clear blue as Prowl's body. His wheels and robot legs are the same colour as Prowl's wheels.
The name of the toy has always intrigued me. It seems a bit simplistic for a transformer. Is it intentional or did someone make a spelling error when they wanted Firebolt ?
He has a pair of Minicon sockets on his roof. This exposes his underside when mounted which consists of two white panels and a clear blue strip down the middle that might be a piece of complex machinery the larger robot is using. There's some moulding at the end of the fire engine that you could conceivably think was gun barrels.
TF (to weapon mode) Fold the top of the back of the vehicle out to the sides and then rotate 180 degrees so the orange panels are pointing forward and the silver ones back. Fold the water cannon out to the side. Fold the front of the vehicle onto the back of the vehicle. Place so the underside of the back of the vehicle points up/ Fold up the clear blue central chest piece as a scope.
What you get is a missile array - 12 missiles divided equally between two chambers. The missiles are moulded in and painted. Unlike Prowl he can't be hand held - you need to attach him to a minicon post or leave freestanding - but see the Hellflame versions bellow.
TF (from fire engine to robot mode) Fold the top of the back of the vehicle out to the sides and then rotate 180 degrees so the orange panels are pointing forward and the silver ones back. Fold the front of the vehicle down to form the robot legs. Fold the clear blue central panel down onto the chest to expose his head.
Firebot is moulded with his head wearing a fireman's helmet. How good is that ? The white and the blue are much more exposed here. His shoulders turn & fold back and his hips & knees move independently.
Good toy in all three modes again.
In Japan Firebot becomes Draft and is sold in the Emergency Team set numbered MM-20. The Emergency team do not feature in a Micron Legend giftset.
From the original Emergency team review " The Emergency team are great, 3 nice vehicles, 3 good robots - though Firebot does look like he was a combiner limb in a previous life ! He transforms into a missile box - similar to Overload's shoulders, with minicon holes each side. If you turn him upside down you can flip his chest piece up in this mode as a sight.
As I intimated above Overload has these at the moment - the white and transparent blue on Makeshift and Prowl match him well, and while Firebot (Firebolt ?) is a different shade of red (more cherry) then Overload the shape works well with him.
Good set, recommended. "
Firebot has more independence from Prowl because of his body colour so Hasbro also went for a G1 homage in this toy - they chose pale blue for the fire engine making him a Minicon Hotspot. I don't go for the whole blue fire engine thing but it's a G1 homage so I'm OK with that. Far worse is to come. The missiles within the toy are now red.
Here white become orange and clear blue become black. I think they're intended to match Powerlinx Red Alert and provide him with a team of similarly coloured Minicons. However Draft's main colour goes from being red to dark blue ???? What ??? A dark blue fire engine ??? At least if they'd made it orange it would have blended in with the rest of the team ! The missiles in the toy are red on this release.
Quench's main body becomes yellow on this release, which is a reasonable choice as I can remember seeing airport fire engines painted this colour. Quench's missiles are painted shocking pink !
Why ???? I can see little reason for this set. The green makes me think they were aiming for a military set - the name of this toy implies a Military theme too as does the green they've used on the fire engine (in the UK the Army have green fire engines nicknamed Green Goddesses) but it just doesn't give that feel on the rest of the set. They just feel like odd random repaints.
Original Micron booster v2 review :"I don't know of anywhere that has Green emergency vehicles but there we go.
Prowl = Groove
Firebot = Cluster
Makeshift = Rotor
Clear blue become dark clear green - shame, the light green on the box gave
Rotor a HM Brainstorm feel
Grey becomes White - good
Black becomes Dark Green - Why ????? it's mainly used for the wheels ?????
Red becomes Olive Green.
Actually this last one is quite cool as we get Cluster as a Green Goddess Fire Engine :-)
OK, but nothing special, and for both these sets I can't see the reason for the colour schemes."
This release swaps white for one of the Universe favourite colours Burgundy, and the clear blue for off white, while black remains the same. Firebot's red again becomes airport fire engine yellow (and his missiles become red) which is appropriate given he's packed with two planes.
Each of the Hellflame Microns is exclusive to different stores - Quasar (Prowl) was an Ito Yokado exclusive, Graviton (Firebot) was a Justco exclusive and Bulge (Makeshift) was a TF Station exclusive.
Unlike Quasar (Prowl), both Graviton (Firebot) and Bulge (Makeshift) get a remould for this release. Graviton acquires a 5mm in place of the Minicon socket on the right as you're looking at his front. This allows toys with a standard size fist hole to carry him.
Here white becomes black and the off white becomes grey along with the black remaining the same giving a monochrome appearance to these toys. The red becomes a very dark blue continuing the night attack theme of the other toys and the missiles are now painted yellow.
Nice repaint and a good mould modification.
At last the Emergency team acquire a theme to their repaints and are renamed (and labelled) the SWAT team. Anti-Blaze is SWAT team member A03. White becomes blue and clear blue become black with black remaining black. Anti-Blaze's red becomes grey. The colours work with the name & theme for the team and breathe a life into this set of repaints that the others just haven't had.
Sadly Anti-Blaze is the original version of the mould and not the adapted Hellflame version. However Anti-Blaze is a revelation. Original - obviously a fire engine and that image has stuck in my head repaint after repaint. US Repaint = Hotspot colours, must still be a fire engine.... although I've never seen a light blue one. Dimension-X Draft - Dark Blue, not sure what they were getting at there. Hazard team (DVD) Quench - Yellow, Airport Fire Engine. Micron Booster V2 Cluster - Olive Drab, Military fire engine. I come unstuck again with the black Hellflame Team Graviton, but nothing has shifted the basic Fire Engine ness of this toy. Till now. Paint it grey, put SWAT on the side of it and it's suddenly an armoured vehicle with a water cannon on the front. Well done Hasbro for finally breaking my mindset ! Robot mode looks good in grey with blue upper body highlights, and the missiles in the weapon mode here are the same grey as the body.
Then of course they give it the name Anti Blaze which immediately makes me think fire engine again !