Transformers: Generations: Netflix War for Cybertron Trilogy Voyager Class Hotlink & Battle Masters Heartburn and Heatstroke

The Netflix Siege series represents everything that is wrong with Hasbro these days. Unimaginative repaints, abysmal quality control, and deplorable distribution. The first two are self explanatory, and you can read more about them in my reviews. Walmart put these up for preorder after/during Toy Fair. They were to be released April 1st (I think, or close to that, beginning of April for sure). I ordered mine that first week. Now I realize that Covid-19 screwed up distribution of all kinds of things, but that didn’t become a big deal in the US until the middle of March. These toys should have been well on their way to distribution by then. The toys should have shipped when they were supposed to. I got e-mails right around the release date saying they would be delayed until May (Ultra Magnus) and July (the rest). I ended up finding all of them but Ultra Magnus in store long before the expected ship date. I’m sure some will blame Walmart for the distribution problems, but if Hasbro is going to announce a release date and the vendor is not going to make good on that, then they shouldn’t give them exclusives. They can sell all their exclusives through Pulse. No reason to make things exclusive to companies that won’t deliver on time.

Heartburn & Heatstroke

Previous Mold Use: Siege Battle Master Blowpipe, Siege Battle Master Aimless, Siege Battle Master Caliburst, Siege Battle Master Trenchfoot, Siege Battle Master Shrute

Heartburn and Heatstroke are identical with the exception of their eye color. Not sure which is which, and I really don’t care. Hard to care about Targetmasters created for random toys when they didn’t bother include Targetmasters with toys that should have them.

Hotlink

Previous Mold Use: Siege Voyager Starscream, Siege Voyager Red Wing, Siege Voyager Acid Storm, Siege Voyager Ion Storm, Siege Voyager Nova Storm, Siege Voyager Skywarp, Siege Voyager Thundercracker

If you put Hotlink in front of me and asked me who it was I would have said Skywarp. Is he different, yes. Is he that different, no. You can clearly see the differences in the comparison photos, but I would have liked something more distinctly different from Skywarp.

Overall: I love this mold, so while he may look a whole lot like Skywarp, I’m still glad to have him. Kind of annoyed that it costs more than a regular Voyager to include Battle Masters. I would have happily paid more for Spinister or Pinpointer if they included their partners.

Thanks for reading!