Hot Seat (1989)
Butt-ugly. That’s the shortest and most apt description I can think up for this figure. Most of it just doesn’t work for me. From the lack of paint details, to the Lord Dread meets Doc Terror helmet, it’s bland yet ugly at the same time. And the face–yikes! Now I know why the helmet obscures it. Hot Seat has the ugliest 3 & 3/4 inch head sculpt this side of an 80’s Lanard CORPS! figure. I suppose the ugly mug could be explained by his background as a boxer, helpfully pointed out in the file card.
The helmet is the most interesting part of this figure for me. I’ve always gotten more of a villain vibe from it, with the rivets and single eyepiece. I know the Joe line was really branching out in terms of helmet design, but this one is really strange. As headwear goes, it’s got a very sci-fi piratey flavor. Oddly, the helmet on the box art looks more like Scoop’s than the final product. This is yet another figure that makes me curious about its design origins.
C’mon! You know Effects is uglier!
I AM LOCUTUS OF PITTSBURG
Orange pants…whatever, Hasbro. Kids were buying the vehicle, drawing attention to the driver’s pants was hardly a selling point.
The ugly head, yeah, that’s true but not bad per se. Can’t all be handsome types, gotta have the rough mugs…though, it seems they did half-arse some of the later run vehicle drivers in both sculpting and style. Like all the rejected/leftover character ideas got put in the “vehicle operator” section. So you seemingly random concept body parts, ugly head maybe with a strange removable helmet (See Wild Card, Armadillo, Updraft…)
Grey hair on a Joe… what were they thinking??
I actually like Hot Seat for most of the reasons you mention. His ugly mug fits in with his pugilistic background. I thought he was cool in the few issues that Larry Hama featured him in and I thought the Raider was one of the better vehicles released around that time. The problem with later drivers is that they all sound more or less the same, plus they have zero characterization compared to earlier ones such as *ahem* Clutch.
Nice face!
Definitely a weird figure. They splurged on painting the pads on his legs red (?!) but didn’t paint his shirt under the flak vest. And the helmet is probably one of those things that looked better on paper.
Why were this guy, Skidmark, Windmill and others orange and green? All from the same time period and all drivers/pilots.
With a slightly different paint job, this would have been a pretty good figure. He’s distinct looking and has a decent sculpt. I would have loved a repaint of him in the TRU era. Even as an updated Crankcase, he would have been a welcome redo.
I actually think his head sculpt is okay–he almost looks like Lorne Greene.
Raider was cool but also much larger than I expected, I ended up selling but I did keep Hot Seat. Always was weirded out by the grey hair, I made him an old vet and something of a mentor to the newer joes, of course right after that they get rid of the newer joes.
And effects is uglier.
Does anyone know how to explain why there was such a drastic dropoff in wuality of paint and sculpts, etc. In the Joe line? I understand wackiness as they were going for new things and audience (anti drugs, pro environment, Street Fighter, etc) but when it seems they should havr hadd more resources based on past success the scuplts and lack of detail makes it seem like they had much less than they did even in 1984. Why?
Let me know