(NOTE: Because this is a repaint, this is not a full-blown review. This mainly covers any changes made to the mold and the color scheme, and merely compares it to Autobot Alliance Trailcutter. For a review on the mold itself, read the review of Autobot Alliance Trailcutter here.)

    Hoist is a pretty no-brainer redeco of the Legends Trailcutter mold, given that G1 Hoist and G1 Trailbreaker also shared the same base mold. Just like the original Hoist, this one's color scheme is green, slightly lighter than on his G1 toy. This suits me just fine, as it allows his other main color-- black-- to serve as a better contrast color. This particularly works well in vehicle mode, where there isn't a whole lot of other colors (albeit more than on the Trailcutter version of this mold). The front bumper, grill, and headlights are painted silver, and there's a short (VERY short) "caution" yellow/black striped pattern on the doors, but other than that it's just those two colors. I would have liked to see a bit more orange (which is only on stripes on his legs) in vehicle mode, or at least have all his side windows painted. That said, the colors DO come together quite nicely in robot mode, with silver considerably more prominent and a proper yellow visor and silver face. Unfortunately, his face has not been remolded from Trailcutter's, which means that he has a normal mouth-- which is NOT Hoist's face. Hoist's has a faceplate, so if you look at this toy's head too closely it'll look too much like Trailbreaker/Trailcutter dressing up as Hoist for Halloween. That's a relatively small annoyance, though-- the BIG issue is that the vehicle mode is not a crane at all like the G1 toy, but rather a 4WD vehicle just like Trailcutter. Given that his name is Hoist, this is a pretty big disconnect. Granted, they'd have to completely redo the toy to give him a proper tow truck mode-- the back area that would have to be removed forms his robot arms-- but it still means that Hoist was definitely a secondary consideration for this mold.
    Hoist has had some minor remolding done-- a peg hole on top of his roof has been put in to allow him to carry Cyberverse-scaled weapons, and his hands have also been retooled to allow the same thing. Hoist also comes with a fairly standard gun accessory-- it's nothing special, but it does give the toy a weapon, which it was sorely lacking before. However, they passed up a great opportunity to make a crane arm/weapon accessory and have it attach to the rear of the vehicle mode, thus giving Hoist at least a LITTLE bit of a tow truck mode without re-doing the entire toy...
    The colors on "GDO" Hoist are quite nice (though he could use a few more paint apps in vehicle mode), and if you ignore his name by itself it's the superior-looking of the two releases of the mold as of this writing (11/15). However, his lack of a new face or a slightly different alt mode make this less of a dedicated "Hoist" figure than the Generations "30th Anniversary" deluxe version of the character. Unless you're particularly insistent on getting a Hoist figure at this small scale, I'd go with the latter version instead.

Review by Beastbot

Back to Transformers: Generations Index