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Zob's Thoughts on Combiner Wars G2 Menasor
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Zobovor
Jul 2, 2016, 12:21:41 PM7/2/16
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Ordered this bad boy from toysrus.com for about $99 with free shipping. Twice. Had to return the first one because poor Motormaster was missing his head. I don't know that I've ever bought a Transformer before that was missing such a vital piece! Anyway, despite my initial disappointment with the first set, now my second set is here and I'm suitably thrilled with it. Like the G2 Superion set, this was basically a must-have for me, despite already owning all the Combiner Wars Stunticons in their G1 colors. In some ways, it was even more desirable because of what the toys represent.
So, for those who don't know: The G2 toy line started off in 1992 as redeco versions of oldskool G1 toys, until transitioning to new-to-you toys that were previously only available in Europe and then, finally, all-new designs. The old Scramble City teams were among the last G1 toys planned before the transition. Originally, the Protectobots and Stunticons were planned to follow the release of the G2 Aerialbots and Combaticons in 1994. (Like Silverbolt and Onslaught before him, Motormaster was slated to have new spring-powered missile launchers!) Hasbro got as far as making sure that the Stunticons and Protectobots were mentioned by name in advertisements for the G2 cartoon series. (Also, my first retail job was at Toys "R" Us that summer, and there was a retail solicitation in their computers complete with SKU numbers.) For whatever reason, though, Hasbro dropped the Stunticons and Protectobots at the last minute.
Evidently, a small quantity of packaged samples were produced before the decision not to sell the toys. G2 Breakdown rather famously became the first BotCon exclusive in 1996, as Hasbro had produced about 300 packaged samples. The other three small Stunticons have found their way on eBay periodically, but no packaged sample of Motormaster has ever surfaced. There are fewer than a dozen known sets in the hands of collectors. What this means is that the G2 Stunticons remain among the most valuable and elusive toys for Transformers collectors, since they are technically, theoretically, possible to obtain, if you're willing to sell off your entire collection and spend $26,815 on a Menasor with no head (no, I am not making this up).
Because I'm comparing a lot of different toys, I'll use the shorthand CWG1 to refer to the Combiner Wars in their G1 colors and CWG2 when describing the Combiner Wars toys in G2 colors. G1 and G2, of course, refer to the toys from the 1980's and 1990's, respectively.
Like the G2 Superion set, Menasor comes with a big full-color illustrated poster of Combiner Wars Menasor in his G1 colors, showcasing Off-Road as part of the team instead of Wildrider/Brake-Neck.
BREAKDOWN
The actual G2 Breakdown (the only G2 Stunticon I own, or have ever seen in person) was teal-colored with fuschia highlights. His new factory-applied stickers included a pink splash design on his hood. It's a far cry from the cream-colored car sold during G1. Anyway, the new Combiner Wars version gets the teal part right, but his secondary color is a much darker purple, almost as dark as the Menasor fists and feet on the G1 toy. It reminds me of the hand-painted G2 Stunticons that eBay seller frenzy_rumble put together some years ago, whose colors didn't quite match the existing G2 samples. I almost wonder if Hasbro's deco artists were trolling for photos of the G2 Stunticons and came across frenzy_rumble's pictures instead of photos of the genuine toys.
His engine block is now turquoise (his teal color is just slightly greener) and it's a combination of blue plastic and black plastic that's painted blue. It must have taken a lot of paint operations to get it covered in paint like that. I almost think it would have been much better to just cast it in the right color of plastic to begin with. (I just barely noticed that the original Combiner Wars Breakdown is the same way, though.) His sword/gun is also cast in black plastic but painted entirely fuscia with a silver blade, a little closer to the fuschia on the authentic G2 Breakdown but still not a precise match. He's got a blue face with red eyes now, instead of the red face and blue eyes on the G1-colored version. They did not use the same exact paint masks; the little clips on the sides of CWG1 Breakdown's chest are unpainted, but they're painted silver on CWG2 Breakdown. He also gets his dark purple G1 Decepticon symbol switched out for a very light teal G2 symbol.
In car mode, he's got the same black hood and gigantic turquoise G2 symbol as the actual G2 toy. The splash deco is absent from his roof, but in a fit of cuteness, the original "15 RACING" logo on his windshield (Combiner Wars Breakdown was released in 2015) was replaced with "94 RACING" (the G2 Stunticons were slated for a 1994 release). Breakdown's date stamp is 53131, indicating his birthday as November 9th, 2015.
G2 Breakdown tends to get a lot of love (there have already been a LOT of toys released in homage to him, most of them convention exclusives) and this is arguably not the most authentic tribute to the original G2 toy, but it's reasonably close. And it's nice to have a Geetwotastic toy of Breakdown that I can take out of the package and play with, without worrying about horribly devaluing it.
DRAG STRIP
Where G1 Drag Strip was almost entirely yellow, the planned G2 Drag Strip toy was almost all black, with a painted deco pattern on either side evocative of a checkered flag. He would have had a blue "windshield," a blue robot head, and a gold vac-metal engine. The Combiner Wars tribute made some odd color choices, maybe because some parts were gang-molded with Wildrider, or maybe because Hasbro was once again taking inspiration from the fandom (there's a guy on DeviantArt called Air-Hammer who did a digital repaint of the Combiner Wars Stunticons into their G2 colors, and he included some yellow parts on Drag Strip to try to evoke the exposed gold-colored engine, which the Combiner Wars design lacks altogether). If Hasbro was actively trying to reproduce Air-Hammer's work in three-dimensional form, then they got astonishingly close.
So, the new Drag Strip is mostly black but he has blue-colored parts, and paint, in mostly the same places where the CWG1 Drag Strip had purple. His passenger cabin is bright yellow, as is his Combiner Wars connector peg on his chest. I rather dislike the yellow, but I understand its presence as an attempt to approximate the color mapping of the authentic G2 toy without the presence of the exposed engine. He gets a turquoise-colored gun and fist/foot combo. His date stamp is 53271, manufactured on November 23, 2015.
In some ways, Drag Strip is not wholly authentic as a G2 tribute. He's missing the checkered flag motif on either side, which was arguably a bit difficult for Air-Hammer to digitally paint onto a rounded surface. Wouldn't have been hard for Hasbro to do, but first they would have needed to actually refer to pictures of the authentic G2 toy instead of some random fan's concept artwork.
DEAD END
While the original Dead End toy was a dark red Porsche with black accents, the idea for G2 Dead End was to make him a lighter red color with a bright blue as a secondary color. Most of the photos I've seen of existing samples are missing their factory stickers, but based on the photos on G2 Breakdown's packaging, Dead End would have had a street sign inspired deo on his roof (with the words "Dead End" emblazoned on it) and some fireball-like deco on either side of his car mode. The finished CWG2 toy seems to take its cues from frenzy_rumble's version, with tiny G2 Decepticon symbols on either side, enveloped in a flame design.
In car mode, CWG2 Dead End loses the yellow racing stripe that CWG1 Dead End got, and in its place he has a hood that's painted entirely black with a very large G2 Decepticon symbol on the hood (authentic to the planned 1994 toy). For robot mode, both CWG2 Dead End and CWG2 Wildrider ended up with the paint mask for CWG1 Wildrider's chest, which painted more of the chest design, giving it more of a hexagonal shape than the pseudo-Batman logo on CWG1 Dead End's chest. Interestingly, the color mapping is not identical between the CWG1 and CWG2 toys. For example, CWG1 Dead End had red shoulders, grey elbows, and red forearms, with some cheatsy paint on the sides in car mode to try to get it to blend together. CWG2 Dead End bypasses all of that and just has red arms, all the way down. He gets a blue exhaust pipe gun and a turquoise fist/foot combo.
Dead End's date stamp is 52291, identifying his manufacturing date as August 17, 2015. Odd that he wasn't made at the same time as the others.
WILDRIDER
Hasbro is still calling him Brake-Neck, but as far as I'm concerned, he's Wildrider.
The planned deco for G2 Wildrider was perhaps the most garish of the group. Originally a muted grey and black with red windows, the intended color scheme for the 1994 toy was entirely yellow with blue windows. He had the prerequisite gigantic G2 Decepticon symbol on his hood, and some weird, seemingly random art deco on his roof. CWG2 Wildrider gets the roof deco slavishly right, but other things are a little off.
While G1 Wildrider had a red paint deco for his face, it looks like the G2 toy was going to have a reddish-purple hue. It seems that frenzy_rumble interpreted it as more of a dark purple, and Air-Hammer followed suit. (Maybe Air-Hammer's digital repaints were based directly on frenzy_rumble's colors?) In any event, Hasbro's third-generation interpretation resulted in CWG2 Wildrider having a much darker face. There's very little contrast against his helmet, which is already dark grey.
On the G1 toy, the insides of the robot arms were made of the same plastic as the side windows, so the robot arms were mostly red. This doesn't really translate to the design of the Combiner Wars toy, so Hasbro employed some trickery with the CWG1 toy, using paint and staggering plastic colors to make the arms red for robot mode. G2 Wildrider had blue windows, but instead of employing the same trickery, Hasbro just applied to blue color to CWG2 Wildrider's legs. The same general color profile is there, only it's mapped to different places on the toy's body.
His date stamp is 52291, meaning he was produced on August 17th, the same date as Dead End. Given the fact that he and Dead End share an identical design, it seems highly unlikely they were using the same set of production molds and just toggling between different colors of plastic. More than likely, they used the master mold to create a Wildrider mold and a Dead End mold, rather than producing both toys with the same mold and just gating off the part of the mold for the robot head (the only physically different part between them).
MOTORMASTER
The problem with trying to do an homage to Motormaster is that the Combiner Wars toy works so completely differently than the G1 toy did. Originally, Motormaster's purple cab formed the robot feet and the rest of his vehicle mode, the grey trailer, formed his robot body. The Combiner Wars toy had a grey body, but since he just transformed into the truck cab, the entire cab was grey in vehicle mode.
The CWG2 toy takes a different approach, balancing his cab color and trailer color. G2 Motormaster was slated to have a purple cab and a blue trailer, with some red-colored factory details sporting a gear motif and the name "Motormaster" emblazoned on the sides. The CWG2 strikes a decent balancing act with the colors, with the top of the cab mostly purple and the lower section mostly blue. It still "reads" as G2 Motormaster based on the color profile. He lacks the distinctive gear patterns, but he does have some red panels in truck mode that do evoke the factory stickers on the G2 toy.
In robot mode, he's actually a little more colorful than the authentic G2 toy would have been. Again, he's predominantly blue and purple, with some red deco on pretty much all the places where CWG1 Motormaster is purple. The actual G2 toy would have been a bit more plain (and neither the G2 Aerialbots nor G2 Combaticons had consumer-applied stickers to spruce up their robot modes, so there's no reason to believe the G2 Stunticons would have, either) but this is the deco that Air-Hammer came up with, so by gum, Hasbro followed it to the letter. The actual G2 Motormaster's red gear-motif stickers would have ended up on the sides of his arms and legs, but the Combiner Wars toy just doesn't have the real estate there for paint operations, so this was an acceptable alternative deco.
CWG2 Motormaster has the fix applied to the ratcheting leg joints that was introduced with the Battle Core Optimus Prime version of this mold (and also applied to late-run versions of CWG1 Motormaster). The ratcheting parts didn't line up correctly on the original version of the toy. The fixed edition allows for a more natural stance in Motormaster's robot mode, and allows his hips to rest in the correct position for the Menasor configuration. The updated version also has much stronger, tighter ratchet joints, better able to withstand Menasor's combined weight.
His date code (53201) says he was born on November 26, 2015. Apparently the magic toy factory doesn't stop churning out toys for Thanksgiving.
BLACKJACK
Since the roller car that came with G2 Motormaster was changed from purple to black, it makes sense that Blackjack (who essentially replaces the roller car, which I call Crusher) is now the same color. He gets turquoise as his secondary color. He looks a lot more like Road Hugger than Blackjack, so I guess at this point they just need to do him in yellow and then in blue to represent Detour and Hyperdrive and finish off the Micromaster patrol. His birthday is October 5, 2015 (date code: 52781).
Blackjack actually got a minor mold change. He's got hook-shaped tabs holding his lower legs together in car mode instead of rectangular-shaped ones. This means that the peg-hole created by his lower legs when they're plugged into each other is tighter, and he attaches a little more securely when serving as Menasor's chest armor. Very slightly. He still tends to fall off.
MENASOR
Man, he's beautifully garish. There's just something about a horribly mismatched combiner that makes more sense to me than one built out of a team with a unified color scheme. Devastator and Predaking are great and all, but Devastator has never looked like the "bizarre and terrifying" amalgam of construction vehicles all stacked on top of each other. Menasor's G2 color scheme is just crazy sauce, all red and yellow and blue and purple and stuff.
I was never really aware of just how bad the original Motormaster hips were until I experienced the fixed version. It really does make a tremendous difference. I had just sort of accepted that CWG1 Motormaster was a bit floppy, especially when bogged down by the weight of Menasor's limbs. I knew that Battle Core Optimus Prime had improved joints, but that toy didn't interest me, and I didn't realize until recently that Motormaster had gotten a running change with the fix applied as well. Suddenly I just figured out why he was shipping as late as Wave 4, and I find myself wishing I'd gotten one! (I played around with my CWG1 Motormaster, and I found that stretching the springs out inside his hips was sufficient to tighten the ratcheting joints. I can't figure out how to get him to actually Stand Like A Cowboy like the toy was designed to, though.)
So! This set doesn't bring anything new to the table if you already have the CWG1 editions of the Stunticons. You basically have to be a die-hard G2 fan to fully appreciate it. (And, really, if you're anything like me, you probably don't need to spend yet another $100 on toys you already own. We've all done that enough with the Combiner Wars line as it is!) However, I'm super pleased with it.
Zob (already setting my sights on G2 Bruticus... when does he come out, again?)
So, for those who don't know: The G2 toy line started off in 1992 as redeco versions of oldskool G1 toys, until transitioning to new-to-you toys that were previously only available in Europe and then, finally, all-new designs. The old Scramble City teams were among the last G1 toys planned before the transition. Originally, the Protectobots and Stunticons were planned to follow the release of the G2 Aerialbots and Combaticons in 1994. (Like Silverbolt and Onslaught before him, Motormaster was slated to have new spring-powered missile launchers!) Hasbro got as far as making sure that the Stunticons and Protectobots were mentioned by name in advertisements for the G2 cartoon series. (Also, my first retail job was at Toys "R" Us that summer, and there was a retail solicitation in their computers complete with SKU numbers.) For whatever reason, though, Hasbro dropped the Stunticons and Protectobots at the last minute.
Evidently, a small quantity of packaged samples were produced before the decision not to sell the toys. G2 Breakdown rather famously became the first BotCon exclusive in 1996, as Hasbro had produced about 300 packaged samples. The other three small Stunticons have found their way on eBay periodically, but no packaged sample of Motormaster has ever surfaced. There are fewer than a dozen known sets in the hands of collectors. What this means is that the G2 Stunticons remain among the most valuable and elusive toys for Transformers collectors, since they are technically, theoretically, possible to obtain, if you're willing to sell off your entire collection and spend $26,815 on a Menasor with no head (no, I am not making this up).
Because I'm comparing a lot of different toys, I'll use the shorthand CWG1 to refer to the Combiner Wars in their G1 colors and CWG2 when describing the Combiner Wars toys in G2 colors. G1 and G2, of course, refer to the toys from the 1980's and 1990's, respectively.
Like the G2 Superion set, Menasor comes with a big full-color illustrated poster of Combiner Wars Menasor in his G1 colors, showcasing Off-Road as part of the team instead of Wildrider/Brake-Neck.
BREAKDOWN
The actual G2 Breakdown (the only G2 Stunticon I own, or have ever seen in person) was teal-colored with fuschia highlights. His new factory-applied stickers included a pink splash design on his hood. It's a far cry from the cream-colored car sold during G1. Anyway, the new Combiner Wars version gets the teal part right, but his secondary color is a much darker purple, almost as dark as the Menasor fists and feet on the G1 toy. It reminds me of the hand-painted G2 Stunticons that eBay seller frenzy_rumble put together some years ago, whose colors didn't quite match the existing G2 samples. I almost wonder if Hasbro's deco artists were trolling for photos of the G2 Stunticons and came across frenzy_rumble's pictures instead of photos of the genuine toys.
His engine block is now turquoise (his teal color is just slightly greener) and it's a combination of blue plastic and black plastic that's painted blue. It must have taken a lot of paint operations to get it covered in paint like that. I almost think it would have been much better to just cast it in the right color of plastic to begin with. (I just barely noticed that the original Combiner Wars Breakdown is the same way, though.) His sword/gun is also cast in black plastic but painted entirely fuscia with a silver blade, a little closer to the fuschia on the authentic G2 Breakdown but still not a precise match. He's got a blue face with red eyes now, instead of the red face and blue eyes on the G1-colored version. They did not use the same exact paint masks; the little clips on the sides of CWG1 Breakdown's chest are unpainted, but they're painted silver on CWG2 Breakdown. He also gets his dark purple G1 Decepticon symbol switched out for a very light teal G2 symbol.
In car mode, he's got the same black hood and gigantic turquoise G2 symbol as the actual G2 toy. The splash deco is absent from his roof, but in a fit of cuteness, the original "15 RACING" logo on his windshield (Combiner Wars Breakdown was released in 2015) was replaced with "94 RACING" (the G2 Stunticons were slated for a 1994 release). Breakdown's date stamp is 53131, indicating his birthday as November 9th, 2015.
G2 Breakdown tends to get a lot of love (there have already been a LOT of toys released in homage to him, most of them convention exclusives) and this is arguably not the most authentic tribute to the original G2 toy, but it's reasonably close. And it's nice to have a Geetwotastic toy of Breakdown that I can take out of the package and play with, without worrying about horribly devaluing it.
DRAG STRIP
Where G1 Drag Strip was almost entirely yellow, the planned G2 Drag Strip toy was almost all black, with a painted deco pattern on either side evocative of a checkered flag. He would have had a blue "windshield," a blue robot head, and a gold vac-metal engine. The Combiner Wars tribute made some odd color choices, maybe because some parts were gang-molded with Wildrider, or maybe because Hasbro was once again taking inspiration from the fandom (there's a guy on DeviantArt called Air-Hammer who did a digital repaint of the Combiner Wars Stunticons into their G2 colors, and he included some yellow parts on Drag Strip to try to evoke the exposed gold-colored engine, which the Combiner Wars design lacks altogether). If Hasbro was actively trying to reproduce Air-Hammer's work in three-dimensional form, then they got astonishingly close.
So, the new Drag Strip is mostly black but he has blue-colored parts, and paint, in mostly the same places where the CWG1 Drag Strip had purple. His passenger cabin is bright yellow, as is his Combiner Wars connector peg on his chest. I rather dislike the yellow, but I understand its presence as an attempt to approximate the color mapping of the authentic G2 toy without the presence of the exposed engine. He gets a turquoise-colored gun and fist/foot combo. His date stamp is 53271, manufactured on November 23, 2015.
In some ways, Drag Strip is not wholly authentic as a G2 tribute. He's missing the checkered flag motif on either side, which was arguably a bit difficult for Air-Hammer to digitally paint onto a rounded surface. Wouldn't have been hard for Hasbro to do, but first they would have needed to actually refer to pictures of the authentic G2 toy instead of some random fan's concept artwork.
DEAD END
While the original Dead End toy was a dark red Porsche with black accents, the idea for G2 Dead End was to make him a lighter red color with a bright blue as a secondary color. Most of the photos I've seen of existing samples are missing their factory stickers, but based on the photos on G2 Breakdown's packaging, Dead End would have had a street sign inspired deo on his roof (with the words "Dead End" emblazoned on it) and some fireball-like deco on either side of his car mode. The finished CWG2 toy seems to take its cues from frenzy_rumble's version, with tiny G2 Decepticon symbols on either side, enveloped in a flame design.
In car mode, CWG2 Dead End loses the yellow racing stripe that CWG1 Dead End got, and in its place he has a hood that's painted entirely black with a very large G2 Decepticon symbol on the hood (authentic to the planned 1994 toy). For robot mode, both CWG2 Dead End and CWG2 Wildrider ended up with the paint mask for CWG1 Wildrider's chest, which painted more of the chest design, giving it more of a hexagonal shape than the pseudo-Batman logo on CWG1 Dead End's chest. Interestingly, the color mapping is not identical between the CWG1 and CWG2 toys. For example, CWG1 Dead End had red shoulders, grey elbows, and red forearms, with some cheatsy paint on the sides in car mode to try to get it to blend together. CWG2 Dead End bypasses all of that and just has red arms, all the way down. He gets a blue exhaust pipe gun and a turquoise fist/foot combo.
Dead End's date stamp is 52291, identifying his manufacturing date as August 17, 2015. Odd that he wasn't made at the same time as the others.
WILDRIDER
Hasbro is still calling him Brake-Neck, but as far as I'm concerned, he's Wildrider.
The planned deco for G2 Wildrider was perhaps the most garish of the group. Originally a muted grey and black with red windows, the intended color scheme for the 1994 toy was entirely yellow with blue windows. He had the prerequisite gigantic G2 Decepticon symbol on his hood, and some weird, seemingly random art deco on his roof. CWG2 Wildrider gets the roof deco slavishly right, but other things are a little off.
While G1 Wildrider had a red paint deco for his face, it looks like the G2 toy was going to have a reddish-purple hue. It seems that frenzy_rumble interpreted it as more of a dark purple, and Air-Hammer followed suit. (Maybe Air-Hammer's digital repaints were based directly on frenzy_rumble's colors?) In any event, Hasbro's third-generation interpretation resulted in CWG2 Wildrider having a much darker face. There's very little contrast against his helmet, which is already dark grey.
On the G1 toy, the insides of the robot arms were made of the same plastic as the side windows, so the robot arms were mostly red. This doesn't really translate to the design of the Combiner Wars toy, so Hasbro employed some trickery with the CWG1 toy, using paint and staggering plastic colors to make the arms red for robot mode. G2 Wildrider had blue windows, but instead of employing the same trickery, Hasbro just applied to blue color to CWG2 Wildrider's legs. The same general color profile is there, only it's mapped to different places on the toy's body.
His date stamp is 52291, meaning he was produced on August 17th, the same date as Dead End. Given the fact that he and Dead End share an identical design, it seems highly unlikely they were using the same set of production molds and just toggling between different colors of plastic. More than likely, they used the master mold to create a Wildrider mold and a Dead End mold, rather than producing both toys with the same mold and just gating off the part of the mold for the robot head (the only physically different part between them).
MOTORMASTER
The problem with trying to do an homage to Motormaster is that the Combiner Wars toy works so completely differently than the G1 toy did. Originally, Motormaster's purple cab formed the robot feet and the rest of his vehicle mode, the grey trailer, formed his robot body. The Combiner Wars toy had a grey body, but since he just transformed into the truck cab, the entire cab was grey in vehicle mode.
The CWG2 toy takes a different approach, balancing his cab color and trailer color. G2 Motormaster was slated to have a purple cab and a blue trailer, with some red-colored factory details sporting a gear motif and the name "Motormaster" emblazoned on the sides. The CWG2 strikes a decent balancing act with the colors, with the top of the cab mostly purple and the lower section mostly blue. It still "reads" as G2 Motormaster based on the color profile. He lacks the distinctive gear patterns, but he does have some red panels in truck mode that do evoke the factory stickers on the G2 toy.
In robot mode, he's actually a little more colorful than the authentic G2 toy would have been. Again, he's predominantly blue and purple, with some red deco on pretty much all the places where CWG1 Motormaster is purple. The actual G2 toy would have been a bit more plain (and neither the G2 Aerialbots nor G2 Combaticons had consumer-applied stickers to spruce up their robot modes, so there's no reason to believe the G2 Stunticons would have, either) but this is the deco that Air-Hammer came up with, so by gum, Hasbro followed it to the letter. The actual G2 Motormaster's red gear-motif stickers would have ended up on the sides of his arms and legs, but the Combiner Wars toy just doesn't have the real estate there for paint operations, so this was an acceptable alternative deco.
CWG2 Motormaster has the fix applied to the ratcheting leg joints that was introduced with the Battle Core Optimus Prime version of this mold (and also applied to late-run versions of CWG1 Motormaster). The ratcheting parts didn't line up correctly on the original version of the toy. The fixed edition allows for a more natural stance in Motormaster's robot mode, and allows his hips to rest in the correct position for the Menasor configuration. The updated version also has much stronger, tighter ratchet joints, better able to withstand Menasor's combined weight.
His date code (53201) says he was born on November 26, 2015. Apparently the magic toy factory doesn't stop churning out toys for Thanksgiving.
BLACKJACK
Since the roller car that came with G2 Motormaster was changed from purple to black, it makes sense that Blackjack (who essentially replaces the roller car, which I call Crusher) is now the same color. He gets turquoise as his secondary color. He looks a lot more like Road Hugger than Blackjack, so I guess at this point they just need to do him in yellow and then in blue to represent Detour and Hyperdrive and finish off the Micromaster patrol. His birthday is October 5, 2015 (date code: 52781).
Blackjack actually got a minor mold change. He's got hook-shaped tabs holding his lower legs together in car mode instead of rectangular-shaped ones. This means that the peg-hole created by his lower legs when they're plugged into each other is tighter, and he attaches a little more securely when serving as Menasor's chest armor. Very slightly. He still tends to fall off.
MENASOR
Man, he's beautifully garish. There's just something about a horribly mismatched combiner that makes more sense to me than one built out of a team with a unified color scheme. Devastator and Predaking are great and all, but Devastator has never looked like the "bizarre and terrifying" amalgam of construction vehicles all stacked on top of each other. Menasor's G2 color scheme is just crazy sauce, all red and yellow and blue and purple and stuff.
I was never really aware of just how bad the original Motormaster hips were until I experienced the fixed version. It really does make a tremendous difference. I had just sort of accepted that CWG1 Motormaster was a bit floppy, especially when bogged down by the weight of Menasor's limbs. I knew that Battle Core Optimus Prime had improved joints, but that toy didn't interest me, and I didn't realize until recently that Motormaster had gotten a running change with the fix applied as well. Suddenly I just figured out why he was shipping as late as Wave 4, and I find myself wishing I'd gotten one! (I played around with my CWG1 Motormaster, and I found that stretching the springs out inside his hips was sufficient to tighten the ratcheting joints. I can't figure out how to get him to actually Stand Like A Cowboy like the toy was designed to, though.)
So! This set doesn't bring anything new to the table if you already have the CWG1 editions of the Stunticons. You basically have to be a die-hard G2 fan to fully appreciate it. (And, really, if you're anything like me, you probably don't need to spend yet another $100 on toys you already own. We've all done that enough with the Combiner Wars line as it is!) However, I'm super pleased with it.
Zob (already setting my sights on G2 Bruticus... when does he come out, again?)
Manic
Jul 3, 2016, 5:13:30 AM7/3/16
to
On Saturday, July 2, 2016 at 9:21:41 AM UTC-7, Zobovor wrote:
> Zob (already setting my sights on G2 Bruticus... when does he come out, again?)
He's available now at BBTS, though I couldn't even begin to guess when he might show up in retail, as it was only in the last month that Skywarp found his way to my local TRU.
> Zob (already setting my sights on G2 Bruticus... when does he come out, again?)
Zobovor
Jul 11, 2016, 1:56:48 AM7/11/16
to
On Saturday, July 2, 2016 at 10:21:41 AM UTC-6, Zobovor wrote:
> CWG2 Motormaster has the fix applied to the ratcheting leg joints that was
> introduced with the Battle Core Optimus Prime version of this mold (and also
> applied to late-run versions of CWG1 Motormaster). The ratcheting parts
> didn't line up correctly on the original version of the toy. The fixed
> edition allows for a more natural stance in Motormaster's robot mode, and
> allows his hips to rest in the correct position for the Menasor
> configuration. The updated version also has much stronger, tighter ratchet
> joints, better able to withstand Menasor's combined weight.
You know, I've been disassembling toys, reassembling them, and then disassembling them again in the hopes of figuring out this mess. I've studied the insides of my G1-style Motormaster and G2-style Motormaster and I just can't see any difference in the parts used for assembly. I actually wonder if they were just being assembled incorrectly at the factory and somebody finally noticed, not that there was a mold change that went into effect. Most people in the fandom seem to agree that toys manufactured in 2014 are the bad ones and 2015 toys are the fixed ones, and yet the one version of this mold that I own with tighter, better ratcheting joints than any of the others is... Optimus Prime, the very first one to be released.
> CWG2 Motormaster has the fix applied to the ratcheting leg joints that was
> introduced with the Battle Core Optimus Prime version of this mold (and also
> applied to late-run versions of CWG1 Motormaster). The ratcheting parts
> didn't line up correctly on the original version of the toy. The fixed
> edition allows for a more natural stance in Motormaster's robot mode, and
> allows his hips to rest in the correct position for the Menasor
> configuration. The updated version also has much stronger, tighter ratchet
> joints, better able to withstand Menasor's combined weight.
So, is there something I'm just not seeing? Or am I just going crazy? Is this place a ghost town? Can somebody make me a grilled cheese sandwich?
Zob (yes, probably, yes, and cheddar cheese only, please)
David Connell
Jul 11, 2016, 8:26:31 AM7/11/16
to
On Monday, July 11, 2016 at 1:56:48 AM UTC-4, Zobovor wrote:
> Zob (yes, probably, yes, and cheddar cheese only, please)
Provolone/mozzarella mix is better.
> Zob (yes, probably, yes, and cheddar cheese only, please)
No One In Particular
Jul 11, 2016, 6:06:52 PM7/11/16
to
use this to our advantage!
Also, my cooking kills people. You're better off with McDonalds take
out. Trust me.
Brian
Gustavo Wombat, of the Seattle Wombats
Jul 13, 2016, 3:43:05 AM7/13/16
to
On Sunday, July 10, 2016 at 10:56:48 PM UTC-7, Zobovor wrote:
> On Saturday, July 2, 2016 at 10:21:41 AM UTC-6, Zobovor wrote:
>
> > CWG2 Motormaster has the fix applied to the ratcheting leg joints that was
> > introduced with the Battle Core Optimus Prime version of this mold (and also
> > applied to late-run versions of CWG1 Motormaster). The ratcheting parts
> > didn't line up correctly on the original version of the toy. The fixed
> > edition allows for a more natural stance in Motormaster's robot mode, and
> > allows his hips to rest in the correct position for the Menasor
> > configuration. The updated version also has much stronger, tighter ratchet
> > joints, better able to withstand Menasor's combined weight.
>
> You know, I've been disassembling toys, reassembling them, and then disassembling them again in the hopes of figuring out this mess. I've studied the insides of my G1-style Motormaster and G2-style Motormaster and I just can't see any difference in the parts used for assembly. I actually wonder if they were just being assembled incorrectly at the factory and somebody finally noticed, not that there was a mold change that went into effect. Most people in the fandom seem to agree that toys manufactured in 2014 are the bad ones and 2015 toys are the fixed ones, and yet the one version of this mold that I own with tighter, better ratcheting joints than any of the others is... Optimus Prime, the very first one to be released.
But, how well do his feet lie flat when he is in a natural pose?
> On Saturday, July 2, 2016 at 10:21:41 AM UTC-6, Zobovor wrote:
>
> > CWG2 Motormaster has the fix applied to the ratcheting leg joints that was
> > introduced with the Battle Core Optimus Prime version of this mold (and also
> > applied to late-run versions of CWG1 Motormaster). The ratcheting parts
> > didn't line up correctly on the original version of the toy. The fixed
> > edition allows for a more natural stance in Motormaster's robot mode, and
> > allows his hips to rest in the correct position for the Menasor
> > configuration. The updated version also has much stronger, tighter ratchet
> > joints, better able to withstand Menasor's combined weight.
>
> You know, I've been disassembling toys, reassembling them, and then disassembling them again in the hopes of figuring out this mess. I've studied the insides of my G1-style Motormaster and G2-style Motormaster and I just can't see any difference in the parts used for assembly. I actually wonder if they were just being assembled incorrectly at the factory and somebody finally noticed, not that there was a mold change that went into effect. Most people in the fandom seem to agree that toys manufactured in 2014 are the bad ones and 2015 toys are the fixed ones, and yet the one version of this mold that I own with tighter, better ratcheting joints than any of the others is... Optimus Prime, the very first one to be released.
> So, is there something I'm just not seeing? Or am I just going crazy? Is this place a ghost town? Can somebody make me a grilled cheese sandwich?
> Zob (yes, probably, yes, and cheddar cheese only, please)
Zobovor
Jul 13, 2016, 7:07:58 PM7/13/16
to
On Wednesday, July 13, 2016 at 1:43:05 AM UTC-6, Gustavo Wombat, of the Seattle Wombats wrote:
> But, how well do his feet lie flat when he is in a natural pose?
My Combiner Wars Optimus does not stand like a robot cowboy as I believe he was designed to. Maybe the stars and planets aren't aligned the way they need to be.
> But, how well do his feet lie flat when he is in a natural pose?
Zob (on a steel horse I ride)
Gustavo Wombat, of the Seattle Wombats
Jul 14, 2016, 2:39:31 AM7/14/16
to
It comes from their very limited articulation, of course, and I will acknowledge that the ability to hold any number of more expressive poses is objectively better, but the modern toys cannot quite do the perfect rigidity of the originals. Even the Masterpiece toys seem a little bit lacking compared to the originals because of this.
CW Optimus is meant to have his legs further apart at the feet than G1 Optimus. It makes him look a little bit like a human in armor, compared to G1 Optimus looking like a robot.
Some of the Armada toys got this stiffness right, but again, always sacrificing articulation to do so. Overload is awesome, but no one will ever call him well articulated. Tidal Wave was pretty good.
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