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Zob's Thoughts on Combiner Wars Deluxe-Class Groove
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Zobovor
Jun 15, 2016, 1:46:13 AM6/15/16
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I hate shopping for currently-available toys on eBay. It's one thing when I'm hunting for old Decoys or PVC figures, but I feel like I shouldn't have to resort to online resellers to get stuff that I should be able to theoreticaly walk into a store and find (or order from an online retailer). In the case of Groove, though, when it became clear to me that he wasn't just going to fall into my lap, I finally broke down and grabbed him off eBay because the price was right and I didn't want to miss out.
Although Groove was planned as an online exclusive, seemingly from the start, he came in packaging that, as far as I can tell, could have theoretically made it to retail shops. The only oddities are that a) there's no pack-in comic book; b) the front bubble has four extra flaps that extent to the edge of the card and wrap around to the back and are taped down; and c) Groove is identified as part of Sky Reign (replacing Smokescreen in the official line-up), rather than a member of the Protectobot team. Not that I care, of course, as long as I didn't have to buy the entire Takara gift set just to get Groove!
I've said this many times, but the original Groove toy from 1986 was a piece of garbage. He was a block of plastic with a face, a Transformer in name only and the worst Scramble City design ever conceived. I've hated him forever and I never would have bought him if I hadn't needed him to form a complete Defensor. Flash forward to 2015 with the advent of the Combiner Wars edition of Defensor. I can certainly understand Hasbro's desire to want to innovate and try to improve on their past products (and when it comes to lead designers of the brand, I get the impression it's a bit like dogs peeing on a tree; everybody wants to leave their mark). At the same time, though, replacing Groove with this newcomer upstart Rook and giving him the time-honored position as Defensor's leg, and then demoting Groove to a tiny toy that turns into Defensor's bowtie, does not seem like the way to go. Maybe a giant motorcycle doesn't make a lot of sense, but in the Combiner Wars line we've still got cars that are the same size as fighter jets, so at this point what's one more size discrepancy?
I knew when Takara began developing a full-sized Deluxe-scale Groove that they felt very much as I did, that Groove deserved and needed a proper update. I really didn't want to have to import the entire Protectobots gift set from Japan just to get the Groove toy I wanted, so I was really glad when I heard Hasbro was going to be offering the toy individually in some capacity. I paid about $30 shipped for Groove, which is crazy for a Deluxe toy but perhaps not as crazy for a limited-run toy that was only available through online retailers (and which was going for between $70-$90 on eBay as recently as April).
He's stuffed into the packaging weirdly, doing the splits so he can fit into the bubble, with his front motorcycle wheel cranked around and hanging over his left shoulder. It's not pretty, but no worse than what they did to, say, smooth-bubble Beast Wars Dinobot. If you mistransform him and flip out the motorcycle wheel halves on his legs, then you can attach his twin vaporator cannons to his legs as per G1. They are his only weapons aside from his Combiner Wars fist/foot combo, though, as he does not come with a hand pistol. His fist/foot combo is the same design as the one that came with Alpha Bravo/Quickslinger/Vortex. It's black with a white thumb connector (so I guess he would technically fit in with the other Sky Reign combiner guys). He's got a peg-hole mount on the underside of his right forearm, so you could have him hold both cannons and equip the Gatling-style fist/foot combo deal at the same time if you wanted.
I rather like his robot styling a great deal. His chest is painted gold, which nicely mirrors the metallic gold paint on the die-cast chest of the original toy. His head sculpt is a dead ringer for the original character, and in a touch of class, he's got light piping in his eyes. The back half of his head is clear plastic, but his eyes have a yellow semi-translucent laquer applied so they glow yellow. Purists will note that Groove had a gold face and eyes in the G1 cartoon, not the blue eyes you might expect, and this detail did not go lost on me.
Combiner Wars usually isn't an exercise in innovation, so when it comes to transformation he's very much what you would expect. He's got the same collapsing leg design as the Aerialbots, and his arms swing up on an axis and bend in half like Firefly does when he's in a Superion arm configuration. Like the G1 toy, the color and details of Groove's arms roughly suggest the motorcycle's engine block. Also like the G1 toy, the entire front wheel assembly flips up, swings around, and ends up on his back as a robot. The guns are interesting in that they're molded entirely from clear plastic, but painted except for the weapon handles and the lights on the tops, to which a colored laquer was applied to make them look like police lights. From the outside, it looks like there are tiny flashers inside each light, until you flip it around and can see that what you're seeing is the shape of a flasher that's been carved into the plastic. Very clever.
In motorcycle mode he's got a tiny flip-out kickstand to support him (he cannot stand on two wheels without it), which is embedded within his left forearm (which ends up on the undercarriage when he's transformed). His front wheel can turn from side to side, independantly of the windshield and headlight assembly, but his handlebars do not move along with the wheel. His twin vaporator cannons mount on either side of the cycle mode as you would expect, and the fist/foot combo can either attach to the top of the cycle mode or can connect to the back for storage. It's not the sexiest-looking Transformer motorcycle by any stretch of the imagination (and nowhere near the styling of the 1980's Honda Goldwing) but it's recognizable as what it's supposed to be, and it's much better than Wreck-Gar or Iguanus or Vroom.
The main reason I wanted this toy, of course, was to complete my Combiner Wars Defensor and give him a proper leg. In this regard, Groove does deliver. His leg configuration provides Defensor with the classic motorcycle-wheel-on-the-knee look, and in my opinion is far preferable to the presence of Rook as a contributing team member. Groove can turn into an arm for Defensor as well, but why in the world would you want him to?
The toy isn't quite perfect. The two halves of the rear wheel don't snap together in a solid and satisfying way; we've had wheels that split in half before, and have done a much better job of securing to each other in the past (Transmetal Tarantulas; Beast Machines Thrust; etc.) His swivel waist is pretty loose, but the other joints are nice and tight. Mostly, I'm just thankful this toy exists at all. Hasbro's done a fine job of "forgetting" key members of the Combiner Wars teams and then suddenly "remembering" to offer the characters to us. I must be willing to keep playing this game, since they've gotten me three times now (Quickslinger, Brake-Neck, and now Groove; still holding out for Blast Off eventually). The date stamp on my toy is 60461, meaning he was manufactured on February 15, 2016 (and the Takara edition of the toy differs slightly from the Hasbro version, making it unlikely this is Takara leftovers).
I pined for this toy for what feels like many months, so I'm pleased he's a member of the family. I need to go downstairs and swap him out for Rook right away!
Zob (now to start pining for the G2 Menasor set!)
Although Groove was planned as an online exclusive, seemingly from the start, he came in packaging that, as far as I can tell, could have theoretically made it to retail shops. The only oddities are that a) there's no pack-in comic book; b) the front bubble has four extra flaps that extent to the edge of the card and wrap around to the back and are taped down; and c) Groove is identified as part of Sky Reign (replacing Smokescreen in the official line-up), rather than a member of the Protectobot team. Not that I care, of course, as long as I didn't have to buy the entire Takara gift set just to get Groove!
I've said this many times, but the original Groove toy from 1986 was a piece of garbage. He was a block of plastic with a face, a Transformer in name only and the worst Scramble City design ever conceived. I've hated him forever and I never would have bought him if I hadn't needed him to form a complete Defensor. Flash forward to 2015 with the advent of the Combiner Wars edition of Defensor. I can certainly understand Hasbro's desire to want to innovate and try to improve on their past products (and when it comes to lead designers of the brand, I get the impression it's a bit like dogs peeing on a tree; everybody wants to leave their mark). At the same time, though, replacing Groove with this newcomer upstart Rook and giving him the time-honored position as Defensor's leg, and then demoting Groove to a tiny toy that turns into Defensor's bowtie, does not seem like the way to go. Maybe a giant motorcycle doesn't make a lot of sense, but in the Combiner Wars line we've still got cars that are the same size as fighter jets, so at this point what's one more size discrepancy?
I knew when Takara began developing a full-sized Deluxe-scale Groove that they felt very much as I did, that Groove deserved and needed a proper update. I really didn't want to have to import the entire Protectobots gift set from Japan just to get the Groove toy I wanted, so I was really glad when I heard Hasbro was going to be offering the toy individually in some capacity. I paid about $30 shipped for Groove, which is crazy for a Deluxe toy but perhaps not as crazy for a limited-run toy that was only available through online retailers (and which was going for between $70-$90 on eBay as recently as April).
He's stuffed into the packaging weirdly, doing the splits so he can fit into the bubble, with his front motorcycle wheel cranked around and hanging over his left shoulder. It's not pretty, but no worse than what they did to, say, smooth-bubble Beast Wars Dinobot. If you mistransform him and flip out the motorcycle wheel halves on his legs, then you can attach his twin vaporator cannons to his legs as per G1. They are his only weapons aside from his Combiner Wars fist/foot combo, though, as he does not come with a hand pistol. His fist/foot combo is the same design as the one that came with Alpha Bravo/Quickslinger/Vortex. It's black with a white thumb connector (so I guess he would technically fit in with the other Sky Reign combiner guys). He's got a peg-hole mount on the underside of his right forearm, so you could have him hold both cannons and equip the Gatling-style fist/foot combo deal at the same time if you wanted.
I rather like his robot styling a great deal. His chest is painted gold, which nicely mirrors the metallic gold paint on the die-cast chest of the original toy. His head sculpt is a dead ringer for the original character, and in a touch of class, he's got light piping in his eyes. The back half of his head is clear plastic, but his eyes have a yellow semi-translucent laquer applied so they glow yellow. Purists will note that Groove had a gold face and eyes in the G1 cartoon, not the blue eyes you might expect, and this detail did not go lost on me.
Combiner Wars usually isn't an exercise in innovation, so when it comes to transformation he's very much what you would expect. He's got the same collapsing leg design as the Aerialbots, and his arms swing up on an axis and bend in half like Firefly does when he's in a Superion arm configuration. Like the G1 toy, the color and details of Groove's arms roughly suggest the motorcycle's engine block. Also like the G1 toy, the entire front wheel assembly flips up, swings around, and ends up on his back as a robot. The guns are interesting in that they're molded entirely from clear plastic, but painted except for the weapon handles and the lights on the tops, to which a colored laquer was applied to make them look like police lights. From the outside, it looks like there are tiny flashers inside each light, until you flip it around and can see that what you're seeing is the shape of a flasher that's been carved into the plastic. Very clever.
In motorcycle mode he's got a tiny flip-out kickstand to support him (he cannot stand on two wheels without it), which is embedded within his left forearm (which ends up on the undercarriage when he's transformed). His front wheel can turn from side to side, independantly of the windshield and headlight assembly, but his handlebars do not move along with the wheel. His twin vaporator cannons mount on either side of the cycle mode as you would expect, and the fist/foot combo can either attach to the top of the cycle mode or can connect to the back for storage. It's not the sexiest-looking Transformer motorcycle by any stretch of the imagination (and nowhere near the styling of the 1980's Honda Goldwing) but it's recognizable as what it's supposed to be, and it's much better than Wreck-Gar or Iguanus or Vroom.
The main reason I wanted this toy, of course, was to complete my Combiner Wars Defensor and give him a proper leg. In this regard, Groove does deliver. His leg configuration provides Defensor with the classic motorcycle-wheel-on-the-knee look, and in my opinion is far preferable to the presence of Rook as a contributing team member. Groove can turn into an arm for Defensor as well, but why in the world would you want him to?
The toy isn't quite perfect. The two halves of the rear wheel don't snap together in a solid and satisfying way; we've had wheels that split in half before, and have done a much better job of securing to each other in the past (Transmetal Tarantulas; Beast Machines Thrust; etc.) His swivel waist is pretty loose, but the other joints are nice and tight. Mostly, I'm just thankful this toy exists at all. Hasbro's done a fine job of "forgetting" key members of the Combiner Wars teams and then suddenly "remembering" to offer the characters to us. I must be willing to keep playing this game, since they've gotten me three times now (Quickslinger, Brake-Neck, and now Groove; still holding out for Blast Off eventually). The date stamp on my toy is 60461, meaning he was manufactured on February 15, 2016 (and the Takara edition of the toy differs slightly from the Hasbro version, making it unlikely this is Takara leftovers).
I pined for this toy for what feels like many months, so I'm pleased he's a member of the family. I need to go downstairs and swap him out for Rook right away!
Zob (now to start pining for the G2 Menasor set!)
William A. Rendfeld
Jun 15, 2016, 8:36:26 AM6/15/16
to
On Wednesday, June 15, 2016 at 1:46:13 AM UTC-4, Zobovor wrote:
>Mostly, I'm just thankful this toy exists at all. Hasbro's done a fine job of "forgetting" key members of the Combiner Wars teams and then suddenly "remembering" to offer the characters to us. I must be willing to keep playing this game, since they've gotten me three times now (Quickslinger, Brake-Neck, and now Groove; still holding out for Blast Off eventually).
...I'm sorry, "forgetting"? I doubt it went quite the way that you're implying. It was probably more like this.
>Mostly, I'm just thankful this toy exists at all. Hasbro's done a fine job of "forgetting" key members of the Combiner Wars teams and then suddenly "remembering" to offer the characters to us. I must be willing to keep playing this game, since they've gotten me three times now (Quickslinger, Brake-Neck, and now Groove; still holding out for Blast Off eventually).
Hasbro Exec #1: Okay, we're doing new versions of the G1 combiners. The fans have been wanting them for years, and we've got the chance to do them right now.
Hasbro Exec #2: Wait, is it really a good idea to put out entire waves of jets and cars that practically look identical? Maybe we can spice them up a bit, add some variety. It'll make the retailers happy.
TakaraTomy Exec: Fans want cartoon accuracy!
Hasbro Exec #1: Alright, how about this? With the Aerialbots, we swap out one of the jets for a helicopter - we're doing one anyway for the Protectobots and the Combaticons, why not give folks a preview? As for the Combaticons, take out a car, swap in a truck. We can retool the truck into First Aid. And later, we can put out the originals as online exclusives.
TakaraTomy Exec: And Ratchet!
Hasbro Exec #1: ...sure, why not? Anyway, Japan's doing giftsets for the combiners, and if they want to put out the original guys, then good for them.
-Months Later-
Hasbro Exec #1: Hey TakaraTomy, what's this about you doing a new Groove?
TakaraTomy Exec: Fans want cartoon accuracy! New Groove too tiny, doesn't turn into arm or leg! And who Rook?
Hasbro Exec #2: Groove's a motorcycle! He's tiny! Plus with Rook, we got a new character!
Hasbro Exec #1: Different markets, different rules. Fine. At least we're on the same page with Bruticus.
TakaraTomy Exec: Making new Blast-Off! Retooling Vortex! Fans want cartoon accuracy!
Hasbro Exec #2: But Blast-Off turns into a space shuttle! Making him a jet isn't nearly as egregious!
Takara Tomy Exec: ...you make movies with Michael Bay and you complain about egregious?
Hasbro Exec #1: Enough! How about this - we put out our own version of the bigger Groove, one year after we put out Slingshot and Wildrider.
Hasbro Exec #2: Quickslinger and Brake-Neck.
Hasbro Exec #1: Same thing! Now, this alternative Blast-Off won't have the tooling ready for a while, right? If we get the chance, we'll put it out in the future.
I don't assume conspiracies or duplicity on Hasbro's part, only them dealing with the realities of the market and mold availability.
Zobovor
Jun 15, 2016, 12:50:25 PM6/15/16
to
On Wednesday, June 15, 2016 at 6:36:26 AM UTC-6, William A. Rendfeld wrote:
> I don't assume conspiracies or duplicity on Hasbro's part, only them dealing
> with the realities of the market and mold availability.
I don't assume ANYTHING. There is incontrovertible evidence that Quickslinger and Brake-Neck were planned from the very start, not some kind of stop-gap measure to alleviate the fans' concerns and try to make them happy.
> I don't assume conspiracies or duplicity on Hasbro's part, only them dealing
> with the realities of the market and mold availability.
The Combiner Wars toys first started hitting retail shops in February 2015. The Aerialbot team, with Alpha Bravo in place of Slingshot, was available at this time, and the Stunticon team, with Offroad in place of Wildrider, was available shortly thereafter.
Fan outrage was pretty strong, and Quickslinger and Brake-Neck were finally made available in June 2015.
The problem with this scenario is that the date codes on the Quickslinger and Brake-Neck toys indicate that they were manufactured in January 2015. So, in other words, Hasbro was ALREADY PLANNING these toys before anybody had ever bought Alpha Bravo or Offroad. Their creation wasn't a response to the fan outcry; it was a calculated move to offer us the "wrong" toys from the start, leave us to perhaps assume we would never get complete teams, and then make it look like they were coming to the rescue by offering us special replacement team members. However, that's simply not how it happened. The date codes don't lie.
Groove seems to be a different case, since the timeline is more consistent with the idea that his creation (and that of Blast Off) was a response to the problem of the incomplete teams. I've observed a roughly six-week lead time between the manufacturing date and the date toys have shown up in stores (it takes time to package the toys, box them up, ship them overseas, distribute them to retailer warehouses, ship them to individual retail stores, etc.) which means that we could have gotten Brake-Neck before Offroad had ever become a problem. Instead, Hasbro strung us along with pointless redeco versions of toys that nobody would have bought (Alpha Bravo was always meant to be Vortex from the start, and Offroad was conceived as an update for Triggercon Ruckus).
They never flat-out lied to our faces and said "we are never releasing a complete Aerialbot team, so either buy the helicopter or you'll never be able to form Superion." But it was implied by the packaging ("2 of 5" does not mean the same thing as "2 of 6") and the case assortments. I am generally pleased with the end results (I have complete Aerialbot and Stunticon teams), but I think I'm justified in feeling deceived.
Zob (and don't get me started on Computron)
Manic
Jun 17, 2016, 3:41:01 AM6/17/16
to
I've never been bothered by the perceived scale issues between members of the combiner teams. We are, after all, talking about characters like Soundwave and Blaster who, as giant robots, can transform into human sized tape decks with companion robots who can transform from a cassette tape into human sized robots, jaguars and other animals.
Size/mass displacement has a LONG history within the fiction, thus it's kinda pedantic for someone to take umbrage over it.
I have been very happy with Groove in his traditional spot as Defensor's leg and even at the inflated price point due to being online exclusive, he is worth the money for that reason alone. I like Rook as an individual toy, but he kinda makes a boring looking limb.
On Wednesday, June 15, 2016 at 9:50:25 AM UTC-7, Zobovor wrote:
> Zob (and don't get me started on Computron)
I won't get you started, but I will be getting the Unite Warriors Computron, as I find the colour scheme alone to be far more visually appealing than the Hasbro version. It also doesn't hurt that Scattershot has been retooled enough so he doesn't look like Superion got a wacky paint job. I'll get the Perfect Effect hands and feet to replace the garbage hand/foot/gun pieces they'll be using.
Size/mass displacement has a LONG history within the fiction, thus it's kinda pedantic for someone to take umbrage over it.
I have been very happy with Groove in his traditional spot as Defensor's leg and even at the inflated price point due to being online exclusive, he is worth the money for that reason alone. I like Rook as an individual toy, but he kinda makes a boring looking limb.
On Wednesday, June 15, 2016 at 9:50:25 AM UTC-7, Zobovor wrote:
> Zob (and don't get me started on Computron)
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