Zob's Thoughts on Power of the Primes Battleslash, Roadtrap, and Tailgate (plus Starscream, too!)

[Zobovor]

I mentioned to my wife that I was looking for the recently-released Legends-class toys without much success, and she got as far as the checkout on Big Bad Toy Store when we realized it was just a preorder. I told her I'd find them at retail right after we ordered them and I'd be stuck with two sets. Sure enough, I was taking a Redbox movie back to Walmart tonight and they just happened to have all three of them on the pegs. I grabbed Starscream, too, because I skipped him the first time around but I still had some birthday money in my pocket.

BATTLESLASH

The concept behind the original Duocons from 1987 was that each robot could split into two vehicle forms. The toys were spring-loaded, and plugging the aerial vehicle into the top of the ground vehicle triggered the transformation, with the admittedly simple robot design popping up into place. It was a fun novelty, and I've always been fond of the toys despite their simplicity and lack of media exposure for the characters. The original Duocons were the truck and helicopter named Battletrap and the tank/jet team called Flywheels (and fans have long suspected their names got switched), but Hasbro decided to assign new names to the individual vehicles, who can also now transform into robots by themselves without having to combine.

So, Battleslash is the new name for the helicopter component. As a robot, he's just under four inches tall, the same size as a regular Legends toy. Considering he's one of the few G1-inspired toys who doesn't have an existing robot design to pattern his look after, they did a reasonably good job. He captures the general look and feel of a Transformer from the G1 days, and head sculpt is not unlike some of the existing Micromasters or Nebulans. (He gets a silver-painted face with red eyes, which further adds to his authenticity.)

He's equipped with a helicopter blade mounted to his right forearm, which spins freely but is not easily detachable (and cannot be carried in his hand like a weapon, despite his packaging illustration). He's not particularly attractive, being almost entirely grey with only a tiny bit of black (and blue painted toes). His feet are really tiny and his thunder thighs are monstrous. These are, of course, concessions of his ability to form the upper half of the Battletrap robot mode. Also, due to the way he's designed, the ball-and-socket joints for his shoulders are facing outwards, not pointing out to either side, so his arms can only move out to the sides or swing forwards ninety degrees.

The helicopter mode isn't great. There are some toys that don't overtly appear to change into anything, and there are toys that are clearly robots in not-much-of-a-disguise. Battleslash is very, very obviously a Transformer.

The collector card I got was Megatronus Battleslash, who "toys with his enemies to increase his legend." Whatever that means.

There are a lot of moving parts that go unused for Battleslash as an individual toy, which makes him a little complicated and harder to figure out than your average toy of this size.

ROADTRAP

Where Battleslash has dainty ballerina feet, Roadtrap's are humongous. Roadtrap's feet are so big that he comes packaged with his toes pointing down, just to get him to fit in the bubble. There are no instructions to explain this, but you CAN NOT just flip the feet up and call it good. You are required to move the red windshield halves out of the way first. Failing to do so will likely break the toy.

Roadtrap's the same height as his partner, and he's got a more colorful robot configuration. While he's still mostly blue, he's decorated with red and yellow and silver (most of it on the truck grill and headlights on his feet, but the same colors are also represented on his shoulders and abdomen). He's got a white Decepticon badge on his right breast plate. His head sculpt is good, and actually reminds me a lot of the head sculpt for G1 Battletrap.

The original vehicle configuration was something like a Ford Bronco with an oversized camper shell. This new vehicle form is a bit more abstract, since zero attempt was made to hide his robot torso. The entire thing serves as the camper shell, making the vehicle look decidedly more alien in nature than his G1 counterpart. We're almost hitting a Multiforce level of abstract vehicle forms. He still retains the red windows and bright yellow headlights, which were stickers on the 1987 toy and which enables this toy to successfully read as (part of) Battletrap despite the changes.

I got Onyx Roadtrap, who "casts his mind across space to steal Autobot secrets."

Something that really bothers me is that Roadtrap's packaging artwork shows him clutching a handheld weapon. You can't see the whole gun, but you can see that he's carrying something. The toy doesn't actually come with any accessories. Suffice to say, this is false advertising and it irks me a bit.

BATTLETRAP

The combined Battletrap form is about five inches in height, notably smaller than a Deluxe toy. The parts count and complexity of the individual components would probably have negated Hasbro trying to market and sell this pair in a single Deluxe-class package, but it feels a little like they're asking $15 for Deluxe toys and $20 for this significantly smaller, over-engineered equivalent.

Battleslash forms the upper body of the combined mode, in which his legs serve as the combined arms, a secondary combiner head emerges from behind the helicopter cockpit, and the robot arms and helicopter blade tuck away behind his back. Roadtrap, meanwhile, forms the lower half, with his torso splitting in half and those halves shifting down lower on his legs. His arms tuck away behind the combined legs, and his robot head served as a the connection point, plugging into the nose of the helicopter (Roadtrap's robot neck doubles as the waist swivel joint for Battletrap).

The combined form is fairly well-proportioned, though I feel like his leg armor (the chest halves of Roadtrap) get in the way. I'm trying to see them as leg shields, the same ones that Ramjet and Thrust and Dirge had, but they're not well-integrated into the legs and tend to flop around when posing him. The size of the combined arms makes more sense now than the huge upper legs on Battleslash, but they're still almost too big even for the combined form. I think both forms would have been served better with smaller, more squared-off parts instead of these big, beefy, rounded limbs.

I love the fact that Hasbro is finally addressing the Duocons, and the new toy is definitely more impressive than the G1 version, but the execution is still a little lacking. The lack of weapons is a big turn-off, for one. G1 Battletrap had a big double-barreled blaster for the two vehicles to share. Not only do these toys not get guns at all, but the design of Battletrap's hands would seem to preclude being able to carry most weapons (he has the right five-millimeter holes, but since his hands serve double duty as Battleslash's feet, the support heel struts are in the way).

Despite Battletrap's flaws, I'm still curious to see what Hasbro does with Flywheels eventually.

TAILGATE

For an obscure 1986 character who had, like, one on-screen appearance and was never a player in any capacity in Marvel Comics, Tailgate has received a surprising number of toys. He tends to get addressed about as frequently as Windcharger (who is arguably the most obscure of the 1984 Autobots), sort of a built-in redeco perpetually waiting in the wings, similar to how Thundercracker and Skywarp toys almost always inevitably follow an initial Starscream release. (He's enjoyed a carerr of considerably greater renown in IDW comics, but such things fail to interest me.)

The Power of the Primes toy for Windcharger was designed specifically to resemble the character. The original 1986 version of Tailgate was a substantial remold of the G1 Windcharger toy he was based on, changing not just the details for his robot mode (his robot face and chest were all-new), but some of the styling of his vehicle mode as well (he had a different, more symmetrical cowl induction hood that included an indent for the heat-sensitive rub symbol). The new Tailgate got a new robot head, but is otherwise identical to Windcharger. This means he's got the wrong-shaped chest, pelvis, and lacks the assembly around his head. Some characters have normal heads, and some characters just have faces poking out of a huge block (Tailgate, Outback, Backstreet, Guzzle, etc.) and it looks wrong when those characters get toys with normal head designs.

I got Amalgamous Tailgate, who "chooses the fastest form for every mission." Sounds a lot like Windcharger to me.

I understand that the nature of recycling toy designs will sometimes preclude significant remolding (the whole point of reusing a toy mold is to save money), but the recent toy lines have usually been really good at giving us the definitive versions of characters. While this is a better Tailgate than the heavily IDW-inspired Generations toy from 2014, there's still room for improvement. Well, it's still better than Combiner Wars Pipes, not that this is a particularly difficult hurdle to clear.

STARSCREAM

I decided against getting Starscream when I first saw him in stores, some months ago, but I've been regretting it and decided I would buy him if I saw him again. It's a bad-looking Starscream, and not the definitive version of the character (i.e., I would not put him on a shelf of neo-G1 toys, not that I have room to display any neo-G1 toys), but in addition to being a collector of Transformers toys I am also a student of Transformers mold changes, and now that I've got Elita-1, I was really curious to know what, precisely, was changed on Starscream. (Was it worth $24.97 to find out? Eh, what else was I going to spend that money on?)

There are reasons why I skipped over Starscream the first time. I disliked the styling of his robot mode, which was technically G1-inspired, but realized in a way that was aesthetically distasteful to me. The enormous gauntlets and huge, bloated boots, combined with the odd shape of his chest, was a major turn-off for me. If they're going to do Starscream wrong, they really need to go all-out and do him incredibly, extremely wrong. I think that if this toy had been produced in, say, Action Masters colors or G2 colors, it would have held more appear for me as a niche homage. They're already part of the way towards Pretender colors (the canopy glass is black here instead of orange) so why not go all out? Or, conversely, if they had sculpted him with circuit detailing all over his body, he would have been recognizable as Underbase Starscream, an iteration of the character that's never gotten an official toy.

The two Prime Armor accessories (which form the feet of some theoretical, unnamed combiner mode, which may or may not include Blackwing and Dreadwind) can double as extensions of his guns, plugging into the peg holes on the sides of his arms and inserting the regular arm guns into them. They look a bit like oversized G2 missile launchers in this configuration. The weapons are ridiculously big, but they actually look good on this toy because it helps to make the giant gauntlets and boots look a little less incongruous.

Where most Transformers rearrange their bodies to become the vehicle that they turn into, Starscream pretty much just wears his jet mode as a backpack. If Hasbro wanted to spend the money, they could theoretically remold the robot parts endlessly into a wide variety of characters without it ever affecting the engineering of the transformation. The transformation is so exceedingly simple (you push Starscream's upper legs into his lower legs and fiddle with the wings a bit) that I wonder if parents were complaining about Titans Return being too complex, and this was their response. This feels like a Playskool toy in every way that matters.

Jet mode reminds me more of Thunderwing than Starscream. It's the canards on the nose, I think. Silver stickers adorn the wings, with cute references to G1 lore like "GHOST ATTACK" and "D-22" (the designation for Starscream by Takara for the original Japanese toy line). You can mount the Prime Armor to the undersides of his wings, if you want a largely unaerodynamic jet that cannot possibly fly.

His weird sparky thing is red but the front is painted pink. It rattles around inside his Prime Armor very loosely and falls out when you sneeze.

The combiner form is kind of a horrible mess. Maybe I would love it if some G1 equivalent existed, but it's ugly and messy and I will probably never transform him into this mode ever again.

I got Amalgamous Starscream, who "mimics the forms of others in order to deceive." He's drawn so much more proportionately on his collector card.

This is not an absolutely terrible toy. It's not great, though, either. It really does feel like a wrong-colored redeco of the original, proper use of the toy, except for the fact that Starscream apparently IS the intended use for this toy. (The Elita-1 redeco is even less appropriate, since at least Starscream is supposed to turn into a jet.) I kind of feel like Starscream has run the gamut of literally every size class in existence, and Voyager is just about the only one they hadn't covered yet.

The toy is rumored to be on the slate for the inevitable Thundercracker redeco, which probably means Hasbro has completely given up on selling us five-member combiner teams. There may simply be no Decepticons intended to complete the Starscream/Blackwing/Dreadwind combiner, and we really may have to settle for either using wrong-allegiance toys like the Dinobots, or adding older Combiner Wars toys into the mix.


Zob (also got the Elite Series C-3PO and R2-D2 from the Disney Store tonight)

[MWG]

On Wednesday, March 28, 2018 at 10:10:13 PM UTC-5, Zobovor wrote:
> I mentioned to my wife that I was looking for the recently-released Legends-class toys without much success, and she got as far as the checkout on Big Bad Toy Store when we realized it was just a preorder. I told her I'd find them at retail right after we ordered them and I'd be stuck with two sets. Sure enough, I was taking a Redbox movie back to Walmart tonight and they just happened to have all three of them on the pegs. I grabbed Starscream, too, because I skipped him the first time around but I still had some birthday money in my pocket.
>

I managed to find them once about a month ago at a Walmart in north Oklahoa City, but really didn't see them again for a while after that. Target has also been getting this wave in the last few weeks. Tailgate seems to go a little quicker due to being shortpacked versus the Duocon parts.

> BATTLESLASH
>
> The concept behind the original Duocons from 1987 was that each robot could split into two vehicle forms. The toys were spring-loaded, and plugging the aerial vehicle into the top of the ground vehicle triggered the transformation, with the admittedly simple robot design popping up into place. It was a fun novelty, and I've always been fond of the toys despite their simplicity and lack of media exposure for the characters. The original Duocons were the truck and helicopter named Battletrap and the tank/jet team called Flywheels (and fans have long suspected their names got switched), but Hasbro decided to assign new names to the individual vehicles, who can also now transform into robots by themselves without having to combine.
>
> So, Battleslash is the new name for the helicopter component. As a robot, he's just under four inches tall, the same size as a regular Legends toy. Considering he's one of the few G1-inspired toys who doesn't have an existing robot design to pattern his look after, they did a reasonably good job. He captures the general look and feel of a Transformer from the G1 days, and head sculpt is not unlike some of the existing Micromasters or Nebulans. (He gets a silver-painted face with red eyes, which further adds to his authenticity.)
>
> He's equipped with a helicopter blade mounted to his right forearm, which spins freely but is not easily detachable (and cannot be carried in his hand like a weapon, despite his packaging illustration). He's not particularly attractive, being almost entirely grey with only a tiny bit of black (and blue painted toes). His feet are really tiny and his thunder thighs are monstrous. These are, of course, concessions of his ability to form the upper half of the Battletrap robot mode. Also, due to the way he's designed, the ball-and-socket joints for his shoulders are facing outwards, not pointing out to either side, so his arms can only move out to the sides or swing forwards ninety degrees.
>
> The helicopter mode isn't great. There are some toys that don't overtly appear to change into anything, and there are toys that are clearly robots in not-much-of-a-disguise. Battleslash is very, very obviously a Transformer.
>
> The collector card I got was Megatronus Battleslash, who "toys with his enemies to increase his legend." Whatever that means.
>
> There are a lot of moving parts that go unused for Battleslash as an individual toy, which makes him a little complicated and harder to figure out than your average toy of this size.
>

The transformation is a bit irritating due to having to rotate just about every limb to get them in the proper places to move around those black hinges. But he makes a decent little robot, and I don't mind the wild west gunslinger stance the legs have. I wish the grey were a bit darker (it is better than most internet images make it look) and the windows weren't that bright blue color but overall he is OK. And we see so few helicopter bots (except CW Vortex re-uses) that he is a bit more unique. As for recolors, I wouldn't mind G1 Tracer or Blackout I guess.

> ROADTRAP
>
> Where Battleslash has dainty ballerina feet, Roadtrap's are humongous. Roadtrap's feet are so big that he comes packaged with his toes pointing down, just to get him to fit in the bubble. There are no instructions to explain this, but you CAN NOT just flip the feet up and call it good. You are required to move the red windshield halves out of the way first. Failing to do so will likely break the toy.
>
> Roadtrap's the same height as his partner, and he's got a more colorful robot configuration. While he's still mostly blue, he's decorated with red and yellow and silver (most of it on the truck grill and headlights on his feet, but the same colors are also represented on his shoulders and abdomen). He's got a white Decepticon badge on his right breast plate. His head sculpt is good, and actually reminds me a lot of the head sculpt for G1 Battletrap.
>
> The original vehicle configuration was something like a Ford Bronco with an oversized camper shell. This new vehicle form is a bit more abstract, since zero attempt was made to hide his robot torso. The entire thing serves as the camper shell, making the vehicle look decidedly more alien in nature than his G1 counterpart. We're almost hitting a Multiforce level of abstract vehicle forms. He still retains the red windows and bright yellow headlights, which were stickers on the 1987 toy and which enables this toy to successfully read as (part of) Battletrap despite the changes.
>
> I got Onyx Roadtrap, who "casts his mind across space to steal Autobot secrets."
>
> Something that really bothers me is that Roadtrap's packaging artwork shows him clutching a handheld weapon. You can't see the whole gun, but you can see that he's carrying something. The toy doesn't actually come with any accessories. Suffice to say, this is false advertising and it irks me a bit.
>

He is a little more boring to me. The white and yellow details on the roof seem a bit gaudy and unneeded. But overall he is OK. As for repaints, I guess some form of Crankcase (probably with paint elements of the Walmart 2007 movie-verse version, to be a bit more unique from Roadtrap) or Cybertron Cannonball would be nice (he also uses the Cyb. Red Alert mold like the above mentioned Crankcase).

> BATTLETRAP
>
> The combined Battletrap form is about five inches in height, notably smaller than a Deluxe toy. The parts count and complexity of the individual components would probably have negated Hasbro trying to market and sell this pair in a single Deluxe-class package, but it feels a little like they're asking $15 for Deluxe toys and $20 for this significantly smaller, over-engineered equivalent.
>

Several of the recent legends class molds seem to come in pairs and feel like they should be two-packs. We obviously got the flying clones in a set via Walgreens, but they could stand to re-release Fastlane and Pounce (big box set exclusives for us). The two parts of Battletrap could be a box set (I wonder if Takara actually will release them packaged together,even though paintjobs won't change) and if Flywheels DOES happen (hoping for a surprise release in a hypothetical fourth wave of PoTP legends),those can be bundled eventually. They could probably run them at voyager price, if they toss in a few random titan/prime master repaints.

> Battleslash forms the upper body of the combined mode, in which his legs serve as the combined arms, a secondary combiner head emerges from behind the helicopter cockpit, and the robot arms and helicopter blade tuck away behind his back. Roadtrap, meanwhile, forms the lower half, with his torso splitting in half and those halves shifting down lower on his legs. His arms tuck away behind the combined legs, and his robot head served as a the connection point, plugging into the nose of the helicopter (Roadtrap's robot neck doubles as the waist swivel joint for Battletrap).
>
> The combined form is fairly well-proportioned, though I feel like his leg armor (the chest halves of Roadtrap) get in the way. I'm trying to see them as leg shields, the same ones that Ramjet and Thrust and Dirge had, but they're not well-integrated into the legs and tend to flop around when posing him. The size of the combined arms makes more sense now than the huge upper legs on Battleslash, but they're still almost too big even for the combined form. I think both forms would have been served better with smaller, more squared-off parts instead of these big, beefy, rounded limbs.
>
> I love the fact that Hasbro is finally addressing the Duocons, and the new toy is definitely more impressive than the G1 version, but the execution is still a little lacking. The lack of weapons is a big turn-off, for one. G1 Battletrap had a big double-barreled blaster for the two vehicles to share. Not only do these toys not get guns at all, but the design of Battletrap's hands would seem to preclude being able to carry most weapons (he has the right five-millimeter holes, but since his hands serve double duty as Battleslash's feet, the support heel struts are in the way).
>
> Despite Battletrap's flaws, I'm still curious to see what Hasbro does with Flywheels eventually.
>

The legs are a bit clunky and it takes some time to fiddle with Battleslash's arms to get the rotor in a decent position on his back (I don't put it between his arms like packaging seems to suggest). I did get the Nonnef weapons set for them yesterday, have yet to split Battletrap apart again to use the weapons in separate modes but it is worth getting. I think they were right to release the Battletrap components first,helicopter and off-road SUVs aren't nearly as common as jets and tanks (though a new jet could be made into a couple Triggerbot/cons and the tank could make Warpath or Guzzle.

> TAILGATE
>
> For an obscure 1986 character who had, like, one on-screen appearance and was never a player in any capacity in Marvel Comics, Tailgate has received a surprising number of toys. He tends to get addressed about as frequently as Windcharger (who is arguably the most obscure of the 1984 Autobots), sort of a built-in redeco perpetually waiting in the wings, similar to how Thundercracker and Skywarp toys almost always inevitably follow an initial Starscream release. (He's enjoyed a carerr of considerably greater renown in IDW comics, but such things fail to interest me.)
>
> The Power of the Primes toy for Windcharger was designed specifically to resemble the character. The original 1986 version of Tailgate was a substantial remold of the G1 Windcharger toy he was based on, changing not just the details for his robot mode (his robot face and chest were all-new), but some of the styling of his vehicle mode as well (he had a different, more symmetrical cowl induction hood that included an indent for the heat-sensitive rub symbol). The new Tailgate got a new robot head, but is otherwise identical to Windcharger. This means he's got the wrong-shaped chest, pelvis, and lacks the assembly around his head. Some characters have normal heads, and some characters just have faces poking out of a huge block (Tailgate, Outback, Backstreet, Guzzle, etc.) and it looks wrong when those characters get toys with normal head designs.
>
> I got Amalgamous Tailgate, who "chooses the fastest form for every mission." Sounds a lot like Windcharger to me.
>
> I understand that the nature of recycling toy designs will sometimes preclude significant remolding (the whole point of reusing a toy mold is to save money), but the recent toy lines have usually been really good at giving us the definitive versions of characters. While this is a better Tailgate than the heavily IDW-inspired Generations toy from 2014, there's still room for improvement. Well, it's still better than Combiner Wars Pipes, not that this is a particularly difficult hurdle to clear.
>

IMO, PoTP Tailgate is a huge improvement over the T-30 version. That mold was just clunky with kibble getting in the way of robot mode articulation, and the ugly shade of blue didn't help. I still want a Tailgate from RtS Windcharger, just to complete the cycle. Though I could see the PoTP version of the mold in blue (random foreign Windcharger repaints) or yellow (homage to that catalog image of him in Hubcap colors, and Hubcap in white). I do agree Pipes desperately needs a redo, I treat the CW version as a generic character (Huffer at least had a good headsculpt and the colors were basically correct).

> STARSCREAM
>
> I decided against getting Starscream when I first saw him in stores, some months ago, but I've been regretting it and decided I would buy him if I saw him again. It's a bad-looking Starscream, and not the definitive version of the character (i.e., I would not put him on a shelf of neo-G1 toys, not that I have room to display any neo-G1 toys), but in addition to being a collector of Transformers toys I am also a student of Transformers mold changes, and now that I've got Elita-1, I was really curious to know what, precisely, was changed on Starscream. (Was it worth $24.97 to find out? Eh, what else was I going to spend that money on?)
>
> There are reasons why I skipped over Starscream the first time. I disliked the styling of his robot mode, which was technically G1-inspired, but realized in a way that was aesthetically distasteful to me. The enormous gauntlets and huge, bloated boots, combined with the odd shape of his chest, was a major turn-off for me. If they're going to do Starscream wrong, they really need to go all-out and do him incredibly, extremely wrong. I think that if this toy had been produced in, say, Action Masters colors or G2 colors, it would have held more appear for me as a niche homage. They're already part of the way towards Pretender colors (the canopy glass is black here instead of orange) so why not go all out? Or, conversely, if they had sculpted him with circuit detailing all over his body, he would have been recognizable as Underbase Starscream, an iteration of the character that's never gotten an official toy.
>
> The two Prime Armor accessories (which form the feet of some theoretical, unnamed combiner mode, which may or may not include Blackwing and Dreadwind) can double as extensions of his guns, plugging into the peg holes on the sides of his arms and inserting the regular arm guns into them. They look a bit like oversized G2 missile launchers in this configuration. The weapons are ridiculously big, but they actually look good on this toy because it helps to make the giant gauntlets and boots look a little less incongruous.
>
> Where most Transformers rearrange their bodies to become the vehicle that they turn into, Starscream pretty much just wears his jet mode as a backpack. If Hasbro wanted to spend the money, they could theoretically remold the robot parts endlessly into a wide variety of characters without it ever affecting the engineering of the transformation. The transformation is so exceedingly simple (you push Starscream's upper legs into his lower legs and fiddle with the wings a bit) that I wonder if parents were complaining about Titans Return being too complex, and this was their response. This feels like a Playskool toy in every way that matters.
>
> Jet mode reminds me more of Thunderwing than Starscream. It's the canards on the nose, I think. Silver stickers adorn the wings, with cute references to G1 lore like "GHOST ATTACK" and "D-22" (the designation for Starscream by Takara for the original Japanese toy line). You can mount the Prime Armor to the undersides of his wings, if you want a largely unaerodynamic jet that cannot possibly fly.
>
> His weird sparky thing is red but the front is painted pink. It rattles around inside his Prime Armor very loosely and falls out when you sneeze.
>
> The combiner form is kind of a horrible mess. Maybe I would love it if some G1 equivalent existed, but it's ugly and messy and I will probably never transform him into this mode ever again.
>
> I got Amalgamous Starscream, who "mimics the forms of others in order to deceive." He's drawn so much more proportionately on his collector card.
>
> This is not an absolutely terrible toy. It's not great, though, either. It really does feel like a wrong-colored redeco of the original, proper use of the toy, except for the fact that Starscream apparently IS the intended use for this toy. (The Elita-1 redeco is even less appropriate, since at least Starscream is supposed to turn into a jet.) I kind of feel like Starscream has run the gamut of literally every size class in existence, and Voyager is just about the only one they hadn't covered yet.
>
> The toy is rumored to be on the slate for the inevitable Thundercracker redeco, which probably means Hasbro has completely given up on selling us five-member combiner teams. There may simply be no Decepticons intended to complete the Starscream/Blackwing/Dreadwind combiner, and we really may have to settle for either using wrong-allegiance toys like the Dinobots, or adding older Combiner Wars toys into the mix.
>

I might pick it up if I see it cheap enough, he really doesn't move around here. But I want the mold repainted into Slipstream, if only to give us at least ONE female Decepticon in the Classics series.

> Zob (also got the Elite Series C-3PO and R2-D2 from the Disney Store tonight)

I did finally track down Cyber Battalion Shockwave. Despite needing a bit more articulation (knees, bicep swivels), the robot mode is basically what we should have had at regular retail for the Classics-Generatins line long ago. It is the right size and just feels right. The vehicle mode isn't too bad, if the robot arms could hide better it would be fine.

[Irrellius Spamticon of the Potato People.]

I really like the Thrilling 30 and haven't gotten a new one just for the fact that i have the thrilling 30.

The last Pipes and Huffer we got were terrible.

> > STARSCREAM
> >
> > I decided against getting Starscream when I first saw him in stores, some months ago, but I've been regretting it and decided I would buy him if I saw him again. It's a bad-looking Starscream, and not the definitive version of the character (i.e., I would not put him on a shelf of neo-G1 toys, not that I have room to display any neo-G1 toys), but in addition to being a collector of Transformers toys I am also a student of Transformers mold changes, and now that I've got Elita-1, I was really curious to know what, precisely, was changed on Starscream. (Was it worth $24.97 to find out? Eh, what else was I going to spend that money on?)
> >

I've made a list of the Studio Series toys I want...or you could put it in the bank....

> > There are reasons why I skipped over Starscream the first time. I disliked the styling of his robot mode, which was technically G1-inspired, but realized in a way that was aesthetically distasteful to me. The enormous gauntlets and huge, bloated boots, combined with the odd shape of his chest, was a major turn-off for me. If they're going to do Starscream wrong, they really need to go all-out and do him incredibly, extremely wrong. I think that if this toy had been produced in, say, Action Masters colors or G2 colors, it would have held more appear for me as a niche homage. They're already part of the way towards Pretender colors (the canopy glass is black here instead of orange) so why not go all out? Or, conversely, if they had sculpted him with circuit detailing all over his body, he would have been recognizable as Underbase Starscream, an iteration of the character that's never gotten an official toy.
> >

Action Master or G2 fine but circuit details? Now you're asking for even more stickers?

> > The two Prime Armor accessories (which form the feet of some theoretical, unnamed combiner mode, which may or may not include Blackwing and Dreadwind) can double as extensions of his guns, plugging into the peg holes on the sides of his arms and inserting the regular arm guns into them. They look a bit like oversized G2 missile launchers in this configuration. The weapons are ridiculously big, but they actually look good on this toy because it helps to make the giant gauntlets and boots look a little less incongruous.
> >
> > Where most Transformers rearrange their bodies to become the vehicle that they turn into, Starscream pretty much just wears his jet mode as a backpack. If Hasbro wanted to spend the money, they could theoretically remold the robot parts endlessly into a wide variety of characters without it ever affecting the engineering of the transformation. The transformation is so exceedingly simple (you push Starscream's upper legs into his lower legs and fiddle with the wings a bit) that I wonder if parents were complaining about Titans Return being too complex, and this was their response. This feels like a Playskool toy in every way that matters.
> >

Yeah, it kind of annoys me how they (elita-1 too) just wear a jet. G1 Starscream used more jet parts in his robot mode.

> > Jet mode reminds me more of Thunderwing than Starscream. It's the canards on the nose, I think. Silver stickers adorn the wings, with cute references to G1 lore like "GHOST ATTACK" and "D-22" (the designation for Starscream by Takara for the original Japanese toy line). You can mount the Prime Armor to the undersides of his wings, if you want a largely unaerodynamic jet that cannot possibly fly.
> >

They're getting less and less realistic with ways to store accessories, aren't they. I wish they were at least resembling rocket boosters.

> > His weird sparky thing is red but the front is painted pink. It rattles around inside his Prime Armor very loosely and falls out when you sneeze.
> >
> > The combiner form is kind of a horrible mess. Maybe I would love it if some G1 equivalent existed, but it's ugly and messy and I will probably never transform him into this mode ever again.
> >
> > I got Amalgamous Starscream, who "mimics the forms of others in order to deceive." He's drawn so much more proportionately on his collector card.
> >
> > This is not an absolutely terrible toy. It's not great, though, either. It really does feel like a wrong-colored redeco of the original, proper use of the toy, except for the fact that Starscream apparently IS the intended use for this toy. (The Elita-1 redeco is even less appropriate, since at least Starscream is supposed to turn into a jet.) I kind of feel like Starscream has run the gamut of literally every size class in existence, and Voyager is just about the only one they hadn't covered yet.
> >

Animated, Armada, Energon, Prime, and the movies gave us Voyager Starscreams, but I never felt a lack of Voyager Starscreams.

> > The toy is rumored to be on the slate for the inevitable Thundercracker redeco, which probably means Hasbro has completely given up on selling us five-member combiner teams. There may simply be no Decepticons intended to complete the Starscream/Blackwing/Dreadwind combiner, and we really may have to settle for either using wrong-allegiance toys like the Dinobots, or adding older Combiner Wars toys into the mix.
> >
>

We still don't know anything past wave 4, and we so far only know one wave 4 bot. I'm not optimistic though, but that's just me. Combiner Wars broke me of my habit of buying every Thundercracker. I just didn't need a leader.

> I might pick it up if I see it cheap enough, he really doesn't move around here. But I want the mold repainted into Slipstream, if only to give us at least ONE female Decepticon in the Classics series.
>

Normally it's the only Transformer in most of the stores I visit. Grimlock flies off the shelf, almost as if he were a jet... Slipstream might not be bad, and honestly makes more sense for the mold than Elita-1, but Slipstream just isn't mainstream enough for Hasbro to make toys. She was not in the G1 cartoon or comics. We haven't gotten a major US release of any Slipstream toy yet, assuming you exclude the RID Minicon who is obviously a different character.

[Zobovor]

On Thursday, March 29, 2018 at 7:43:16 PM UTC-6, Irrellius Spamticon of the Potato People. wrote:

> The last Pipes and Huffer we got were terrible.

I hope that we're being vocal enough about this (not just here, but on other forums as well) that Hasbro is noticing and is planning a redo some day.

> Action Master or G2 fine but circuit details? Now you're asking for even
> more stickers?

No, not stickers. The circuit detailing would be part of the sculpt.

> They're getting less and less realistic with ways to store accessories,
> aren't they. I wish they were at least resembling rocket boosters.

I like that storage is at least an option, since the G1 combiners had all those fists and foot plates and things always sitting around. And, I really do like Starscream's gigantic arm guns.

> We still don't know anything past wave 4, and we so far only know one wave 4
> bot. I'm not optimistic though, but that's just me.

Everything I've heard is that wave four will be the end of Power of the Primes. It's scheduled to be a shorter toy line, planned for only 12 months as opposed to Titans Return, which was closer to 18.

Maybe that's for the best? I don't know what's coming next, but Power of the Primes has felt like a misstep since day one, with a confusing ecosystem and a mishmash of gimmicks. It's sort of been Combiner Wars meets Titans Return with Targetmaster Pretenders thrown in. Like I said before, it's not PotP, it's PotPourri.


Zob (apparently doesn't work hard enough for management to actually notice and acknowledge it)

[Zobovor]

On Wednesday, March 28, 2018 at 9:10:13 PM UTC-6, Zobovor wrote:

> Or, conversely, if they had sculpted him with circuit detailing all over his body, he would have been recognizable as Underbase Starscream, an iteration of the character that's never gotten an official toy.

Man. "Be careful what you wish for, because you just might get it," as they say. I did kind of ask for this, didn't I? I guess I just wasn't expecting it to be literally an entire toy line of Underbase characters...


Zob (planning on getting Starscream and Soundwave as soon as I can convince my wife that we really need to spend $60 on more plastic robots)

[Irrellius Spamticon of the Potato People.]

I saw these today too, but my resolve wasn't yet broken enough to cave in quite so quickly. Oddly enough if there's a Thundercracker repaint I will have absolutely no self control.

[eric....@gmail.com]

I saw Starscream & Soundwave at my local Walmart tonight. I couldn't resist Starscream (I've been wanting a good Voyager class one and PotP wasn't). I'll might end up getting Soundwave eventually but I'm passing on him for now.