Prime Wars Trilogy: which was the best toyline?

Ok so now that the swansong of the Prime Wars Trilogy is approaching and War For Cybertron: Siege is looming as the start of a new toy Trilogy (and the fact I can't find another thread on this), which was your favourite; Combiner Wars, Titans Return or Power of the Primes?

For me, it was Titans Return. I liked the idea of Combiner Wars and the re-release of so many of the G1 combiners in new, more dynamic forms and updated engineering; and Power of the Primes was a bit too mish-mashy for my liking; but Titans Return was where it was at. Releasing so many of the original Headmasters, then Targetmasters (albeit as Headmasters now unless you forked out for TakaraTomy's versions), then branching out into other fantastic updates (like Topspin and Twin Twist; I have Topspin and oh my god), "little dudes as heads" as a play pattern is so fantastic and appealing. Then with the little extra Titan Masters and their triple mode vehicle/animal/weapons to bolster your forces, I just think its genius.

So what's yours and why?

EDIT: I made the post multiple choice since sometimes picking one is tough :)

I voted for Titans Return. The play pattern was fun and the figures were on the whole quite well thought out. I also enjoyed the focus on post 1986 figures. Triggerhappy, Blurr, Brainstorm, Megatron and Wolfwire were instant hits. The only figures from the line that downright disappointed me were Chromedome and Highbrow.

Combiner Wars was a bit of a flop for me. I don't think that the gestalt gimmick was strong or interesting enough to support a whole line, especially in the way that they were released with the actual combined figures being spread across several waves. I feel like the idea would have been better served if the combiners had been released as box sets, parted out across the trilogy in the same way that Devastator and Predaking have been.

Power of the Primes has been almost a complete miss for me. The gimmick is kind of garbage. I'm interested in the idea of Abominus and will maybe get any Legends box set release, but apart from that nothing has really caught my attention.

I voted TR, basically for the same reasons listed above. All three lines gave me a lot of stuff that I loved, but I found Combiner Wars got tired pretty fast. All Limbs All The Time and so much mold reuse... and moreover, I'm just not very interested in combiners.

PotP for me falls right in between the other two. Some really, really great stuff - I love Optimus/Orion, and Primal is one of my favourite TFs in my collection despite the fact that I don't much care for BW. The tiny Prime Master shells must be a huge bird-flip to people who want actual Pretenders, but I think they're great. And those Terrorcons... swoon. Great Legends, particularly Slash and Beachcomber. But Rodimus was disappointing, Inferno is a boring reuse of an already overworked mold (give me a Hosehead instead!!), Jazz votes for Trump... etc.

So yeah, ultimately it's TR. Base modes! Little guys! Cute elephants and such! Basically all of the Deluxes are fantastic. This was the first line since I started collecting as an adult that made me want to just sit down and mess around with these toys rather than just unboxing them and putting them on a shelf. This was the line that taught me that transforming your Transformers can be fun.

Now bring on Siege!

I really need to get through the rest of the of the POTP figures I want (Predacons, Terrorcons W2 etc) before I can really decide.

However at the moment I would have to go Combiner Wars. Combaticons, Stunticons, Arielbots, Protectobots, Liokaiser, etc, I really liked having these classic groups redone - I even liked the new team members like Rook and Offroad.

I really liked how many less-famous characters got toys in Titans Return like the Autobot and Decepticon headmasters, Topspin & Twin Twist, Doublecross, Overlord etc. I was just not that keen on so many characters that were never Headmasters now being Titan Masters. In fact I've never been a giant fan of the whole Headmaster concept because if you loose the head thats pretty much it for the toy.

I'd say that POTP is shaping up to be my least favorite of the three lines, though once again I need to reserve judgement until i have all the figures I am after.

I went Combiner Wars.

All three lines are strong but as someone who really has a strong attachment to some of the “scramble city” characters, poseable deluxes of First Aid, Brawl, Skydive etc just wins for me. The combining gimmick is of secondary interest to me; I like that they can combine but I like the fact they’re satisfying on their own *more*.

I did find the line-wide Headmaster gimmick from TR annoying; for example while TR Blurr is a great figure.. why am I being forced to detach his head when I transform him? It’s my only real complaint about the line, though.

POTP is a good line although the Dinobots really didn’t need to be combiner limbs... they got away with it but it weighs the line donwn a little. Easily my highlight of POTP is Beachcomber. My favourite Character & yet another excellent toy.

I picked Titans Return partly for sentimental reasons. Highbrow was the first Autobot I ever received as a child, and was the second or third Transformer I got after Pounce and Wingspan. Also, the first Transformers fiction I ever consumed were reruns of the Headmasters anime when I was living in KL in the early 1990s. So the Titans Return line strongly represented the time that got me hooked on colourful plastic robots.

Another thing I liked about Titans Return was the amount of variety offered in terms of alt-modes and characters. Not to put Combiner Wars down (which is also a great line), but with the exception of several Legends figures like Shockwave and Bombshell, most of the Combiner Wars line-up transformed into Earth-based Vehicles. With Titans Return on the other hand, we had futuristic/alien vehicles, beast modes and triple changers. As for character selection, not only did we get the original 7 G1 Headmasters, but they threw in the Decepticon Targetmasters, the Jumpstarters, Black Shadow, Quake and Krok (seriously, how often does HasTak offer a new Krok at mass retail??). My only complaint about Titans Return is that I would have preferred characters like Blurr and Octane to be regular Transformers than Headmasters, but I can understand why they went with that direction.

As mentioned earlier, Combiner Wars is a great line, but I just prefer Titans Return better. I also feel like TR Deluxes and Voyagers make better standalone toys. My own personal quibble about CW/PotP Deluxes and Voyagers is that to exploit their gimmick and enjoy the figure to the fullest, you can't just buy one, you need at least four Deluxes and a Voyager. Still, I really do appreciate HasTak offering modernised versions of the Gestalts with better articulation and proportions.

As for PotP, my favourite aspects were the new Dinobots and Leader class figures. It’s so cool to have an Optimus Prime with a Matrix, and the option to turn him back into Orion Pax.

For me it's really a tie between Combiner Wars and Titans Return.Combiner Wars got the Generations line back in stores after we skipped most of the thrilling thirty figures, and the main gimmick was a strong one. Some of the figures were a little "simpler" than previous offerings, but at least they were larger than the previous waves. Titans Return again featured a strong gimmick and integration between different sized figures, and boasted a wide range of less well known characters. Both lines shoe horned in characters who had never originally featured the gimmicks on offer, but at least it meant we got some of those figures.

Prime Wars has been a bit of a let down. It's doesn't really have a unique line wide gimmick of it's own. The Prime Masters are just a different type of headmaster, and the combiners are, well, combiners. The Evolution figures have been interesting, but are limited to the Leader class and not without issues of their own. It would have been great to see greater integration between the leader class and the smaller figures. It again features toys who have been shoe horned into becoming combiners. Even so, it's still great to see Transformers on the shelves in mainstream retail stores.

It's a tough call, but probably Combiner Wars for me. I really like some of what they've been doing in PotP, and getting all of the 87 Headmasters (well, except Scorponok) in TR as well as finishing off the Triple-changers was great, but...bringing back combiner teams. Almost all of them. That's pretty special.:)

Combiner Wars because it didn't necessarily force everyone to be a gestalt.
e.g. CW Megatron and Ultra Magnus are both very nice toys but neither of them can combine, nor should they.

Okay, they did release guys like Sunstreaker, Prowl, Trailbreaker, Ironhide, Hound, Wheeljack, Optimus Prime, Mirage etc. as gestalt figures, but they were basically done as repaints of other gestalt robots to milk more money out of those moulds - which I'm perfectly fine with; we all know the importance of repaints for the brand. And it's a neat way for people who missed out on earlier CHUG versions of those characters to get them, so win win for fans, but I personally had no interest in them. But aside from repaints, the gestalts in CW were gestalts from G1, and those that weren't generally weren't.

Titans Return and POTP are both really great lines, don't get me wrong, but I'm not as fond of them "shoehorning" the Headmaster gimmick all over the place to the point where every 'bot and his dog are now Headmasters. I'm super happy to have CHUG Jumpstarters - they're both great toys... but I couldn't care less about the Headmaster gimmicks. How many of you can name any of the Neo-Headmasters' Titan Master component without looking it up? At last weekend's Oz Comic Con and Play World conventions, I was asking some people random Transformers trivia questions. One question was to name TR Optimus Prime's Titan Master component. Seriously... how many of you can name him without Googling it? And how much do you know about that Titan Master's character? I just don't care about these new Titan Masters. And you can bet that there are kids who are losing those Headmasters and we can expect to see a lot of headless TR characters on the secondary market in a few years' time (just as the G1 secondary market must has a lot of headless Headmasters). :/ The cool thing about the CW TFs - even the combining ones - is that even if you lose all of their accessories, they are still fully functional Transformer action figures. They can all transform from robot to alt mode and back. Lose a Headmaster and your robot mode is screwed, unless you buy a replacement independent Titan Master, but even then it doesn't look the same.

Heck, this happened only recently with TaZZerath who lost his TR Grax, and he's an adult collector! I'm not having a go at him, this could happen to any of us - but it highlights the inherent flaw of the Headmaster gimmick. The head is essentially a detachable and transformable accessory (or in the case of Nitro Zeus, non-transformable). A classmate lost my Krunk back in 1988 and my Snapdragon was headless for years and years until I managed to replace it. :( Totally sucked!

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Originally Posted by GoktimusPrime

Heck, this happened only recently with TaZZerath who lost his TR Grax, and he's an adult collector! I'm not having a go at him, this could happen to any of us - but it highlights the inherent flaw of the Headmaster gimmick. The head is essentially a detachable and transformable accessory (or in the case of Nitro Zeus, non-transformable). A classmate lost my Krunk back in 1988 and my Snapdragon was headless for years and years until I managed to replace it. :( Totally sucked!

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Yup sure did! It got stolen actually. Had to buy a whole Skully just to get Grax back. Found a good second-hand one via another member of this website though at a good price :)

I think the one thing that bugged me about TR was there was no TR Sunstreaker; IDW usually tie their products in nicely with HasTak and I think this was a missed opportunity from the Simon Furman -ations run and Max Dinobots with all the red/white clones. How fun would that've been!!

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Originally Posted by TaZZerath

I think the one thing that bugged me about TR was there was no TR Sunstreaker; IDW usually tie their products in nicely with HasTak and I think this was a missed opportunity from the Simon Furman -ations run and Max Dinobots with all the red/white clones. How fun would that've been!!

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Totally agree, but from a marketing POV I guess because it was too soon after Combiner Wars Sunstreaker.

It was a tight choice between Combiner Wars and Titans Returns for me, but I went with Combiner Wars.

POTP just felt like a combo of both of them thrown together at the last second, or with leftover parts of each one. It just didn't feel cohesive as the other 2.

Titans Returns was good, but I didn't how every character barring scouts we head masters. If you could transform them without taking off the head (like some of the leaders) it would have been better because it would have made the gimmick optional.

Combiners Wars did that, so you could have it as a combiner if you wanted to but it wasn't forced.

Love the Prime Wars trilogy, or maybe I should hate it, as it got me back into collecting again after a long hiatus. Anyhow....

Combiner Wars was great, we got a ton of classic characters in a consistent scale together and we even got some surprises like Skylynx.
I understand the need for repaints and retools not just to make money back from a mold, but I can imagine it's not easy to make mold after mold that all meet the same length dimensions when in limb mode. I have 16 combiners on my display currently (that's counting CW, UW and POTP combiners). I don't mind that they aren't perfect, they're good for the price point and I couldn't imagine parting with them.

Titans Return furthered what we got with CW in terms of unique characters. If you had told me ten years ago we would get the jumpstarters in CHUG form I'd have laughed in your face! I don't care for headmasters really, but it's nice that they can pilot the vehicle mode (in most cases). The level of detail and G1 accuracy on the figures from this line was fantastic too and that
titans class Trypticon is pure awesome!

Power of the Primes combined what I loved about both previous lines - combiners, G1 accurate updates and threw in an evolution gimmick too. I know not all like the evolution thing, but I thought it was as well done as it could be for the price point and hey let's throw in an Optimal Optimus with an amazingly gorgeous throne repaint for the sake of it!

All in all, it had it's flaws, but I do appreciate what HasTak did here. My favourite line of the three would have to be POTP, but I love them all. I was sad when I found out POTP was only going to last 3 (or technically 4) waves.

TR for me. For once the gimmick didn't ruin the toy. We did get a couple of stinkers but they weren't headmaster related.

CW was long overdue on paper but the result gave us many truly awful toys all for the sake of combination.

POTP basically felt like leftover/unused/rehashed designs from the first two toylines and being so small can't be fairly compared.


I have to say with possibly the exception of CW the scout/legends class game was strong in the Prime Wars Trilogy. It's really made me pay attention to this size class.

I wish they'd run with the evolution gimmick line wide in POTP. It's a cool gimmick.

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Originally Posted by Lint

I have to say with possibly the exception of CW the scout/legends class game was strong in the Prime Wars Trilogy. It's really made me pay attention to this size class.

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It hasn't been this strong since ROTF/DOTM days

I loved each of these 3 lines very much, but picked Titans Returns as I think it was that line that had the most "I can't believe we actually got modern interpretations of these characters" moments.

CWs was a very close second but as much as I loved it too, I feel like we needed to wade through a fair number of mediocre combiner toys in the years previous to get there.

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Originally Posted by SharkyMcShark

It hasn't been this strong since ROTF/DOTM days

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ROTF had some sweet scouts. I don't remember DOTM having scouts, just that legion sized cyberverse nonsense.

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Originally Posted by M-bot

I loved each of these 3 lines very much, but picked Titans Returns as I think it was that line that had the most "I can't believe we actually got modern interpretations of these characters" moments.

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I second this. I really appreciate that Hasbro made new figures of this many less-than-popular characters, and they're mostly very faithful to the their G1 representations to boot.

Combiner Wars started very strong but the aesthetic fatigue set in pretty fast too. The combiner port system Takara came up with was absolutely ingenious though.

Titans Return on the other hand offered variety and lots of designs across the board. I actually didn't mind the idea of making traditionally non-headmaster characters headmasters. It's play pattern I'm sure younger fans would enjoy; hell I've had some great times too with vehicles, monsters, weapons and bases etc. that these little dues can all interact with. These are seriously fun toys.

Overall I think Hasbro did extremely well with the Prime Wars trilogy. It's probably been the best 2-3 years for me in terms of main line output. I feel like John Warden really understand how to work the bean counters and please the fans at the same time. And Siege looks to be shaping up to be pretty awesome too.

From here

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Originally Posted by BigTransformerTrev

I was amazed and how many characters have gotten new toys!

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:) Yup! This is what I luuuurv about CHUG. :)
I love building a Neo-G1 collection with modern figures, and the reason I started making those CHUG-G1 catalogues was to show how much of G1 has been realised as CHUGs (I'll update them and make new ones next summer ;))

And this is why I personally prefer new CHUG figures to be based on characters that have never been made as CHUG before. e.g. when I look at the Siege figures, toys like Optimus Prime, Megatron, Hound, Sideswipe, Soundwave etc. don't really peak my interest. I already have existing CHUG figures on each of those characters. It's the same reason why I skipped toys like CW Sunstreaker, TR Megatron, POTP Optimus Prime etc. - nothing wrong with those toys, but they're just entirely surplus to my needs. But guys like Flywheels, Cog and the Micromasters have been super-excited and I can't wait to get them because they just don't exist in my current CHUG collection. :D

I personally much prefer CHUG to focus on making 'new' characters (i.e. ones never done before) rather than revisiting ones that I already have.

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Originally Posted by GoktimusPrime

And you can bet that there are kids who are losing those Headmasters and we can expect to see a lot of headless TR characters on the secondary market in a few years' time (just as the G1 secondary market must has a lot of headless Headmasters). :/ The cool thing about the CW TFs - even the combining ones - is that even if you lose all of their accessories, they are still fully functional Transformer action figures. They can all transform from robot to alt mode and back. Lose a Headmaster and your robot mode is screwed, unless you buy a replacement independent Titan Master, but even then it doesn't look the same.

Heck, this happened only recently with TaZZerath who lost his TR Grax, and he's an adult collector! I'm not having a go at him, this could happen to any of us - but it highlights the inherent flaw of the Headmaster gimmick. The head is essentially a detachable and transformable accessory (or in the case of Nitro Zeus, non-transformable). A classmate lost my Krunk back in 1988 and my Snapdragon was headless for years and years until I managed to replace it. :( Totally sucked!

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3 out of 4 of my kids have Titan Masters and they love them. We have so far lost 2 heads Top-Spin and Triggerhappy. Fortunately we found Triggerhappy's head in the hedge in my front yard. Luckily I bought my daughter TR Arcee and we have re-purposed Ultra Magnus's head for use on Top-Spin, He is now called Ultra-Spin.

I also have PoTP Dinobots sitting in my walk-in wardrobe which is going to be a gift for my 3rd son's birthday. So it will be interesting how they compare TR with PotP

There have been too many interesting discussions started here in the last week and I cannot presently attend to them (except for voting Titans Return in this poll). And then tonight I became aware of more info on the coming Siege toys (of both factions thankfully) and so I'm now even more overwhelmed. I cannot even...

I don't like trying to shoehorn the entire line into one gimmick. I feel it's totally unnecessary.

For this reason, while good, TR is my least liked of the three. Yes we got some great toys but some of those characters would have been made so much better by not being headmasters. Also, trying to make each of the legends being able to be piloted ruined some of them.

CW was great. All of the original combiners got fantastic updates and anything that would have been considered an issue was fixed by Takara. The extra figures who weren't originally combiners were a bit of a waste for me personally, however I thought they did a good job of balancing out the line for people who wanted their mainstay characters.

PotP is where it's at. They didn't overly stick to a formula, with the battle/armour gimmick able to be largely forgotten. Fantastic characters brought back in the Terrorcons (the best combiner of the trilogy), Punch/Counterpunch and an amazing figure in Beachcomber.

Ultimately though, I like to view the trilogy as one big output. Cherry picking from each series really provides a golden era in modern transformer toys.