Combiner Wars wave 1 toys official images

[Verno]

I'm curious about the use of additional pieces forming the hands and feet. Do people feel it's a step backwards? Or just a necessary evil?

[Firestorm]

The packaging looks VERY nice, hoping we'll get to see them on shelves here

The obvious combiner ports in all the limb-bot's chests is a little disappointing as are the vehicle modes of all the wave 1 aerialbots (excluding A.B)

Will probably still Pick up all of them except for Optimus

I'm curious about the use of additional pieces forming the hands and feet. Do people feel it's a step backwards? Or just a necessary evil?

Personally I see it as a step backwards, it shouldn't be THAT hard to build the appendages into the limb-bots. I can see why they did it I guess but I still think it's a pretty silly idea.

[Lint]

That Silverbolt looks like absolute garbage.

I'm with you there as far as the alt mode is concerned. I know it's a curse being a concorde, robot AND the centerpiece of a combiner but with the promising work they did with the triple changers I expected better.

The others I can deal with.

T
Personally I see it as a step backwards, it shouldn't be THAT hard to build the appendages into the limb-bots. I can see why they did it I guess but I still think it's a pretty silly idea.

I personally prefer separate appendages if it gives the alt and bot modes of the limb-bots better form and function and the combine bot better stability. It can't be fun trying to hide a giant fist or foot into a transforming robot and they seem to have a hard enough time giving us decent fists and feet for our 'regular' toys.

[5FDP]

Any excitement I had for these are now gone after seeing these images I could possibly live with a helicopter limb, but as others have said, Silverbolt looks like crap. You just know that TakTom will come out with their own version with corrected gold paint apps, but there is nothing they can do about that horrible alt mode. Oh well.

[doublespy]

It looks like Silverbolt is slightly mistranformed in alt mode compared to the photoshop'ed stock photo. The arms under the wings should be able to bend inwards a bit more sit be parallel to the fuselage. It might help a little bit...

I don't get it. The triple changers made Generations so promising, and then the level of engineering has dropped dramatically. Now we get something like voyager Brainstorm, whose transformation to me is on the same level as the original G1 Brainstorm designed near 30 years ago(who actually hides the face BETTER when in headmaster mode).

It is just the difference between designers? Or is it simply the development time? (Springer apparently had been in development for 2 years.)

The Deluxe Stunticons IMO are better in every mode. In combined mode they don't have individual limbs hanging off everywhere.

[griffin]

The helicopter keeps making me think of the Energon Optimus drones (one of the most disappointing toys of that era)... and it's probably going to look very similar when combined with the Voyager Optimus too.

Silverbolt's kibble is awful. Prime is underwhelming also - given that he's not combining I'd expect better.

Optimus does combine. He officially combines with the whole first wave.

As he said, Optimus ends up being a combiner, because Motormaster is a redeco of Optimus (with a new head) for the second wave.
I'd imagine that they had Motormaster planned first, and made Optimus from it to get more out of the mould... but then released Optimus first for some reason. It would have made better sense to release Motormaster first, so then the core for the Stunticons is ready for whenever the rest of the Deluxe Stunticons are released. Because often, 2 or 3 waves of Deluxes can hit stores before they restock the second wave of Voyagers.
Besides, Optimus will sell as a character no matter how bad the toy looks (for being a pre-emptive redeco of Motormaster), so Optimus in the second wave instead of Motormaster could have done just as well as selling the core of the second set of Deluxes in wave 2 (to force people to keep going back to the stores to find it later).

[Ode to a Grasshopper]

I'm curious about the use of additional pieces forming the hands and feet. Do people feel it's a step backwards? Or just a necessary evil?

I don't mind it - incorporating the hands/feet into the gestalt limbs often seems to compromise the rest of the toys in Scramble-city-esque combiners. As long as HTT allow for some sort of storage of all the accessories in all the modes then I can allow them a cop-out or two.
Sadly the days of the likes of Tripredacus and Rail Racer (which even then had its flaws with the team members for the sake of the gestalt - Midnight Express is a bit on the leggy side, for example) are long gone.