Toy Review - Generations Combiners & group reviews/comments

[Sutton]

Picked up a Rook this afternoon and all I could was:

1. Love his little Russian hat

2. For a guy who replaces the motorcycle his vehicle mode is incorrectly scaled to the other Protectobots.

To be fair, every vehicle is out of scale with each other, but the giant motorbike is next level/bleedingly obvious out of scale. Especially for kids, who will more likely have a real-life point of reference for a car vs bike than they will for car vs SWAT APC, or rescue helicopter vs airport firetruck (those things can be pretty big). So I can forgive the design choice.

I'll still pick up a deluxe Groove in a heartbeat if they decide to release one, but for now I'm pretty happy with the team. Just wish they'd used the different arms for Blades included in the Victorion set, the missiles are a real misstep. Especially considering the extreme amount of remoulding in other CW releases like First Aid / Offroad etc...

[SuspectimusPrime]

1. Love his little Russian hat

Russian? The first time I saw it, the bar on his helmet made me think of American football/baseball helmets.

[SMHFConvoy]

Russian? The first time I saw it, the bar on his helmet made me think of American football/baseball helmets.

Maybe it's a perception filter and we all see what we want?

[Nonalyth]

Been fiddling with the Wave 3 deluxes for a few days now (no Hotspot yet because lolAustralia) and I have to say I like the groove they're laying out (no pun intended(why am I using so many parentheses in this sentence?(OK now I'm doing it on purpose))).

Air Raid had already given us an example of how far they were willing to go with a "repaint", and First Aid and Streetwise just drive it home. To the casual observer they look like completely different toys in alt mode, and even in robot mode have enough work done to clearly set them apart from the original. Only through the intimate act of transformation does it become truly clear, which suits me just fine.

For whatever reason First Aid's shoulder pads work a lot better than Offroad's, and there's something about a futuristic ambulance with a massive engine strapped to the top that I find... I don't want to say arousing, but I'm going to think it. It's a damn shame they couldn't find a better way to attach the kibble-blaster to Streetwise. The massive turret with fingers looked dumb on Deadend, and it looks dumb now. The triple-barreled shotgun is awesome, and miles better than the awkward, sort of pipe thing Deadend has. That being said, the Awkward-Sort-of-Pipe-Thing™ attaches to the vehicle mode in such a way that it looks like a beefy exhaust, while the shotgun... Doesn't. I mean it kind of does, but who puts a scope on an exhaust? Was it Wheeljack? It was probably Wheeljack.

It's just too bad Blades lets the side down, with nothing but a new head to differentiate him. Not even a new weapon. Not even a different weapon. I have to agree with Sutton re: the Victorion arms, seeing as it would (a)give that little bit more in they way of characterisation and (b) take the bloody missiles off the bloody helicopter with bloody "RESCUE" written down the bloody sides. Maybe they're filled with fire-retardant foam? I guess they used up their creativity budget with the other two.

Which brings us to last but not least, the one genuinely new mold, Rook. And he's pretty good! The 5mm ports on the ends of his arms rather than in his hands are actually kind of nice, especially with his grabby claw accessory. Transformation is simple but satisfying, I like how he looks with tires for pecs, his Russian fur football helmet is fine, he's... Not red. I can't decide if it's a breath of fresh air (like Alpha Bravo being a helicopter rather than another bloody jet, sorry gee-whiners) or an unsightly deviation from a unifying theme. Alternatively, maybe it doesn't really matter.

Yep, it's that one.

I also picked up Motormaster at the same time, which let me finally finish Menasor. Hooray! I mean, his joints are somehow worse than Optimus's, and he sometimes doesn't tab together properly, but at this point I'm so glad to have another (mostly) completed combiner that I don't much care. The two-part sword is also the best combined-form weapon so far, being as it isn't two guns that join into an overly-long gun, or an overly-long gun and a thing that combine into an even more overly-long gun. Not to mention he has a similar level of re-molding to the better repaints, providing a good amount of distinction from Optimuscle. So yeah, good enough!

[griffin]

Some wave 4 images I took last night...

I don't yet have the Voyager (Battle Core Optimus) or Leader (Starscream) of this wave yet, so here are just the Legends and Deluxes.

Skywarp with the other three uses of the mould by Hasbro so far.


The four Deluxes with Rodimus and the Wave 1 Optimus, because it looks better with this team than the white one would.

.


Rodimus with the previous Legends Rodimus.


Superion, Ultra Prime, Menasor and Defensor.

[griffin]

Just two more of the 2015 Generations toys left to collect (Voyager Battle Core Optimus & Leader Skywarp).
The choice of Legends toys this year coincidentally have similar colours.

[UltimateGalvatron]

Hey griffin do you have two sets of combiner a one for robot and one for combined mode or do you just display them in robot mode?

[griffin]

Still just the one set at the moment, but the Japanese Superion and Menasor are currently on their way from HLJ.

I just like playing with these Combiner toys (including Devastator), so have been having them in different modes at different times.
(and people keep coming over to play with them too)

[jazzcomp]

Is there a reason why Prime would combine with his autobots? Or is this really just a toy mold idea?

[SuspectimusPrime]

Just two more of the 2015 Generations toys left to collect (Voyager Battle Core Optimus & Leader Skywarp).
The choice of Legends toys this year coincidentally have similar colours.

I find that shot of Thundercracker and Cyclonus standing together hilarious - seems silly to think that Thundercracker becomes smaller when he (not Bombshell) is reformatted by Unicron.