Prime Wars Trilogy: which was the best toyline?

[FatalityPitt]

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.

[ComradeRenko]

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.

[Ode to a Grasshopper]

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.

[GoktimusPrime]

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!

[TaZZerath]

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!

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!!

[GoktimusPrime]

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!!

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

[Golden Phoenix]

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.

[MayzaPrime]

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!

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

[Dan]

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...

[KELPIE]

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.