View Poll Results: What's your favourite Prime Wars toyline?

Voters
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  • Combiner Wars

    12 41.38%
  • Titans Return

    16 55.17%
  • Power of the Primes

    3 10.34%
  • I skipped all lines; couldn't find any appeal

    0 0%
Multiple Choice Poll.
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Thread: Prime Wars Trilogy: which was the best toyline?

  1. #1
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    Question 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

  2. #2
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    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'm really just here for the free food and open bar.

  3. #3
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    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!

  4. #4
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    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.

  5. #5
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    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.


    Eagerly waiting for Masterpiece Meister

  6. #6
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    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.

  7. #7
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    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.

  8. #8
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    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.

  9. #9
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    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!

  10. #10
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    Quote Originally Posted by GoktimusPrime View Post
    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!!

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