What ever happened to: Power Core Combiners

[TaZZerath]

Thought I'd start up a discussion around what I consider the oft-forgotten "black sheep" of the Combiner family, being 2010's Power Core Combiners.

At the time, Combiners were pretty stagnant in any Transformers line despite their previous popularity. It seems like Hasbro designers thought of a way to try and bring them back into the mainstream in a more creative way, having only the 'core' robots with 3 modes (Robot, Alt, and Torso) and the 'limbs' only being capable of having vehicles and hands/feet (no robots) which felt very much NOT a transformer-y thing to do.

I was on the fence about these at the time (and it was just before my "collection renaissance" anyway) but I am curious: did anyone get these? Were they any good? Did they provide a good stepping stone towards the better Combiner Wars many years later?

[UltraMarginal]

I got a set or two, I came across one the other day that I think Sinnertwin gave me when I bought some other stuff off him. I'm not sure where the others are.
I didn't mind the core robots, I thought they had some reasonable modes and transformations. I liked the visual style of the combined form, with structure of the vehicles forming hands and feet, very reminiscent of the constructicons, and a style choice that is otherwise not revisited in combiners.

Otherwise, I really didn't like them, I thought they were very expensive for their play value, the spring loaded nature of the limbs meant they couldn't be posed at all and the few that I had exposure to were not very stable.

While the more recent combiners have been fairly repetitive in their transformation design, they are a much better executed toy line, as individual and combined toys.

[Deonasis]

I like to think they were an experimentation of combiner joints, and the design considerations required in making torso-modes and hiding that extra stuff. Fall of Cybertron Bruticus took combiners further again.

Looking back, i notice some concepts introduced in a previous line become a fully realised feature not long after. Like Generations Brainstorm being a headmaster and Whirl/Jetfire have opening cockpits before the full Titan Master line (and its The Last Knight inclusion) came to be.

I still dream of taking my KO G1 Constructicons altmodes and fit them with the automorph tech from PCC. They would snap together and form Devastator but loose their individual robot modes.

[BigTransformerTrev]

Heh - sometimes I thought I was the only one that remembered these guys

Whilst only really a footnote in TF toy history, I reckon there were a few highlights:

*Price: they were relatively cheap. Especially near the end where you could find the sets of 5 at Big W for only $10
*Mostly original characters: My favorite by far was Smoulder with Chopster. It was the only firefighting-based Decepticon character I had ever seen (now we have Megatronia too of course) and his Mini-Con turned into both a blaster and a Fire-Axe. Very cool!
*A couple of good homages: I still reckon that Huffer from this line is the best update of the G1 character we have seen, a lot more fun than the CHUG version. Steamhammer was a decent shout out to the Energon figure too.
*Combiners AND Mini-Cons: To have both options was very cool. I liked how the Mini-Cons could turn into both armour and weapons
*Variety: The 'torso' characters turned into things like helicopters, jets, trucks, race cars, ambulances, water/snow/construction vehicles etc. The Drone limbs expanded that even further
*Decent figures: Many make lots of the current Cyberverse line look like crap!
*Play Value: When my son was first getting into TF's, my PCC collection was one of his first ports of call for my figures that I knew he would enjoy, not be too difficult and would handle some rough play.

The only set I would have liked to get but didn't was the Dinobot one with Grimstone. If they ever do a 'definitive' Dinobot collection I'd like to see him included along with Scorn from AOE, both in G1 colours like they did with Slash.

Overall a nice little line.

[SMHFConvoy]

The worst figure though was double clutch from the rally bots set, terrible robot and torso mode. The rest were cool though

[Ode to a Grasshopper]

I liked a lot of 'em. The core robots were mostly good, and the minicon-type weapons guys were often pretty decent as well.
I don;t have any of the spring-loaded sets so I can't speak for them.

[dirge]

Good kid's Transformers, as Trev said. I no longer have any, but they're cleverly engineered & have oodles of play value.

[TaZZerath]

Good discussions and points from everyone!

If I ever come across any of these guys second hand I might pick some up to take a look then. Agreed about Smolder and Chopster, they look pretty awesome. Same with Undertow, Heavytread and the Dinobot combiner.

[SharkyMcShark]

I didn't mind them. These were the last figures I purchased at Coles

The Huffer from wave 1 remains my preferred CHUG version of that character.

I ended up with the Combaticons and the Aerialbots from this line. The Aerialbots were trash, the Combaticons were nice enough.

The individual figures were quite nice - I always enjoy seeing new-ish things being tried instead of G1 being rehashed, so I quite liked that aspect of this line. It was new and sort of familiar at the same time.

The actual gimmick never grabbed my affection though. Non-transforming parts on a combiner? Big time miss me with that.