Big Bad Toy Store got in the Combaticon wave of Combiner Wars Deluxes, so let's talk about one of them, why not.  I'm glad the Combaticons are in the second half of the line, because we just kind of got them a few years ago, combining and all, in the Fall of Cybertron toyline.  There's a little deja vu involved.  When Hasbro dips into the Combiners well, the Combaticons tend to be what gets pulled up first, because they're one of those rare early teams that were an interesting variety of vehicles, rather than "all jets" or "all sportscars," and so it's kind of nice that they got to sit out the first few rounds this time.

This is Swindle!   I like him.  He's a drastic retool of the Protectobot Rook.  Like, super drastic, to the point that he's really just a guy who transforms in the same pattern but becomes a differently-sculpted robot and vehicle.  He shares, like, a crotch and thighs probably and maybe some other structural stuff, but the rest is all new.  But, as mentioned, he transforms the same.  "Roof" of the car goes on his back, legs form the lower half of the front, the arms fold up into the back.  Rook was a good toy, and so is he.  

And it's just nice that Swindle gets his own danged head, you know?  Of all the "guys who transform into limbs for larger guys" from the original Transformers, he's arguably the one dude who stood on his own, character wise.  And so he's important in a way a lot of the other Combiner Wars dudes are not.  And yet Hasbro, half the time, tends to get his head wrong.  Swindle has these adorably large eyes, right?  He's a con man who's adorable.  That's kind of his thing.  But the Alternators toy was really just Trailbreaker in tan, and then his Fall of Cybertron toy... I guess copied that head instead?  It didn't really look like Swindle at all.  But here's the wide-eyed combining Swindle toy you wanted.  Finally.

You can plug his cannon into his arm like he had it in the original cartoon, if you want.  That's also cool.

Before my Combiner Wars Ultra Magnus shipped, we got word that TakaraTomy over in Japan was doing their own Magnus, and it was going to have a bunch of additional paint applications I probably would have done myself (but badly).  In fact, it basically looked perfect.  It had the red legs I prefer my Ultra Magnuses have (a detail from the original toy and the first "season" of More Than Meets The Eye), it painted blue across the pelvis and parts of the shins instead of leaving them bare... there was not a lot to argue with.  It would have to be mine, saving me a lot of time painting my own toy.  

But there was one snag.  

It didn't come with Minimus Ambus!  Japan doesn't *really* get IDW comics over there, even though they're still very popular amongst Japanese fans, and so Minimus Ambus is not really a thing for them.  Instead, TakaraTomy decided to deco up Minimus Ambus as... Alpha Trion, the other bearded Autobot guy in the mythos.  And I guess he pilots Ultra Magnus now for some reason!  Who knows!  There's a two-page comic included, but I am monolingual.  

This is a fun contradiction, in that while Japan's Ultra Magnus is specifically detailed like his MTMTE "season one" IDW comic appearances, he does not come with Minimus Ambus, which is definitely a dealbreaker for me.  

Do I get the perfect Magnus or do I get the pretty-good Magnus who comes with Minimus Ambus?  

I decided to mix and match and get the best of both worlds!  My second Magnus is now here, and I've gifted him the first Magnus's Minimus Ambus, plus all the first Magnus's accessories, so that he gets to have his assembled hammer weapon at the same time as his shoulder missiles and rifles.  (one becomes the other, otherwise)  I have my cake, I'm eating it, I'm living the motherfuckin' Magnus dream.

While American Magnus is in the 1986 Ultra Magnus colors (minus the important-to-me red thighs), with a tealer blue and a milkier white, Japanese Magnus is a darker blue and bleachier white that looks more like the colors from the original cartoon.  His rifles are now white instead of black.  In car carrier mode, his trailer is almost entirely blue, which is truer to the original cartoon's model, rather than the patchwork red and blue of the original toy's.  That I'm sort of lukewarm on, but it's a very weak personal preference as to be negligible.  

The important thing are those red thighs.  

And now I have this spare tiny Alpha Trion to hang out with my other tiny toys!  Maybe he can say hello to The Fallen.  "Hey, in some continuities, we're brothers!" he'll say.  And The Fallen will be like "I wish I were on fire, why aren't I on fire anymore."

But I ramble.

I've probably mentioned it in this blog before, but when I was a kid, I designed a Transformers combiner.  Powermaster Optimus Prime and Pretender Classics had just happened, and I noticed that we were starting to get old guys (Bumblebee, Jazz, Grimlock, Starscream) redone as new toys with current gimmicks, and I hatched a plan to get me other new toys of guys I wanted years earlier but never got toys of.  And so, using allll the creativity that a ten-year-old can muster, I designed a Transformers gestalt guy made of Ratchet, Ironhide, Prowl, and Wheejack with Optimus Prime as a torso.  It was very creative.  So wow.

Anyway, twenty-five years later, the dream is nearly being realized.  I've got my Ironhide and Prowl, Wheeljack's coming, and there's some art of a possible Ratchet that leaked, and of course there's Optimus Prime.  I am so into this.  I want everyone to be a combiner.  I want to rebuy my entire Transformers collection as combiner limbs and torsos.  Combiner Wars is the shit.

Anyway, all these new limbs here (Ironhide, Sunstreaker, Prowl, and Mirage) are retools of the Stunticons.  Ironhide was Offroad, Sunstreaker was Breakdown, Prowl was Dead End (well, okay, he's a retool of Streetwise who's a retool of Dead End), and Mirage was Drag Strip.  They all get new heads.  They're officially supposed to combine with "Battle Core Optimus," a white redeco of the first wave Optimus Prime torso with a new also-Optimus-Prime head retool, but I'm cool with the first wave Optimus Prime I already have.  My childhood combiner guy didn't have a white redeco of Prime in it.  Also Legends Class Rodimus forms the chest armor.  Sort of.  He likes to not stay on so well.

My favorite of the four is Sunstreaker, since his toy incorporates the big fist/foot/cannon accessory into the robot mode itself.  Plus Sunstreaker's yellow, and you know me and my yellow.  

One thing I don't like is how the fist/foot/cannon accessory on each of these guys is split up between silver-painted plastic and silver plastic.  Some of the plastic in these toys are nylon for structural integrity reasons, and nylon won't take factory paint, but it still makes the weapon modes of each toy look even less cohesive than before, like a piece of gun with some fingers in it.  It's just more conspicuous.  Which, again, is why I'm happiest with Sunstreaker, who can peg his fist/foot/cannon accessory onto his back.  

I've seem some folks complain that we're getting new toys of these four guys when we already have toys of them.  Well, maybe you do!  Those toys came out in 2008!  That was a while ago!  And, like my childhood self, sometimes you don't get to get everything you want during the first pass, so second chances are nice.  And it's even better if these second chances combine into a larger robot.  

Now where's my Wheeljack and my Ratchet?

FINE i guess i'll talk about some of the new toys i've gotten in the past few weeks

Here's the SDCC-exclusive Combiner Hunters three-pack, which I'll showcase 'cuz the remainder of the stock goes up some time today on HasbroToyShop.com.  (OH HEY!  HERE IT IS!) It comes with redecoes of the three Deluxe Class female Transformers we got last year: Arcee, Windblade, and Chromia, plus a bunch of additional huge-ass weapons and one small bit of retooling.

The retooling is Arcee's hands, which go from slot-holding hands to the usual 5mm peghole hands.  She still comes with her swords, and since the slots are 5mm across, she can still hold her swords.  She doesn't come with either of her original guns, which means technically you can't really complete her transformation.  Her hands grasp either end of her smaller rifle in car mode, and without that rifle, the arms kind of just fold underneath and don't secure.  I mean, it's not the worst thing in the world, and it's not like they're visible in car mode, but it still bothers me a little.  She comes with a giant toothed cleaver that originally came with the super-large Beast Hunters Optimus Prime toy from a year or so back.   She doesn't hold the cleaver super well, what with it being twice her size, but you can still get her into some poses, and a huge-ass cleaver is still fuckin' rad.  Her new colors, a dark charcoal with some pink and silver trim, make her the most attractive toy of the set.  Plus, you know, Autobot symbol tattoo on her cheek.  Booyah.

Windblade and Chromia have fewer changes to them, with no weapon absences or retooling, and their colors kind of feel a little more shuffled-around rather than changed.  Chromia is improved, I think, with the facepaint around her eyes, which makes her look pretty fierce and a little terrifying.  Which fits Chromia well, hmm?  She's still blue and gray, though now she's more gray than blue, while Windblade is now mostly red rather than only a little red.  They both come with weapons from those 12-inch "Titan Heroes" figures that collectors hate but kids snatch up like crack.  You know, the nontransformable five points of articulation guys?  Windblade's weapon is the "Decepticon Hunter" from the Robots in Disguise cartoon, while Chromia's sword is Bumblebee's sword version of the Decepticon Hunter from the same cartoon.  But, you know, packed with a Deluxe Class toy, they're huge.

A purchase of either this Combiner Hunters set or the SDCC-exclusive Devastator at Comic-Con got you a bonus Combiner Hunters one-shot comic.  That comic's being released to comic book stores on Wednesdays!  I read that comic like thirty times at my booth, and so I'm very glad it was a good comic.  (It introduces Victorion, the fan-voted lady combiner.)

If you like transforming robot ladies in facepaint and tattoos wielding weapons larger than themselves which they use to cut down giant Transformer combiners, then this set is probably up your alley.  

There was a lotta stuff at Toy Fair this year, from the giant-ass Devastator to the Combiner Wars guys to a buttload of Kre-O stuff that'll never come out, but this friggin' Ultra Magnus was at the top of my list.  This friggin'  Ultra Magnus!

When we first got store listings that hinted at a Leader Class Ultra Magnus, there were a lot of different ways the toy could have panned out, and there were even a "he tell me" folks around who were insistant that this Magnus would go those ways.  But naw, dudes, this guy ended up being everything I personally wanted.  He's no strictly 1984/5ish redesign like the Megatron and Jetfire before him, he's a purposeful translation of Ultra Magnus as currently seen in the IDW comics, down to having a little tiny Minimus Ambus friend to go with him.  That last part, especially, I wasn't expecting to see in a toy -- not only because production costs are rising and parts counts falling to match, but also because it's celebrating a very specifically current unorthodox treatment of Ultra Magnus.  Sure, we get a lot of white cab Optimus Primes here and there in lieue of an Ultra Magnus, but actually getting our little mustachioed reimagining of that concept I thought was unlikely.

And so I am amazingly pleased.

Minimus Ambus himself is very very small.  He's about half the size of a Legends Class figure, so he's amazingly dainty.  Even at this size, though, he's not as simple as he could be.  His car roof and robot backpack is on this hinged arrangement that seems too rich for this toy's size's blood.  In Ultra Magnus's robot mode, he fits inside the chest, all mech pilot like, with his fistholes pegging onto control joysticks.  Because this is where the larger robot's head fits into during car carrier mode, Minimus can't stay here when you transform Ultra Magnus, but Minimus transforms into a car, and so I think there might be a place for him in vehicle mode, if you think about it.  

(Japan is apparently going to do him in white and purple and red and pretend he's Alpha Trion, while painting the larger Magnus robot more like how he is in the IDW comics, because I don't know why.)

The larger Ultra Magnus part of the toy's had a lot of thought put into it as well.  His shoulder missile thingies and his two rifles combine into an axe, which is a callback to his Animated counterpart.  (Which obviously also makes me amazingly pleased.)   Articulation abounds, despite the way Ultra Magnus's design usually being a stumbling block to such.  His head turns, despite it being part of a mask that goes over Minimus Ambus's head.  His arms manage to articulate outward from the torso, despite those tall shoulder pylons.  The shoulder missile launchers are even on hinged tabs so they can move out of the way of his outward bicep articulation.  And Magnus has, like, has actual working thighs, despite that whole area needing to be a flat plane for cars to ride on in vehicle mode. 

A lot of these ideas are shared by the Masterpiece Ultra Magnus that came out earlier this year, but concentrated in this less-expensive form.  The walling of the trailer mode piling up on the back of his legs is another, as is the way his forearm armor accordions around his fists.    The result is a very playable robot figure with a number of weapon configurations, who transforms into a vehicle mode that can carry your other Transformers, who also includes a little pilot guy.  This toy goes down my list and checks everything off.  

Surplus to all this is the little sculpting details all over him that suggest he transforms into a truck cab that's several stories tall.  There's tiny ladders and tiny doors everywhere.  Each of his wheels would be larger than my apartment.  This doesn't distract from the toy at all, and really only creates a conversation starter, but what?

Combiner Wars Cyclonus combines with any four Combiner Wars limbs and Viper to form Galvatronus!  Galvatronus's chest and head are part of the "reshelling" that Cyclonus got when he was retooled from Silverbolt.  And, yeah, this is pretty weird.  But it's a good weird.  I like good weird.  It's just something nobody expected, going into this Combiner Wars subline, that, y'know, we'd get a Cyclonus torso who'd combine with five other guys to form a Galvatron super robot.

According to the packaging bio, Galvatronus's deal is he uses mind control to steal the limbs from other combiners, which is awesome.  It also doesn't stop anyone on message boards from asking if he's going to get "real" dedicated limbs every five minutes.  C'mon, you guys.  He steals other people's limbs.  It's his deal.  Figure this one out.

Cyclonus and Galvatronus are not going to be involved in the Combiner Wars fiction in the IDW comics, which is something that made me sad when we learned it a while ago.  Sure, it'd make no sense -- why would Cyclonus transform into Galvatron?  The two are definitely not friends in IDW, in contrast to the syncophantic Smithers/Burns relationship the two have in the original cartoon which this toy reflects.  Additionally, IDW Galvatron is specifically against combiners, and spent some time in his distant past trying to genocide any iteration of them.

But that'd actually be pretty cool, storywise, don't you think?  You have this Galvatron guy who's super against combining because he thinks they're an ethical contamination of his species, and you also have this Enigma of Combination artifact that basically kablamfs Transformers into being combiners if you shine it at them.  It'd be like that Bloom County storyline with Oliver Wendell Jones and his Electro-Photo Pigment-izer.  And then, you know, it'd involve Cyclonus some how.  Two people who hate each other being kablamfed into being a combiner together, at least one of whom hates combiners.  That's just got story karma written all over it.

Anyway.

Galvatronus is weird and awesome.

Sure, I dig my new Aerialbots, Stunticons, and Protectobots, but what's really kept me engaged in Combiner Wars is the promise of guys who were never previously combiner guys now being combiner guys.  Optimus Prime doesn't really fulfill that promise, because Optimus Primes combine kind of frequently, but when we get to stuff like Combiner Wars Cyclonus, that's when I pay attention.  A Cyclonus that's now a combiner torso, oh, and also his combined mode is Galvatronus, a Galvatron super robot.  It's a nice melding of old with new.  I will take hundreds more like this, please.

(I will talk more about Galvatronus in a later blog post.)

Cyclonus is a "reshelling" of Combiner Wars Silverbolt, meaning large amounts of him are retooled.  He's got a new robot chest and head, an entirely new jet mode, and a new super robot combiner head.  Unfortunately, this means that, like Silverbolt, he transforms by wadding up his robot parts underneath his jet mode and hoping you don't notice.  On the plus side, it's a pretty good jet mode if viewed from the top.  It's certainly a better-looking jet than the old Universe toy from 2008, which was roughly 50% Cyclonus's bulbous calves, but folks always overlooked how crummy that vehicle mode was because of how perfect his robot mode was.  

This toy trades in that perfect robot mode for a merely acceptable robot mode in service of a better jet mode.   Silverbolt/Cyclonus in robot mode is kind of stiff.  He's got the usual joints, but he doesn't really look natural in any pose that isn't standing.  I also prefer the more desaturated indigo of the various versions of that 2008 Cyclonus to the more magenta-like purple of the 2015 Cyclonus.  I do, however, prefer the larger size of the newer Cyclonus.  Cyclonus is a tall guy!  A Deluxe Class toy isn't nearly enough height for him.  Voyager Class is better.  

An interesting alteration to Cyclonus's transformation, versus Silverbolt's, is that Cyclonus now has two tiny removable 5mm-pegged tailfins.  They wanted Cyclonus to have those little wings on his arms like Cyclonus tends to, but his transformation prevents him from being able to keep them on his arms, and so these new pieces were made.  You unplug them from his forearms in robot mode and then re-peg them back into his fistholes when he's in jet mode.  It's not the most elegant solution, but it's thoughtful all the same.  

There's just something about the face that reminds me more of the earlier Floro Dery design for Cyclonus before he got redesigned and homogeonized like everyone else for the 1986 animated movie.  I think it's the lips.  I think I would have preferred something that took more from more recent interpretations of the character, like in *everyone else repeats along with me, because I am so predictable* More Than Meets The Eye.

I like Hot Spot a lot.  I mean, not just this specific toy, but in general.  And, yeah, I know, it doesn't really have anything to do with Hot Spot himself.  I'm not sure I could tell you without looking what his Tech Spec bio is about.  I mean, sure, it probably says he's big into rescuing and being helpful and being a leader and whatnot.  But honestly I like him because he and the other Protectobots were among my first Transformers.  And he's a big blue fire truck, which is kind of memorable.  Red fire trucks are a dime a dozen, but this guy?  He sticks out.

Hot Spot forms the middle of Defensor, which is an aspect of Hot Spot that's been left on the table in the last few iterations of him.  Though Hasbro goes to the Combiner well not unfrequently, the Protectobots are rarely at the top of that list.  People remember the Jet Combiner Guys and the Car Combiner Guys and the Combiner Guys They Actually Remake All The Time Because They're All Different Military Vehicles Instead Of All The Same Thing, while the Emergency Vehicle Guys are in definite fourth place.  Which is too bad, because they're my favorite.  Again, solely because they're the ones I owned as a kid, but whatcha gonna do.

That said, Hot Spot is the best Combiner Wars torso thus far.  Optimus/Motormaster is kind of chunky and simple (which isn't entirely bad), and Silverbolt/Cyclonus is a little more involved and inventive, but Hot Spot soundly kicks both their asses.  His weakest aspect is his fire truck mode, and only because it's basically him stretching out and folding into a board.  He still has that sweet water cannon in this mode, which you can swing around and aim at stuff.  That's more vehicle mode playability than the other guys have.  

His robot mode is his best-looking mode.  Optimus/Motormaster is chunky enough to be a little in his own way, and Silverbolt/Cyclonus is more lithe but still a little awkward, but Hot Spot is dynamic.  He's just fun to look at.  He looks fuckin' Ready.  His only weak spot are his knees, which are a little loose on mine, but he's got that giant water cannon behind him anyway to use as a tripod.  This really only increases his awesomeness, since you can put him in all sorts of battle poses with a built-in way to keep him standing.  

The conversion to torso mode is what really engages me, though.  That water cannon of his, like, literally wraps around him to form the chest armor and head.  The black parts which form his chest are on the opposite end of cannon structure from the parts that form his head, yet the whole thing folds down towards his crotch, across his taint, and up his back to connect.  I love it, and I love doing it.  

Attaching Groove is a little fiddly.  It's not because of how secure the attachment is from himself to the chest, like with Blackjack and Menasor, but mostly because Groove himself likes to come undone out of his chest armor mode.  If Groove's arms tabbed into his legs more securely, it'd be perfect.  

I like how wide Defensor is.  Skinny Hot Spot forms a chunky torso, and with the limbs and Groove attached, he just seems like this brick of a dude.  He just feels very satisfying.  Those other Combiner Wars guys are great, but for me, Defensor is where it's at.

Each of the combiner teams so far includes a new dude who replaces one of the traditional dudes.  Alpha Bravo replaces Slingshot, Offroad replaces Wildrider, and Rook replaces Groove.  Slingshot, Wildrider, and Groove are all still available somehow, so it doesn't bother me so much, plus it gives us these new guys.  I like new guys!  And the new guys so far have been more interesting than the folks they replace.   Rook is the best example of this so far.  He's probably the best toy of the Deluxe Combiner Wars guys so far.  

What makes him stand out is that, unlike Alpha Bravo and Offroad, who are really Vortex and Ruckus, Rook is an entirely new design.  He gets to be his own dude, rather than a "pretool" of somebody else.  I mean, he's probably going to end up being a pretool for somebody else eventually, given how often these toolings are reused in some manner, but he's seemingly entirely himself.  

And since he's new we get an interesting idea or two from him, since he starts out as a blank slate.  He's wide and bulky, unlike his peers.  His head is designed to look like a rook piece from, y'know, chess, which may make him the first Transformer guy named Rook whose name makes some sort of sense.  He transforms differently from everyone else, incorporating a rear backpack of sorts that satisfyingly snaps into place in each mode.  He's got ankle joints, which is a luxury in this line.  

But most importantly to me, he's got Hulk hands.  Instead of the usual 5mm peghole inside his hands, this hole is instead sculpted in front of them, so that you can take a combiner fist and plug one in, giving him pounding power.  You can double up on them, or even quadruple up on them if you plug another two into his shoulders.  Not only is this super cool, but it also frees up weapons from other characters who look kind of mismatched holding large-ass pieces of artillery, like First Aid.  

Over in Japan, they're making a Deluxe-sized Groove exclusive to their country and ditching Rook.  I feel a little bad for them.  We still get Groove as a Legends Class chestpiece over here, and Rook is great.

You know, to disambiguate him from adorable friendly Blades from Rescue Bots.

The Protectobots are mostly a friendly group, at least when they're not hired by Grimlock to hunt down Blaster and Goldbug to bring them back to him for trial and execution.  One of them's a pacifist, even, though which one depends on continuity.  (Groove most places but in the cartoon it was First Aid.)  

But Blades was always the jackhole of the group.  As I've been reblogging photos of the new Combiner Wars Protectobots these past few months, a common response has been "dude, that rescue helicopter is covered in missiles, wtf."  Well, that's Blades!  He's kinda missiley!  He just wants to kill, kill, kill.  You know how it is.

Combiner Wars Blades ain't got a whole lot to talk about.  He's Alpha Bravo with a new head.  Unlike Streetwise and First Aid, the 90% of the rest of him isn't reshelled with new sculpting.  The new head's all there is.  I like Alpha Bravo, though, so Blades isn't unwelcome or anything.  There's just less new to talk about versus the other Protectobots.

His blue face makes me happy.