Streetwise, yo!  Otherwise known as "the Autobot police car guy who isn't Prowl."  For serious, they even both originally transformed into the same Nissan Z police car altmode.  They just transform differently and one of them also becomes a leg.  So, yeah, they don't make a lot of Streetwise toys, because Prowl already exists.

Funny thing about this new Combiner Wars Streetwise is... he's also friggin' Prowl.  From the neck down, if you pay attention to the sculpting, he's just Prowl.  Sure, he transforms differently, making him look passably Streetwise because "police car who transforms differently from Prowl" just kinda says Streetwise in the brain, but check him out.  His chest is sculpted to look like a car hood.  His toes have Prowl's tootsie taillights sculpted in.  And, well, Prowl's name has shown up in solicitations, so a Prowl is coming.  He's probably this toy with a new head and somehow a color scheme that doesn't look like this but still looks like Prowl.

Streetwise:Prowl::First Aid:Ratchet

That aside, Streetwise is a "reshell" of Dead End, meaning nearly everything on him is new except some innards and he transforms the same.  He's this offwhite color rather than the original Streetwise's gray, but not as cream as Breakdown is.  This and his slightly desaturated red give him a kind of grizzled look I like.  Instead of Dead End's pipe weapon, Streetwise now has a shotgun.  His new head is also crisp and sharp and interesting.  

I like him a lot.  I'll probably also like him when he's got a new head and he's Prowl.

They don't make a lot of First Aids.  If Hasbro wants a white and red ambulance guy, Ratchet tends to have that covered, and if you're looking to make a First Aid out of some pre-existing ambulance guy toy, it's a hard sell to make a white and red ambulance guy into another white and red ambulance guy.  You already have that toy as a white and red ambulance guy.  

That's why, out of all the Protectobots, First Aid is among the least to be revisited.  There are occasional Hot Spots because he's a blue fire truck and so that's a less redundant deco to go to on a red firetruck toy.  There are new Blades redecoed out of helicopter toys constantly.  Even Streetwise got a new toy at BotCon a few years ago, a Prowl in black and red to echo Streetwise's Generation 2 toy.  Only Groove feels as left out as First Aid, and it's not a conflict of toys problem with him, it's just that nobody friggin' cares about Groove.

So bam, it's 2015, and here's your First Aid toy.  He's sort of a retool of Offroad, the new Stunticon pickup truck, but in his case the word "retool" is pretty insufficient to describe what's going on.  A fan term for toys like him is "reshell," since First Aid really only shares his connector peg, his thighs, and some internal jointing with Offroad.  Most of the actual robot parts and the entirety of the vehicle is a new sculpt.  He transforms entirely the same as Offroad -- they share engineering, that is -- but the sculpt is almost completely different.  So that's actually pretty cool.  It also results in some kinda uncanny deja vu as you transform him.  

Despite this seemingly being First Aid's first victory over Ratchet in the toy aisle since like 1986, he's, uh, still gonna be retooled as Ratchet, apparently.  His comic book has an "oops" where it shows the toy with a Ratchet head.  It's probably why his chest looks like a van window bisected by his connector peg, rather than First Aid's segregated dual vent pecs.  (And, likewise, Ironhide is gonna be the head retool from Offroad.)  A Ratchet hasn't been solicited yet, so this is just a potential release and might just be a head that never gets used, but even when First Aid gets his day, his day is still partially Ratchet's.  Poor First Aid.

I've had enough of these Combiner Wars guys to make a full combiner since Christmas, but I didn't have the right components to make an official team until Thursday.  And so I figured I'd wait to talk about the combined forms until then, when I could show off a completed group.  The first two waves of Combiner Wars staggered the teams, with one or two missing members of the two completable teams held off until the second wave.  (Optimus Prime being a third wheel.)  

Here are the Stunticons!  There are four of the original members here, with two new members of the team.  Wildrider has been replaced by Offroad, partially for "we lost the trademark" reasons and partially for "wouldn't it be nice if one of these guys weren't a sports car" reasons.  You gotta vary up your allotted retail space.  Offroad himself is sculpted to be a new Ruckus, a Triggercon from the late Eighties, but it was determined for one reason or another that his toy would instead become a new guy in colors that would look like Wildrider when in combined mode.  (I think "Ruckus" itself is another lost trademark, but I'm not sure.)  

The other new member of the team is Blackjack, who was originally a Micromaster from the Sports Car Patrol, but is now the guy who forms Menasor's chest.  The original Menasor had a little black car-like drone on his chest that came with Motormaster, the semi truck torso guy, and Blackjack is the new approximation of that.  The new Blackjack toy itself, like Offroad, was sculpted to be a different guy, Runabout, the Battlecharger.  But they didn't have the trademark to that guy the last time a Runabout toy was made (he was a Transformers Collectors' Club exclusive renamed Over-Run), so that toy became another small black car, Blackjack.  S'just as well, since I'm not ready to replace my Over-Run yet, and am happy to have a new Blackjack.  

(Blackjack doesn't fit super securely on many people's Menasors, but mine is snug enough.)

Wildrider won't be completely forgotten, as he's getting a limited release through online retailers(?) as a Dead End head-retool named Brake-Neck. 

Like the Aerialbot limbs, the Stunticons share some engineering ideas.  Offroad transforms the way most Combiner Wars limbs do so far, with the head placed at the far end of the combiner connector piece, the front of the vehicle folding over onto the back of the robot, the arms splitting off from the sides of the vehicle, and the legs pulling out from the rear.  Dead End and Breakdown differ similarly from this formula in that their heads are not attached to the connector piece at all, but are hidden under the hood of the car during vehicle mode, attached to the front of the torso which wraps over the tops of the shoulders and over the connector piece in robot mode.  Drag Strip's head is done similarly, but without the chest wrapping part.  

Breakdown is super obviously going to be Sunstreaker eventually.  He looks like Breakdown, sure enough, and there aren't really any compromises on Sunstreaker's behalf, but Breakdown's foot/hand/gun is Sunstreaker's car engine thruster dealio, and it can peg onto Breakdown's back appropriately, as well as slot into Breakdown's car mode in a way that better approximates Sunstreaker's vehicle mode than the usual orientation.  Breakdown will likely get some new parts, like a head and chest, and some new colors and be a pretty good Sunstreaker.  

The highlight of these guys, however, is the combination engineering,  The connection points are a dream.  There's no shoving or excessive force, and yet it's incredibly sturdy and poseable.  I'm in awe of its simplicity.  You really can play with the larger combined robot as if it were a single entity, without fear of anything falling off.  (With the exception of Blackjack for some people, as mentioned above.)  

This is probably pretty good, since this is a line titled Combiner Wars, so the combining should probably work.

I was pretty damn satisfied with my 2006 Classics Megatron.  He was gray and black and green and orange and purple and he transformed into a motherfuckin' Nerf gun.  The green and orange and purple was really only there to help him pass toy gun regulations, but it really made me love him.  Plus, you know, Nerf gun.  Bonus.  

And so when we were first introduced to the new, bigger Leader Class Megatron, I was initially a little meh.  The new toy was in classic colors, meaning the purple and orange and green were gone, and he was back to being silver and black and red.  Silver and black and red are fine colors, it's just, y'know, not as interesting to me.  Plus the toy fell into the body proportion aesthetic a lot of the new Transformers team's stuff seemed to find itself in -- wide body with thin legs.  It's a good set of proportions for Animated Batman, but I prefer my bots to be more stompy.  

But, well, Stuff is happening in the comics.  Megatron's an Autobot now.  He's joined the cast of my favorite Transformers fiction, and it's phenomenal.  And this new Leader Class Megatron toy would include a change of Autobot faction stickers to represent that development.  Suddenly the toy became Lost Light Megatron, and I had to have it.  Sure, the rest of him's not specifically designed after the body he has in the comics now -- it's more of a generic "G1 Megatron as a silver tank" thing -- but it's close enough and that's its official intent and that's how my brain works.  Plus he's a big enough toy to actually fit in with my Lost Light display.  Slapping an Autobot symbol on my Classics Megatron would result in a guy who stands eye-to-eye with my Rodimus and Brainstorm, and that just won't do.  

Original misgivings aside, he's a great toy in person.  His skinny legs aren't bothersome when he's actually in front of you in 3D, and they ratchet to and fro with satisfying clicks.  Plus his legs are shaped that way to accommodate his real working rubber treads.  He's got a set of real working rubber treads on his back and a set in his legs.  They don't combine into one single pair of working treads in tank mode, but that's fine.  

That the toy is mostly covered in silver paint also helps.  He's this giant shiny attractive thing, and there aren't huge spots of unpaintable nylon plastic breaking up his silver like some metallic-painted Transformers have.  Sure, there are a handful of unpainted silver spots, but they're not conspicuous or incongruous.  Despite not having purple or green, he's an attractive chunk of plastic.  He does have some orange detail, though.  I'm sure it helps.

In tank mode he's got a rotating turret... if you leave him half-transformed.  The proper instructions have you close his pelvis onto the back of the turret, locking it in place, but if you don't connect that piece,  he's engineered so that the whole turret rotates.  He's got springloaded missile launcher in his barrel/arm cannon, and also both of his secondary tank weapons combine into a longer rifile for him to carry in robot mode.  When you lift up his chestplate during transformation, there's a sculpted spark casing under there, with details borrowed from its appearance in Beast Wars.  

This toy is also available in Armada Megatron flavor, if you so choose.  That version has a new head (with the antlers) and is mostly green, gray, purple, and florescent orange instead of mostly silver and black.  But that dude isn't in my comics and I like my original one better, with the real working wrist-shiv deployment, so screw it.  

The only huge disappointment with this guy is the sticker sheet.  Sure, I like the Autobot logos, and they work well enough on him, but Hasbro also put his original toy's chest deco on there.  You know, the little swirly loops that look like chest hair.  The problem is, they printed them on a white background, like his symbols, instead of a clear background, so they look pretty terrible on his chest.  Reprolabels better solve this one for us.  I need those chest swirlies.  I'll keep the real swirlie stickers on him until then, because my love for the chest swirlies slightly edges out how terrible I think these stickers look.  

look i only said the comics were stopping

When this new Voyager Class Optimus Prime was first introduced to us, we didn't know he was going to be a super robot's torso in some new subline imprint called Combiner Wars.  And so we were all sort of staring at him, scratching our heads, wondering what was up.  New Optimus was lookin' kinda weird.  Photography of him cleverly obscured the combined-robot crotch hanging off his back, and his limb connection points and super robot head were likewise obscured.  Knowing that certain elements were being compromised to incorporate a torso mode, not to mention existing mostly to be the eingineering groundwork for another toy, made everything fall into place.  

Combiner Wars Motormaster is a pretty damn extensive retool of Combiner Wars Optimus Prime.  They look like they share a bunch of parts, but it's always fewer parts than you think.  Yeah, from the thighs down, they're the same toy, but nearly everything from there up is new.  I'm talking like nothing but the fists, the backs of the biceps, and some structural parts of the torso.  The entire front of the cab on either is different, as are the arms and chest and heads.  Functionally, they are the same toy, but their sculpt differs. 

CW Prime is a beefy friggin' Optimus Prime.  He's a little pinheaded, but that's partly due to his transformation -- his neck sits on a rotating panel that obscures his head in truck or torso mode, and there's not a lot of clearance for it otherwise.  The super robot head hides inside his giant backpack.  His chest windows are fake kibble, with the real truck windows placed on the backs of his arms.  His legs transform like basically any Optimus Prime ever.  Motormaster is the same except he gets different sculpted details other than fake chest windows.

Both these guys are meant to be the torso of a combined super robot, so some key joints ratchet very toughly.  The hips in particular are very solid, and their ratcheting resting points are pretty far from each other, which makes the sculpted slant at the bottom of the toes feel silly.  There's no ratcheting point that lines up with how his toes are sculpted against the ground.  

Optimus gets two guns that combine into a larger gun and Motormaster gets a gun and a sword that combine into a larger sword.  The combined weapons are intended for their combiner robot forms.  In torso mode, you can keep their chest clamshell closed, or open it up to place Legends Class Blackjack (or his future retool, Rodimus) inside as armor.  

Optimus Prime's a beefy Prime, very wide and boxy, which are traits we don't get in an Optimus Prime toy much anymore, so I like him for that.  Most, if given a choice between the two, would choose Motormaster.  Motormaster gets far, far fewer toys, and other than the obvious Optimus legs the base toy seems geared more towards Motormaster than Optimus.  

The Transformers action figure toyline theme this coming year is Combiner Wars, which means most everything combines with other things.  Everything in the Deluxe and Voyager size classes become limbs and torsos, respectively, and a few things in the Legends size class become weapons or armor for the combined robot.

Which is super great if you have more than just four Deluxes!  I got too clever for myself this past week or so.  Amazon.com got in the Combiner Wars Voyagers, and so I ordered them and got them shipped to myself... in California.  It's Christmas, y'see, and so we visit the in-laws down in San Diego most every year.  Maggie goes out there earlier, while I stay behind a few extra days to finish up work.  And so I thought I was being super crafty, getting those toys to myself on the other side of the continent.  Until I got super sick and couldn't fly out to California.  It was just me and the cat this year.  Well, me, the cat, a turkey, and the Combiner Wars Deluxes I had preordered from Big Bad Toy Store, which arrived here while I was stuck in Ohio as the torsos arrived in California.  

So I have some limbs.

No torsos.  But some limbs.

There's three aircraft (which belong to Superion) and one car (which belongs to Menasor), and they all transform basically the same.  You fold the arms up alongside the vehicle, collapse the shins around the thighs, and cover the head with the front of the vehicle.  The legs of the aircraft sort of accordion into themselves after opening up the shins, rather than the literal collapsing of the car's legs, but it's all the same formula.  No actual shared pieces, but very similar engineering.  And it sort of makes sense -- these are all based on guys from 1986, who all transformed fairly similarly then for the same reason they do now: they all have to become limbs that are exactly the same size and proportion.  You can't have a combiner robot guy with one leg longer than the other.  And each guy can become any of the four limbs, so there has to be a common pattern between them at some denominator.  

Each guy also comes with a rifle and a second much bulkier double-barreled weapon that also transforms into either a foot or a fist.  It's a step up over the original versions of these guys, who came with extra foot or fist pieces you just sort of set aside when not in use.  Here at least the feet/fists have something they can do when they're not being feet or fists.  

My favorite of the four is Alpha Bravo.  He's a replacement for Slingshot (who was the only Aerialbot I owned as a child), partly because "Slingshot" isn't a trademark Hasbro owns anymore and partly because four Deluxe-sized jets who all transform nigh-identically is kind of overkill.  Three (Air Raid is in wave 2) is kind of pushing it already.  Alpha Bravo's a helicopter and so he's also super obviously just the Combaticon Vortex in Slingshot's colors.  I like Alpha Bravo best because he's a new character who's a little orange and also because he makes a better helicopter than the two other aircraft are jets.  Jets are flat things and don't lend themselves well to robots (unless you open up like a cootie catcher akin to live-action Starscream) or combiner robot limbs.  Helicopters are taller and rounder and can contain robot parts better.  ...even if Alpha Bravo's arms just peg onto the sides and hope they hide themselves behind those missiles sculpted on his arms.

Drag Strip's a pretty good car, sure, but Alpha Bravo's weapons integrate better into his vehicle mode than Drag Strip's.  And maybe Drag Strip also needs to get drawn by Sarah Stone before I pay attention to him.