Important stuff up front:

Combiner Wars Liokaiser is now available exclusively at Entertainment Earth.  There's a coupon code, SINGLES, which gets you $20 off, free shipping, plus a free diorama.  

So here's Entertainment Earth's exclusive Liokaiser.  The original Liokaiser was a combiner guy from Japan's Victory toyline and cartoon, and so he's not really a household name over here in the states by a mile.  BotCon did one of his components, Leozack, as a standalone redeco of Starscream back in 2009, but otherwise, he's not really made a splash here.  So what we have here are a buncha Combiner Wars guys retooled into Liokaiser dudes.  There are some laterations.  Leozack and Jarugar, the two components who made up the original combiner robot's torso, are out.  They're replaced by Deathsaurus, the Decepticon Leader from the Victory toyline and cartoon.  That change is one of the WHAAAAAAAAAA??? deals I enjoy.  A Sky Lynx retool as Deathsaurus?  I never would have thought of that.  Sign me friggin' up.  

Deathsaurus, like all the other main components of this new version of Liokaiser, has some retooling.  His is the least, though, as his single new part is a new "hat" for the top of the beast mode head.  It gives the head a fin and some angrier-looking eyes.  The colors, for the most part, aren't Deathsaurus's.  Since Deathsaurus is replacing Leozack and Jarugar, he's mostly in their colors instead of his own.  He still has the white dragon head with the golden beak, and his weapons are a familiar shade of Deathsaurus gray-blue, but he's largely teal and black and white.  

The original Deathsaurus walked on his hind legs, and you can get this version of him to do so if you want.  I do wish I could get the forelegs to sit flush with the torso, but there's some parts bumping into each other keeping the ratcheting from clicking into the proper position.  Ah well.  If I display these guys in uncombined mode, I'd probably keep Deathsaurus on his hind legs, just to make him more Deathsaurusy and distinguish him more from Sky Lynx.

Liokaiser's legs are a pair of Brawl retools, Drillhorn and Killbison.  (Killbison is "Ironbison" on the packaging for likely "we can't have Kill in the name" reasons.  Same with Deathsaurus, who uses his untranslated "Dezarus" name.)  These two are the weak point of the set for me, if only because I just don't like the awkward Brawl mold.  I mean, the two are tanks, so it makes sense that Brawl would be used for them, but they're still an annoyance.  Drillhorn uses the Nosecone version of Brawl, so he can have his drill, obviously, and both have new heads.  What's interesting about their heads are they have articulated stuff on them.  Killbison's antenna fold out from inside his head, and Drillhorn's horn folds out as well.  This is so that their heads can fit into the space needed for transformation.  I'm surprised that this extra tooling step was taken, rather than granting the pair new heads that are made of a single piece but with smaller, molded-in parts.  It makes me happy, regardless.

The arms are Hellbat ("Fellbat" on the packaging for GUESS WHY) and Guyhawk.  Both jets, but they're different jets, one retooled from Skydive and the other from Air Raid.  (Though Skydive and Airaid do share some parts already.)  Hellbat, like the tanks, gets a new head with flip-out parts: his bat wing ears.  Guyhawk is the only limb whose new head is a solid object.  Guyhawk, to me, is the stand-out deco of the entire set.  He's pink!  We don't see many pink toys.  It's a very lovely pink, too, and I thiiiiiiink it represents properly in photography.  

Combiner Wars Liokaiser has another new component, Ion Scythe.  He's a reuse of an Arms Micron toy, which were the Mini-Con partners Japan produced as part of its Transformers Prime toyline.  He transforms from a bird cyclops to, what, a pair of pliers?  I dunno.  An oddity: In Japan, Arms Microns were solid plastic colors with only stickers to deco them.  Ion Scythe has those stickers painted on him.  They could have painted anything on him, but they painted his Japanese stickers on him.  Okay!

How to properly transform your Liokaiser is... well, it's sort of ambiguous.  The instructions show one way and the packaging photography shows another.  Specifically, the tank legs are transformed in the extra-tall configuration, which you couldn't use normally on most Combiner Wars combiners because the extra-tall configuration doesn't work if you don't have two Brawls to be the same height as legs.  But there are two Brawls, so one can take advantage of this symmetry and make Liokaiser more leggy than other combiners.  The instructions show the legs transforming as Brawl usually transforms for leg mode, in a shorter configuration.

Personally, I like to transform the tank legs shorter, and then rotate them 90 degrees sideways as to replicate the original Liokaiser's legs better.  This means Liokaiser can't bend at the knees the way a humanoid usually does, since the knees now bend inwards, but if you have a few Combiner Wars toys, you know how unreliable a combiner's knees can be anyway.  Just have him stand at attention and save yourself some Giant Toy Pratfalls.

I tend to display my Liokaiser with my BotCon Leozack.  Leozack was left out of this version of Liokaiser, but I have a toy of him, so it's nice that he still gets to hang out.  Jarugar is out of luck, I guess, unless you're cool with Kreons.

Transformers Asia Kids Day Platinum Edition Robots in Disguise Premium Grimlock and Bumblebee 2-Pack – Exclusive

You probably haven't seen me talk about many Robots in Disguise toys here, and for a pretty good reason -- I don't really buy many!   I mean, the cartoon's okay, and the toys look okay, but early on, before the toyline hit, it became apparent that I would be more frustrated with the toyline than I would find enjoyment out of it, due to my particular eccentricities.  

You see, it was going to be a pretty small line, as far as "real" toys go (the non one-step or two-step guys), and they were all going to be Deluxe Class-sized.  So I'm sitting there, looking at this coming line-up, realizing that if I was going to start collecting these guys, I was going to have to get used to having a Grimlock (who is very large in the cartoon) who was the same size as every other toy.  And that chafed my bum, I realized I could save myself a lot of storage space and money, and decided that I was cool skipping on it all.  I mean, minus Strongarm, of course, OBVIOUSLY.  Strongarm is great.

But at some point last year, Japan's version of the toyline decided to go balls-out and make everyone a properly-transforming larger Grimlock that's not a one- or two-step toy.   They grabbed Fall of Cybertron Grimlock (who may or may not be the same character depending on who you ask and how you look at things) and then retooled the crap out of it.  New torsos, new robot legs, new shoulders, new fists, new heads -- there was a lot of new stuff to make him look like Robots in Disguise Grimlock instead of "basically G1-style Grimlock" -- and kazam you have a Grimlock who technically solves my Grimlock Problem or, perhaps, my RID collection problem.  

And then Hasbro brought him over, put him in a Platinum Edition set with a redecoed RID Bumblebee, and now Entertainment Earth has him as an exclusive in the United States.  Entertainment Earth also sent me these two to review!  So here I go.

Let's talk about Bumblebee.  If you have a Transformers Prime Vehicon toy (from the RID subline, not the First Edition) then this Bumblebee's going to feel very similar as far as transformation processes go.  The roof folds up on the back of the robot legs, the arms pull out from the sides, and the rear bumper hangs off the back of the head.  There's a sword that stores underneath the car mode.  I got one the regular retail version in the take-home bag for Toy Fair 2015, but this is the PREMIUM EDITION!  Mostly that means he's in a more metallic gold-ish color instead of canary yellow and he has a handful of new paint operations.  There's black on his feet, there's red on his headlights, there's some silver on his sword... it's not a lot added here.  But he's not really the main attraction; Grimlock is.

Fall of Cybertron Grimlock was not a well-received toy, and the retooling present in this version sort of addresses the perceived problems.  His dino hips/robot shoulders accordion out during transformation, and it's incredibly easy to get them so untransformed that you can't remember how to inch them back turn by turn into the way they're supposed to go.  It's one of those things where you wish you could leave a trail of breadcrumbs for yourself to find your way back home, but this is a plastic robot toy's shoulder apparatus, so that's not really possible.  However, the retooling done to make Grimlock into another Grimlock removes the need to untransform the shoulders so much to get him back and forth between robot and dinosaur modes.  All the possibility for over-accordioning his shoulders is there, but so long as you temper yourself, you can probably avoid getting lost in the woods.  

The other thing people didn't like about the toy was how empty he is if you look at him from the bottom in dinosaur mode.  You know that scene in Pete's Dragon where they put a big sheet over the dragon and he runs around and you can see a dragon-shaped sheet and there's nothing underneath it?  No, you don't know that scene, because I'm really old and nobody has watched Pete's Dragon in thirty years.  But the toy is kind of like that, trust me. 

Honestly, that part I don't mind too much.  Like, I'm not gonna be shoving my eyeballs in this toy's underside anyway.  He's gonna stand upright on the shelf, not hanging around lying around on his back, exposing how little robot he has under there.  If you have a bunch of RID Mini-Cons, though, this problem is partly addressed.  There's ports tooled in there for you to fill him up with specific Mini-Cons.  I don't know what they are because, again, I haven't collected much RID.  But it's nice that you can do this if you have the toys available to you.  

The original FOC Grimlock also had electronic lights for when you open up his jaw with a lever behind his head.  This RID retooling has neither the electronics nor the lever to open his jaw, which is sad.  The new dinosaur head does have an opening jaw, however, with both the top of the skull rising a little and the jaw itself hinging down more.  You have to -- gasp -- use your finger, though.

Grimlock still comes with Grimlock's sword and shield.  They don't suit this version of the character very well, but you can pretty easily forget you own them.  I'm sure some other toy could borrow 'em.  

Unlike Platinum Bumblebee's seemingly scant bit of paint, Platinum Grimlock feels covered with it.  Lots of details here and there, from silver and green and charcoal to yellow.  That and the retooling is where all the money went, and it's all very pleasing.  He doesn't look unfinished, and I don't think I see any deco that my mind thinks is missing.  

If Platinum Edition Grimlock/Bumblebee pleases your noodle, you can find him on Entertainment Earth's website for sale!  

Hey, you guys!  Entertainment Earth has a fancy new exclusive toy set!  It’s one of those Platinum dealies where you get all the paint and whatnot, so if you saw Deluxe Bumblebee in stores last year and were like, okay, but what if this thing were painted, or if you saw Deluxe Grimlock and were like, okay, but what if this were scaled to Bumblebee correctly – these are your guys.

I will have one soon!  And I will talk about it too much then, I’m pretty sure.  You know how I am.