I drew a Shortpacked! strip nine years ago about the arms race of more accurate Beast Wars Dinobot toys, wherein we're presented a toy, it's not painted so accurately for whatever reason, and then Hasbro and Takara go back and forth on the toy, with each subsequent release being a little more accurate but not ALL the way more accurate, and over the course of a decade or two get you to buy slightly better and better Dinobots.  It's a pretty good racket they have going!

COMPLETELY UNRELATED here is LG-EX Rhinox.  He's like the Hasbro Generations Rhinox I already had, but now he's brown instead of tan!  The tan was more accurate to the original Beast Wars toy, but less accurate to the television animation.  TakaraTomy's first attempt at this mold, released under their Legends toyline, had similar colors to this new LG-EX Rhinox, but the line-wide visual gimmick at the time was "make everything metallic."  That's probably more okay if your toy's, like, a car, but Rhinox is 80% rhinoceros hide.  And so he was this awful-looking metallic brown rhinoceros, despite otherwise being more accurate colors to the animation.  I skipped that specific release of that toy, preferring having the rhino hide parts be matte plastic rather than him looking to be made out of aluminum foil.

Well, good, because a toy convention over on that side of the world decided that they were going to give Rhinox (and Waspinator and Rattrap) another go, this time without the mindboggling metallic plastic.  So, like, problem solved.  Matte brown plastic!  Perfecto.  This time Rhinox even has his gums painted inside his rhino mouth, which is a nice (and show-accurate) touch.  Great work!  Thanks toy convention!

Other than the brown, the most obvious change is to the dual Chainguns O' Doom, which feature actual paint, rather than being solid unpainted plastic.  Rhinox is no longer trying to stop you with a pair of oatmeal cookies.  Also his hip joints are a little tighter, which solves another problem.  LG-EX Rhinox is less likely to faceplant.

Anyway, time to get rid of this older, tanner Rhinox before I end up with a Rhinox collection like I do my mountainpile of Dinobots.  

(note: my smaller, legends class groove has reprolabels stickers on it, so that's why mine has some extra detailing that yours might not have)

Last year, Hasbro had a "May Madness" where online retailers briefly carried Combiner Wars versions of Wildrider and Slingshot, who had been replaced by other, more interesting guys at retail.  Well, it's May Madness again!  Have some Deluxe Class Groove, who had been replaced by another, more interesting guy at retail.

I mean, the Deluxe Class-sized Groove that TakaraTomy made for their version of Defensor isn't bad or terrible, by Combiner Wars standards.  It feels and operates like all the other Combiner Wars Deluxe Class guys.  The same basic transformation steps and everything.  But, like, he replaced Rook, who is easily the best Deluxe Class guy in the whole Combiner Wars line.  He's got Hulk Hands, yo.  Hulk Hands.  And it's not like his presence removes Groove from the combined Protectobot form of Defensor, 'cuz there's a Legends Class Groove who becomes the chestpiece thing.  Groove can still hang out.  So, yeah, I feel like Hasbro made the right move, giving us both Rook *and* Groove.  

There are things to like about Deluxe Groove, though.  He has translucent plastic!  None of the other guys have a sprue set aside for translucent plastic.  So that's nice-looking.  And he has two handguns with little siren flasher things on them, again using this translucent plastic.  Guns with little flashers on them is a neat idea.  Maybe not the best idea for a character who's a pacifist, but whatcha gonna do.  It's weird that the pacifist is the one Combiner Wars guy who comes with more guns than he can hold.  (other than the double targetmaster club subscription guys)

But, like, man, that motorcycle mode of his.  Not good!  I mean, you have to remember that a bunch of the jets are mostly robot parts with some jet parts stapled on top, but Deluxe Groove's motorcycle mode still feels lacking.  His arms just ... sort of go there.  And the whole thing isn't terribly motorcycle-shaped, either.  It's just a long box with some motorcycle details sketched in.   Being able to cover up a small portion of this mode by pegging in his two new guns shouldn't be such a relief.   (Also, they're positioned so that if they fired, they'd blast his own hands off.)  

Anyway, this toy exists probably to vindicate the smaller Groove that mass retail got.  Oh, and to be retooled into Afterburner later on.  And sadly, probably never into Sideways.  

Short break from the Victorion folks because I have an embarrassment of Combiny Guy riches and I wanna skip around a bit.  So here's "Wandering Roller"!

TakaraTomy didn't release the new Protectobot, Rook, with their Defensor box set 'cuz they wanted to make a new Groove leg for their market.  Which is pretty sad for Japan, because Rook is one of the best Combiner Wars guys.  Well, that absence is fixed now, I guess!  TakaraTomy was like, okay, so there's all this extra tooling we haven't used yet because it wasn't G1 enough, so we gotta find a way to repurpose it all into a single combiner team guy we can sell.  Waste not, want not, and all that.  Using all the parts of the Combiner Wars buffalo.  

So TakaraTomy grabbed our Cyclonus/Galvatron torso dude and decided, hey, this guy is nabbing dudes from across all the various Transformers timelines to be his limbs.  Which is a solid idea, A+, much approve.  And one of these guys is our Rook mold as IDW Publishing's Roller.  Now, Rook's sculpt actually doesn't really look much like IDW Roller, who is a distinct entity from that little nontransforming Roller guy that Optimus Prime keeps in his trailer, but Rook does transform into a six-wheeled armored vehicle like that nontransforming Roller guy, so I think that's where that connection was made.  In IDW, nontransforming trailer-pet Roller was named in honor of character Roller after the latter went missing.  (Hence the name, "Wandering Roller.")

Out of all the other limbs in this set, I'm talking about Roller first because he's got such an interesting conglomeration of colors.  He's mostly silver in vehicle mode, which makes sense if he's supposed to be emulating the other Roller's vehicle mode, but in addition to that silver, in robot mode is added a rich dark brown, some striking Chef Boyardeeish orange, some metallic blue, and some dark forest green.  That mix of silver, brown, orange, blue, and green is not really a mix you see on many Transformers, if on any other Transformers, and it's a welcome diversion from the sea of white and red that most of Combiner Wars/Unite Warriors has been.  I heart it.

I'm not really sure where the green comes?  IDW Roller has all those colors except the green.  In fact, it should be more of the teal if it were being accurate to IDW Roller's design.  It's kind of odd.  I mean, I'm not saying not to use the green, since I like how it looks, I just wonder what its inspiration is.

Sadly, Wandering Roller does not come with any Kremzeek juiceboxes.

Here's some car ladies!

Back when we were doing all our online voting to determine Victorion's attributes, I guess folks voted for cars!  So here's two cars, one made from each of the Combiner Wars car toolings.  But, you know, with retoolings.

Jumpstream is the one with a face!  She was originally Breakdown/Sunstreaker/etc, but now she has a new head, a new chest/tummy, and new forearms.  Oh, and she comes with that new shield, too, which attaches with the rest of everybody's new accessories to form a new giant sword.  Jumpstream is here to be the cute one, I guess.  Look at those large, wide-set eyes.  

Dustup is the one with a ninja mask!  She was originally Dead End/Streetwise/etc, but now she also has a new head, a new chest, and new hands.  Apparently the new tooling budget thought it was very important that everyone have smaller, thinner hands.  Dustup comes with a... blade weapon thingy, like maybe what the Klingon use?  Don't look at me, I get all my Star Trek information second- or third-hand.  That thingermabobber also helps form the giant Victorion sword.  Take a look at that vehicle mode of hers (the one without the spoiler) -- all that red?  That's paint.  Dustup's got a shitload of paint.  

(okay fine the tall, thin strip of unpaintable nylon plastic down the middle of the doors isn't paint)

Jumpstream's red in vehicle mode is also all paint, but hers is a less impressive amount.

I like these two well enough, but Pyra Magna is a tough act to follow.

Is this... is this the first Voyager Class-sized lady Transformer since TM2 Arcee in 2001?  I must be forgetting somebody, right?  Being a dad uses up a lot of your braincells.  

Anyway, I got Victorion (early) (from an eBay seller) and I was originally gonna just talk about them all in one go, but I realy like Pyra Magna and so I'll talk just about her, why not.  

It shouldn't be too surprising that I find her to be the stand-out among the set, 'cuz the base Hot Spot mold she was retooled from is pretty swell.  Hot Spot's OTHER retool, Onslaught, is a little better than Hot Spot, and Pyra Magna steals from one of his helpful retools, the heels in the back of the feet which aid stability.  (Not, like, high heels, but just long-ass rods that jut out from the back of the foot.) 

But because Pyra Magna is mostly Hot Spot, that means she's large and awesome and can do all sorts of crazy poses.  She comes with an axe (made out of two of the parts that become the combined robot form's sword) and that kind of helps you want to pose her doing more things, like swinging and double-handed holding and whatnot, which is kind of a bonus over the original tooling's guns.  

New parts include new forearms and hands, a new head, a new chestplate, new combiner mode chest parts that also feature in vehicle mode, and of course the new combiner mode's head.  Between all those and the new red and sea-green color scheme, she looks like her own bot.  

Tell you what, I miss that teal that the sea-green was back in early production.  Every toy should have teal.  And orange.  Every toy should be teal and orange.  And this toy was like halfway there, but then they decided teal and red were too bright together and took away my teal.  They should have desaturated the red if they had to neuter one of the colors!  Teal is the best.  I was robbed.

According to an image in the instructions, you should peg the combiner mode's new feet into the ladder stuff on her back.  So that's a place to put those.  I didn't see anywhere in the instructions that say where to put the combiner mode's new hands.  Dang, I guess someone's gonna hafta hold those.

There is a misassembly problem, though!  An oft-forgotten step in transformation to robot mode is zig-zagging the knee struts into a configuration that locks into the top of the shins.  Part of the knee struts were assembled upside-down in both legs, which makes a little nob point in the wrong direction and keep this locking in from working.  Kind of annoying.  Not, like, a dealbreaker, but definitely annoying.  At worst, since the toy's knees are stiff enough that the locking in isn't terribly necessary, the misassembly makes her taller, which is actually kind of a neat feature in itself.  She can go look down her nose at Hot Spot and Onslaught and (soon) Bludgeon.  At best, you can just snip those nubs, I guess, and transform her the way she was engineered to be.  Or maybe you're supercool and can remove rivets, i dunno.

I bet Pyra Magna could remove rivets.  She looks capable of things.

Sky Lynx!  When we were kids, my little brother really really wanted Sky Lynx.  Like, he had an incalculable yearning.  I mean, think about it: Sky Lynx was a shuttle that split into a lynx and a bird, and the lynx and the bird combined into a dragon.  Oh, and it could walk.  You put in batteries and the damned thing walked by itself.  You can see the appeal, right?

So then I got Sky Lynx for my birthday from our grandparents.  I opened the thing up in front of my poor brother.  Back then, my grandparents liked to get a smaller present for the Other Sibling (our sister was not born yet or was too young to care) on the other's birthday so they wouldn't feel completely left out because that's the kind of spoiling-riffic stuff you can do as a grandparent, and so there is this amazing photo of my brother limply pointing to his also-ran BraveStarr toy he opened up that day, a very visible inner brokenness deepset within his face.

Decades later, I'd buy him the Japanese reissue.  It was the least I could do.

But this Sky Lynx is mine!  His shuttle mode no longer splits up into lynx and bird modes, instead going straight to dino-dragon, and obviously he doesn't self-walk anymore.  He does, however, become a torso for Combiner Wars limbs to connect to and become Sky Reign.  Not a terrible trade-off.  

Space shuttles -- at least the ones we sent up into space for years -- aren't a thing anymore, being all retired and whatnot, and so probably relatedly Sky Lynx is a very liberal interpretation of one.  He's got little forward-swept wings on his back end.  He's got a weird pattern of windows and little tiny wing horns near the cockpit.  The crawler-transporter is still there, and since Sky Lynx is no longer a proper real-life shuttle, I guess it's actually now just a part of his generic space shuttle mode.  As mentioned above, it does not detach.  It's not even all connected down there in the middle, so even if you tried disassembling the toy you'd have a scattering of disjointed blue parts.

Though in dragon mode Sky Lynx no longer walks, he does have a little more articulation than before.  His forelegs (not the back) can splay outwards.  He's got bicep and thigh swivels, and you can move them yourself without breaking the toy, like you were liable to in the 80s.  I swear, that old plastic was made from crusty old cheese.  The original toy had a few joints in his neck (necessary for transformation), but I don't think it could look to and fro, so that's new.  Out the back, just barely, is a tiny version of his original tailfin-ended tail.  It's barely visible from most angles, but I'd say it's vestigial.  Attach the two sword weapons to it, and you get a properly-lengthed tail.  The original tail is probably there just for purists.

The torso mode is where you find this toy's only real deficiency.  Unlike the other torsos in Combiner Wars, Sky Lynx's shoulders do not seem to secure in any way, and so you have to hold them in place while you articulate his arms or else the shoulders move with them.  But this mode is where his lynx head ended up, so you kind of forget this annoyance when you behold his splendor.  

The two swords combine into a longer sword, because of course they do.

Armada Starscream from earlier in the Generations toyline was a pretty damn good Starscream toy.  It was a new version of... well, Armada Starscream, but shorter and with shoulder joints and you didn't need to have a Mini-Con to make his missiles fire.  It was a joy.  I mean it, it's a great little thing.  So much that when Cheetimus painted one up like Sunstorm I was like YOINK and bought that fucker.  

Well, here comes more!

This is Starscream Super Mode, because way back in Armada, when they redecoed everybody, they made them into upgrades of the same guy rather than new characters.  But Starscream's "super mode" was in Thundercracker's colors, and so when he got upgraded in the cartoon the English version dubbed in a little "I look like Thundercracker!" comment and the toy was sold as Thundercracker.  Otherwise, Starscream in this deco is known as the Starscream who goes total Linkin Park angsty and gets himself disintegrated by Unicron to make Megatron so way sorry for the way he's been a stupid jerk, DAD.  I'm serious, there were so many Linkin Park AMVs.  He tried so hard and got so far, yo.  But in the end?  (he came back as a zombie in the next series and then in the series after that he was totally fine, so... no, it didn't really matter)

But hell yeah I'd buy a Starscream Super Mode or Thundercracker or whoever.  I loved the deco on the original toy, which was certainly inspired by Thundercracker, but took a few left turns.  For example, his eyes had to be silver.  They really had to, to keep the rest of his deco silver where it needed to be silver.  And that plastic sprue was nylon, which is unpaintable.  And so instead of having his face be red-eyes-on-silver-face, Armada Thundercracker was red-face-on-silver-eyes.  Which is, you know, striking.  I'm very upset this did not pay forward in later Thundercracker toys.  

I do think the deco loses a little something when his blacks are gunmetal instead of black.  But whatcha gonna do.  It's my only sort of not-really complaint.  I like this toy a lot.  Give me more.

(spoilers: we're getting more)

 *finally climbs out of a pile of babies*

Look, I have new toys!  New Combiner Wars toys!  I don't have these guys' torso yet, but let's talk about the limbs.  They're wave six of the Deluxe Class guys, aka The Final Wave.  I mean, there's still a buttload of more box sets coming out through the rest of the year, but these are the last single-packed guys before Combiner Wars gets transitioned into Titans Return (aka Everyone Is A Headmaster).

Wheeljack is the most changed of these four.  Though he used to be Breakdown, he's had his entire car mode replaced and most of his robot mode as well.  He's 90% new toy, though he transforms exactly the same and has all the same functionality.  I'm happy for the vehicle mode reshelling the most, because I just kinda feel like Wheeljack needs to look like a Lancia Stratos, moreso than most other Autobot cars need to be their original car model.  I mean, it's cool that he has new robot parts, too, but that feels like extra on top of a necessity.

In between promo renders and the final product, some of Wheeljack's black plastic is now white, like his crotch and elbows.  This is not helpful, since he was kinda too-white already!  And so now he's really white.  Don't get me wrong, he has a lot of paint -- Wheeljack kind of has to have a lot of paint, since he's got a distinctive rally deco, but all his budget went into creating that, so you don't get a lot of the small stuff like having painted forearms and whatnot.  S'okay, I'll paint a lot of that stuff myself later.

Second, let's just get Smokescreen out of the way.  He's a straight redeco of Prowl.  Like Wheeljack, he uses up all his paint budget in his vehicle mode's rally deco, and so his robot mode's a little plain.  Smokescreen's a little frustrating, because we know there are other unused heads on these guys that might not make it to retail (coughcoughRatchetcoughcough) but I guess Hasbro proooobably wanted a race car instead of a second white-and-red ambulance.  S'okay, Ratchet's likely this year's BotCon customization class guy anyway.

Hound is Swindle with a new Hound head!  Swindle himself was a heavy retool of Rook in the same way that Wheeljack is a retool of Breakdown -- aka, it's all new except for a crotch and a peg and some tiny joints here and there.  In addition to Hound's new head, his smaller weapon now has nubs on the back so that it can be shoved into the rollbar cage on his robot mode back, giving him an over-the-shoulder weapon.  (Some later versions of Swindle reportedly have this as well.)   Over-the-shoulder weapon pleases me!  

Where Hound is frustrating is how they deco him.  He's got, like, two separate vehicle fronts sculpted on his torso.  Up top on his chest is one set of fake vehicle front, and then there's a separate set of fake vehicle front on his stomach.  This is so he can do double duty as both Hound and Swindle provided you illuminate the right parts with paint.  However, the right parts were not illimunated with paint!  Hound has his Swindle parts painted, ignoring completely the Hound bumper across his ribcage, while those Swindle parts were ignored on Swindle.  Grrrr!   Maybe I'll do some painting on Hound as well.

And finally there's Trailbreaker, who even-more-finally has his own original name back.  Hasbro tried to make so many Trailbreakers over the years, realized they didn't have the trademark but weren't willing to find a new one, and so we got a lot of black Ironhides.  And so finally, a year or two ago they were all FINE, dubbed him "Trailcutter," put out a few Trailcutter toys, and even got Trailbreaker to change his name to Trailcutter in the IDW comics.  And then Trailcutter died.  And now they got "Trailbreaker"-the-Trademark back for real and so I guess they can give his proper name to his corpse.  

Poor Trailbreaker.

Trailbreaker has a few retoolings, but not nearly as many as Wheeljack.  He's got a new head, obvs, but he's also got new forearms and new fingers on his combiner mode fist.  One of his new forearms ends in a hand and the other ends in a gun, as Trailbreakers do, but they made the end a 5mm peghole so you can shove his combiner mode fist in there.  Sweet.  His combiner mode fist now has kind of a claw thing going on instead of fingers, which is super neat.  Well, it'd be super neater if this tooling got used a second use (as Hoist?) so you could give a combiner robot double claw hands, but whatcha gonna do.  (Other than buy a second Trailbreaker.)  

Trailbreaker's new claw things give me pause, though.  The fronts of the claw are painted, which is... weird.  Other than dipping the whole damn thing in silver, like with the Optimus Maximus guys, these hand/foot weapons don't really get paint, and they certainly don't get spot paint.  I have this feeling that the silver finger fronts are meaningful in some way, but I can't find any new way for the weapon to interact with the robot mode.  I mean, obviously, the first thing you think of is Trailbreaker's silver forcefield generator which usually goes over his head, but you can't shove this weapon behind Trailbreaker's head any better than any other version of the mold.  (ie, terribly)  I dunno.  It's gonna bug me.  

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.