Transformers has a storied history of adding in non-toy characters to help the narrative along.  Sometimes all the "real" characters in the toy range don't give you what you need in your story, and so you gotta make somebody up.  Need a big warlord-type Big Bad, but 1985's product offering is already accounted for?  Then say hello to Straxus!  Need someone who needs to look unimpressive and also someone you can kill immediately without Hasbro getting fussy?  Then say hello to Scrounge!  He transforms into a wheel!  It doesn't matter that he transforms into a wheel, because he doesn't have to be marketable on the toy shelf.  He's just there to be in your story.  

The flipside is that these fiction-only weirdos sometimes become popular.  Like both Straxus and Scrounge.  Both eventually got toys, though Scrounge's took longer.  (And it was just Cosmos in yellow, since Cosmos is a, uh, round-ish UFO guy.)  The Rule of Cool means sometimes your favorite characters are never going to get toys.  Or if they do, it might... take... a while.  

So, hey, say hello to Rung.  He's a quiet, even-headed psychologist, and he's a skinny nerd in glasses who transforms into a stick.  A stick.  PROBABLY he's not on Hasbro's shortlist, despite having been preeeeeeetty important in the past several years of Transformers comics.  Because, you know.  Glasses nerd.  Stick.

But he's pretty important, so I had to go make my own.  

It took until Power of the Primes Moonracer/Novastar came out that something suitably skinny with kibble put in most of the right places was available to modify.  Transformers toys are mostly male, and being male-coded means your toys either get Bruce Timmish superhero proportions or you're just a big solid block.  So, yeah, thank goodness for Moonracer's slight build.  

I gave Moonracer the orange fists from Novastar and then painted the rest of her Tamiya Orange and Flat White, with some silver Sharpie in places for trim color.  I left a circle on her translucent blue plastic stomach unpainted, 'cuz Rung's got one there.  I did paint the toy everywhere, including the vehicle mode parts on the bottom of the feet and on the back, so in theory Rung could transform into an orange and white car.  But in practice, I think I paintlocked him and I don't feel like wrecking his finish just to put him into alt-mode.  Besides, dude rarely transformed anyway.  Remember, stick.  

For the head, I went to my buddy Trent.  I commissioned a Rung head from him using measurements I took of Moonracer's head, and he put together a CGI model we can 3D print off of Shapeways.  You can find it here!  Moonracer has a 4mm balljoint on her neck, so this head will also work with any other toy that has a 4mm balljoint neck, such as Power of the Primes Wreck-Gar, now showing up at Walgreens.  

And now Rung can hang out with my other Lost Lighters!  

I mean, if Hasbro actually eventually made a Rung toy, I wouldn't say no to it, but this'll make me plenty happy regardless.

Man, remember when these Transformers Fan Vote things resulted in new characters?  I guess that was just the first two years, but since, like, Windblade is in EVERYTHING now, you'd think Hasbro'd be all... hey, that worked out for us pretty well, why don't we do that, like, a second time.  But, naw, these days we just get to choose which pre-existing old guy to remake.  

And for this year's, we weren't even originally sure what the end result of the vote would have been.  Hasbro said simply "CHOOSE THE NEXT PRIME" and gave us a smattering of pre-existing characters and told us to vote for our favorite.  (Sure, one of those was "UNKNOWN EVIL," but unknown evil was technically just Deathsaurus.)  It wasn't until later we learned that, oh, we're taking the winning character and giving him a Leader Class toy where they have a smaller-scale figure that folds up into a portion of a larger-scale figure.  Really makes you wonder how that would have worked out if, say, Arcee had won.  Maybe one of her halves would have been a giant techno-organic spider, I dunno.

Anyway, who won was Optimus Primal.  Because, as Hasbro should really have figured out by now, if you have a list of guys and only one of them isn't G1, folks vote for the not-G1 guy.  Any more than one not-G1 guys, you're gonna split the not-G1 vote and end up with, say, Wheeljack or whoever, but otherwise you're gonna have a Beast Wars character every time one's on the list.  So Optimus Primal won!  And Hasbro had to make him a toy!   Had to!  We made them do it!  There's always some crank somewhere who claims that these votes are always rigged (because he didn't get what he wanted and/or thinks girls are stupid), but the fact that we got Optimus Primal and not Star Saber definitely puts lie to that conspiracy.  I feel like this team really wanted to do Star Saber, and they only do Beast Wars literally when we force them to.

Since the theme was "early form merging with later, larger form," seen elsewhere in the Power of the Primes toyline as "Hot Rod becoming Rodimus Prime's chest" and "Orion Pax becoming Optimus Prime's chest," this new Optimus Primal toy has a mechanical-looking Optimus Primal becoming the torso of his later, larger, Optimal Optimus form.  And if you're worried they forgot about that intermediate Transmetal form, it's given a tip of the hat through the Optimal Optimus gorilla mode being able to ride on Optimus Primal's spaceship mode like a surfboard.  

It's nice that they found extra things for this Optimal Optimus re-do to do, because they cut out the fourth mode, the wheeled armored transport.  He's just the big robot, the big gorilla, and the big jet.  The smaller robot doesn't turn into a gorilla, just a spaceship that looks an awful lot like Optimal Optimus's torso flattened out with a rolling pin.  The Matrix fits into the cockpit of the spaceship, which helps you play out your favorite "Optimal Situation" moments. 

Some other changes are attempts to make the appearance more cartoon-accurate.  In the cartoon, Optimal Optimus could retract his shoulder guns.  The toy couldn't, because they were, y'know, electronic.  But in cartoons, you probably don't want giant missiles constantly blocking the face of your super tall character, so they tucked away.  So on this toy, you can yank those off and plug them elsewhere if you want.  The bigger robot's face is also just the show's version of his head, instead of having the more stylized, angular mouth of the toy.  

Also there's no chrome.  Which is probably better in the longer run.  Or it would be, the toy didn't have stickers.  And as you have probably heard me grumble about more than once on this blog, Hasbro's current factory-applied stickers are garbage.  They start peeling and shredding under all possible atmospheric conditions.  And on this new OpOp, those stickers are right on the torso part that you shove in between the parts of the rest of his torso.  Woo!  So, you know, one step forward and all that.

oh and the original optimal optimus's backpack is made out of sparkly brown plastic that is kind of brittle so, uh, yeah, this may be a welcome update for some people

It's an okay toy.  It's got a lot of different configurations, a good combined robot, an okay gorilla, and a jet because we say so.  And that gorilla can ride himself as a surfboard.  

This toy hasn't shown up at regular North American retail as of this writing, and so mine is the Japanese release, which is absolutely identical to ours but with a sticker on the packaging.  And we're running out of time for this guy to come out over here before the next line (Stege) starts hitting stores this winter, so it's entirely possible Hasbro's "fan vote winner" will end up getting shat out into places like TJ Maxx and Marshall's.  Who even knows.

Punch/Counterpunch has had quite a few toys, for who he is.  There's the original, the first Club exclusive retooled from Sideswipe/Sunstreaker, the second Club exclusive whose Punch mode was a literal arm, and now this one.  That's four!  Four toys for a guy who has a pretty restrictive gimmick.  Like, he has two robot modes, one Autobot the other Decepticon. 

The idea, of course, is that Punch is an Autobot who has a second robot mode which he uses to infiltrate the Decepticons as "Counterpunch."  I mean, it's... not the best cover.  It's just putting another two syllables in front of your name.  It's like if James Bond were sneaking around some supervillain's lair maintaining his name is "Counterbond."  And his disguise is just himself walking backwards with a hat tipped over his face.  And he drives James Bond's car.  

It's absurd and goofy and people love it.  

The previous two Punch/Counterpunch toys were... insufficient.  The first Club toy was based on an awkward toy and had the tiniest of tiny heads.  The second turned into an arm instead of having both robot modes because it was just Combiner Wars Wheeljack with a new head.  But this toy... this toy is a new Punch/Counterpunch from the ground up.  And it's mostly unencumbered by any of the past three line's gimmicks.  It doesn't make itself turn into an arm like the Combiner Wars or Power of the Primes toys.  It doesn't have a head that turns into a robot (or two heads that turn into robots, one would imagine for this guy).  Yeah, it has a 5mm peghole hidden behind a hatch in both robot mode chests so you can plug in the Power of the Primes fist/chest armor, but that's not really intrusive.  And, honestly, it's a plus, since you can just put the fist/chest armor on the back of whichever robot you're using, pretend it's a jetpack, and cover up the other robot mode's chest.  It's essentially a feature.

What I'm saying is, he's kinda just a regular Generations-style toy.  We haven't gotten one of those in about half a decade.  

His transformation is simple enough, but not condescendingly so.  The entire back two-thirds of the car folds up behind his legs.  His arms pull out from the sides.  The hood splits in thirds -- the outer thirds stay on top of the arms in either of two Autobot/Decepticon figurations, and the middle third folds up and hides inside the torso.  And that's it!  Nothing about it really annoys, and so he's a fun guy to shift between modes.

Punch/Counterpunch also comes with a little translucent Prima figure.  The only other way to get Prima is to get that SDCC Throne of the Primes set, so if you missed that, here's another chance.

He's neat.  I like him.  He's an Amazon exclusive which is currently out of stock, but if he follows the pattern of the others, there'll be lots more eventually.

There's some unsurprising overlap between Transformers names and Marvel Comics superhero names.  For the first seven years, Transformers toys were named BY Marvel.  (Bob Budiansky in specific.)  It's why Transformers have super-hero-y names to begin with, setting aside the weird Latin folks like Optimus Prime or Omega Supreme.  It wasn't until Transformers left Marvel that we got guys named stuff like, uh, Cheetor and Waspinator and Rhinox.  So, uh, yeah.

But in the grand tradition of Marvel superhero comics-y names, there were Transformers named things like, say, "Venom."  And, no, the Spider-Man villain didn't exist yet at the time -- he'd be a few years later than the Deluxe Insecticon, but Venom was also the name of a Black Panther villain.  And there's "Ravage," who's also an Incredible Hulk villain.  When you have to name 20 Transformers in a day, you might start having to pull from the archives.  

And there was Firestar.  

(left to right: botcon 2005 flare up, botcon 2014 flare up, novastar)

Transformers Firestar was just a character in a single Transformers cartoon episode about lady Autobots, who'd appear just this once and never be seen again.  Obviously the Marvel Superhero Firestar who shared a starring roll on a cartoon show with her Amazing Friends one year earlier would have both the clout and the seniority.  But it meant that, well, a toy of Transformers Firestar would always have some complications.  When BotCon tried to make a toy of her in 2005, rather than rename her, they decided to instead make a Firestar look-alike who served as her protege.  Her name was Flare Up.  And Flare Up went on to do some things in lieu of Firestar for a while.  Flare Up got to show up in Transformers Animated, for example, in a form obviously based on her BotCon toy rather than the original Firestar's design.  And ten years later, BotCon would give Flare Up a second toy.  For a while, it seemed Flare Up might just up and replace Firestar in general.

But here we are, three more years later, and we have Novastar.  A rename attempt, even though a Firestar appeared in IDW comics not long prior.  (You don't have to abide by toy trademark rules in comics, especially not in interiors, especially especially if you don't claim trademark rights.)  An actual toy of the original Firestar character, for the first time ever, just with a name that sidesteps the trademark issue.  

The toy itself is Moonracer with a new head, new gun, and new deco.  It tries to do some different things with its deco that sets itself apart from how Moonracer's presents itself -- there's less translucent plastic visible in vehicle mode, for example.  And all of the original Female Autobots were shaped pretty same-ily that this toy can mostly get away with being Moonracer's body with a Firestar head.  It passes the squint test.  

I liked Moonracer's toy, despite it being pretty backpack heavy, and that means I like Novastar's, too.  I do regret that her plastic color breakdowns mean she can't have her pale yellow hands.  Her hands and thighs are tied to the same plastic tree, and that tree is the unpaintable nylon tree, so they either both have to be orange or they both have to be pale yellow.  Orange is probably the better choice.  The vehicle gives her a pale yellow stripe down the side, which helps.  

She's the only toy in wave 4, and (short wave 3 Optimal Optimus actually showing up in North American stores) the last major retail Power of the Primes toy release.  Novastar comes two per case, so at least she isn't shortpacked.  I was worried about that.  But I see lots of reports for her across the United States (only at Walmarts so far) so hopefully she won't be too hard to find in general.

Now if only they made toys of Greenlight and Lancer to be Elita Infin1te's legs.  Not holding my breath on that.

Masterpiece Dinobot showed up to monopolize my world just before I could get to talking about Power of the Primes Predaking, but now that MP Dinobot fever has died down a smidge, I'm ducking back to those simpler, more primitive pre-MP Dinobot times.  

So, yeah, it's TITAN CLASS Predaking!  Titan Class is that once-a-year size class that costs $150 and bounces back and forth from being an irregularly-formed combiner (Devastator) to city-sized guys (Metroplex, Fort Max, Trypticon).  Predaking is the second combiner, and he's an awful lot like Devastator, the first!  Just, like, construction-wise.  He's composed of giant blocky dudes who are clearly just pieces to make a cohesive 18-inch-tall robot.  It's the same feel all over.  If you have Devastator, you know generally what to expect with Predaking.

Predaking's a little less fortunate in this respect, though, because his individual components are ANIMALS.  Unlike construction vehicles, which are essentially blocks already, animals are, like, you know... animal shapes.  And so Predaking gives you... some blocks with tiny heads and legs on them!  They're animals!  Sort of!  

I mean, this didn't matter to my toddlers, who looked upon these blocky creatures with a sense of frenzied wonder, but a more older-type person might be a little dissatisfied.  

For example, the monstrously lengthy thighs of the combined Predaking robot ... just kind of hang underneath the bull (Tantrum/Torox) and the rhino (Headstrong).  Those are the two bulkiest animals (in real life), so they're the best choices to go with if you need to have two giganto plumpo creatures, but it's still a visible compromise.  Divebomb, the ... bird... is also pretty bulky, because he splits in two.  Half of him becomes an arm of the same girth as the other arm, Rampage (tiger).  The rest of him is, well, it's half of Predaking's torso.  It's his taint and his stomach and his spine and his wings, with Razorclaw (lion) forming the chest.  So Divebomb's a pretty massive bird!  Chunky!

But, again, the combined robot is the main event here.  Everything else is subordinate.  And the combined robot is pretty good!  I like it!  It holds together and can do stuff and it looks nice.  And so that's how I'll likely display him, and it probably won't matter that he's made out of the blockiest jungle creatures ever seen.  

The set comes with a sticker sheet, same with previous Titan Class offerings, but, oh my lord, the sticker material isn't terrible this go-round.  Like, you can remove stickers from the sticker sheet without the stickers TEARING DOWN THROUGH THE MIDDLE OF THE STICKER instead of, like, you know, where the actual perforations are.  And the material is strong enough you can actually remove and replace stickers if you have trouble putting them down, so long as you're careful.

And there's minimal putting flat stickers over sculpted detail.  That's nice.

Oh, and Predaking comes with a Prime Master figure of Onyx Prime, which is the only way to get an Onyx Prime.  So, uh, hopefully if you were completist with those you were already planning on getting this guy.

Anyway, summing up: Good big robot.  Smaller guys are an acquired taste.  A small step forward in sticker technology in this year of 2018.  

Finally, the Dinobot combiner that "The Beast" sort-of kind-of not-really foretold!

Wave 2 Power of the Primes has two the final two Dinobots, allowing Volcanicus to be properly combined.  Sludge owes a lot of his parts to Slag.  In robot mode, his thighs, shins, and upper arms are the same.  From the waist up, he transforms backwardsly, with his front becoming the dinosaur back instead of the dinosaur stomach. Similarly to Slag, Sludge's brontosaurus head/neck closes around the robot head, concealing it.  

The original Sludge toy had you fold his forearms up against the insides of his upper arms, with his brontosaurus toes at the elbows.  This new toy just leaves this transformation step out of the equation and leaves the brontosaurus toes at the wrists.  The instructions want you to bend his arms at the elbows for dinosaur mode, but I think I like them better straight.  It's more of a brachiosaurus look, but oh wells.

(I'm going to call him a brontosaurus, since I'm pretty sure the character design is old enough that he's not meant to be an apatosaurus.)

Snarl, the stegosaurus, is all new!  He keeps his thagomizer behind his head, but he otherwise transforms similarly (surprise!) to his other quadropedal Dinobot friends.  His head's a little smaller than the others, possibly since it needs to hide inside the combiner port cavity within his own chest, rather than inside a dinosaur part.  Instead of being flatfooted like the others, his dinosaur hind legs stand on their tippy toes.

Sludge, Snarl, Grimlock, Swoop, and Slag all combine to form VOLCANICUS!  Volcanicus is actually a pretty good combiner.  A lot of anguish has been thrown about over how wide his shoulders are, but so long as you plug those extra two combiner fists into his abs, it's really not a problem in person.  He's wide, sure, but his torso tapers from the waist properly to make it look fine.  His wideness merely makes him look mighty.

The other option for the two extra fists is to plug them into the back of the feet for additional stability.  He's not going to need this.  Well, he's not if yours has the same plastic tolerances as mine.  The biggest threat to my Volcanicus's stability is that one of his feet likes to rotate a little to the right, which can lead to him ultimately losing traction and doing the splits.  Extra heels would not solve this.  Tighter 5mm pegs at the ankle, yes, but not heels.  

The major negative to Volcanicus is his lack of a weapon.  In the cellphone game Earth Wars, Volcanicus gets an upsized version of Grimlock's Fall of Cybertron sword.  You can try giving him the FoC toy's sword, but it was already a little undersized for the Voyager Class toy.  Being held by a giant combiner makes the sword look like it's meant to serve cheese on a plate.  There's some third party options, one of which is $50 and includes a bunch of extra stuff I'm absolutely not interested in, and at least one Shapeways sword.  For the time being, at least, my Volcanicus is gonna have to fight people with his bare fists.  

You know, Powerglide, when Moonracer says she'll hang out with you after the war's over, and the war's been going on nine million years, maybe she's just not that into you.

This is Power of the Primes Moonracer!  This is the first toy Moonracer's ever gotten.  Sure, back in 2005, BotCon made a Moonracer toy but they couldn't get the trademark and they ended up deciding she was Chromiainstead, but this is, like, the first... successful Moonracer toy?  In that they managed to design her after Moonracer and also call her Moonracer and also decide that yes, she's Moonracer?  It's good! 

I like Moonracer.  She's always in good spirits, even when the situation isn't appropriate.  Also she can shoot Decepticons out of the sky over her shoulder while not looking.  She's very good things that aren't following orders or reading the room.

Her toy is very unlike the other Power of the Primes/Combiner Wars Deluxes, so this too is refreshing.  She transforms completely differently from the rest.  Everyone else's boots open up so you can squeeze/telescope the thighs inside.  It's all a bit of shared engineering that Moonracer lacks.  Mind, she lacks this so she can have on-model skinny lady legs, but it's still a new approach.  Instead, she keeps the bulk of her vehicle mode on her back.  It's a massive, massive backpack she has.  

She transforms into an elongated Cybertronian car.  Since nothing telescopes, the car parts just kind of wrap around the top of her as she lies down.  She's got three separate translucent blue areas (a fourth if you include her combiner fist weapon), all of which read as driver compartment canopy windows, so, uh, I guess she's got a lot of driver compartments?  I dunno.  She's a very long car, is what I'm saying.  

Her toy is incredibly pretty.  She's very vibrant seafoam green with some white and a tiny bit of lavendar.  It's very Nineties Shopping Mall Signage.  Her colors are so striking you feel like it's insufficient that she's merely standing on your desk and that maybe it would be more satisfying if you could absorb her essence somehow.

Like other Power of the Primes Deluxe Class toys, her fist weapon can clasp around her torso to become chest armor.  ...unfortunately, hers clasps low on her torso, putting her armor around her stomach.  She, um, kind of looks pregnant?  Especially since the armor includes a hole for you to bury tiny Transformers in.  Well, whatever!  *shrugs*

Her ankle artictulation rocks a little from side to side, which is helpful in posing.  

I like her VERY MUCH, despite the huge backpack.  Combiner limbs have run such a strong rut, it's nice when one escapes it, even if there are compromises.

In wave 4, she'll get a new head and be redecoed as Firestar.  Well, Novastar.  For some reason, "Firestar" is an unavailable trademark.

Hun-Gurrr is Elita One's casemate, and if local Walmarts are any indication, much more popular!  I mean, I guess unlike Elita One he's a completely new mold (though he transforms similarly to Combiner Wars Silverbolt), so he's got that going for him.  And, like, I know, I had Hun-Gurrr/Grrr/Gur when I was a kid, and so that lure of nostalgia is there.  But c'mon.  Elita One, you guys.  She'll punch your face so hard her arms need smokestacks.

Not to say that Hun-Gurrr is terrible or anything.  He's all right!  Which is... honestly kind of a damning thing to say, since the original 1988 version is probably the best combiner torso there was.  That dude had crazy articulation, man, for 1988.  1988 Hun-Gurrr established a pretty high bar for 2018 Hun-Gurrr to clear.  And in some ways he does, and in some ways he doesn't.

First off, you notice that the rear legs of the beast mode are backwards-elbowed.  It's kind of necessary for how the torso mode thighs form, but it still looks awkard.  Second-off, you notice the big mass of purple hanging under his stomach.  That's both good and bad -- Good, because it's fun to integrate combiner mode kibble into the main toy rather than having to attach it later, and Bad because it wasn't actually integrated very well here.  It just hangs off his stomach.  It's less bad in person, and you're more likely to notice how the deco purposefully tapers off between the parts and the dragon mode on his stomach so you can see a purposeful dragon shape under there, but, uh, yeah.

The ways he does better, though?  They're pretty good ways!  The original Hun-Gurrr didn't have beast mode mouths that opened.  This is pretty ridiculous for a robot friggin' named "Hunger."  Dude can't eat!  But the new toy does have openable mouths.  The new toy also has side-to-side dragon head articulation (or ankle tilting in robot mode), and this plus the mouths... is everything.  The original 1988 toy was unusually dynamic, but the new one is just a little moreso because of the addtional head articulation. 

Otherwise, y'know, it's Hun-Gurrr again.  He's good, but he's no Elita One.

(i'll wait to talk about the combined mode once his limbs come out)