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.  

Way back in 2000, my third BotCon, we got two exclusive toys.  The first was Apelinq, Wrecker Commander, and the second was Shokaract, cruel lord of all time and space.  Once a lowly near-nameless Predacon grunt, the Hunter found the Dark Essence of Unicron buried on Earth and was awarded the Matrix of Conquest.  Now he was Shokaract, rule of Cybertron's future, powerful beyond measure, speaker of hilariously over-the-top Simon Furman villain dialog.  But since time travel exists, he guarded the Dark Essence zealously.  Of course, his own paranoia led to his downfall, and Shokaract's reign was erased from existence. 

There's no way there'd ever be a toy of the Hunter!  That'd be just crazy!

Well, sometimes crazy works, and here we are fourteen years later with a danged Hunter toy.   Very recently we got a new toy of Beast Wars Rampage as this year's club membership exclusive toy, which mounted a very very very tiny new head on the body of Deluxe Transformers Prime Megatron.  A great idea with a kind of hilarious noggin.  Don't get me wrong, the thing is beautiful.  Absolutely gorgeous.  But that tiny, tiny head.  (It has to be, to fit in vehicle mode.)  Since Shokaract was originally a redeco of Rampage, folks clamored for a Shokaract redeco of him.  I did not.  I didn't think it'd be what I wanted.  Shokaract should be huge, not a deluxe.  Why would I want a tiny Shokaract?  It's not like they'd designate him his pre-Shokaract Hunter form.  And once we learned Club Rampage had a tiny head, that was another nail in the coffin as far as I was concerned.  Did not want!

Well, old me was dumb.  I love this thing.  It's probably my favorite toy of the whole set.  Somehow, amazingly, in these different, darker colors, Shokaract's head doesn't look so puny.  I'm not sure how.  Maybe it's just the color scheme creating an optical illusion.  But it's surpisingly okay.  And the toy itself is astoundingly pretty.  Shokaract was always pretty, so it shouldn't be that surprising, but still here we are.  And, yes, the goddamned thing is officially the Hunter, pre-finding-the-Dark-Essence.  It's like a toy just for me! 

Plus it comes at a pretty opportune time, since the original Shokaract is covered in blue chrome that does not survive well decades past his production.  The chrome on mine was falling off like autumn leaves just by picking him up and moving around -- and that's without all the dusting I had to do to make him presentable.  I was dabbing lightly with a cloth to keep from scraping his surface off too much.  Oof.  Some day I will just have to bite the bullet and send the thing to Cheetimus to scrape and repaint the blue.  It won't be chrome, but it'll be something I can friggin' transform again.  It sucks when you can't handle one of your favorite toys which is super expensive to replace.  

Anyway, the new one doesn't have chrome and so it's something that can actually be played with.  It's very, very welcome.  As of this writing, he's still available (with his fellow pirate Brimstone) on the Collectors' Club website and on Big Bad Toy Store.