I like the idea of the Dinobots combining. When I was a kid I waited every episode they were featured for them to combine. I like the PotP figures so far, I think they're a lot of fun. As much as people rip on Hasbro I think they're doing really cool things. CW was cool, TR was great, PotP is too. Do I still love my old Classics figures? Hell yes, but I don't think they're so much better than the current lines.
Also in hindsight I think Energon was my favorite toy line.

 

You know, I didn't really consider anyone at Hasbro lazy because there wasn't any evidence to it. Then came in John Warden saying that the Primes weren't getting toys because they were "hard to imagine", and I realized that someone wasn't doing their job. Still don't consider Hasbro as a whole lazy, but there's some incompetence most certainly st least in one higher up.

Still prefer T30, CW and Titans Return over the Classics/Universe/early Generations days, but I just can't bring myself to like or do anything other than dislike Power of the Primes. I can appreciate a good Dreadwind and the lovely little roster addition of Slash, but there are so many things wrong with the line between so many size classes — all of which I have detailed before. It's just a poor attempt at crossing over the two previous (and far superior) lines.

 

...I absolutely adore the "Power of the Primes" gimmick. It's a bit "all in my head"... but hey, they're toys, a little imagination should come into play.

Say you have Jazz. Then you put the armor on him and give him Liege Maximo. Now he's "The smoothest talker in the universe". Now hook him up to Volcanicus as a limb. Now Volcanicus is able to be a smooth talker. Get Slag, hook him up with Micronus, and now he makes the Combiner even more powerful. So you've got a super-powerful, smooth talking Volcanicus. Now throw in Vector Prime on the chest, and now your Volcanicus can time-travel to smash Nazi tanks and convince Hitler to surrender with his silver tongue.

It's just... I don't know why, but this is such a cool concept for me. There are so many combinations! It genuinely does make me want all the Primes, even though it's all in my head.

 

IF you throw in an extra pair of Prime armor from the other toys to attach to the feet, you can attach all eight Prime masters to Volcanicus (1 on each hand, 1 on each hand used as torso filler, two on the combined feet). Now he's got the power of all the Primes. Me Grimlock king!

 

But there's twelve Primes!

 

I don't like Generations Metroplex because he's too big. Way too bland and lack of details on such a huge figure.

 

Wow! You just made the gimmick sound awesome to me. Like, I didn't hate it, but it just felt like "Oh. Okay" to me before.

One thing I really like about combiners was the thought of switching not only limbs, but also whatever abilities the character adds to the gestalt(Mirage adds invisibility, etc). Makes me think of customizing a character in a video game or something.

Though, as armour, I still think it's a bit wonky. Given that most figures seem to be able to wield these as God(dess)-powered shields, I feel that works better and looks less goofy. It strikes me more as a "Oh, they wield the 'protection' of this Prime(Deity?)" sort of dealio.

 

I really don't like the POTP gimmick. I'd prefer if Cloudburst the Titanmaster turned into the head of his G1 inner robot.

At least then, you could slap it on an appropriate mold and make him an update.

I actually like the updated shells though if they had remained Titanmasters, I'd have liked the smaller figure to be based on the shell like the cancelled Pretender Classic Titanmasters from the Collector's Club.

I don't like POTP Dreadwind and Darkwing. I wish they were bigger or at least in scale with Titans Triggerhappy where a Titanmaster can fit in his cockpit.

I don't like Titans Return Laser Prime. I think it's stupid that the Titanmaster can't sit in the cab.

If I had my way, every Transformer from now on could fit a Titanmaster in the cockpit or cab.

Anyway at the risk of being negative, I have been loving Titans Return and Combiner Wars.

I'm really looking forward to POTP Rodimus Prime, Tailgate, Outback and the Duocons.

Given that POTP has brought back the Combiner Wars gimmick with Jazz and the Dinobots, I'd love if we got a new Scourge with the same engineering so we could use 4 Sweeps as limbs for Galvatronus.

 

This is how I feel about it too, makes me shake my head when reviewers are so lukewarm on using imagination and are like "I guess... you can plug this in here... if you want to.. don't know why you would want to..." it's like ugh c'mon this stuff is just plain fun.

 

Here's the thing about this logic-Liokaiser has not sold well. So there's 2 takeaways that one can have from this:

1.) The Japanese characters that have not been brought to more prominence in English-speaking fiction (so discounting characters like Overlord or Star Saber because of their IDW appearances) do not have enough of a sales draw to make them profitable. So it's Liokaiser's general obscurity that led to poor sales of the set

Or

2.) Many of the fans hardcore enough to care about getting a classics Liokaiser did not want what they saw as a half-measure when we've seen earlier in Combiner Wars that fans care about having complete teams (thus we got Slingshot, Wildrider, Groove, and soon to have shuttle Blast-Off). The Sky Lynx retool, while neat in it's own right, and I think would have been effective as a single release akin to the Betatron version of Scattershot, was not good enough for a significant portion of fans.

Now I believe both of these are true (plus there's a discussion to be had about how Hasbro marketed all of the CW boxsets, since most of them that aren't Computron sold pretty poorly), but I do think a more accurate Liokaiser would have helped. I know I'm not alone in skipping it in favor of hoping for a UW version.

 

The armor is hit or miss for me. I think it looks good on Slag and Dreadwind(not getting him so not sure if that's his name?), and it pretty much is supposed to be a shield on the Voyagers, but I would like it a bit better implemented. And, I dunno, even I think putting a Prime in a foot is a little weird. I wonder if this is all just my nostalgia for Armada/Minicons coming in. I think the Titanmasters were supposed to do this kinda thing, too, but it never worked for me. "Firedrive gives 'bots the power of flamethrowers (or whatever)!" No, you've just put Hot Rod's head on Triggerhappy.

Anyway, new POTP-related unpopular opinions: I love Grimlock. He absolutely rocks, but give the guy a weapon. He needs it.

I also really enjoy seeing what card I get. So far most of them have been kinda lame, but I still enjoy thinking about all those possible combinations.

 

You know what? I probably would have been a little happier with Power of the Primes if they had included cockpits for the Prime Masters/Headmasters. It would add a level of interactivity built into the toy that would allow one to easily say they belong together. (Plus, the cockpits were one of my favorite parts of TR.) I don't know how you'd integrate that with the Combiner functionality, however, which just goes back to the problem of them not just going with Powermasters. Plenty of space available then.

The toys no matter what look absolutely absurd and I think Dreadwind has the worst of it. A beer belly is one thing, but a big chunk of nothing just... floating there is even worse. Then, attaching it to the arm looks slightly less dumb and weighs down the toy's joints.

The "use your imagination" is fun and all and I find the cards entertaining, but those don't make anything tangible. At least swapping a head around adds something to the toy that's immediately distinct, whereas a big chunk with an abstract art wart just makes someone think "... the hell is that? Looks heavy."

 

why not just have him kill hitler?

“Nazi ain’t got no humanity”

 

It really boils down to Hasbro not putting in the effort to do the group justice so everyone is waiting to see what Takara does.
Of course there have been people who caved or people who didn't know the characters but thought the boxset looked cool who did buy it.

 

well, Grimlock is a just king! The other can get the ones he doesn't like.

 

I do not like MP Sunstreaker.

That should put me on a few more ignore lists.

 

REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!! YOU MONSTER!

Nah JK, tis fine. I prefer the way that MP Sideswipe looks to Sunstreaker. (This from a CHUG collector)

 

The US release Chromedome head is absolutely terrible. Having gone for toy accuracy across the line, we get IDW. I'd honestly rather have the Takara head, but can't justify the import fees and now aftermarket fees. That said, I physically checked EVERY Chromedome in a 60 mile radius of my house hoping my local stores got some of those mispackaged Takara headed US Chromedomes. A part of me still hopes that Hasbro brings the Takara heads over somehow.

 

I like the POTP Starscream mold. The stickers are awful, but I like the mold.