I'm addicted to these guys now. So cheap, and while certainly lacking Hasbro quality, definitely worth the price of admission. I have three combiners now, and I wanted to talk about them a little bit. First, for all of them... I didn't like the stickers on ANY of them Poorly placed, mostly ugly, and many peeling off already, so I removed them all, or in the case of the first guy I'm reviewing, in the process of removing them all. First Knockoff... is what appears to be a knockoff of a knockoff according to Autobus Prime, or something like that. I don't know anything about the origins of this toy aside from what Autobus said, but if what he said is true, I'm rather interested in how this guy came about. Before the pictures, I have to warn you. My wonderful, awesome camera... doesn't like the cheapo Walgreens brand batteries I got for it. I put in a brand new pair, and my camera says "Charge the batteries!" and turns itself off before I even get a display. So lacking GOOD batteries, I used my mom's old camera, which is kinda funky, so the pictures aren't great. The whites that look yellowish are definitely very white, and very nice looking. The animal modes. The yellow lion and blue wolf (well, he's supposed to be a puma, but I like wolf better) definitely win here. Their animal modes are very nice. Not as articulated as, say, Cybertron Snarl, but the legs do have joints at the shoulders/hips and elbows/knees, allowing for more than just static poses. They look rather nice, overall. Each have back-mounted weaponry, too. The red bird is also pretty cool, but the way the body is shaped, it seems like a 4-legged beast with wings (this something like G1 Flamefeather) would work better. Oh well. The legs feel a little wierd in posing them in animal mode, but the gold vac-metal wings are pretty sweet. The bird headsculpt is definitely the coolest of the four. And finally, the bull. He's actually purple, though you won't be able to tell from these pictures, really. Stupid camera. His rear legs are loose, which is annoying. He splits in two to form the combined bot's arms, however, the big bot's fists are clearly exposed beneath the bull head. The beast legs have one joint each. The shoulder/hip joint. The vac-metal horns and butt panels are pretty cool looking. For now, anyway. The tail doesn't look at all right with its orange color. I may remove it, since it gets in the way for the combined bot anyway. Easily the least cool. Bot modes. Okay. Not gonna lie here. They ALL kinda lose here. While the bird guy looks pretty good, his wings are on the back of his legs piece, and they have to be somewhat extended for his foot to stand flat. The lion and wolf are almost tied (they're nearly exactly the same as far as transformation, just with different molds, think G1 Prowl vs G1 Smokescreen), except that the lion head which becomes the bot's chest, hinders arm articulation to the point of... none. He can't lift his arms at all. The wolf, however, has all the articulation of a G1, and everything works. The back-mounted weapons for these guys And the bull, again, kinda sucks. His head won't stay straight (the bot splits in half to become the arms... the head is tucked away between the two halves, so you have to split him apart, unfold the head, then put him back together), and his body doesn't want to stay connected. The bull head on his chest helps. A little bit. Kinda. However, it kinda blocks his face, and just looks way too big. The cool thing about the individual bots, though, is that they all come with their own weapon and shield, all color-coded (though the purple bull was originally green, but the weapon and shield weren't changed). The weapons are all vac-metal again, which is pretty sweet. The shields are all just plain white plastic. Combined mode. Okay, this is definitely the coolest mode. The bird forms the main body, with the lion's head connecting to the chest and the bull's head forming a "helmet" (if you take it off, his head is nothing more than a face, really). I didn't know until I read one of Autobus Prime's links (which are in the post I linked earlier), but the bird and wolf heads connect to his shoulders, which (along with the rest of the arms) are formed by the two halves of the bull. The lion and wolf bodies form the legs. All four weapons combine to form a Voltron-esque sword, which is really freakin' cool. The four shields also combine into one cross-shaped shield, which, while not as cool as the sword, is still pretty neat. Aside from the arms, everything clips together very well. The arms on mine feel like they're going to fall off, and the bull limbs get in the way. Can you tell I really don't like the bull? All in all... this guy is probably worth the $6 and change you'll pay. It's something different, and from what I understand, is actually an original creation. Most of the plastic feels pretty solid, to me, and I haven't seen any real stress marks yet, though there's lots of "sprue-scars", if you get my meaning. The vac-metal I don't expect to last for terribly long, but it does look REALLY good for now.
I was halfway through my next post and accidentally hit ctrl-R rather than ctrl-T to open a new tab, and lost everything in the post. So now I'm annoyed and don't want to redo it right now, so I'll come back to this later. Grumble grumble.
Looks good, in a "Sentai Brave Robot" kind of way. If I ever found one I'd probably pick it up for shear novelty value.
I bought the red eagle for $2 at some weird dollar store but it didn't come with a sheild/head/other kibble for the combined mode =( (luckally I didn't buy the others)
I used to have that set when I was younger before I started collecting TFs. I also had a few bug TF KOs as well that were awesome at the time. They transformed into a praying mantis, a bee and I forgot what the other two turned into.
Just picked up the RiD Galvatron KO. Overall, the plastic quality feels really good... better than the ones I mentioned in the first post. After looking at the ridforever.info site, though, it's missing a LOT of joints that the REAL RiD Galvatron has... rendering him, basically, a triple changer. His bot mode is nice, he has a workable 2-headed dragon mode, but his jet mode isn't very convincing. The dragon tail/jet cockpit is all one solid piece, and doesn't even clip in to the neck/shoulders area where it should (the head crest gets in the way, so I'm going to try and cut a little bit of the plastic away and see if that works. In the end? Save your $10 on this guy. Not worth it. Spend the little extra money and get a real RiD Galvatron.
Okay, let's do a God Max KO review now. I only have pictures of him with my Defensor KO (well, I have individual pics, but they didn't come out well), so you can see that, too. Bot modes! Aside from a few loose joints, these guys are pretty sweet. The White Plane ("WP" for the review) has kind of an ugly head, but, well, what can ya do. The arms feel a little squished towards his body, but he's a plane, there's only so much you can do... and you have to consider the year the original Braves were originally produced. Still, he has double-jointed elbows, which is cool, PLUS shoulder joints! Unfortunately, he can only move his arms up and down. Oh well. I can't figure out the proper way to have his wings in this mode. Red Car ("RC") probably has the best bot mode of the bunch. Head turns, arms are almost exactly like Cybertron Downshift's arms... only difference being the shoulders, which don't move. He's pretty sweet. Vac-metal/chromed torso panel, too, which you reveal by switching a lever. It's pretty neat. He does look a little bare without the stickers, but I really hated those. Green Drill ("GD") is... odd. His arms are REALLY loose on mine, which kinda sucks. His head (which is attached to the removable tank turret in alt mode, think RiD Hightower) doesn't really fit onto his body... I need a freakin' dremel, I think. Aside from that, not much to say. He's got a cool axe. Flip the lever on his chest and schwing! Boobies! I mean chest guns! The drills on his shoulders pop out and can be put in his hands (if you have him, you'll see how it works), too. Alt modes. Once again, what you see if what you get. No wierd flaws here, except GD's loose arms. Combined mode As you can see, he's pretty big. WP's legs become the arms, his cockpit becomes the chest. His elbows plug into sockets in RC's car-front... the bottom of which is his back in bot mode, but becomes the waist piece in combined mode. It's kinda cool. GD splits in half, his turret becoming a large gun. RC's knees clip onto the front of GD's drill mode and ta da! KO God Max. Oh right. I had a little bit of trouble keeping the "hood" that goes over WP's head (yes, the combined mode's head is WP's head) straight, so when I checked the base where it connects to the back of the place, the peg/socket gizmo there had some extra plastic in the socket that needed to be cut away, and the peg was just barely big enough to fit in... I got it to work, but it takes some fiddling to get straight. Still, this is the only real FLAW in this whole KO set. RC and WP come with chromed swords that attach to GD's black axe to form a very large melee weapon. The final verdict? Totally worth it. I saw all three in a set for $12 at Big Lots... which is a ripoff. Buy them seperately for $3 each. There's only three of em. More pictures of about the same quality as the 4-Animals set review.
can someone provide me instructions for the figures in the original post? i cant figure the combination out to save my life edit: oops, i found it, i lost the little waist connector oops
Wow, just as I was going to Looking to see if there's a thread. I picked up a dark gray and silver chrome version of TMII Megatron; it's been remolded, but it's a great figure. Quality is up with Hasbros, and it's even got added articulation. It's a real nice transformer, especially for 10 bucks. I'm thinking I'm going to give that Optimal Optimus a try. I also saw Lio Convoy and TM Rattrap too, but passed.
I got both of them are they both are cool as hell!! I am going to make these into my "Mirror" Universe...
There's a two new swivel points in the Dragon head and neck, one at the base of the neck and the top of the head. Since it's been remolded and doesn't have that silly neck flopping, err, control mechanism, you can instead pose the head and the neck how you'd like it, rather than how it flops about. He also has a fist hole drilled into his hand, though with the dragon abdomen/shield, it's difficult to find anything that'll really fit into it. He also has remolded legs and no longer has the articulated wheel covers on his knees. Strangely enough, the didn't remove it, and in fact, left the wheels in him for some reason. I actually would've prefered if they were going to remold it, to take the wheels out like they took out the neck control and remolded it with standard legs. Also, they took out both missle launchers and the spark crystal, and remolded all of them so that if you didn't know it, you wouldn't miss it. Again, for $10, this was a steal! My only debate is when I pick up Optimal Optimus, to get the Optimal colored version or the Primal Prime colored version.
Does anyone have REAL names for these KO's? I know they were based off of some other line but are/were they autobots & decepticons?
They're Kaisers - From Brave Exkaiser, members of the God Max team, Sky Max, Dash Max and Drill Max. In the context of the series, they're good guys - the Kaisers are energy beings who possess Earth vehicles as they wage their battle to destroy the evil forces of the Geisters. It was made in 1991, right after TF fell out of favour in Japan. They might even be unused TF designs - like the Brainmasters and Star Saber before them, the main character of the series shares their gimmick. Seems to follow a pattern.
There's some pics of the original toys in the Brave thread: http://www.tfw2005.com/boards/showpost.php?p=875107&postcount=540
