That's not really locked in though, but the mold seems way sturdier than both Hot Spot and Onslaught. I agree it holds fine this way! Just shave/cut off the protrusions on the long red hinges inside the legs (they're supposed to go in the other way). I think it's actually very easy, people just don't expect that part to be wrong and only find out when the 'knobs' pushes and deforms the legs' plastics, unfortunately. I have no idea why those parts aren't simply flat on both sides, don't think they do anything meaningful for them to have knobs.
The tab seems intended to slightly control the folding into vehicle/torso mode. It stops you folding that arm further than needed as the leg concertinas up. Might possibly prevent some accidental stress somewhere? But once folded correctly with the top of the leg is clipped in, the tab doesn't seem to add any particular strength or stability. So Pyra Magna with it shaved off works just as well as Hot Spot in all modes as far as I can tell.
I finally got mine and clipped the parts down.. yet it still created a small stress mark on each leg. Oh well. Not a huge deal, I guess. I haven't combined them yet.. I'm a little disappointed they didn't spring to give the mortorcycle a weapon... Also Dustup's bra doesn't like to stay plugged in...
Man, she's GREAT. She really does have a bit of a premium look to her. A LOT of painted surfaces and details. Except on Pyra Magna, which sucks, because she has an awesome design. The red plastic just looks and feels...thin. she definitely won't be entering fire truck mode again, as thats where most of that red plastic shows its ugly face. Her robot mode is an entirely different story though. So nice. All the problems people have reported are present, but they're small ones. Those extra plastic pieces on Pyra Magna's legs seem to be on every single one. While I think I know why they put them there (to help fold UP the legs and not to put them in too far), it really hurts collapsing the legs DOWN correctly. I already had slight stress marks where they were pressing up against. Cut them off, no issues. If Hot spot and Onslaught can survive without them, so can she. Honesty, when I first saw Victorion, I could not have cared less about it. 2 AB molds, 2 stunticons and Hot Spot? Boo. But all these girls in hand have so much character to them, including the heli twins (still havent gotten their names down yet). Even my expected least favorite of the group (the Breakdown mold one) turned out to be super cool. The joints are tight as they should be. Pyra Magna's thigh joints are a bit too tight, but nothing too outrageous or scary. And the Nightbird lookalike's chest piece has a bit of an attitude problem with wanting to peg in properly. The WEAPONS. Are these inspired by anything at all? Totally a knock out, single and combined. The new hands and feet are cool too. The hands come off as a bit small though, and holding the sword looks a tad silly from most angles. The hips on Pyra/Victorion have the same issues that the mold did previously. But at least for me, it's always been easily remedies by just messing around with the hips, usually by clicking one or both back 1 click if you want her to stand straight. But these are all easily gotten over nitpicks to me. I love her. I'm happy they muted down that green a bit, but to me, it could have been a shade or two BACK to that original color. I wish her head looked a bit less square, but it's not terrible. In fact, it's rather nice. She just looks so cohesive and complete. I also like using Dustup(?) as a chest plate, not only to differentiate her from Defensor, but to cover up the otherwise flat and boring-desinged chest. At least to me. Just makes her look more dynamic. For $90 shipped on HTS, she's great. Absolutely totally recommend. And hey, you could say it's a part of Transformers history, right? I still want a MOSC Windblade just for the hell of it. First fan-built bot is pretty cool, and the case holds true for Victorion x6.
I like the set overall. Still figuring out what configuration of limbs I like best. I think Victorion is definitely going to be on display for Xmas - she's got the colors for it! Nitpickys: . I trimmed up the leg swing-arms for better locking . Most of the joints are pretty tight - maybe a bit too tight in spots. It makes the looser stuff stand out - like DustUp's (Lambo mold) wobbly hips. . The combined sword weapon is pretty darn nifty, but the end of it is made of transparent plastic, yet the blade is completely painted? C'MON! . Too bad Rust Dust (biker bra) didn't rate a new head. The paint job kinda accentuates how butch the chin looks. A pretty winner set for the most part, especially at the discount HTS code price. I gotta figure out what to do with that awesome mini-poster that was in the box.
Some of my thoughts... An excellent paint job and color scheme. The unified color scheme really ties this figure together. They've got a lot of little stand-out details and the Cybertronian writing patterns look great. All of the new head sculpts are awesome and believably female, without resulting to anything cliched, including the combiner mode head. I do still think the Breakdown mold is the weakest Combiner Wars figure, but it works better here, but in robot and leg mode. Arm mode is still very iffy. In fact, my only complain with this is a minor one. As cool as the sword is, I'd really rather they have blasters and Victorion have a big gun instead.
I got mine yesterday. For the most part pretty happy. But the thigh swivels on my Pyra Magna were frighteningly tight. I really worried that I'd snap her hips off transforming her. I managed to get it apart and scraped ha lot of paint off the inside of the joint. Now she's still nice and tight, but I don't have to worry about breaking her. In a bizzare note, both my Breakdown's never fit the back of their car modes together well, but Jumpstream leaves no gap whatsover, and fits perfectly. Conversely my Dead End and Streetwise fit together perfectly with the back end of the car, but Dustup always has a gap.
I realized that the copters have holes so you can rotate the arms and have the fins facing backwards when they are legs. It's in the instructions, but to be fair, it's not like I didn't know everyone's transformations by now. Anyways it's nice, keeps the fins from being in the way when you use them as legs. And my Jumpstream has gone longer without falling apart than my first Breakdown did. That's a good sign. Too bad you can't switch around the head of Pyra Magna's pickaxe. Do that and peg it on the ladder in truck mode, and it'd look like some sort of giant Jaws of Life thing.
Got mine from Target.com, colors really growing on me, imperial red and almost jade like green is certainly not a combination you see often. New hands and feet and giant sword are great.
Just got Victorion today. Yes, I know that Rust Dust is on upside-down. Here's the UPC if anyone wants it: I like her, but she's a bit fiddly. More details soon. It's late, and I'm exhausted.
Mine showed up on Thursday and I got a chance to unbox and check it out over the weekend. The not-scottish: I noticed some shoddy paintwork on the rear of the car mode of Dustup, I remember seeing that posted here (might have been in the Victorion discussion thread, though), but otherwise no QC issues to speak of. Rust Dust's joints are a little loose, I guess? Honestly I'm having a hard time coming up with any quality issues, which I think is a good sign. Pyra Magna's knee joints are the same on mine as it seems it is on everyone else's. I guess this is intentional, although I couldn't figure why, so I slightly disassembled the legs and sliced the protruding parts off. It was easy enough - just remove three screws and use an xacto knife to cut through the part near the alt mode's "light bar" molding where a thin layer of glue holds the two pieces together. Note: it won't come completely apart due to another pin in the lower part of the leg, but there's enough give to get the knee out so you can work on it. (Another note, if you're going to do this, do not try to pull the pin and swap the pieces - the type of pin used isn't just a straight-through pin like seen on most joints, it's closer to one of those types that you need to heat up, and the plastic won't support a lot of stress so you're likely to break it if you try) The "meh" As for the figures, well, I couldn't vote in the fan's choice poll so I won't grumble about having two more uses of the helicopter mode here. But I would have liked to see one of them using Takara's 4-blade rotor Vortex version to switch things up a little. And a tweak to Rust Dust's head sculpt would have been nice. I will grumble about the colors a little, although in this case it's not because I don't like what the fans chose. I'm a sucker for oddball paint schemes and huge fan of the ridiculous color schemes of the G2 figures, so a bright red, cyan and white is fine by me. While the red is bright and plentiful, the cyan is more... pale grey-green-blue, I guess, and the "white" is few and far between. I really liked the artwork for these figures, and the initial pictures at least got the red and cyan right. When they showed the more faded color I thought it would work pretty well, maybe if the red was toned down a little or if more white/grey/silver was added to break it up or accent it. But as it is, the red is just really overpowering without much else to break it up. Dust-up, in particular, is just all red. I know there's some green in there (I'm having a hard time calling the color cyan at this point) but there's so much red it just drowns everything else out. She'll definitely need some touch-ups. I actually find myself thinking I'd have preferred the original "in your face" cyan and red, but either way I think they'd have needed more of the white/grey/silver. I'm also torn on the new hands/feet. I've got them cobbled together and mounted on Pyra Magna's back in bot mode, so they're not really in the way, but I liked the added armament that the standard-issue HFGs provided the other teams (included the G2 sets). The Tony the Tiger (it's grrrrreat!) Setting aside any obvious excitement about six new female characters being added to the Transformers universe, I like that these figures were released without excessive retooling being done to turn their feet into high-heels (with exception to the combiner mode feet), or to give them boobs. I get WHY this is done in artwork and design, they're supposed to be obviously feminine design cues, but it always just seemed a bit out of place to me. Sort of like Arcee in the '86 movie - she's a girl, so of course she's pink? And I mean, who does action stuff in high heels? It bugs me in movies, too. Anyways, the new head sculpts are all well done (Jumpstream's seems a bit small, I guess), especially the combiner head. I don't think it's quite as obvious in Pyra Magna's alt mode as others have mentioned. Combined mode, the color scheme works much better than it does in individual bot modes. Here too I would have preferred the brighter cyan, but it's not quite as much solid red as, say, Dust-Up is. The new hands look a little small but I like the extra poseability they have, and the new feet, my problem with the high-heel-design aside, are pretty nice for extra posing ability (they do tend to slip on smooth surfaces, though). Joints are all tight, and the weapons included are stellar. The colors on the swords are great, and the weapons all work well in separated and combined forms. The verdict I'll try and get some pictures posted up of the team in with the G2 combiner sets later, maybe after I've had time to do a little detailing on them. They're definitely going to live with my other G2 figures, the colors fit there so well I have to wonder if it was intentional to release her in a set with the other G2 sets. Overall: I think this is a really nice set, but very, very red. If you don't mind the red or don't mind doing a little bit of detailing to fix it up, and you don't mind getting two more helicopters, this set is worth owning.
I'll leave the positives out of this right now because I need to state the negatives. Is anyone else scared of the paint coming off because the paint looks like it could come off really easy... Where do I store the hands when everyone is in robot mode? And my pyra magma has an arm problem when you bend her arm up to peg it into the shoulder in combine mode, it doesn't stay. It's like there was a groove missing in the arm to make it stay up all the way. Aside from all that though it's as good as a combiner usually is in this line.
caved and bought one off target.com. $25 off $100 but victorion's $99.99 so i had to get a cheap toy to push it over. all together was $85 for victorion and some pony toy.
