that the pretenders are cool. edit: anyways, i forgot to put this in here. which pretenders are your fav. blah blah blah
bludgeon, thunderwing/black shadow, crossblades/blue bacchus, metalhawk, vroom, skyhammer, roadgrabber, roadblock, dinoking, and monstructor are my favorites, gunrunner is alright too i think
pretty simple, you'll find a lot of them tf close to how he does, but if you like the character or his look, go for it
i only got skyhammer, and the tiny amount of play time i have managed to get with him he is a fun figure, if it wasn't for the GPS i would highly recommend him
I only own Cloudburst, Waverider and Thunderwing, but I'm a fan of them. Thunderwing (complete, Reprolabels, near-mint condition) is one of the jewels of my collection and the other two are also fun. I'd love to get some more, with Submarauder and Bludgeon at the top of my list, but I just don't have the money for vintage stuff right now.
I only like monstructor because he is one of the rarer jewels of my collection (of course he stays under wraps in the basement), other than that I never really liked the pretender series. I was really amazed at the price he can fetch.
Even when I was 8 years old back in '88, I always thought the Pretender concept was really, really stupid. Like a lot of the other gimmicks from the last couple years of G1, it struck me as a floundering attempt to keep the line active in the face of falling popularity (much like how Micromasters were designed to be a Transformers equivalent of Micro Machines - the main difference being that Micromasters still turned out to be awesome). Now that I'm older I still think they're pretty lame. The shells are mostly inarticulate bricks, and the robots almost universally transform by folding the robot in half and sticking an accessory on top to make it vaguely look like something.
The idea of TFs getting human disguises is somewhat ok to me ( although I think the toys themselves suck)...but I REALLY don't get the idea of TFs getting the disguise of a boar monster, skull monster, fish monster, or..wait, I think one even had a Pretender disguise of a motorcycle. Now that's stupid.
Some of the characters been awesome in fiction, Bludgeon, thunderwing etc. But as a concept... not so much. I'm going to buy the new Bludgeon and thank Primus, he wont be a pretender
It's like you've been reading my mind! I feel exactly the same way. When I first saw Pretenders on the shelves, I thought to myself: "What the hell is this shit?!" They looked like something out of MOTU... Even though the Masterforce cartoon depicts Pretenders as being awesome toys, The actual figures are a total disappointment (including the reverred Metalhawk). Yeah, definitely not a fan of Pretenders here...
I like Pretenders even though I own few of them. I have Gunrunner, Submarauder and Finback; and so far Gunrunner is my favorite. I want to get the rest of the mega and ultra pretenders and hopefully Bombburst as well one day.
I had Landmine, Waverider, Skullgrin, Gunrunner, and Doubleheader. Oh, and Slog and Birdbrain from the Monstructor set. The first four I mentioned were among my favorite toys. The simple transformation made them extremely fun to play with, and they usually featured as major characters in my imaginary scenarios. In fact, since I thought Waverider looked like a girl, "she" was Landmine's girlfriend. Sadly, I lost those first four in a house fire when I was 10. I managed to get a Landmine off ebay a couple years ago, but never really felt like dropping any money to get the others back. Too much other good stuff.
