So here in Australia we skipped Wave 4 and have gone straight into Wave 5, which is hitting shelves next to the other AOE stuff. All in all, I think this is probably the weakest wave we've gotten. Wave 4 was awesome in heaps of ways and this one feels like a big downgrade. I love the obsolete Kreons, but this has so many I had to look up most of them and there are just too many brown and dark red Kreons for a single set. For those after them, here's the codes on the packets: 45- Skrapnel 46- Fangwolf 47- Misfire 48- Trypticon 49- Mindswipe 50- Nightbeat 51- Highbrow 52- Jarugar 53- Jetwash 54- Wingspan Hawk 55- Torosaur 56- Silversnout That said, lets check them out! First up is the very originally named Wingspan Hawk! I've looked into it, but I really can't work out who he's supposed to be. He doesn't appear to match any of the AOE combiners either. He's a Decepticon. Maybe someone can help me out? EDIT: Thanks, PopCulturePooka, he's based on G1 Wingspan! His alt-mode is apparently a hawk, but it doesn't really look like much of anything. The equally inspired named Fangwolf comes next. He is based on Cybertron Snarl! He even retains Snarl's Wolf Head hand! Awesome. He possibly also doubles as the fifth member of AOE Combiner Lazerbolt. He pulls off the wolf look a lot more successfully then Wingspan Hawk pulls off a hawk. Silversnout looks pretty fierce. Like Wingspan, I'm not really sure where he's supposed to fit in, although possibly he's supposed to match AOE combiner Grimstone? He's got a tail, so that's pretty cute. He transforms into a dinosaur type thing. Possibly a Stegosaurus considering the spikes? I really love the new dinosaur parts. Jetwash is, obviously based on G1 Jetfire! I wouldn't be able to tell you why he's "Jetwash" here though, seems a rather bizarre name change. I would've preferred a less spiky helmet, but this works too. He turns into a gun-packing jet! The Scavenger Misfire is for whatever reason an Autobot in Kre-O instead of a Decepticon. Talk about... A misfire. He's still unmistakably G1 Misfire though, I'm disappointed by the mix up though. They did pretty well emulating his G1 Jet mode as best as they could. Mindswipe is obviously G1 Mindwipe! He looks really awesome, definitely one of my favourites in the set. He turns into a bat, although the instructions claim its a "Dino Mode". Definitely one of the better looking animal Kre-Os. Here's Nightbeat. You'd be forgiven to think this is supposed to be G1 Nightbeat, but for whatever reason its actually G1 Punch. Not really sure where that mix-up came from. Either way, he looks good and its refreshing to see a Yellow and Blue character in the sea of dull colours of this wave. I think cars are the most successful alt-mode for Microchangers. They always look petty good. A pretty darn cool addition is Trypticon! For the first time ever, he now has a robot mode. The T-Rex head does not like staying upright like that, it pops off constantly. Pretty ignorable though because... ... The T-Rex mode is ridiculously adorable! This is definitely the mode I'm keeping my Trypticon in. The chest design really solidifies this version as WFC Trypticon. EDIT: Thanks to XenoTK, it seems I was completely wrong about my WFC claim, the chest is spot on to Classics Trypticon! This guy is a dual homage between G1 and Classics! I love it! Jarugar is probably the coolest homage in the set. He's based on the Breastforce G1 Jallguar! I really love those sorts of obsolete homages in Kre-O. His alt-mode is an off-roader and it looks pretty good. Highbrow is based on G1 Highbrow, of course. Just like Misfire, they've screwed up his allegiance! He's an Autobot (and the instructions depict him as such) but his chest has a Decepticon logo! Seems MTMTE minor characters aren't faring too well allegiance-wise. Luckily, the chest piece mostly covers up the mishap. Unfortunately you can still see the Decepticon symbol if you look through the circle on the chest piece. Lame. His alt-mode is a twin-rotor helicopter, similar to his G1 self. Torosaur has a vicious looking robot mode. He appears to be the fifth member of the original AOE combiner Volcanicon. He turns into a... Thing. Possibly a dinosaur? The instructions just say "Beast Mode". Last but not least is Skrapnel, based on G1 Shrapnel! Finally the Insecticons are complete! Unfortunately, they've colored him to match the Insect combiner team of AOE original combiner Obsidian, so he doesn't match color-wise to his brethren. He still is unmistakably Shrapnel though and he even comes with Megatron in alt mode! Awesome! EDIT: As XenoTK pointed out, the colors match the G1 Zaptrap redeco of Shrapnel too! He turns into a Stag Beetle, as usual! So all in all, its an OK set. I love some (like Trypticon, Fangwolf and Nightbeat) while some could've been better with a little help (like Misfire and Skrapnel) and some I'm not really interested in (Like Wingspan Hawk and Silversnout). Interestingly, the package now says "Robot to Beast" although most are still vehicles! They're really plugging the Dinobot thing, I guess.
Trypticon's chest detail seems to be an homage to Classics Trypticon (The one who was a dragon) rather than the WFC one which might explain the abundance of teal in his torso area... And considering Fangwolf doesn't have a bit of silver on him I'm not really sure how well he fits in with the dynamic of the Lazerbolt components. Then there's the fact that each of his individual bots all seem to have more movie-accurate tech detail and lizard(???)-like alt modes (Although it's practically impossible to tell with these Micro-Changers), so aside from being white and blue and having a beast mode Fangwolf seems to have very little in common with the Lazerbolt team... While I definitely wouldn't put any money on Hasbro not designing Skrapnel to be the leftover member of the Obsidian group (Especially considering there's a very insect-like look to the alt modes of that team), there's always the possibility that his coloration is based on his Diaclone figure or the e-Hobby "Zaptrap" repaint based on it. And Mindswipe's bat mode seems like it look a lot better if the robot mode legs were just removed entirely. It's more of a man-bat mode at the moment...
It looks like WFC Trypticon to me, the finer details are missing, but the general shapes and placement of details are definitely there, such as the "eyes" on the chest, which unless my color blindness is tricking me were also teal, the placement of the Decepticon symbol and the general shapes around it also match, although they've taken liberties with the color. Although, looking at them together again, it DOES sort of look like the Dragon head on his chest... Maybe I am completely wrong. The more I look at it, the more I see the Classics Trypticon design. Nice work! And excellent triva, Kreon designers! Yeah, in that case possibly Silversnout is Lazerbolt's? It seems weird they'd give some fifth members but not all of them. Yeah! That works well too. Possibly its intended to do both? I definitely agree. I updated my post with your discoveries! This is what I love about Kreon Micro-Changers, there's so much trivia depth to them!
There's pretty clearly a dragon head "embedded" in the chest detail that looks like Cybertron Scourge's dragon head and Classics Trypticon was a repaint of of the Legends of Cybertron version of Scourge. The only thing I could conceivably interpret as eyes are the bits of teal torso detail poking out between the dragon's "horns". And while the Kreon version of Trypticon is pretty clearly a dinosaur and not a dragon, his Classics toy also had a Robot Mode and was Legends-scaled. Seems like a more obvious inspiration for the Micro-Changer version than one of the city or warship-scaled versions of Trypticon. EDIT: Nevermind, apparently you see it too now. They might have dispersed the usual leftover combiner team members between this wave and the next. Then again, I'm not sure if any of them really seem to match color schemes exactly with those teams, but I suppose Frostbite might be part of the Lazerbolt group... Then again, since the new combiners aren't really based on anything in any serious way, there's no telling how many components they are actually supposed to have. They could all have only four apiece, but then again there could be dozens more. Who knows?
All these slight renames, Misfire and Highbrow getting the wrong factions, and "Nightbeat" being based on an entirely different character makes this wave seem really sloppily done... Trypticon and Misfire (faction symbol aside) are must-haves for me. Mindwipe and Shrapnel are pretty interesting, though I've already made customs of both so I'll probably pass. I like how they did Highbrow's twin rotors and Fangwolf's head-hand. With Wingspan (Hawk) you could just buy a second to make his twin Pounce (Wolf). Torosaur looks a bit like Repugnus, though he and Silversnout seem overdetailed compared to the others.
Only Trypticon and Mindswipe interest me for customs. All of Microchangers are starting to look the same, there's not enough variety between the designs.
I want the parts to modify the custom I did a few months ago for my series of truly transformable Kreons.
I tried at a Beast Wars Megatron myself using the parts from this Wave + Blight and Bulkhead from Wave 3. If only we had a Megs chest! I might buy a second Trypticon in order to make a permanent one. His T-Rex mode is pretty much the same as Trypticon's.
Great photos, and, yeah, definitely some really cool homages in this set. Any chance of a peek at Highbrow's chest printing?
Thanks for the review and pics! I think I'm wanting the entire wave, especially Trypticon and Fangwolf (Fangwolf was actually the Galaxy Force name for Cybertron Snarl, so another cool nod there). That kinda sucks about Misfire and Highbrow's swapped faction symbols. In that last pic Highbrow doesn't look very thrilled about it.
Hmm, Highbrow's printing there seems to be the same vaguely Prime-esque style as Sunstreaker and some of the other guys in the next wave, all curves and points and not really matching their original design. Compare with, say, Mindwipe and Wingspan, whose printing is very faithful to their G1 toys...
