A few years back, I bought at a severe discount- i think it was like a, "Buy anything and you get three free Skeleton Warriors figures free" kind of sale- Machine Wars Optimus Prime and Sandstorm. I hear a lot about BW, BM, etc, but little about Machine Wars. what gives? oh, Even at almost rock bottom price, Prime's trailer in battle mode is LAME as hell.
I don't know too much about it myself, other than that it was a very short lived toy series that ran at approximately the same time that the first wave of Beast Wars came out. I believe it was a KB exclusive line... there were maybe a dozen figures total?
For starters, it was one of the smaller lines if I'm not mistaken; secondly, I don't think there are many that really liked that line at all.
machine wars was pretty much a filler line by hasbro during the first wave of bw. when bw first came out they werent sure if it was gonna take off so they made this line full of repaints with old names that were all vehicles to make some money. Josh from these boards and a couple others were trying to make a series out of it. there is no story behind machine wars. so to fans its gold. *edit* mechatron beat me with a better answer hah.
It was just a small test line to see if vehicle type Transformers would be marketable, IIRC. I wasn't actually collecting at the time so I missed out on the story behind that series!
It uses a lot of European TFs but with the cool features (i.e. missiles) disabled. For instance Optimus Prime is a repaint of Thunderclash with his awesome rapid fire missile thing taken out.
It was a filler/test line (to see if a return to vehicles would be welcomed). All the mega/leader class figures were recoloured/retooled (read: gimmicks removed) versions of european g2 figures - and they came with much better decos than their g2 forebears. The basic figures all the the flip transformation, and featured a high level of articulation (for the time). I thought they were very very well done, especially the Mirage/Prowl mold and the Megatron/Megaplex mold. I really liked the way their two piece guns (that were actual gune sized relative to them and not the size of their torso or leg or something) stored in the legs. Overall a good if shortlived test line. I had (past tense - all dead now... oh and some are in a kitbash I used) pretty much all of them and thought they were epic. The leader/megas are meh but the basics are definitely worth picking up (or any derivation of them - they were re released in BW2, Robot Masters, and Robots in Disguise)
The only cool toy in the line IMO is Starscream... Optmus Prime is decent but it sux that they disabled the launching gimmick because it was so cool.
If I were to ever found a Junker Thunderclash I would to "Repair" MW Primes' Missiles. That and I would have to have some sculpt a faceplate for me.
I had no idea that they took out Thunderclash's missile launcher. What the hell's the point of the trailer then? I wanted to get these before. Now I wish for them to have never happened. Hell no. The elbows move up and down, that's it. All the cool is in the gravity-feed semi-automatic missile launcher.
No he's a typical G1 brick, but I like him a lot, and his truck mode looks a lot like those racing trucks out there.
Filler crap... It stands to reason if KB is throwing em out into the mall's walkway, then it is a filler line to begin with. i asked mainly because there are so many toy lines now out that i stick mainly to G1, (i admit i own a G2 Sidswipe) or if there is a G1 fig released in another series (Primus or Unicron for example.) Revoltech, Masterpiece, and 85 percent of the reissues at TRU i have never seen. dinky as they were, glad I got mine when i did.
