Just to be clear, I'm not saying that any single powermaster is a bad toy: but as for the gimmick, whats the point?

All it does. as far as I can tell, is lock a transformations tep being the gimmick. Headmasters add something, as do targetmasters, but powermasters simply make something slightly more difficult.

So what do people like about the gimmick? Is it the toys themselves that people have fond memories of, or do some people actually enjoy the gimmick itself?

 

I enjoyed the gimmick itself. I saw it as a power supercharger, and I loved the exposed engine block look on Prime.

 

i was actually think about that recently, and i kind of agree ~ as a gimmick, it doesn't really make a ton of sense.

But honestly, i just kinda like the idea of the minibots being keys that unlock the transformation + the way they became the engines looked pretty cool.

 

There is none. I always left them away, cos they look better without the powermaster. Optimus gained a beer belly through his for example.

 

G1 Double Dealer's gimmick is quite fun, as while hie is a triple-change he requires the correct powermaster to unlock his Autobot and Decepticon non-vehicle modes. As a kid I had play patterns around the powermasters being separated from their main bots, meaning that certain character's couldn't just transform at will to open a can'o'whoopass when needed.

Each to their own of course  

 

I have never been a big fan of the Powermaster gimmick. Headmaster either. The thing that I've never liked is that loosing the Powermaster or Headmaster component could basically ruin an otherwise sweet toy.

 

I agree with the first part. Double Dealer was pretty dope. The rest of them do nothing for me. Powermasters are just transforming Cyber Keys. To me, it was easily the least interesting of the three -masters.

That's not to say Hasbro couldn't revisit it in some fashion that would be good. For example, a head/power master (head in robot mode, engine in alt mode, which is not dissimilar to the way the TR heads can fit in the guns to be quasi-targetmasters) would be fun in both modes.

 

Modern day I imagine they would just make them act more like cyber keys. Not integral to the transformation but plugging one in unlocks some feature.

 

My only attachment to them was the only one I had as a kid. Powermaster Optimus Prime. That was mostly because Optimus was back from the dead and I had another chance to own him. I never owned any others. As an adult, I now own them all and I agree. It's a pointless gimmick. You basically have a toy with one step locked, and the powermaster is the key. The only one that really utilizes this gimmick in a cool way is Double Dealer. Because each Powermaster only unlocks one of his two modes.

 

I wonder what Maketoys does with the gimmick with those decepticon jets. Transform!!God On!!

 

In modern day era, the closest to the powermasters would be the Omega Lock from Cybertron Primus... basically, while not needed to transform him, still, used to officially transform him

 

Kind of how you need that little minicon to shoot Unicrons chest missle

 

Fiction wise in the old comic it made perfect sense, and the toys tied into the comics more than the cartoon...not saying it's a bad gimmick but it wasn't the best when you'd lose the ability to transform it if you lost the Powermaster. Brilliant marketing though since the toy wouldn't work or it would break so you'd have to beg mom and dad to go buy a new one lol

 

It was the whole nebulon thing in the comics. The powermasters needed the nebulons to process the power from the planet

EDIT: NINJA'D!

 

Weren't the powermasters designed in Japan and then the American story was just written around the gimmick that already existed? In Japan, iirc, the idea was that the powermasters were closer to mechs that were operated by human pilots (more like the humans merged with and became the mech rather than pilot them). In that sense it makes sense because it's an entirely different character (Powermaster Optimus was actually Ginrai in Japan), and since it can't operate in robot mode without the powermaster, there's no way it could transform from vehicle to robot.

As for the toys themselves, I had forgotten that the transformation locked. It's possible I didn't realize it and I just forced my Optimus to transform, breaking the locking mechanism. Or maybe I just never bothered to pull his Powermaster and try to transform him without it.

 

Soooo, Mini-cons?

 

The only thing I like about it is it makes Optimus Prime look like a bad ass who can overhead press 8,000 tons. Other then that I can take or leave it.

So in a nutshell I like: the correlation between Optimus' appearance and the Powermasters line.

 

As far as I'm aware, we don't know for certain "which came first" once the Hasbro and Takara lines started diverging.

I'd wager it was Hasbro, though, given stuff like Ginrai having the retracting fists that PMOP doesn't. Takara retooling the figure to add those seems way, way more likely than Hasbro retooling it to remove them.

 

Looking at the way things are today ( Unite Warriors ), that would be a safe bet. However, things were different back then. The comic audience was WAY smaller than the cartoon audience, so overall interest in the line was shrinking fast. About the only thing carrying it was the momentum the toon had. Given that Takara had a cartoon still and made Overlord, that we didn't get here, I believe they made Ginrai and Hasbro simplified it. They weren't doing many large toys at that time, but Optimus was a big enough character they knew it would sell. But they simplified it to lower costs because they were still unsure of selling large toys for what they considered a dying toy line.