Personally I quite like lining them up with their cards and I do actually quite like the story telling conceit. There's something quite enjoyable about posing these tiny Cybertronian gods on Fortress Maximus and Trypticon'c city modes. And like I say, I do buy into the mythology, so I can certainly appreciate the frustration that people feel about some of these being hard to get.
Plus, it's just collecting innit? The collecting impulse encourages completism.

Big long ramble about Predaking incoming.

I 100%-absolutely-fan boy-no objectivity at all-hopelessly loved the Predacons. So, combiners were cool but by early '87 they were already a bit passe, taken over by the Movie cast in my affections (Time moved quickly and I was fickle back then). We all knew the drill; team of similarly themed vehicles that'd combine into a big boy. Got it. But then the Predacons came along and I was thrilled by a combiner team all over again. They were great. They seemed like the nastiest, hardest bastards in the Decepticon ranks, kind of like a proto Decepticon Justice Division without the ideological commitment. No wonder both Megatron and Shockwave were employing them as the nuclear option.

I was first introduced to them in 'Prey' two parter, significantly the first original UK material Furman had produced since 'Target:2006' had concluded. After seven weeks of some of the blandest American stories and an ok Christmas themed tale I was hungry for high drama. And man, did I get it. This was probably the first time I'd seen 'the death of Optimus Prime' (I hadn't actually seen the movie by this point) and throughout the story the threat seemed so real, he seemed so outclassed, that I totally bought the ending. It wouldn't have worked if the Predacons hadn't been such powerful and charismatic designs. And Geoff Senior, at his TF peak, rendered them with such attitude and ferocity.

And of course there was that wonderful little bit of serendipity that Furman exploited with Divebomb 'stealing' Swoop's name. Like any nerdy detail loving TF fan will tell you, Divebomb was the name Swoop originally had on the G1 show bible. To adult eyes it seems incredibly silly that if you beat someone in a fight you can have their name, and an ongoing feud thrown into the bargain, but back in the 80's when I wasn't even into double figures it felt like a very real and compelling grudge. Sadly after the inevitable Dinobot vs Predacon match this crowds trundled off into background character obscurity. For me, only Bludgeon's iteration of the Mayhem Attack Squad came anywhere as close to being as legitimate a threat as these guys.

When I got back into collecting around late 2012 I began to watch reviews on youtube. The gut response of which 'never released in the UK' reviews I sought out first was telling. Constructicons? Nah. Omega Supreme? Shrug. Trypticon? In time, sure. Fortress Maximus and the Predacons? Fuck yes! I almost felt like I was a wee kid again, looking through those old G1 catalogues with eyes wide with wonder. Except now the catalogue moved. And had awkward and cringey narration.

When I got a big redundancy settlement payout from my old job I splurged on the Platinum Edition Predaking. Sure, I guess I'd have liked to get an old school version with the yellow, but in the end it didn't matter. It was the Predacons. They turned up on the Saturday before I started my new job and I was almost like a kid of Christmas Day, opening the box excitedly and taking each one out to admire, inspect, and sticker up. It was an awesome feeling, but I couldn't shake that buzzing little voice in the back of my head that kept on saying "shit, these are a bit fucking weird aren't they?". The size and stockiness of Predaking is definitely way cool and I love the way he stands apart from the 'Scramble City' style teams. It really makes you feel like you've got something really special in your hands. But he's as ungainly as he is impressive. There's something just a little more elegant and well, playable about the 'Special Teams'. Many of the design solutions feel very 'un-transformery' to me, which makes a lot of sense when you read about the designer.

Things start to get really awkward when you get down to the individual bots. Sure Rampage and Divebomb look pretty cool in robot mode, but Tantrum and Headstrong just look...like dweebs. Like, they were very likely bullied at school. Razorclaw is, as they say, problematic. He looks cool. All the hard work that the lion's head on his chest and that magnificent, malevolent head sculpt are doing is utterly undermined by those arms. Those stubby, stupid looking arms. "Yeah, but Astrotrain?" Yeah, but RAZORCLAW! The fucking leader of one of the coolest Decepticon teams. He should be a total hard bastard of a toy, and with those arms he never will be.

I really like all the beast modes. Sure, they're kind of flamboyantly weird, but that's something I'm totally ok with when it comes to Transformers. More so than stumpy arms, obviously. There's a definite care and attention gone into the design of the beast modes and it makes the wonkiness of some of those bot modes all the more frustrating. These guys really do make me feel so incredibly dissonant and discombobulated. Like, I think they look fantastic together. They rock team colours in a way that the Constructicons don't (for me, of course). Each one stands as an individual, distinct from his team but clearly a member of it, in much the same way as the Dinobots and Insecticons. But then the whole effect just gets skewed but the weirder aspects.

And when I first saw PotP Predaking I was thinking the design team must be out to recreate that very feeling. Like, that was him alright. That's 100% Predaking, with minimal updates to the core design of the character. But he looked really skinny. and disproportionate. He lacked that heft and menace that my mind's eye picture of Predaking. And the lion head looked too small (ok, now I'm just being petty and bitchy). And then more photos came and with every new set I'd go from thinking it was actually looking pretty good to thinking it looked dodgy as fuck.

So it was a wonderful surprise when I opened up the box and Predaking and all his component parts were actually pretty good. Obviously it was Razorclaw I got out first and man, he really works! Despite essentially being a big block with a lion's head and some legs and some dubiousness around the lion's hind legs and and rear, it's a fine beast mode, and it totally looks like the G1 character. It's when you transform him from beast to 'bot that you really get a sense of how far we've come since Combiner Wars Devastator. Now, don't get me wrong. I liked Devastator plenty. It was a game changer and a lot of fun. But the way that Razorclaw's legs tab together was my first clue that the engineering soloutions had taken a step up.

Inevitably Razarclow is blocky and yes, that chest is way to big for those limbs, but those arms certainly aren't stubby. I've waited years for a really good Razorclaw and, while he's not perfect, he really does look the part. Obviously, as a G1 TF:UK saddo, I wanted my Predacons and Dinobots to scale well with each other. That they don't is as much the fault of the PotP Dinobots as it is the Predacons, but at least I can have Razorclaw and Grimlock go toe to toe, right?

Well, no. Razorclaw is about a head taller than Grimlock, making all these guys very big Voyagers. While it irritates the scale fascist in me, at least I'm getting some value for money?

Rampage and Divebomb are pretty much more of the same. Admirable, but compromised bot with very blocky, and maybe not totally convincing beast modes. But the real problems come with Tantrum and Headstrong. They're not as awful as I thought they'd be and you can kind of ignore the problem if you squint right. But really, there is no pretending that they don't have a big block that's nearly the same width as their chest that goes from their shoulders to their ankles. It's an astonishingly crappy soloution to the 'where do we put the thighs', even though I could never come up with a better one myself.

But I forgive them, because the combined mode of Predaking himself is amazingly good. CW Devastator wasn't exactly the most poseable figure in the world. On a good day his arms would hold their position if you raised them up. But Predaking is incredibly posebale and dynamic. There's just something about the satisfying click of a strong ratchet. The ankle tilts are just as sturdy. Another problem I had with Devy was that the limbs would untab in a variety of ways as I moved him around, but Preadking stays tabbed up tight right up until I push the ankle tilts to a ridiculous degree.

But the main sell is that predaking looks fantastic. He was always the biggest of the combiners, so it's very fitting that he gets the Titan treatment. Some have complained that his waist is far too tiny, but I can't say it bothers me in the slightest. He looks every bit as imposing as he should. The thing that really impressed me was the way the limbs attach to the torso. They've really got the most out of every component, particularly the Divebomb's wings/backpack form the waist and the wings.

From the rumours around the next Generations trilogy I'm beginning to think we've seen the last of the Titans. That's a real shame if this is the level the design team are working at. It can't help but feel like squandered potential. But if this is the last Titan then they're going out on a high point.

 

I just had a crazy idea (that I myself do not have the chops to pull off) to redo Predaking into a Maximal combiner.

Headstrong = Rhinox.
Divebomb = BW Silverbolt/BWII Skywarp
Razorclaw = BW Prowl/Lio Junior
Rampage = Either Cheetor or Tigatron.
Tantrum = BWII Bighorn/BW Bonecrusher.

I think it could work.

 

Just got Beachcomber today, so now I can do this...

"We won..."

 

I'll post pictures if it succeeds.
I have an idea for Elita as limb mode.
It's not hard and with a different character.
That's why i have already popped her combiner head off to see if it's possible.
Because this normal Elita combiner body is just damn ugly.
So my Elita will stay Elita and the combined form is actually without her but only her head.

 

The golden lagoon got destroyed, so yeah we won.

 

Welcome to Jurassic Park!

 

Is this all 4 Jurassic park together?
Because each movie only has 1 T- rex in it, and you got 4 of them.
The humans can't survive 4 T- rexes.

 

So, what are your thoughts on Optimal Optimus? Worth picking up?

Gorira's so friggin' nice, but it's crazy expensive (the reissue's up for $180). This guy with the add on kit costs 100 bucks less......

 

Nah man, life just..uh..er....found a way!

 

what are you talking about? the second one had a baby trex as a plot point

 

And a family of three at the end. (Just watched the first two with my little one for the first time this week)

 

and one of them loses in the third one

 

Don't know how similar this is to you idea, but...

(This isn't mine, "Grimlockimus" on Twitter is doing it)

 

I got the last 3 Terrorcons they are great but does everyone's Sinnertwin have the loose shoulder things that the blue arms connect to?

 

"Subjugation is the destiny of all living beings."

I'm so glad I skipped regular Optimus for this one!

 

What part of it is loose?

Do you have the shoulder assembly rotated all the way up, or down? It clicks in place. (if that's the part you're referring to)

 

Looks good in color!

 

looks like the standard version wont look too bad on sdcc primal either

 

Still there's room for a sdcc version. They don't have too change much

 

Finally found Wave 3 Legends and Primemasters at my nearest Target. I already got the Primemasters off of Ebay a couple months ago, but better late than never.