We're now at the tail end of Power of the Primes, with only Novastar and Punch/Counterpunch on the horizon, and War for Cybertron: Siege is right around the corner.

Looking back at the past 3 seasons of Transformers toys for the "fan" market, which one do you think is "best"?

How you define "best" is up to you. Best designs, best characters, best gimmicks, most fun, etc. In the end, you can only choose one: Combiner Wars, Titans Return, or Power of the Primes. In making your decision, you can also consider Japanese counterparts of each line such as UW for CW and a number of Legends for TR.

Prior to this year, my only CW/UW toy was UW Superion. I just wasn't impressed by the rest of the line, and I loathed CW Menasor. But to be fair, these past few months with the reintroduction of the combining gimmick by POTP and the release of Prime Wars Blast Off, I appreciated CW much more. I think Ultra Magnus, Bruticus/Baldigus, UW Devy, and UW Grand Galvatron are really good to excellent toys.

POTP is basically a combination of the Titan Master gimmick of TR and the combining gimmick of CW, and to be honest, it did not always work. I think the leaders of this line are pretty solid, though the only one I decided to buy is Optimal Optimus. Abominus and Predaking are amazing. A few Deluxes such as Dreadwind and Blackwing filled out the gaps in our collections, though they're flawed figures, for sure. Dinobots, finally, but personally I think Dinobots should at least be Voyagers, so I did not buy them. And cool, female TFs Elita-1 and Moonstar. Finally, I really love the small Pretenders that we got from this line, though their Targetmaster modes are mostly a miss.

Ultimately, my vote goes to Titans Return. It had noteworthy Leaders (Sixshot, Overlord, Blackshadow, Blaster, and even Super God Ginrai), Voyagers (Alpha Trion, Blitzwing, Astrotrain, Octane), Deluxes (the Triggerhappy mold, the Monsterbots, the Headmasters), Legends, and exclusives (Chaos on Velocitron and Siege on Cybertron).

Which would you vote for?

 

Titans Return.
No contest.
So much fun, so inventive (Highbrow, Scourge and Windblade are based on the same design, much like Broadside and Alpha Trion), amazing range of characters (Krok, Quake, the Jumpstarters, and Overlord all getting a-list treatment), two Titans, the introduction of the Titan Master price point - which was way more fun than I anticipated, and just the anticipation and excitement that came along with it all. And I just loved lining all the head's up.

I've seen some, shall we say, incredulity when I've said this before, but here goes; I actually thought the TR gimmick was pretty discrete in comparison with the CW-style figures.

 

It's hard to pick. I love combiners and PW3 have us the best combiners of the neo G1 epoch. So it's hard to pick between CW & POTP. Don't get me wrong I liked TR but there are only a hand full of characters from TR that I really like and enjoy playing with, but with combiners love them all!

 

Titans Return and it's really not close.

Lots of characters who haven't had a figure in a long time? Check
Gimmick that is mostly unobtrusive (not counting the Voyager class)? Check
Fantastic sculpts with fun and interesting transformations? Very Check

I look at the Jumpstarters or Triggerhappy and they just kill anything offered by the other two series. Even the figures that aren't quite as good (Chromedome, Hardhead, Blurr) are still fantastic and would stand out as being the best of either of POTP or CW. While I think POTP has some good stuff, it's nothing compared to the quality of the TR figures. Combiner Wars was, overall, pretty bad, imo. Some cool Leaders and combined modes and that's about it.

 

My vote goes to potp.

Really for only 2.5 reasons. Dinobots and Optimus/nemesis.

This was the toyline that pulled me back in to the transformers toy collection. I had been out of it since 2007. The figures that were available and the fact that it's essentially all 3 gimmick lines combined (evolution/combiner/Titan master) made it an easy option for me.

 

I have nearly all the figures from all the trilogy parts in my collection, missing only the ones not yet fully released, and I can say Titans return was fun for the amount of unique molds we got, Combiner wars on well the gimmick was awesome so Power of the primes is a close second,
Which one is my favorite? Hmm I would go with....well I dont know i liked them all

 

Totally forgot about the Jumpstarters. They made the Mech Ideas/3P version totally obsolete. They're probably the best deluxe mold in a long time, maybe ever (can't think of anything better).

I should give Leader Optimus a shot. I'll get it mostly for the screen accurate Orion Pax, but here it's still too expensive at $50++.

 

TR has the best stand-alone figures. But... so? A great stand alone figure is a great stand alone figure. I give it to CW because, while not the best stand alone figures, they were all at least 'decent' stand alone figures *and* accomplished combining. Accomplished a whole combining line. Going back to before the Prime Wars trilogy started *that* is an accomplishment, a huge step forward. TR had great, the best figures, but it didn't make the huge step CW did.

TR also updated a lot of characters, but they were characters that could've been updated anytime. CW updated combining characters (with the gimmick), that would have never had a chance to get updated as such any other time.

CW gets knocked for mold re-use too, but if one "trimmed the fat", and got the new Takara molds & remolds, there is still a lot of heavy remolds, but actually very few "repaints with alternate heads" in this line up:

"Trimmed" CW:


'bots: https://i.imgur.com/Cf57LpA.jpg

'cons: https://i.imgur.com/NJBiFpw.jpg

 

POTP, for the variety. Don't like combiners, there's armor wearing like Pax/Optimus. Not feeling Headmasters, see P/CP and others. Hate heads without a face, here comes the Dinobots.

My favorite figure from each line:

CW - UW Devastator.
TR - Amazon Orion Pax from 2-pack.
POTP - New Blast Off.

 

CW, for PERFECTING combiner toy technology. TR has great individuals, but CW gave us 5 of the original G1 teams. Abominus could easily have been included in CW but they decided to have POTP use combining as a secondary gimmick.

 

Nothing to add here. I consider potp better than CW, but TR is in far far ahead.

 

Blows my mind that people would pick anything other than Titans Return, but I’m happy to hear that people were getting something from Hasbro that they really wanted and enjoyed.

For me, Titans Return provided the right gimmicks (pilots, cockpits on vehicle mode, and city building), it provided the most unique engineering (they weren’t limited by the combiner peg), and the best character selection (seriously, we got overlord, Black Shadow, and even Krok!). This is THE line to beat imo, probably the line I enjoyed most since animated.

 

Titans Return by far. Very few toys were eaten by their gimmick...in fact, it seemed to almost free them up without having to worry about the head. Choice obscurer characters abounded and everything integrated nicely.

Combiner Wars was good to get us most of the Scramble City guys. Unfortunately, we had some odd-ball tag ons that, in retrospective, simply ate slots that could have been better served by other characters (Cyclonus, Battle Core OP, Scattershot in lieu of the box set). All the leaders were good but they each had a caveat (Minimus?, Megatron's rubber treads eating plastic, only 3 out of 6 seekers).

PotP is a distant third. The legends-class is outstanding and Abominus is a great combiner. And CHUG Dinobots finally! But the Primemaster gimmick feels half-assed and potential Combiner groups (seekers and fembots) half-formed. And while the leaders are neat, all of them once again have caveats (Optimus's atrocious cab mode and weird ankles, Rodimus's shoulders, Primal missing his tank mode).

Also wish we could have gotten the G2 Firestormers as a combiner group in PotP:

G2 black Sideswipe
G2 blue/neon green Jazz
G2 blue Blades
G2 bright green/blue pants Hound
G2 bright red Inferno OR G2 blue Grimlock

 

For me it's since end of cybertron that I haven't enjoyed a line so much.

I've been deceived by potp after TR and I'm not sure I'll enjoy Siege.

 

Cybertron was the toyline I left transformers with. After unicron trilogy ended, I dropped out. Potp brought me back.

 

A tie between TR and CW

 

Then you missed out on probably the greatest toyline in decades by two years. Don't walk, RUN to Amazon and Ebay to purchase some Titans Return figures.

 

1. Titans Return
2. Combiner Wars
3. Power of the Primes

Titans Return is easily a top 3 toyline in Transformers to me. We got G1 gaps filled in, ridiculously playable gimmicks in the titan masters, and 2 city bots released, and kickass voyagers that were ALL triple changers.

I'd put Combiner Wars next mainly because of the hype it brought to the fandom. We didn't ever think to see combiners at the time, let alone super solid ones that use a connection system that encourages mixing & matching. I personally just wasn't a fan of the lack of variety in the deluxes.

Power of the Primes isn't bad, but is definitely the weakest. It recycles gimmicks from the last 2 years, but where the line really shines is in its 3 leaders. I also appreciated that it brought back pretenders.

 

CW (and I really mean UW) for actually releasing all the vehicle based combiner characters from the cartoon.

I find TR to be overrated. The voyagers are all mediocre, a huge chunk of headmaster characters didn't even get made, and the gimmick is intrusive partsforming nonsense that made a bunch of the head sculpts look awful. I hope they never do headmasters across an entire line like that again.

 

Power of the Primes is far below the others. Titans Return and CW are, to me, fairly close but ultimately Titans Return beats CW out by a fair margin.

Titans Return has a fun play pattern involving novel little figures that interact in a new manner across nearly every size class. This play pattern manages to both be unobtrusive and tie every toy across the size classes together. To add to that, there is a wide variety of characters, fun transformations, and great molds. And all you need for the gimmick is in one toy, allowing for a surprising amount of playability compared to the other two lines which then, as said before, can be shared quite nicely with the rest of the toys.

CW ties the Legends, Deluxes and Voyagers together with a line wide combining gimmick, something quite fun. The Legends could be a bit variable in their effectiveness at interacting with the Combiners, however. The gimmick also required multiple purchases to get into it, whereas in TR a single purchase has everything you need — the cockpit, the Headmaster, etc. Despite this, the combining gimmick did add some extra ways to transform individual toys. The sculpts were very good and the transformations too, although the latter are formulaic thanks to the limiting factor of the gimmick.

POTP manages to be the worst in that it tried to replicate the previous lines' gimmicks, but failed in application and made the line feel disjointed. The recycling of Titan Masters, except with less interesting accessories and not as involved interaction with the Deluxes and Leaders. The reuse of the combining gimmick, only with the attempted reuse of the Titan Masters making what gimmick they are shooting for seem confused. Then, there is a whole new gimmick for the Leader class that compromises the designs of the toys. This isn't to mention the near total neglect of the characters the line is named after. It seems so... scattered. Only worsened by the incomplete Combiners and character groups.
The line has its merits, of course. I often visit the appreciation thread enjoying the individual toys because like Prime Wars past, there are some fun designs and good sculpts. There are upsides with the downsides to the gimmicks, too; Combiners with the Combiner Wars system will always be fun and the Prime Masters add a splash of extra color to the Combiners.