I don’t really care for Menasor compared to other combiners. That being said I don’t think that it “doesn’t count as a combiner” or has no “appeal”. People can like what they like and at the end of the day Menasor is a combiner, albeit the worst one in my opinion.

 

Same energy

 

I’d aLeo argue that Menasor can not do the Menasor thing without the four cars. Having the car limbs is a fundamental part of his design and without it he wouldn’t be Menasor. At least not a G1 version. The same way that being a red truck is fundamental to G1 primes design, there could be optimi that don’t turn into red trucks but then they wouldn’t be G1 Optimus.

 

cars slapped on is exactly what he is though

 

The appeal of a transformer is to have one cool looking mode that becomes another cool looking mode. There are endless variations of that concept, the idea of five limb bots connecting to a torso bot, scramble city style, is just one of them that's been re-used a bunch for its simplicity. The "combine with trailer to make a super mode" is yet another variation, which is what Menasor leans more heavily toward, though he has a unique spin on it by incorporating more smaller components than other major examples.

The only mechanical difference between Menasor and something like Powermaster Optimus Prime, G1 Ultra Magnus, or Star Saber is the fact that Menasor's trailer combines with four additional smaller components.

Magnus starts as this:




Has a smaller component that becomes this:





Which then combines with the trailer to become this:





While a new CHUG Menasor will (most likely) start out as something like this:




Have its smaller components become something like this:




And then combine with the trailer into something like this:





It's the same kind of mechanic but tweaked a little. There's nothing functionally "wrong" with this kind of transformation scheme, it just goes against your traditional views of what type of transformer Menasor "should" be.


(What's always been especially funny to me is that everyone always clamors for Ultra Magnus to include a super mode gimmick with a white Prime robot mode for his cab, even though this never existed in the cartoon, yet somehow that same gimmick is a problem for Menasor...why not just admit that what you want is accuracy to the OG toys? No shame in that.)

 

Maybe that's the reason no official toy has yet replicated that element of his design?

 

Wow this discussion.
MS Menasor looks exactly like all characters involved, even taking wild animation inconsistency with the arms into account.

And it manages to do it without a scrap of combiner kibble and transformations simple enough to be fun.

I really couldn't care less if it does or does not fit what a combiner "is".

 

As folks have already mentioned, the God Fire Convoy reissue was a mess and a half. Given that Car Robots/RiD is turning 20, I would not oppose a redo of Fire Convoy/Optimus Prime and God/Ultra Magnus.

(Besides, wasn't a Scourge repaint of a rumored new G2 Laser Optimus in the cards, or was that just speculation?)

 

I shouldn't like Menasor's animation design but I do just because it reminds me of when I would play a single player video game and give my little brother a controller that wasn't plugged in so he could "help" me and have fun. Menasor is just doing that with all the other Stunticons lol

 

If they do Menasor like 3P have been doing Menasor recently, they should do it like how Magic Square did one of their configurations. Motormaster still combined with his trailer for that extra height/size/stability/accuracy, but the arms are made up of the actually arm bots, you then just have to apply that to the shins as well.


You could even maybe take it a step further and find a way to make Motormaster required as well, similar to how Zeta's torso-forming Bruticus still required all 5 bots to actually combine, including Onslaught.

 

Same. And I hope that despite not being a combining toy, the toy itself is referencing something where the Dinobots form Volcanicus and then assume this new dragon alt mode.

Because I don't think TFs have ever done a transforming combiner before. If this starts us towards that, AWESOME. And I hope HasTak are brave enough to tackle this in the toys.

 

Combine means combine. It’s not whatever you want it to mean. It’s things merging to be something. That’s why they are called combiners and why that cyberverse figure shouldn’t be called a combiner.

 

I've said it before and I'll say it again, Evergreen was a terrible idea and it's only had negative consequences.

 

If Hasbro made a Masquerade-inspired Autobot Menasor redeco that was built like the cartoon character design, I might be tempted to buy it.

 

A combiner and a super mode aren't the same thing. With a super mode, you have two components that are equally important and it doesn't work without the actual character.

This style of Menasor is embarrassingly lazy design and it speaks to everything wrong with this slavish design philosophy. Wanting to be 100% accurate to a 40-year-old cartoon that has characters that look totally different between shots.

In the name of trying to be accurate to that these Menasors have sacrificed everything at the feet of accuracy to the point that you can have Menasor posed with all five bots who comprise him next to him while only owning one set. I would argue that yes when the components are accessories that's not a combiner it's a robot with armour pieces.

 

Not liking a combiner =/= it not being a combiner

 

Except Motormaster doesn't need to combine with anyone for Menasor to function. Solo robot doing the thing =/= combiner. It isn't me not liking Menasor, it's me not liking how Sunbow Menasor was designed. I love the early IDW design that TFM tackled, it made the others at least integral to the full combiner. Or the G1 toy itself where the limbs were nothing BUT the other robots and the obvious hand and foot pieces. The gray man with cars taped to his biceps and BACK of the legs is just terrible and does nothing to make me look at it and thing "combiner"

 

Sunbow Motormaster's shins are Breakdown and Wildrider in their entirety, just very strangely proportioned. But the shins are detailed to look like compressed versions of both of their torsos/legs. So just like the G1 toys. Just really distorted.

The arms are... inconsistent.

 

I can't believe people are seriously defending Sunbow Menasor's design lmao.

 

Eh the legs are nearly as if not more so as inconsistent as the arms.


But again, this is why if we must go G1 toon Menasor, the Magic Square route is the way to go.