Hasbro always seems to miss the mark when it comes to making a good set of combiners. FOC Bruticus gets pretty close to hitting it though. If it weren't for the long and skinny arm that Blastoff forms or Vortex's weird hand shape or the hollow looking torso (when viewed from the side), I think it'd be darn near perfect. I like how the hands, feet and head are all nicely tucked away in each of the figures - no spare parts have to be added to complete the final combined mode. Each of the individual figures also have great looking alt mode bot modes with a decent amount of articulation. Not perfect, but it's definitely getting there. What sort of attributes and features would your ideal combiner have?
No extra parts, and preferably some form of interchangable limbs be it Scramble City-type connectors or the particularly clever design of RID Landfill.
good proportions, extra pieces are secondary to this imo. if it looks like crap, no matter how self contained, i will not buy it. decent separate figures, even if simple. fp colossus and tfc herc are good examples.
Proportions, proportions, proportions. Parts forming is fine and sometimes necessary but if it isn't in proportion then it's fundamental fucked.
There are different combiners that pull off a cool combination but do it in very different ways. I'm not sure if there are many must-have features that are not just guidelines for a good toy/design in general. But here are a few little points: * keep in mind the kibble of the individual members. Some combiners are really ruined by the fact that they have kibble impeding their movement or just plain looking bad. Lobclaw (I think that's his name) in the Seacons is an example. If you try to use him as an arm, those legs get in the way and/or look horrible. This is why I have him a leg right now, so those can be tucked away. * have the members be varied anough to make them interesting (both design and personality). One of the reasons I don't really care much for Superion is that all of the limbs are very, very similar. It makes the team a bit too uniform and the individuality gets lost. The combaticons strike a nice variation in alt modes while still having a common theme. Having the individuals have great personalities is important too. Take Swindle, he was interesting enough on his own to get into TFA without any connection to Bruticus. This was one of the biggest letdowns of the energon combiners (in the show). They were literally just the bodies with drone limbs (Superion even steals drones at one point).
Proportions are the most important aspect to me. I don't mind parts-forming. Sometimes, it's essential to make a combiner work. I think a lot of people fail to realize that when they harp on and on about extra parts. In some instances, a self-contained combiner can work. But in others, not so much.
It's kind of tough for Hasbro do the perfect combiner because as fans we want different things. Like for me the most important thing is the individual robot modes while for another fan the most important thing might be the combined mode. Girl Pants brings up a good point that variety is also a big key to a good combiner. The Constructicons work being the same color because the alt modes are different enough to make the combined mode interesting. If the Stuticons had been the same color and the same type to cars they wouldn't have been that interesting. My sort of weird nitpick about combiners is that the combined mode has to have hands and feet. Power Core was kind of a cool idea but I just wasn't a fan of the combined mode because you ended up with things on the ends of the arms that just didn't look like hands or you'd end up with a weapon on the end of the arm instead of a hand. I guess I watched too much of the original King Kong as a child but something huge like a combiner just needs to look like it could pick up a smaller robot.
I want the individual modes to have some personality and quality. If I look at the individual and think "yep... that's a figure that's clearly going to be a foot" then it fails. Also: YES.
