Takara Tomy, meanwhile, released boxed sets with the full and original G1 teams, forcing Hasbro to later release the 'missing' members of each team, leading to the Protectobots having two versions of the same character. It's disappointing - though, with me, utterly unsurprising - that it's taken me about two years to get around to this, because I picked up Deluxe class Groove at the earliest opportunity, and yet didn't immediately complete my write-up of the complete, G1 homage Defensor.
So, without further ado, let's get our Groove on... Again...
Vehicle Mode:
Groove is back to being a huge, well and truly off-scale police motorbike. Despite some fairly clever compression of the robot parts, this is still a very large, chunky vehicle, with a body as wide as it is tall, and some dubious proportions in terms of the relative positions of the handlebars and the seat. So far, so TransFormers motorbike... the only ones ever to get reasonably-proportioned vehicle modes are the movie line's Deluxe class Fem-Bikes, and they're not exactly the most popular in their robot modes.
As one might expect, the vehicle is largely white, with a translucent cyan windscreen, colourless plastic over intricately-molded, silver-painted headlights, and translucent red emergency lights on the front end. The engine section, just behind the front wheel, is a bit of a mess, in that it's built up of the four parts of the robot's arm, and they're only alternately painted... so the very front of the engine on either side is silver at the top and white at the bottom, while the part that runs under the petrol tank is silver, and the part that can only be described as the robot's very visible and undisguised hands is white. Strangely, right above the lower silver part, there's a recess in the bike's body (occupied by the robot's shoulders in Groove's leg mode) which is painted silver... and that really looks like a mistake. There's a section in the middle of the bike, just below the start of the seat, which features silver and metallic beige paint, with its arbitrary border defined by seams in the plastic, then the back end is bare white plastic except for the very back and a couple of raised, curved details wrapping over the top, which are painted black. The back end features red-painted indicator lights but, aside from all that, the only decoration on this version of Groove is the word 'POLICE' stamped on each side. It's nice that the spokes and the wheel frames are painted silver but, really, this version of Groove has a disappointing paint job compared to the Legends class version... and it's not even significantly different from the Takara Tomy version.
Weapons-wise, Groove comes with a pair of pannier guns - much like his G1 ancestor, only proportionally much smaller - which are intricately molded in clear, colourless plastic, then mostly painted over in gunmetal, with emergency lights on top picked out with translucent red paint. These guns plug in on either side, via sockets on the rear wheel hubs on either side, making them far lower down on the vehicle. Then, of course, there's his hand/foot weapon which, unfortunately, is just a duplicate of the twin-Gatling that comes with Blades/Alpha Bravo/Vortex. This plugs into the petrol tank, via a socket which might otherwise be the means by way petrol is added to the tank. It's a daft position for any weapon, since it would mean the rider would be unable to see over it, let alone reach the handlebars around it.
Robot Mode:
G1 Groove was one of those very small TransFormers toys that barely transformed. Particularly compared to the Go-Bot Night Ranger/Harley Robo, with whom his vehicle form shared certain similarities, Groove was made ridiculously simplistic to enable his part in the Defensor gestalt. Thus, he barely had arms and his 'legs' were one solid unit, surrounding his rear wheel and ending in feet made out of halves of the vehicle mode seat, flipped round from his back. This new take on the character fits the Combiner Wars pattern in terms of his limbs, stature and overall bulk and, from the front, has very good proportions. From the side, of course, it becomes plain that - like many other Combiner Wars figures - the entire front of the vehicle is hanging off his back, completely untransformed. With most of the other Protectobots (and, really, most Combiner Wars figures generally) the impact of this is fairly slight... but with Groove, there's the bike's nose and front wheel just dangling off a backpack that already sticks out beyond the extent of his heel spurs. I don't expect much on a remake of a G1 character - not even something along the lines of TFPrime First Edition Arcee where parts of the bikes nose became the robots (overly angular) chest, but I do feel that more could have been done with the backpack, even within the constraints of what Combiner Wars components are required to do.
The paint job offers few surprises, with very little new colour at all. Groove's chest is a metallic brown that falls well short of the die-cast chestplate of the G1 version, but then the alternating silver/white of the arms is equally different from the chromed parts of the original. The overall impression of this figure is of whiteness broken up with touches of other colours, and it's all very regimented. Even the silver paint on the fronts of the thighs - unusual enough, given that I can't think of a single other Combiner Wars figure with paint on the upper leg parts - doesn't do much to liven him up. Groove is one of those rare figures that makes me wish Hasbro had started using stickers again when Combiner Wars was in full flow, rather than with Titans Return.
While the G1 version of Groove had his two pannier launchers mounted on what could loosely be termed his legs, and carried an additional hand weapon, Combiner Wars Groove's vehicle mode pannier guns become twin handguns for his robot mode. They seem a little oversized but, as pretty much the only painted weapons in the entire toyline, they look fantastic. The fact that he has two handguns and no leg-mounted launchers is a bit disappointing to the G1 purist in me but, arguably, the hand/foot gun takes some of the sting out of it, and can be wielded either as a massive handgun or underslung on his right arm thanks to a 5mm socket (only available on the right because the left arm features his vehicle mode's kickstand). It's also nice that CW Groove has the more standard fist style, and his guns don't have to be mounted sideways, like on the original.
Possibly the most interesting - and impressive - aspect of Groove's head sculpt is that it features light piping, making him (one of) the only Combiner Wars figure with this feature... and thereby a little out of place. The entire back of his head is molded in clear, colourless plastic, and the eyes are painted over with translucent yellow. The front of his helmet is painted black, with the face in a sunshine yellow rather than the metallic beige of his chest or G1 gold. Much as I like light piped eyes, I'd rather not have them than have a head that looks this unfinished. Still, from the front, it does look pretty good, with the sculpt closely resembling an upscaled and upgraded version of the G1 original, retaining its overall boxy shape, but with plenty of refinements.
Despite his briefly unique form (soon reworked as the Technobot Afterburner/Afterbreaker), Groove's transformation has the very familiar Combiner Wars feel, with the legs extending by way of an internal lever below the knee, the arms folding up and compressing into the body, and the head simply being covered over by the front of the vehicle, which just sits on his back in robot mode. The only oddities, really, are the way his arms make use of the bicep rotation for proper orientation in each mode - swinging backwards so the forearms can peg into the chest (with the fists exposed) for vehicle mode. Of all the Protectobots, Groove's transformation is easily the biggest improvement on his G1 ancestor, despite its similarity to just about every other toy in the line. On the downside, I found the way the wheel halves on the lower legs transform to be an absolute pest. Starting on the legs with them in their vehicle mode position, the legs didn't seem to want to peg together to form the back of the bike. Attempting to transform the legs before the wheel halves made it virtually impossible to get them transformed back together. I'm probably missing a simple way of accomplishing it, but I generally manage to muddle through somehow.
Similarly, CW Groove has all the articulation afforded to other CW figures, with a ball jointed neck, shoulders and hips, bicep and upper thigh rotation joints, elbow and knee bends. The feet are a little clumsy and the heel spur isn't always sufficient to maintain his balance in the more extreme poses, but he's not bad within the constraints of his vehicle mode's requirements.
Completing Defensor:
Like any Combiner Wars figure, Groove can become either an arm or a lower leg, but his traditional position is as the right leg of Defensor. Being quite a chunky bike, he makes a surprisingly good arm, and the dual Gatling hand/gun looks pretty good. In his usual form, he looks great - the bike's windscreen becoming a kneecap to complement First Aid's raised bonnet. The foot/gun is less effective in this mode because it barely protrudes beyond Groove's chunky rear end, but the enormous Perfect Effect upgrade feet fix that.
I do quite like Legends class Groove as a chestplate, though, so he actually stays in place... I'll just have to come up with an alternative identity for him...
I am well and truly puzzled by the way Hasbro handled Combiner Wars - releasing incomplete teams with new, unfamiliar members for no earthly reason, then releasing the missing authentic team member after Takara Tomy released their Unite Warriors boxed sets, and then releasing luridly-coloured, G2 homage boxed sets of their own, still featuring the new characters rather than the preferred team member. Nevertheless, weirdly-scaled though he may be - the components traditionally on his right side being vastly different sizes if they'd used the same real-world scale for both - Deluxe class Groove really does add the finishing touch to the Combiner Wars version of Defensor.
The fact that the individual figure follows the transformation scheme of the vast majority of Combiner Wars figures is a let-down considering his the scope offered by the vehicle mode... but one can hardly expect the complexity of Warning Line from TFC Toys' Prometheus, Axle from Maketoys' Guardia, or Motor from Generation Toy's Guardian... but any one of those Third Party figures proves that your components don't need to stick rigidly to the same format to be viable as both individual robots and limbs for the gestalt.
I'm not saying I'm disappointed by Groove - he's exactly what I'd expected and, as already stated, he properly completes CW Defensor... but his paintwork is lacking and his design is unimaginative, putting him firmly in the 'could have been better' category. Whether he's worth acquiring is entirely subjective, and comes down to your personal level of attachment to the G1 configuration of Defensor and how you feel about paying the steadily increasing asking price.
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