TransFormers Collectors' Club 2017/Combiner Wars Shattered Glass Starscream

It was quite rare for the TransFormers Collectors' club to release exactly the same character twice, in two different molds (Kreo figures not included). The only other one I can think of was Toxitron, who appeared in TransFormers Animated form at BotCon 2011, then in Combiner Wars form in the final set of the Club's Subscription Service in 2017. Technically, though, even they are from different continuities... While this is simply a Combiner Wars version of Shattered Glass Starscream... and, unless Shattered Glass has its own multiverse (which, admittedly, is not inconceivable) this thing is a development of the BotCon version rather than a whole new character.

I never picked up the original Shattered Glass Starscream, since I already have a couple of iterations of the Galaxy Force Starscream mold, and I didn't really think the G1 Jetfire homage paint job suited it that well. This one had the advantage of being both smaller and - at the time - substantially cheaper, since the BotCon figure rarely appears outside of the BotCon 2008 boxed set.

Of course, this being a Combiner Wars mold, it was intended as part of one of the Club's swan-song gestalts but, by this point, it seems as though the Club didn't really care: Starscream was never officially assigned to any particular combiner beyond the vague suggestion that he could be use to create something called "Modulus", which was described as being formed with two other BotCon figures (Medix and Ratchet from the 2016 show's customisation class) and two mainline Combiner Wars figures (Protectobot Rook and Technobot leader Scattershot). Personally, I've had him as part of a custom Sky Reign along with other, similarly teamless 'bots.

Perfect Effect PC-18 Upgrade Kit for GodJinrai

Picking up the upgrade sets for Powermaster Optimus Prime/Super Ginrai had two effects on me. First and foremost, it somewhat restored my confidence in Perfect Effect's output... but, perhaps just as important, it left me wanting to ensure my Legends Godbomber/Super Ginrai combination was as good and 'complete' as it possibly could be.

The stock Godbomber figure is far from perfect and his components, when added to Super Ginrai, leave the figure substantially less stable than he was in his basic form. Given that the PC-16 set puts a little bit more weight onto the robot's back (in the form of Jinrai Prime's legs), his weak ankles leave him even more prone to overbalancing and falling over backward.

With that in mind, to be perfectly honest, the only part of this figure I was really interested in was the ankle supports for the God Ginrai gestalt...

Perfect Effect PC-15 Upgrade Kit & PC-16 Jinrai Prime

TransFormers developed along some very strange lines during the Prime Wars trilogy. We were treated to the second ever G1-style Ultra Magnus toy which transformed as a unit rather than being a white Optimus Prime with power armour (the first being the Masterpiece figure), and that led to a reinterpretation of Powermaster Optimus Prime (and Takara Tomy's Super Ginrai remix) in which the 'cab only' Optimus Prime - and the Powermaster feature - was bypassed in favour of keeping with Titans Returns' HeadMaster gimmick and the single-unit transformation.

While I like Super Ginrai and enjoyed him as a single unit, the moment I saw Perfect Effect were producing upgrade sets - the first being essentially supplemental parts for the second, a fully transforming, independent cab - I knew I was going to treat myself to the full Super Ginrai/Powermaster Optimus Prime upgrade, and ordered both PC-15 and PC-16 as soon as they became available.

Power of the Primes - A Plethora of Prime Masters

Although, technically, thirteen wouldn't really be 'a plethora', let alone the mere eight I managed to obtain. The Prime Masters - much like the 'loose' Titan Masters of the Titans Return line - were released in single packs with 'Decoy Armour' (AKA Pretender shells - a homage to part of the 1988/89 section of the Generation 1 toyline) which, for no obvious reason, also transform into TargetMaster-style weapons which the Prime Masters could then attach to externally.

As 'play patterns' go, it was just as daft as that of the loose Titan Masters, but further aggravated certain elements within the fandom who had been hoping for a bigger, more impressive revival of the Pretender concept. For me, though, Hasbro's most heinous crime was releasing only eight of the thirteen Primes at mass retail, and holding back the remaining five for special boxed sets - Onyx Prime being made available only with the Predaking boxed set (which I had zero interest in) while Amalgamous, Nexus, Prima and the Thirteenth Primes coming only with the San Diego Comic Con 'Throne of the Primes' set (also made available at mass retain in Hasbro's Asian markets). Exacerbating this, Prima Prime also ended up packaged with the Amazon exclusive Punch-Counterpunch, so the completist would end up with two copies and a total of fourteen Primes.

Aside from all of this, the Prime Masters served no real purpose other than the decorative. Sure, each one was supposed to grant special powers to whoever wielded it - via slots on the larger figures and on the updated (and now separate) hand and foot parts of the gestalts - but there were no new features activated - Unicron Trilogy-style - on the toys. Furthermore, they were rendered mostly redundant by prexisting chunks of plastic - molded as either weird, flat handguns, Enigmas of Combination or Matrices of Leadership - which already occupied the Prime Master slot on every single Power of the Primes toy of Deluxe class and above.

So, to close off the Power of the Primes and, indeed, the Prime Wars Trilogy posts on this blog, here's a roundup of all the mass retail Prime Masters...

TransFormers Legends (Titans Return) LG46 TargetMaster Kup (aka Chear)

Kup doesn't often appear in TransFormers toylines - coming from the latter part of Generation 1, and introduced to most audiences in the 1986 animated movie, he's never been one of the 'must have' characters. Much like Hot Rod and Blur, his original toy was a bit of a brick, designed to resemble the ridiculously stylised Floro Dery animation model, which took the TV show's habit of fudging the toys' transformation sequence and cranking it up to eleven because he (and/or the rest of the design team) were working from scratch rather than from existing toys and box art.

Thus, Kup became a futuristic, Cybertronian pickup truck and, bar his appearance in a BotCon set as a repaint/retool of Galaxy Force First Aid (representing a young version of Kup, a new recruit in the Elite Guard), his only other appearances in the toyline have been as a more traditional terrestrial pickup in the Generations toyline back in 2011 and a bulked-up repaint of a mold intended for Ironhide in the TFPrime toyline.

Titans Return went back to the original Cybertronian vehicle style, albeit perhaps more functional-looking (G1 Kup's cargo bed didn't look very useful, after all), but the colourscheme looked a bit too lurid for my liking so, coupled with a typically miserly paint job, the lacklustre weapons and a rather bland face sculpt, I decided not to bother picking him up. Then Takara Tomy revealed their Legends version, with an animation accurate desaturated colourscheme, several remolded parts (including a more grizzled face sculpt)... and a TargetMaster weapon too... So I decided to take the plunge after all.

Robots in Disguise (2015)/Combiner Force Thermidor

While I wouldn't consider myself a fan of the most recent TransFormers toyline to bear the subtitle "Robots in Disguise", I've nevertheless picked up more than a handful of the toys - both Hasbro's output and Takara Tomy's versions, packaged under the name TransFormers Adventure.

A significant part of the reason for that is the G1 homages in the Autobot ranks, or the (marginally) superior paint job on the likes of Strongarm... But perhaps the most significant part is the bizarre and outlandish appearance of the Decepticons - it's almost as though they were trying to build on the Beast Hunters aspect of TransFormers Prime, and develop more beast-like Decepticons... Except many aren't robots that turn into beasts, they're beast-like robots that turn into vehicles.

One of my quirky favourites was Bisk, an orange muscle car - not unlike the TFPrime Vehicons - who turned into a lobster-like robot with massive claws and googly eyes. When a repaint was revealed, in a gorgeous shade of blue, and with a name referencing another lobster dish, it immediately became a must-have and, in the end, I was lucky enough to find him in a nearby branch of Asda... So let's take a look

Power of the Primes Blackwing Darkwing

Also (as in originally) known as 'Darkwing', Blackwing is the second Combiner Wars Aerialbot retooling to be turned into a G1 Powermaster homage following Power of the Primes Dreadwind. While both have lost their Powermaster gimmick in favour of the somewhat shoehorned Prime Armour gimmick, their other unique and defining feature - the ability to combine their vehicle modes into the giant 'Dreadwing' superjet - was announced as having been retained. Having missed out on the cumbersome, clunky G1 figures, I was keen to see what contemporary toymaking techniques could do with such an interesting concept.

I was reasonably impressed with Dreadwind on his own, but acquiring this figure made both seem more disappointing than either in isolation... so let's find out why...

Power of the Primes Dreadwind

Powermasters came along at the point in G1 where my interest was beginning to wane... Aside from the new Optimus Prime, the only one I picked up was Doubledealer. While, at the time, I though the gimmick - where the Powermaster figure had to be plugged in for the toy to transform into robot mode - was pretty cool and interesting (not to mention given a good explanation in the Marvel comics), virtually all the others looked overly simplistic compared to the Diaclone-derived toys that first got me into TransFormers.

There were a couple of Decepticons with an additional feature, though - Dreadwind and Darkwing transformed into individual robots, but could combine their jet modes into the super-jet, Dreadwing. Given that gestalts were nothing new to TransFormers, the idea of combining vehicle modes was only slightly novel, and the results were as clumsy as one might expect from late-G1 toys. Nevertheless, I do somewhat regret not picking the both of them up.

Thankfully, then, Hasbro decided to resurrect this concept in Power of the Primes, recreating both Dreadwind and Darkwing as Deluxe class figures (released in separate waves, just to make things interesting). The gestalt jet feature has been included... but is it an improvement on the original?

Titans Return Windblade & Scorchfire

(Femme-Bot Friday #52)

It was basically inevitable that Windblade would get a remake for Titans Return. Having been introduced in the comics as a Cityspeaker, and playing a significant part in Combiner Wars (both in the comics and the terrible CG animated web series), the Generations/Legends toy from 2014/15 was no longer sufficient, and no longer fitted the ongoing aesthetic of the toyline.

The big question, if course, is how much of an improvement the new toy is, and how badly Hasbro's version lets down the new mold... So let's take a look...

TransFormers Legends (Titans Return) LG42 Godbomber

Certain aspects of Takara Tomy's take on TransFormers nomenclature have always baffled me. Way back in G1, some retained their Hasbro names, while others got weird, monosyllabic replacements, like Gong (Brawn), Gren (Hook) or Sprang (Springer), which almost read like Furman-style sound effect captions from the comics. Some names - Condor (Laserbeak), Jaguar (Ravage), Lambor (Sideswipe) - were descriptive of one mode or the other. Some were even cooler than the Hasbro names (Meister, arguably a more apt name than Jazz)...

...Then there were the crazy names, like Goshooter, Black Zarak, Blue Bacchus, Road Caesar, Killbison... and, of course, Godbomber.

As well as being its own TransFormer - or Partsformer, at least - Godbomber was an upgrade set for Super Ginrai... but while Super Ginrai was released outside Japan in a simplified form as PowerMaster Optimus Prime, the add-on set didn't reach the West until the Commemorative Series set in 2003. For this release, Godbomber was renamed Apex Bomber and packaged with the fully retooled Japanese version of PowerMaster Prime. Whether Godbomber was originally skipped because it wasn't fully compatible with the earlier, cut-down Western market PMOP or simply because Hasbro were concerned that the name might offend religious types, I've no idea... but it's abundantly clear that there's no Titans Return version because TR Powermaster Prime uses too many parts from Combiner Wars/Legends Ultra Magnus - particularly the feet - which make him incompatible with the Legends version of Godbomber. The only compatible option from Hasbro's toyline was Magnus Prime, released as part of the Seige on Cybertron boxed set (though, as far as I'm aware, this never made it to UK retail).

Lucky I'd bought Super Ginrai instead, then, right?

Titans Return Octane & Murk

I absolutely refuse to call this guy 'Octone'... that's just another example of Hasbro being unable to give a character his G1 name, and settling some something close-ish, even if it does just happen to be the original Japanese name for the character (in the same way that Alternators Jazz was called 'Meister'). The third and final Decepticon triple-changer, Octane, actually completes a pan-Generations set of the original G1 characters for me: I have Classics Astrotrain (though still haven't posted about it yet!), 30th Anniversary Blitzwing, and now Octane.

There was a Deluxe class Octane released in the Universe phase of the Classics line (under the name 'Tankor' just to confuse everyone), but that turned out to be arguably worse than the G1 original due to several odd design choices, so I didn't bother picking it up. We knew that Titans Return would be taking another stab at Blitzwing and Astrotrain because TR Megatron and Sentinel Pime, part of the first wave of Voyagers to be released, were obvious placeholders for the two G1 triple-changers.

Equally, we all knew a TR Octane was coming when Hasbro released a weird, cobbled-together TR Optimus Prime using an early draft of the mold, based around G2 Laser Prime (albeit several months before they released him again with a colourscheme more appropriate to that specific character, as part of a boxed set), but that just made the entire first wave of TR Voyagers a complete waste of time for me.

I do already have one iteration of this mold in the form of TF Legends Black Convoy, so I was looking forward to getting my hands on Octane, and managed to pick him up at TFNation 2017.

Titans Return Krok & Gatorface

Since I wasn't that inspired by the G1 HeadMasters, I've not felt the need to buy their Titans Return remakes. However, one mold in particular - Skullcruncher/Skullsmasher's - tickled me more than any of the others, I just didn't like the colourscheme.

Thankfully, Hasbro decided to come with a repaint fairly quickly, referencing an Action Master figure, just for added fun, and the new colourscheme - black, purple and acid green/yellow - looked far better than Skullcruncher's green, pink and grey...

The Last Knight/Premier Edition Nitro

Or 'Nitro Zeus', to give him the movie character's full title. Then again, I still haven't seen The Last Knight, and have no intention of doing so, so I have zero connection to the movie character or his nonsensical naming therein. Nitro was one of those toys which, almost like those from the extended range from the original movie and Revenge of the Fallen, simply struck me as being a pretty awesome TransFormers toy, at least as far as the early photos went. I was lucky enough to pick him up at TFNation last year (by the time I got in, there were only two left on the only stall that seemed to have them, and the other one was minus the head!), and he's now the last of The Last Knight's toys that I need to write about...

Titans Return Brawn

I've often mentioned that I'm basically ambivalent about much of the fiction associated with the TransFormers brand. Sure, I watched the G1 TV show (when I could - it wasn't exactly aired consistently in the UK, jumping between various time slots in myriad different early morning TV shows), and I'm a huge fan of Beast Wars, TF Animated and TF Prime... I also read the Marvel comic back in the day, but didn't think much of it once the decree came down to stop using the toys as art reference.

But, to cut a long story short, I'm pretty sure that G1 Brawn was a figure I bought largely because of a story in the UK comics - specifically, The Enemy Within (written by franchise stalwart Simon Furman, and brilliantly illustrated by John Ridgway, Mike Collins and Gina Hart) - in which Brawn gets electrocuted and suffers a psychotic break, while Starscream makes his first proper attempt to usurp Megatron, the net result being that one ends up pitted against the other in a one-on-one battle in the desert. It's not the greatest story ever - Furman is far from being my favourite writer at the best of times - but it showcased the characters far better than the TV show ever did.

Like many G1 Mini Autobots who are not Bumblebee, Brawn has had only a very few reworkings over the years - the most notable probably being the bizarre Deluxe class figure in the N.E.S.T. Global Alliance subline of Revenge of the Fallen. With Titans Return, however, Hasbro are trawling their back catalogue - if not actually scraping the barrel quite yet - for characters ripe for an update... And Brawn just happened to be another of the lucky ones...

HasCon 2017/Titans Return Arcee, Leinad & Ultra Magnus

(Femme-Bot Friday #46)

Hasbro clearly understood that, by ending Fun Publications' license to act as the TransFormers Collectors' Club, they'd have to come up with some sort of replacement for BotCon but, for the inaugural HasCon, at least, TransFormers were only one small facet of the event, given no special consideration.

The absence of BotCon naturally meant the absence of BotCon exclusives, which rubbed a lot of fans up the wrong way (probably those same fans who were regularly rubbed up the wrong way by some aspect - present or lacking - in the BotCon boxed sets, let's face it). That's not to say there weren't any HasCon Exclusives - by the looks of it, there was one for each of Hasbro's major product lines - just that they weren't really 'exclusive' so much as they were 'early access'... And their TransFormers boxed set was contentious for a laundry list of reasons.

But I tend not to let that stop me, particularly when Femme-Bots are involved...

Titans Return Broadside & Blunderbuss

There's a very good reason Hasbro decided to steer clear of triple-changers for many years. Those in Generation 1 were, let's face it, pretty crappy bricks that turned into other-shaped bricks that turned into brick-like robots. The only one that really convinced in any mode was Astrotrain, and that was largely because both his vehicle modes were supposed to just look like cylinders.

When Titans Return rolled around, they decided to reboot all three of the Decepticon triple-changers, Astrotrain first, then Blitzwing, and finally Octane... but on the Autobots' side, they wisely chose not to attempt a new Springer, because the version we got for the 30th Anniversary of the brand was damned near perfect. Sandstorm was therefore unlikely also, as the existing version was derived from the same mold. Broadside, though, hadn't appeared again in the toyline since the barely-transforming triple-brick from Generation 1, and so seemed fair game.

Of course, a robot that turns into an aircraft and an aircraft carrier was never going to be a simple propostion - for one thing, how do you solve the issue of scale between the three modes? - and, somewhat predictably, the toy started to attract scorn from the very beginning... But is it really that bad?

Titans Return Cosmos

Bizarre as he was, G1 Cosmos was one of my favourite figures - as a fan of vintage sci-fi, I really liked that a TransFormer had been based on the UFO from the celebrated hoax photograph by George Adamski, despite being completely incongruous in a line of toys whose terrestrial disguises were still largely based in reality. Trouble is, with such an outlandish - literally - vehicle mode, he became rather difficult to fit into later lines.

Thus, aside from a very basic disc-shaped saucer, very poorly articulated version in the late noughties and an aborted Titaniums version, it had been left up to the Third Parties to produce their usual plethora of versions of the same character, each with their own unique interpretation of the iconic G1 design of both vehicle and robot mode.

Then came the Thrilling 30 line, and a whole new version of Cosmos was released... Or was it? I certainly never saw it in shops, and couldn't easily find it online at a reasonable price. Thankfully, Hasbro deemed it worthy of a more widespread rerelease for Titans Return (since it had already been repainted as Marvel Comics' wheelformer spy, Scrounge, to partner with the Technobots). Needless to say, I snapped him up pretty sharpish... but was he worth the frustrating wait?

The Last Knight/Premier Edition Cogman

There's something of a recurring theme in the TransFormers movie franchise, where a character turns up in the toyline despite being cut from the movie, or a particular element of their character plays an important part in the toy even though it was glossed over in the movie... And I'm not sure how I feel about that.

I mean, on the one hand, it frequently shows how little regard the movie makers have for the property, yet shows how invested Hasbro are in the franchise, and taking advantage of features that define a character... even if it becomes utterly inexplicable one the toys actually hit the shelves. On the other hand, perhaps it simply proves how little Hasbro cares - that they're willing to let these movies waste a good idea that they decided to make use of in the toy?

Thus, we have Cogman as an Aston Martin... Or rather, we have Cogman, a 35mm tall action figure who turns into a larger version of his own head, packaged with an Aston Martin that transforms into a giant robot for Cogman to be the head of. Rumour has it, Nitro has a removeable head specifically to accommodate Cogman, though this was edited out of the movie. All this sounds like a bit of a trainwreck... so let's just see how the toy shapes up.

Robots in Disguise (2015)/Combiner Force Soundwave

There are few characters in the history of TransFormers as memorable and iconic as G1 Soundwave so, when he turns up in other series, he tends to look broadly similar, frequently featuring details which directly refer to, for example, the tape door or the stop/play/fast forward/rewind buttons (except when he doesn't). It's a brave designer who comes up with a whole new concept for Soundwave, so I was particularly impressed by his novel and original design in TransFormers Prime.

Being a continuation of TF Prime, Soundwave eventually turned up in the new Robots in Disguise TV show in his spindly, silent and sinister form before taking on a new, bulkier and very G1 referential form... but was it the right move to go back to his roots after such an impressive deviation?

Titans Return Overlord & Dreadnaut

While I felt a little deprived over the likes of Fortress Maximus never appearing in UK toy shops (since he actually appeared in the Marvel comics, albeit at the same dubiously variable scale as he seems to have used in the cartoon), I wasn't even aware of the likes of Overlord until I became an adult collector, because I'd stopped collecting by the time he was released over here... and, these days, the lustre of most G1 toys has faded somewhat.

Overlord, being one of the 'playset' TransFormers toys, may yet have had a place in my collection, alongside my original G1 Metroplex, Scorponok and (2015's Platinum Edition) Trypticon as well, because he's unique in that he's a triple-changing dual-Powermaster with a fairly decent, quite sprawling base mode, but the lack of articulation in the robot mode is more of a sticking point for me these days than it would have been only a few years back.

But then Hasbro decided to update him for Titans Return, and a widespread release was more-or-less guaranteed (the 'less' part being dependency on Hasbro's increasingly dodgy distribution). As usual, I umm-ed and ahh-ed about whether or not to get him, more or less deciding against based on a couple of YouTube video reviews... but then caved in and forked out £60 for him at TFNation 2017.

So, was he worth it..?