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 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 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..?

TransFormers Legends (Titans Return) LG35 Super Ginrai

Let's take a trip back to August 1988. Fourteen-year-old me was reading the TransFormers comics published by Marvel, frequently revolted by the artwork, but at least trying to pick it up every week (asking the newsagent who delivered our newspapers to call in a subscription didn't work, and the place at the tube station occasionally sold out, so I don't have anything like a complete run, and many of those I have are damaged due to poor storage). Having been killed off the previous year, Optimus Prime was finally returned in another of the Nebulans' bizarre experimental processes (which they seemed to enjoy regularly inflicting upon hapless Cybertronians in the name of keeping the peace), where they built themselves mech suits which basically turned them into power converters - Powermasters, in fact - for the newly-rebuilt Autobot leader and some of his cohorts. Not only that, but Powermaster Optimus Prime could combine with his trailer to become one of the few 'Super Robots' the toyline had seen (along with Ultra Magnus and all the gestalts). I can't remember offhand if I owned the toy before the character appeared in the comics, but I do remember being impressed by the idea of Optimus combining with his trailer to make a super robot... only to be extremely disappointed because the basic truck robot was a step backward from the original, Diaclone-derived figure in every way, and the combined 'Super Robot' could barely be considered poseable, even by Mini-Autobot standards.

Takara Tomy reworked and improved several aspects of this toy, releasing it as a new character, Ginrai/Super Ginrai, who coincidentally looked like Optimus Prime, but wasn't... At least until it was repainted in black, to become 'Nucleon Quest Super Convoy'.

So, when images of Hasbro's Titans Return Powermaster Optimus Prime surfaced, my interest was thoroughly piqued. Based on the awesome Combiner Wars/Legends Ultra Magnus structure, it had far more potential than the old G1 brick but sadly ended up with too many parts recycled from Ultra Magnus and a weirdly beige 'grey' plastic on a lot of its parts.

Of course, it took Takara Tomy to get it right, even if that did mean turning him into Super Ginrai again... but could even they unlock its full potential?

Generations (30th Anniversary) Doubledealer

As far as I can recall (and without popping back to my parents' house to raid the cupboard in which most of my G1 toys remain to this day) I only ever bought two Powermasters: Optimus Prime and Doubledealer. The former was a no-brainer (albeit quite disappointing in-hand, as it turned out) simply because it was the latest incarnation of Optimus Prime (and was accompanied, in the Marvel comics of the day, by a very strange story). The latter was rather more unusual, in that it was a Dual-Powermaster Triple-Changer with an Autobot mode and a Decepticon mode.

Sure, it wasn't unprecedented - Punch/Counterpunch came out the year before - but this was the first time a faction-switching Triple-Changer made it over to this sceptred isle. The idea of an effectively neutral character, willing to work for either side, tickled me, as did the fact that the humanoid robot was an Autobot and the bird-like robot was a Decepticon, with the vehicle mode bearing no visible insignia. This 'Thrilling 30' update, based on the Blitzwing mold, plays things a little differently...

Universe Darkwind

There's a funny series of coincidences to this thing... Or perhaps it's not as coincidental as one might think.

Back in 2007, the BotCon box set - Games of Deception - featured a Classics reimagining of Generation 1 Powermaster Dreadwind. Fans immediately began theorising about what this might mean. Would the soon-to-be-rebooted Universe/Classics 2.0 line feature Darkwing? If so, would the two combine into the fearsome superplane Dreadwing? All the evidence seemed to suggest a negative on both counts... Until Kitbashers discovered that, with the right paintjob, Universe Silverbolt looked eerily similar to the Generation 1 gloom-sayer. Very soon after, official photos of Hasbro's own interpretation surfaced. Frankly, both the home repaint and the official one were a huge improvement on the model's original Autobot colourscheme, so I vowed to pick this one up, despite its simplicity.