Hey, more Titans who are Returning!  The Transformer Who Was Voiced By That MicroMachines Guy doesn't really strike me as any sort of "titan," really, but here he is anyway, being a Titan and being Returning.  

As I mentioned back in my Titans Return Brainstorm blogpost, Blurr is that toy's original tooling.  Subtract Brainstorm's wings and substitute in a different hood for the vehicle mode, and you've got Blurr.  It works a little better as Blurr, partially because it was obviously designed as him first, and secondly because... well, it's an open-top canopy, and Blurr isn't a spaceship.

When we first saw this toy, I wasn't sure I was gonna get it.  I have a Blurr toy from back in the 2010 Generations toy, which was a retool of Drift, but the colors were a nice set of contrasting blues.  But Hasbro decided to make their Blurr a solid teal color?  Don't get me wrong, I love teal, but I'd also like another color in there.  Like, a color #2 would be great.  

Anyway, TakaraTomy later showed off theirs, and it had multiple colors, and then I was sold.  It also helps that Brainstorm is a pretty fun toy with an interesting transformation, and, y'know, Blurr is mostly that same toy.  Good colors on a good toy is good!  

I think my favorite thing about Blurr is his little antenna on top of his head.  (You know, the head that becomes a tiny robot that can ride inside him.)  You can yank that up so the antenna rests higher on the noggin.  It's an extra transformation step for such a tiny dude/head, and I appreciate it.  

Tagged: generations, titans return, blurr

Just two more Technobots left, Scattershot and Afterburner.  Let's blow through 'em.

We got three Scattershots!  One stand-alone Voyager, and one in each of the Hasbro and TakaraTomy box sets.  The stand-alone is kinda forgettable.  It's got two nigh-identical reds and for some reason the combiner head is still in Superion's colors.  Its sole saving grace is its blue face.  Faces that aren't just white or silver are interesting!  

Hasbro's box set Scattershot is better.  It has more contrast in its colors, a Computron face that's not just in Superion colors, and some delicious pinkish magenta.  

TakaraTomy's box set Scattershot is best, though.  It's sadly lacking in that pinkish magenta, but it has the highest color contrast and a buttload of additional retooling.  There's a new Computron head that's not just an unaltered Superion's, and there's new chest sculpts for both Scattershot and the combined Computron form.  Oh, and two new weapons.

Afterburner!  ...Hasbro one wins.  You may have noticed an ongoing "Takara's has better sculpt/mold but Hasbro has better colors" thing going on with most of these guys, and for once we've got a Technobot that's got an identical sculpt across sets.  And so cartoon accuracy be damned, Hasbro's orange and charcoal and green Afterburner is a billion times better than TakaraTomy's monochrome red-and-white Afterburner.  I guess TakaraTomy's has new guns, but you can throw them on the Hasbro version no problem, while also forgetting most of the time that he has new guns anyway.  They're not important.  The orange is.  

So, yeah.  Let's assemble my Computron as I please, mixing and matching.  Hasbro Afterburner and Scrounge (attached with a LEGO piece) and TakaraTomy everyone else, but with the new fists and feet the Hasbro set got.  Huzzah!

Tagged: scattershot, generations, combiner wars, computron, afterburner

Nosecone is the only Technobot I owned as a kid.  In fact, I owned him twice!  Sometimes that happens when a guy is a low pricepoint and your parents and your grandparents are shopping for you at the same time.  Two Nosecones!  

So I've decided that owning both the Combiner Wars and Unite Warriors Nosecones is merely a brilliant homage to my childhood.

Of the two, I do have a clear favorite.  I mean, let's be clear: Brawl is easily my least favorite Combiner Wars Deluxe.  His shoulders are really awkward, he's kind of slight for a big bruiser such as Brawl, his forearms are dinky, and oh jeez that waist.  Meanwhile, Rook (before UW Strafe happened) was my favorite Combiner Wars Deluxe.  And so, y'know, I'm prooooooobably going to prefer the Nosecone built from my (second-)favorite Deluxe versus the one built from my least favorite Deluxe.  

Adding to the TakaraTomy version's favor is the amount of retooling.  He's got a new Nosecone head, and about half of his drill-tank mode is new.  He has treads where he had wheels before, and the whole front roof of Rook's vehicle is replaced with.... well, an arm for the drill with a tiny pair of windows sculpted into it.  It's not the greatest bit of retooling, but you can kind of bury it with all the extra weapons they gave him.  

(Yeah, he gets three new guns.)

The sizeable drill can turn, but it's pretty stiff at the base, and it seems to lock in place every 180-degree turn.  The tip is spring-loaded, though.  

The one thing the Combiner Wars toy gets right over the Unite Warriors toy is the color scheme.  Chocolate brown with orange and yellow feels more Nosecone to me than the washed out brown and yellow.  TakaraTomy were trying to go for the animation colors, which were based on an earlier, redder prototype of Nosecone's toy.  But their toy isn't very red, it's light brown, so I think maybe they were trying to find a compromise point between the animation and the toy.  

If you put the CW colors on the UW toy, you'd have the perfectest thing.

Tagged: generations, combiner wars, nosecone

To be honest, a lot of my feelings about Combiner Wars Lightspeed are because of expectations.  For almost as long as Combiner Wars was a thing, there was a will-they-won't-they about making Computron, and so long as we speculators were in the will-they camp, we were wondering where Lightspeed would come from. Original Lightspeed's a very futuristic car who transforms in a specific way that's kinda unique to combining car limb guys, and so the two available options of Breakdown and Dead End seemed to both fall short in every category except "broadly a four-wheeled vehicle."  

But then the retool of Breakdown into Wheeljack happened, and, oh, hey, that's where Lightspeed was gonna come from, obviously.  Like, super obviously.  Wheeljack shaved off a buncha what was non-Lightspeed about Breakdown, adding some similar shapes to the car mode (if not going full-futuristic) and also retooling the robot mode to look like Wheeljack's.  See, Lightspeed transformed like Wheeljack, with a hood for feet and a roof for a chest.  And so, like, duh, that's Future Lightspeed.  Total duh-doy.  

And then Combiner Wars Computron was finally announced and revealed and it was just a friggin' redecoed Streetwise, the Dead End mold.  It was like COME ON, GUYS.  JEEZ.  And so there was this drop from expectation to this seemingly boggling reality.  There's a toy that looks like Lightspeed RIGHT THERE!  Why wasn't it used?  

....I am guessing Streetwise was used because, I dunno, Hasbro ran out of retooling budget when they got to Lightspeed and so they chose the car guy with the closest head.  Sigh.

The colors on Hasbro's Computron are mostly pretty good!  Five out of six guys are really nice-looking.  Everyone has all these interesting highlight colors that make the decoes pop. But then there's Lightspeed, just plain ol' red and gray, no pizzazz.  He just really sticks out, I dunno.  

Anyway, Takara announced/revealed their Computron and they used the Wheeljack body with a new Lightspeed head.  And that was basically when and why I decided to get the Takara version in addition to the Hasbro one.  I had The-Lightspeed-I-Was-Expecting blueballs.  Sure, since then I've come to appreciate some of the other components more than Lightspeed, but he was the catalyst.

I will say that Takara's Lightspeed head is a little weird.  Lightspeed's original/cartoon head was essentially Trailbreaker's.  It was a box with a goggled face inside.  But this new sculpt they made is... well, it's interesting-looking.  It's not a box, it's a loose interpretation that gives it all these new angles and visual interest.  Which is weird because Takara kinda usually just copies the animation faithfully.  

But it's the Lightspeed body I wanted, so score.

(Note, Hasbro's Lightspeed is actually named "Lightsteed" because of trademark reasons, which is hilarous.)

Tagged: generations, combiner wars, lightspeed

Both Hasbro and Takara tackled Computron separately, and with suprisingly different results.  Like, despite both versions of Computron technically being attempts at the same Computron character, 3 out of the 5 toys are different base molds from their counterparts (and Hasbro adds a sixth).  Strafe is one of the biggest differences.

Hasbro took Air Raid and extensively retooled him to replace all of his Earth fighter jet parts with new Strafe spacejet parts, and also gave him a new head.  It's not a bad job.  In a vaccum, it goes above and beyond what you might expect for a set of toys that seems to have been a late decision in the lineup.  Strafe easily coulda been an unmodified Earth jet.  And so he's neat on the face of him.

(Like, literally, since Hasbro's Strafe head is awesome.  Its original-toy-accurate sculpt is the best part of his design.)

But damn, it's hard to resist the siren call of TakaraTomy's Strafe.  It, too, is an extensive retool, but of Blast Off, the completely new Combaticon shuttle they engineered.  Blast Off was a toy I already liked a whole bunch, except for how his head pops off when you swing his neck assembly out of the way in arm or leg mode.  The Protectobot Rook I think I've praised for being the best deluxe in the line, and Blast Off has a lot of similaritied with Rook.  They both can do the Hulk Hand thing, for example; plug combiner hands into the ports in front of his fists, and it's clobbering time.  Also like Rook, Blastoff has sideways ankle tilts.  Improving on Rook, Blast Off has additional 5mm peg ports inside his fists (so he can hold a gun normally) and also two more on the underside of each forearm.  

TakaraTomy's Strafe improves on many of these things.  First of all, the head doesn't pop off anymore when you transform him into arm or leg mode.  It stays in place, which by itself just makes him a billion times better.  His torso also transforms backwards from Blast Off, leaving the vehicle nose kibble on his back instead of giving him a massive barrel gut.  He no longer partsforms, requiring you to move his shuttle tailfin from its proper placement in vehicle mode to his back in robot mode -- Strafe still has removeable (and separately hinged) tailfins, but they don't have to move during transformation.  Strafe's two main orange cannons are removeable, and as they're 5mm compatible, they can go into his various ports.  

TakaraTomy's Strafe, I've decided, is my favorite Combiner Wars-style limb.  It's everything Previous First Placer Rook can do, but more, and as a spaceship.  Seriously, he's the best guy.  

....once I stole Hasbro's Strafe head and put it on him instead and painted it white to match, anyway.  

Tagged: combiner wars, computron, strafe