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!

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.  

Scrounge was -- at least in my Marvel UK-less childhood -- one of the first Transformers non-toy characters, sharing an issue with a bunch of others.   He didn't have a toy.  He was just created to be in a story only to die.  Blaster, the anti-hero badass, needed his little pal to get offed so as to give him some manpain.  You know how it is.  

Other non-toy guys from that issue have already gotten toys over the years -- Ferak, Straxus.  Ferak was a jet.  Straxus was a (flying) tank.  But Scrounge never got a toy, and for good reason.  He transformed into a wheel.

There aren't a lot of Transformers wheels.  

I remember when that Star Wars Transformers toy of General Grievous came out.  It transformed from Grievous into Greivous's little death wheel vehicle thing.  Hey!  They should add a Scrounge head to that and make a Scrounge, some said!  We were desperate.  There were no other wheels.  Wheels are probably a hard sell to a kid in the toy aisle.  There's jets, tanks, animals, cars.... and, what, a wheel?  What kid's gonna choose the wheel???

(A similar problem exists these days with Rung.  Dude transforms into a STICK.)

But 30 years later, we have a Scrounge.  There was a new Cosmos toy -- you know, the UFO flying saucer guy -- and, hey, if you turn that on its side, that's kind of wheel-like, right?  Right????  Look, it's goddamn close enough.  Hasbro gave it a new Scrounge head, decoed him (and the toy's partner) in yellow, and wham-bam it's Scrounge.  At least, as close to Scrounge as one could realistically expect.  Some would say way closer.  Dude's a wheel, man.

And I'm happy.  It makes me happy.  It's kind of healing, you know?  The poor guy died heroically, and also died horrifically.  Like, got his arm ripped off (his special arm, there is none other like it) and then chucked into a smelting pool, where he was melted alive.  But!  Not before he could chuck a cassette at Blaster, offering priceless proof that Optimus Prime and his warriors were indeed alive somewhere.  Nobody liked the little guy, only to realize at his death who they had lost.  Finally having a toy of him means he wasn't forgotten, that what he did mattered.  And sometimes that realization is helpful here in the real world, too.

Scrounge's little shuttle partner is named Cybaxx, which is another nonsense sci-fi name like "Straxus" or "Xaaron" are.  He's a new guy.  Since his gun mode has two bulbous barrels, it makes me think of Scrounge's Special Arm, the one that had extendo audio and video fingers, the one that Straxus ripped off right before his death.  And so Cybaxx, to me, is just Scrounge's arm.  Maybe his arm was always a guy?  I dunno.  

Also new to Scrounge is that he is now a Technobot, and part of the combiner robot Computron.  He should definitely stay attached to that combiner robot guy.  You probably don't end up in the smelting pool that way.

He's why I bought this box set.

He's worth it.