PCC Commanders Wave 2

Ancillary, non-main-line stuff. Star Wars TF, Speed Stars, Titanium Series, Robot Heroes, that sort of thing. They're kinda neat, but we all know they're not really that important. Admit it, you know it's true.
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BWprowl
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PCC Commanders Wave 2

Post by BWprowl »

My local Wal-Mart had ONE of each of these guys, and they haven't restocked in the week that I've been back. Sightings of these things seem to have been sparse, but hopefully they'll fill out over time.

Leadfoot
Vehicle Mode-
Leadfoot turns into a drag racer that I’m not familiar with, on account of not being familiar with drag racers. I’m just gonna assume it’s a mostly made-up model though. The engine portion in the back is positively gigantic, as in, it IS the back of the vehicle. There’s exhaust pipes on the side, designed to look like they’re coming out from under the vehicle, as they would in real life. They don’t *quite* curve under enough to carry the illusion, however. This sculpting is a concession to them doubling as fingers in robot mode though, so I guess it’s okay. The car’s put together pretty solidly, save for the shoulder pads, which don’t quite want to line up with the car body. There’s also a pretty obvious hatch seam in the cockpit. Oh yeah, and the Powerlinx connector folded down on the nose of the thing. Really though, it’s a good, solid vehicle mode that doesn’t have any obvious robot mode parts or anything sticking out. The blue PCC pegs all stick out the back, but they’re mostly inconspicuous.

Oh, and he’s got ‘BLACKROCK’ written on his spoiler. Because G. B. Blackrock is the most relevant character in TF fiction today! *Sigh* What I really can’t wait for is all the TF-illiterate on /toy/ to start asking why Leadfoot has a reference to Black*Rock Shooter tampo’d on him.

Transformation-
Surprisingly complex for a PCC, though not as much as it appears at first pass. It’s mainly just a case of stretching the vehicle out until it’s a robot, though the front portion folds up nicely to go onto the back, rather than just flopping back there statically, though admittedly it’s a move that’s mostly meant for Combiner Core mode. The pipe/finger chunk on mine’s right hand clicks into place, while the left one does not, oddly. There’s plenty of friction in the joint to keep it stable, there’s just no click in getting there.

Robot Mode-
His head’s tall, and kinda funny-lookin’. I swear I’ve seen this design somewhere, just not sure where. Anyway, he’s a tall, lanky looking robot, with big ol’ pipe-finger hands. I think I’ll pretend he can shoot smoke or flames out of them, that would be cool. His arms are pretty posable, with elbow and bicep swivels, and ball jointed shoulders, with movable shoulder pads. His legs have a decent range of motion, but feel really stiff in the hips, and while he technically has mid-thigh swivels, they’re jointed diagonally for torso transformation, and don’t really help anything. You kinda have to play with his toes and PCC peg heels to get him standing stably. Their range of motion does mean you can get him standing in a variety of dynamic poses though, which is nice. The PCC pegs on the arms stick out like sore thumbs, and you can’t really fold them back, which is too bad. One thing that’s good about the hands though, is that even though he’s got big, open, pipe hands, he’s got standard peg-holes sculpted around his wrist area, so he can handle most Mini-Con weapons just fine. Oh, and you can also open up the aforementioned hatch in his cockpit-chest and fold out a Mini-Con peg, so he can wear chest armor. I’m glad they actually put some thought into his robot mode, instead of denying him functionality that the design wouldn’t have allowed otherwise. He’s a solid Basic on his own.

His butt flap folds up for no readily apparent reason.

Torso Transformation-
I’m mainly just happy that the arms actually peg into place for this mode. Not nearly enough of the Commander figures thus far have done that. It’s not perfect though; the pegs they connect to seem a little flimsy for how much stress they’re gonna have to endure. Use caution. Other than that, the other big news is that the whole thing turns around for this mode. That neatly folded-up car-front section that was on the back is now the chest, and the wheel-pipe arms folded above it compliment it nicely. The legs just rotate up and swivel around on those diagonal mid-thigh swivels.

Combiner Core Mode-
Well, I’ll give it this: It looks cool. Head design is especially nice, very Cyberjet-ish. And it’s actually got a bulky look to it, not just wide like so many other Core modes seem to shoot for. But this one sadly trades functionality for the form. The pegged-together nature of the arm section means that you don’t get any bonus articulation out of the shoulders, just the PCC pegs, which can move up a little bit. Even worse are the legs, which have very little useful articulation, most of the hip movement being blocked off. It’s *really* hard to get a dynamic pose out of this guy. Which is really too bad, since it looks so cool to begin with.

Pinpoint-
Leadfoot’s Mini-Con is this little yellow fellow. He’s a decidedly Nebulan-looking guy, in the head design, and overall proportions. He’s got a backpack with an engine block and a couple of guns, which can swivel around over his shoulders, which is really cool. Transforming to engine mode is kind of annoying, since, despite having pegs on his shoulders and holes in his legs that are supposed to fit together, nothing really lines up right, so it ends up just being vague folding like most of the other PCC Mini-Cons. The engine is hilariously huge mounted on Leadfoot’s vehicle mode, a hypothetical driver wouldn’t even be able to see past it. You can flip the guns forward here for hilariously huge firepower. Robot Weapon mode is just the Robot Mode lying down with the guns pointed out, pegged into Leadfoot’s hand, though if you fold Leadfoot’s finger-chunk away, you can manipulate Pinpoint into a fairly credible and cool-looking gunhand configuration. Chest Armor mode is just the Engine Mode with the guns pointing out, nothing really special. I actually rather like Pinpoint, if only because his joints are all stiff (unlike a lot of the PCC Mini-Cons, which seem to suffer from some joint looseness), he looks cool, and has a connection mode that isn’t just a vague weapon (being instead a vague engine). And the guns over the shoulders thing in Robot Mode is really cool. He’s got Powerlinx pegs on his knees to facilitate multi-Mini-Con linkage, similar to Caliburst.

ALTOGETHER- This is a pretty good set, but you should mainly buy it for Leadfoot’s individual modes. His Combiner Core mode is really disappointing in terms of posability and fiddle value. Pinpoint is a cool Mini-Con, but he’s got kind of a meh weapon mode, so he’s not terrific as an accessory to be swapped around. Get this if you just want a good Basic with a good Mini-Con, and don’t really care about combination.

Icepick
Vehicle Mode-
Icepick is a snowplow in vehicle mode, which makes me automatically biased towards him, since I enjoy seeing unconventional, underused vehicle modes in Transformers, and Icepick definitely has one. The only other Transformers to turn into a snowplow like this were the Mini-Con Iceberg and his repaint, Armorhide. Animated Sentinel Prime was a snowplow, but of the small, inner-city, Mr. Plow type, as opposed to the big, heavy-duty thing that Icepick is. This is the sort of thing you see researchers driving around the North Pole in. I think. Anyway, he’s a big, cool snowplow. The color scheme really sells it, with a mix of off-white and dark blue, along with some silver. While the PCC pegs set on the top back of the vehicle mode aren’t the same color as anything else, they still blend into the color scheme, and don’t stick out too bad as a result. The only other piece of conspicuous robot kibble is the claws hanging off the back; they don’t blend in, or even try to. The wheels at the front could use some paint, being all blue attached to a blue vehicle chunk doesn’t do them any favors. The plow itself is painted silver though, which looks nice, and it’s got some sharp, toothy details which make it look even cooler. The robot mode chest Powerlinx point can flip up here if you like, but it’s too close to the regular Powerlinx point that you’re gonna have to get creative to get two Mini-Cons on him at once.

Stupid fun: Attaching Iceberg on top of him. It’s so rare to see snowplows mating in the wild!

Transformation-
Your basic PCC simplicity. Only remotely interesting part is the crotch-legs folding down, since it uses way more joints than it seems like it would need. This has the side effect of making the assembly where the waist clips together a little dodgy, since it’s just a clip, and enough play will make it slide out. The plow becomes Gundam-ish skirt armor that you’re free to position how you like. I prefer to just go with the box’s suggestion of the middle piece flipped up into the chest, with the side flaps out one click. This gives his legs the best range of motion.

Robot Mode-
I can almost see where the wanted to go with this, but this mode’s got some issues going on that hold it back. First and foremost are the PCC pegs on the shoulder pads. There is no way ever that you’re going to get these to look good. There’s simply no position that’s going to make these big blue cubes on sticks jutting straight out the sides of his shoulders look decent. I tend to fold them down. This is slightly more inconspicuous, and doesn’t impede arm movement as much as you would think. The arms have their own problems though. The claws are on ball joints, letting them rotate, which is good since it really frees up his arms’ range of movement and prevents him from having the infamous sideways hands. But the socket where the ball plugs in points the claws down, and they can’t straighten out forward past this odd 45-degree angle. Leaving some extra movement room for the claws would’ve helped a lot. And since they’re claws attached to skinny arms, there’s nowhere to add a peg hole to let him hold Mini-Con weapons. The Powerlinx point on his shoulder is his only choice. The head is odd too. It’s actually plugged onto a ball joint, with a separate spiked-collar piece sitting around the joint just below it. The head’s kind of nestled into this piece, which makes it sit at an odd angle, and makes moving it kind of tough. And his Combiner head is clearly visible through his back, and no, you can’t just turn it around since that prevents his chest door from closing.

On the upshot, he’s pretty posable, especially in the arms, which have universal ball joints at both the shoulders, AND where the shoulder pads connect to the body. Then he’s got a bicep swivel, an elbow swivel with a wide range of motion, and the aforementioned ball jointed wrists. The legs are more average with universal hips, mid-thigh swivels, and hinge knees. The feet do get joints out of the transformation scheme, but those aren’t worth a whole lot since his feet are actually tiny little decorative things, and you’re actually standing him up on his entire big boots most of the time. This does make him nicely stable though; he can manage one-foot poses pretty well.

Torso Transformation-
Leadfoot brought the originality. Icepick is nothing new, especially in going to torso mode. You know the drill. Swap heads, flip out PCC pegs, manipulate arms to beef up the body. The arms don’t even do anything remotely clever, or peg in anywhere. You just fold his claws up to clutch his armpits and hope it looks cool.

Combiner Core Mode-
Well admittedly, is does look kind of cool. Another good head design, with kind of a Rock Lords/Jewel Lords thing going on with the icicle hair. And he ends up looking wide (because of his shoulders) and tall (because of his legs). And pretty dynamic in the legs too, since they get to keep all their Robot Mode posability. The arms aren’t as good. Trying to get good poses out of the shoulders is pretty much guaranteed to dislodge and crumple up the robot arms snuggled up against the chest. I may need to experiment with alternate positiong. Still, I do like this core mode. I really hope we get a team of arctic drones later down the line to compliment this toy.

Chainclaw-
The nonsensically named Chainclaw is partnered up with Icepick. Notably, the actual toy looks nothing like the pictures on the package, being blue, not purple, and having totally different paint apps. I supposed this was to keep some variety, as Throttler, another Mini-Con in this wave, is also purple. I like the blue better anyway, it goes nicely with Icepick. Sadly, aside from the nice colors, there’s really nothing remarkable about Chainclaw. He’s got an average robot mode, with clamp hands that are hampered by the joint looseness I mentioned seeing in PCC Mini-Cons before. There’s a Powerlinx peg on his back, which would be nice for facilitating weapon combining, but it’s a touch too small, and thus most other Mini-Cons fit too loosely on it.

Chainclaw’s only official weapon mode has you just bending his legs over his head to make him a rocket pod, and while the instructions don’t show it, you’re clearly supposed to clip his clamp hands onto the pegs on the sides of his knees, for stability. It’s passable, but kind of sad when you realize that Firebot, a Mini-Con from way back in Armada, managed to transform into a better-looking rocket pod AS WELL AS a fire truck. I did manage to find another weapon mode for Chainclaw though. If you keep the knees together and bent and rotate the legs around 180 degrees at the hips, the reclip the hands to the knees, you get a decent hand-held rocket gun mode, with Commanders being able to use his Powerlinx peg as a handle. While it’s too loose for Mini-Cons, the pegs fits into most Commander hands just fine, oddly.

Chest armor mode is a sham and I’m not even going to bother talking about it.

ALTOGETHER- Man did I really want to like this one more than I did. He’s a snowplow, he’s got a cool color scheme, his Mini-Con is a rocket pod, where did they go wrong? Well basically, Icepick just feels phoned in. He goes through all the PCC motions and at least does most of them competently, but he brings absolutely nothing interesting to the table, and has a lot of problems that could have been corrected had they just spent more time on it or put in the tiniest amount of extra effort. And Chainclaw is just plain lazy and uninspiring. You don’t need to worry about getting this one unless you really like snowplows or feel the need to bulk up your Decepticon PCC forces. Otherwise, you’re not missing much.

Sledge
Vehicle Mode-
Unfortunately, getting to talk about how much I like Sledge means I have to start by talking about his rather unfortunate vehicle mode. This thing is, simply put, a mess. It’s not a vehicle so much as it’s a jumble of robot parts arranged into a compact shape with construction equipment strapped to parts of it. The body of the vehicle is pretty clearly a robot torso; looking down you can see the calves angled down connecting to the treads. The shovel arm is painfully obviously attached to the clipped-together robot arms, with all sorts of problematic wiggle room at the first joint from the myriad of robot and torso mode shoulder hinges. The blue PCC pegs stick out like sore thumbs, and the ones at the shovel end can’t even fold in decently on their stupidly stiff joints, not that you would want to, since that would limit shovel movement. There’s some silver spray apps that I guess are supposed to look like wear on shovel and dozer blades, but instead just look like Sledge was scooping up silver paint. And I barely even realized that the foldable chest plate is supposed to be the cockpit when it’s compacted in this mode, since it barely looks like a cockpit, and the robot head is plainly exposed if you leave it in that configuration.

Blah, this mode sucks and I don’t want to talk about it anymore, lest it dampen my enthusiasm for the rest of the toy.

Transformation-
Quick and easy, as a side effect of the lamely-done vehicle mode. You get a couple aesthetic options here though, which is kind of neat. The PCC pegs can stick straight up or fold down a bit (I leave them up since the damn joints are so stiff that it’s not worth the bother), and you can keep the cockpit-panel to the side and have the blade in the chest, or fold the blade back a bit and spread the panels across the chest, centering the Powerlinx point and making things more symmetrical (I go back and forth on this one, mainly depending on where I’m attaching Throttler).

Robot Mode-
Oh look, this is where all the effort went. He’s a stocky little guy with a nice yellow/black color balance. The knees have kind of a mech-alive/automorph thing happening with the tread sections that pop-out when you straighten the knees, a nice touch. The legs in general are pretty cool, actually, with the dozer blades forming stable feet with a good range of motion, and the PCC pegs work really well here as posable heel spurs, letting him pull off some nicely dynamic footwork. The arms actually have more articulation than they need. Seriously, not only does the combination of bicep swivel and universal ball elbow joints lead to the upper arm section getting rotated out of position a lot, but the diagonal swivels where the shoulder PCC pegs connect to the body lead other sorts of weirdness. Once you learn to work with it though, you can get some pretty neat poses to happen. He’d be able to cross his arms over his chest if it weren’t for the big shovel-arm sections on his arms. Those form cool-looking armor though, so I’m not too saddened. And the open sections that point with his hands look kinda like arm-mounted rail guns or something, which I find really cool. The hands are proportionate, open-palm sculpts which look really nice, but don’t let him hold weapons. It’s okay though, they compensated for that and put standard-peg holes on the underside of his arms, which work just fine. His head design’s okay, but since they had to get a basic-proportionate face into the backside of a Combiner-size head, he’s got a rather big helmet, and the blinders on the sides are just odd, no way around that one. All in all though, this is a fun, interesting little robot.

Torso Transformation-
Pretty simple. Flip the PCC pegs out of the legs, rotate the arm pegs into position (although it’s cool that just rotating the pegs down gets the robot mode arms up out of the way. This diagonal swivel’s a neat idea). The robot arms don’t make a vain attempt to fill out the body, opting instead to just sit on top of the shoulders and stay out of the way, which is a design decision I can respect after guys like Icepick and Searchlight. As I mentioned, the Combiner head is the same piece as the robot head. You just rotate it around and fold in the aforementioned blinders. Oh, and fold the saw back and deploy the chest piece, if you didn’t have it that way already.

Combiner Core Mode-
This one definitely feels different, as the core body is so small. It creates some interesting proportions when joined with drones, making the limbs look bigger and giving the whole thing a cool Big Shoulders/Big Boots feel that I rather like. Like Icepick, the legs are just the robot legs, so he gets that good range of motion too, plus the dozer blades make cool-looking knee pads. Where the shoulders connect get good posability too, thanks to inventive use of those diagonal swivel joints. You can also fold the shovel-arm halves out from off of the shoulders to create a nifty four-armed robot mode, which I really like now that I’ve happened across it. The Combiner head design’s another cool one: A faceplate/visor combo that looks really familiar somehow, with cool side-attached devil/demon horns coming out. I dig it.

Throttler-
Sledge’s Mini-Con is the Drill that will pierce the Heavens! Okay, maybe not quite, but I would love to see a repaint of this guy in a gold and green Core Drill setup. But anyway, he’s a pretty great Mini-Con. In robot mode, he’s got ball elbows and mid-thigh swivels! This is already above and beyond standard PCC Mini-Con posability, and while he has a tough time standing, it’s okay because he’s so entertainingly fiddly that you can hardly put him down anyway. But what really sells it is his weapon mode. He’s only got one, but that’s fine since it’s an ACTUAL TRANSFORMATION! His knees invert on their joints, fold back, and peg together! Then his arms go back and peg into that assembly to hold it all together! Pieces that lock and connect! Dedicated joints and altmode parts! Any PCC Mini-Cons released in the future have no excuse. And Throttler makes a cool drill too. There’s a Powerlinx connector at the direct back of the drill, letting you attach him to any points that are facing the right way (the chest armor connection points work well for this, if only because I think that having a big drill attached to your chest is awesome). The chest piece that this connector is on has a swivel in it, to facilitate the drill spinning when it’s connected in this manner. Admittedly, it doesn’t spin freely enough to really make the functionality impressive, but the fact that they thought to include it at all is a surprise. Furthermore, Throttler’s still-visible head is not just a standard-size peg, but a Powerlinx point, allowing him to be held by anyone with proper hands, or even attached to other Mini-Cons to give them Spiral Power. I’m glad to see more Mini-Cons in this line including Powerlinx pegs as well as connectors. It lets you do ridiculous awesome weapon combinations a la Energon.
In any case, Throttler makes for an awesome weaponized drill. He can be approximated into some chest armor, but a big drill on someone’s chest is just way cooler, in my opinion.

ALTOGETHER- Sledge is a fine toy on his own. His vehicle mode is awful, but his well thought-out robot and Combiner modes make up for it. But Throttler really SELLS the set. Attaching his drill mode to Sledge in myriad ways leads to some pretty cool combinations, even moreso if you go crazy and attach other Mini-Con weapons to Throttler. I have to admit, I’m really starting to see the possibilities and play value of this line now that I’ve got a couple drone sets, and a bunch of Commanders and Mini-Cons. I strongly recommend this set if you’ve been holding out on PCC until now, but are still interested in the possibilities of the line. It’s honestly almost worth it for Throttler alone.
Last edited by BWprowl on Fri Dec 30, 2011 4:09 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: PCC Commanders Wave 2

Post by 138 Scourge »

Between this and what JT said about Throttler, I'm almost tempted by his set. But I'm kind of more tempted by Icepick, actually. I always like the snow vehicles, and Icepick bears a (probably coincidental) resemblance to the G1 monster Icepick, so that's enough to make me sort of want one.
Dominic wrote: too many people likely would have enjoyed it as....well a house-elf gang-bang.
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Re: PCC Commanders Wave 2

Post by Dominic »

The second wave combiners follow the same general pattern as the first wave. But, there are enough differences in design and execution to lead me to believe that the line was definitely not fully "done" in time. The main figures and drones still feel experimental, giving the impression that the designers were still designing certain figures to try out specific ideas rather than applying fully realized ideas to the figures.

Over all, wave 2 is a vast improvement over wave 1. But, PCC still has a good deal of room to improve. Wave 3 is slated to be recolors of wave 1. I have the distinct feeling that wave 4, (scheduled to be new moulds), will be under-ordered by retailers, which could make any improvements to the line (assuming there are any), moot.



Doubleclutch/Rallybots (team of speedy lookin' cars):
There really is not much to say about this toy that has not been said. Reviews have been almost universally negative. And, there is a reason for that. If any single set poisons "Power Core Combiners", The core figure has problems that should have been predicted, and could have been mitigated if not solved, at the design stage. Weak connections and joints make it easier to disassemble and re-assemble this toy than to re-arrange it for transformation.

The drones have some interesting touches. All of the drones have hard-points, which is to be expected. However, all of the hard-points are on hinges, making it possible to fold down and hide them. This is a small thing that greatly iimproves the look of the drones. (In contrast, Skyburst's drones in wave 1 all have visually intrusive hard-points that are impossible to hide.) Unlike earlier drones, the Rally drones are not designed to transform automtically when connected to the body. Fully converting the drones to limbs requires some manual fiddling.

Doubleclutch and the 4 drones are blatantly out of scale with each other. "Transformers" as a line has always been pretty loose with scale. But, in some cases, it is too obvious to ignore. In this case, there are 5 toys packaged together that share idiomatically similar forms, (cars), that most people, (including the kids this line is pitched to), have a visceral point of reference for. In car form, Doubleclutch is twice or thrice the size of the drones.

As attractive as the combined form is, most of the flaws in the toy become apparent while combining the drones with the commander figure. It is bad enough when pieces simply pop off of a figure while it is being transformed. But, in this case, the least stable pieces also happen to be the same pieces that are under the most stress when the figure is being re-arranged. And, as annoyin as this is for me as an adult, it is likely to be infuriating for a kid. (And, I have a feeling the Doubleclutch is the one that kids are going to want unless they fiddle with a friend's copy first.) Additonally, the drones require more fiddling than toys of that scale and complexity should, including the auto-transform mechanisms needing manual control.

Grade: D Skip this set unless you are looking for custom fodder.



Dirtboss/Destructicons (demolition derby team):
In contrast to the Rallybots, the Constructicons are well worth purchasing. While far from perfect, (and even sharing a few of the Rallybots' problems), Dirtboss and his drones are a great improvement over the wave 1 sets.

At the very least, (if most obvious), Dirtboss and the Destructicon drones are more or less scaled. They are not perfect. But, any discrepancies in scale could be reconciled by all of the vehicle drones being largely retro-fitted. Dirtboss's alternate mode is a monster truck, which is the sort of think people kind of "know" the size of, even if they really do not. (Dirtboss also looks "about right" next to the Rallybots sans Doubleclutch.)

Dirtboss' robot and core modes logically flow from eachother and the truck mode without being predictable. There are few points where pieces could fit together more smoothly or tightly, but none of them are even close to as severe as the problems with Doubleclutch. In fact, a couple of them arguably ad fiddle-value.

Dirtboss's ramshackle drones are a good balance between variety and a unified theme. Each of the drones appear to retro-fitted vehicles that Dirtboss pulled out of the same scrap pile. But, rather than all being the same vehicle or type of vehicle, the 3 drones each have a different "base". One actually looks to be based on the same type of truck as Bombshock's jeep drone from the Combaticon set.

And, while this does little to make the Destructicons a better set in any meaningful way, the fact that the merged for looks a bit like a Chaos Space Marine, (from "WarHammer 40,000), is a nice (though probably accidental) touch.

Grade: A/B Not perfect, but definitely worth picking up.


The "Power Core Combiners" line has huge amounts of potential. The concept is sound. There is real and obvious kid appeal. But, between the fact that it is one of 3 "Transformers" lines on the shelves and the rushed execution of the line, I am wondering how long PCC will last.





Dom
-will try to get thoughts on the new "Legends" up next week.
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Re: PCC Commanders Wave 2

Post by Shockwave »

Nabbed the latest sets Destrons and Protectobots.

Destrons: The commander figure (I'll just call him Motormaster) is remeniscent of both the original Motormaster and RID Scourge. It looks good in all of his modes and the Combiner mode in particular has a strong imposing feel to him.

The limbs: This is where it starts to fail me. Two of the limbs were repaints from the Combaticon set and I'm pretty sure the other two were repaints of the Arialbot set. I really expected new drones for this. The Combaticon drones actually do look pretty good but the arial drones just suck six ways to Sunday. The Helicopter barely transforms into anything and for a set that's billed as versatility I have no idea how this thing would ever work as an arm. It barely works as a leg. Menasor does actually stand so it does actually work, but I really expect better design than this. The plane drone isn't much better. There's no discernable hands to make it look like anything other than a stump where a hand should be. Now, in spite of this, I actually do like this set, but I might have to wait for the actual Stunticon set to come out in order to get more variety of drones available.

Protectobots: The center peice of this actually bugs me for the reason that the robot arms don't fold onto the back very well. Stuff doesn't lock into place leaving the combined mode uneasy and unsturdy. It also suffers from the same drone problem that Menasor does. The plane and copter suck and are unconvincing as lims and the other two at least function.

I think this has been one of my main problems with this line. I could accept the idea of having toys that function as limbs if the actually did so. These do not and there's a lot of inconsistencies. I dunno, they generally look ok in their merged form, but Hasbro needs to step this up if they're gonna keep going with it. I expect limbs that actually function as the limbs they're supposed to be and I expect more diversity (more new molds, not simply the previous set repainted).

I would actually recommend both sets, IF you don't already have the previous two. Otherwise, you essentially already have these, especially if you picked up the two packs.

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Re: PCC Commanders Wave 2

Post by Dominic »

I actually do still have the planes...... :lol:

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Re: PCC Commanders Wave 2

Post by 138 Scourge »

I guess Doubleclutch would go here? This is where I'm putting some real quick thoughts. The Rallybots are pretty neat limbs. I like how one of 'em has their connecting hole in the top of the car, that's kind of a different thing. The legs get a little frustrating, because I pretty much have to unfold them manually instead of having 'em transform themselves. Still, minor problem, decent little dudes, they make a nice set of limbs for Huffer or Leadfoot.

Doubleclutch, though...man, I dunno. I really wanted to like this thing. I like his car mode a lot, the squarish front end and the color make me think of some late seventies-early eighties kind of car. Somewhere between old-school muscle car and old-school piece of crap that someone's trying to rebuild into a muscle car. Which, I'm okay with that, I've been wanting more TFs to look like older cars for awhile. The more rounded back end of the car's a little jarring compared to the boxy front, but no big deal. Still look pretty decent, it's got a unique look among the tons of car TFs we get.

And the robot mode's not bad, either. Not great, but not bad. He's got an interesting transformation going for him, the car parts wind up in different places than they usually do on car-based robots. There's a hell of a lot of backpack kibble if you go with the official transformation, but if you fold the backpack down a bit it's not as noticeable. And for the most part his arms stay on in robot mode, so that's something.

The torso, though. Man, that thing'd look decent as a combined robot, probably. If the arms held together for any length of time. I thought I'd found a solution when a video review pointed out that there's holes in the arms that peg into the body to give 'em more support. It doesn't help, then the arms still fall pop off the ball joints, they're just held in by those pegs for a second or so, then they fall out.

So with a little work, Doubleclutch could have been pretty okay. Even if everything worked the way it should've, he still wouldn't be one of this line's greats. But man, not being able to use the combined mode is a pretty egregious flaw, especially since the torso mode would actually look pretty good if it worked.

Still, Huffer looks pretty good with the Rallybots, so there's that.
Dominic wrote: too many people likely would have enjoyed it as....well a house-elf gang-bang.
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