Grimstone with Dinobot Drones!

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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138 Scourge
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Grimstone with Dinobot Drones!

Post by 138 Scourge »

Been meaning to do a review of these fellas for awhile, so here we go:

Okay, I'd been leery of the PCC line since it started coming out. Both two and five-packs have been more expensive than what I want to spend for what I get, and the drones looked sort of dubious in my eyes. So I held out for awhile, but I knew there was no way that I was gonna not get a set of five Dinobots. Especially when their color scheme is so clearly a callback to the classic Dinobots. So there's your full disclosure, I'm biased toward and against this set.

First impressions on seeing these guy's pictures was positive. I like that they went with dinos that aren't as commonly used. Sure, most of these dino modes have been done before, but mostly in BWNeo and even then, only a few of those molds made it over here. I'm not used to seeing these guys as robot dinos, so I'm pretty happy about it.

Grimstone: Grimstone's labeled as a "Triceratops" on the package and in the instructions, but he ain't. Anyone that flipped out over dinosaurs as a kid can tell you that the shorter horns over the eyes and horns around the bony crest say Styracosaurus. Anyway, in robot mode, he looks great in pictures, but in person...not particularly prepossessing. The dinosaur head sticks out at a strange angle, from the side it makes him look like he's got a big, sloping, gut. Then there's just the fact that...he's kind of plain-looking. Articulation's kind of a pain on this guy, too. The robot arms run into the back kibble since they're connected to the "wings" he's kind of rockin', then his forearms are on this kind of double-balljoint thing that means he can lift his hands up in front of him at about a ninety-degree angle, and they can rotate on the balljoint, but if you try to bring them up when the forearms are turned to the side, say, it's not happenin'. The hands, too, are just kind of sketched-in, you can see a thumb and a finger, but it's more...suggested by the shape of the thing, rather than clearly sculpted. The legs end up being sort of chicken-leggedy in robot mode, since they're the rear dino legs, but since he is kind of part dinosaur, that's a bit more logical than, say, when the movie guys do it. Enough bitching, though, time to get to the good things. Dude's got a good headsculpt, the shape of his helmet doesn't directly ape any of the Dinobots, but it looks like he could fit in with the other guys. His face has got a cool little grin, maybe it's just suggested by some of the lines of his face, but he definitely looks happy. His whole look, while kind of plain, is definitely a tribute to the classic Dinobots. If you'd drawn him into an episode of G1, he wouldn't have looked out of place as their sixth guy, down to his crest in dino mode becoming a set of wings. The dino-kibble in bot mode all folds into a pretty much solid piece on his back, while it does get in the arm's way, it at least looks pretty good. Two of the PCC pegs stay out of the way, pretty much, but the ones on the robot legs just stick out from the back. Grimstone doesn't have a mini-con peg in a place that suggests positioning for an "armor mode", but he does have one on his back, where the dino tail folds up. I don't have any of the other PCC mini-cons to see what kind of armor possibilities are going on, so I just slap mini-con Swoop on there and call it good.

Transforming Grimstone's a pretty simple thing: Unfold the dino head so it's on top of the robot head. Fold the robot arms up onto his chest and snap them together, which'll bring the halves of the crest together. Flip the tail up. Rotate the lower half of the robot legs around, and then pose the legs so that they make sense. Now here you've got a cute little tough guy dinosaur. Once the crest is there to make for more silver, and the red's balanced out by more of the silver and grey, the figure doesn't looks as plain as he does in robot mode. The head and crest are pretty prominent, as they should be for this kind of dinosaur, but the body looks sort of small, and out of proportion to the rear legs, which just look huge. The weakest point here is that the PCC pegs on the back legs are again, sticking straight out, but in this mode, they're more prominent. The mini-con peg at the end of his tail could be used to put weapon mini-cons on, but I still just stick Swoop on there. In a neat touch, there's a little gun barrel on either side of his head that can move up or down, depending on how you like. I generally fold 'em down, so they'll hide the robot head a little better. I like the dinosaur mode more than the robot mode, but they're both pretty decent. Not amazing, perhaps, but there's nothing I really dislike happening here, either.

Drones: The drone vehicle concept didn't grab me at all, but when the drones are robot dinosaurs, it's easier to see them as being a cool group of characters, instead of silly little vehicles. And the scale pretty much works here, there's not that much of a size difference, and it's not as easy to call "bullshit" on four little dinosaurs with a slightly-bigger one as, say, a car with four littler cars hanging around it. Amusingly to me, the Dimetrodon drone is labeled "Spinosaurus" on the package and instructions, and the Pachycephalosaurus is labeled as a second Parasauralophus. There's no articulation to speak of, really. You can move the arms of the drones that have 'em, and you can press on the connection point on the Dimetrodon and pretend like he's striking, but other than that, bricks. Still, not like the other drones in this line have articulation, right? And these things are also great because they all have multiple gun barrels pointing off of 'em, as well as mini-con points that you can attach more weapon mini-cons to, resulting in awesome or adorable combinations. I like the lot of 'em, even the Dimetrodon, who looks mean as hell but cute, kind of like a bulldog. The Anklyosaurus also gets points for being basically a tank with legs and having a spiky mace for a tail, that's great stuff right there.

Combined Mode: They combine pretty easy, you just flip open the top panel of Grimmy's dino head and fold it forward to make the robo-pope head, fold his dino legs up and peg them into place, flip the tail up and rotate the rear legs around. You're there. Pegging the drones into place can take a little doing, I tend to open up the drones where they'll be transforming and sliding the pegs in, it seems to work. Then we have where this toy friggin' shines.

The Dinobot Combiner is pretty much the most visually striking of the PCCs I've seen. He actually reminds me of some of the BWNeo aesthetics, with unconventional choices as to what to do with dino kibble everywhere. The arms and legs are, as always, crazy mismatched things, but the similar coloring and aesthetic makes it all still work as one thing. I particularly like the Parasauralophus drone arm, the tail folds up and the legs fold in to make it huge two-pronged claw arm with a bigass scythe attached. The Dimetrodon arm does the ol' "Animal head doubling as a hand" gag, but it does look cool. Another great feature? Grimstone's bony, spiky crest ends up strongly suggesting a skull shape on his chest with big, pointy teeth. It's great. The combiner face is black, which pretty much eats up any detail there might be there, but his helmet, the feature that makes him the Robot Dino-Pope gives him just tons of unique looking appeal and style And most of the mini-con hardpoints are still usuable, so with a little imagination and trial and error, you can find at least a few ways to make this guy bristle with additional weaponry. Or just go for a goof and stick the dinobot mini-cons all over him. Swoop still looks pretty good attached to the back of this guy, too. Everything seems to hold together well, making him pretty well stable, and the tail of the Pachycephalosaurus drone becomes just an enormous friggin' heelspur, making this stand pretty steadily.

Overall: Okay scout, even with the Dinobot homage and with my Dinobot love, I can only call him "okay". Drones that are cool enough that I can overlook the fact that they don't really transform. Out of friggin' sight combined mode. And a welcome return to mini-con interactivity. Yeah, I'm very glad I bought this set. He's a lot of fun, I've been almost non-stop fiddling with this set for the last week or so, it's really a group of fun toys, and I'm pretty sure they've convinced me that I like Power Core Combiners. If you enjoy this sub-line, then I'd highly recommend these guys. If you don't...really, you could still do a lot worse, these things provide a pretty heavy dose of G1 Dinobot nostalgia, and manage to be pretty neat toys. High marks from this guy, anyway.
Last edited by 138 Scourge on Fri Dec 03, 2010 9:00 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Dominic wrote: too many people likely would have enjoyed it as....well a house-elf gang-bang.
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Re: Grimstone with Dinobot Drones!

Post by Dominic »

The mis-labelled dinos would annoy me. (Honestly, if a little kid is going to notice a mistake, an adult should not be making it.)
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Re: Grimstone with Dinobot Drones!

Post by BWprowl »

Dang, I need to go looking for these things at some point. I want them bad, and I'd like to find them before the sales at the various stores run out.

I'm curious as to how they're going to fit these guys into their normal repaint scheme. How do you mix dinosaur drones in with regular drone vehicle teams?
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Re: Grimstone with Dinobot Drones!

Post by Dominic »

My gut feeling on this is that Hasbro may have had more sets, including another animal based team, planned. But, poor sales on the first wave may have delayed or cancelled, those plans. (As it stands now, wave 5 consists only of the Stunticons. There is not even another recolored combiner in that wave as far as I know.)

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-hoping Hasbro gives PCC another chance after the holidays.
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Re: Grimstone with Dinobot Drones!

Post by 138 Scourge »

Dominic wrote:The mis-labelled dinos would annoy me. (Honestly, if a little kid is going to notice a mistake, an adult should not be making it.)
No, it's true, but in their defense, these guys are, for the most part, crazy hard to spell. I mean, I've been successfully spelling dino names almost as long as I've been alive, but the names of these guys have been giving me a hard time even at the peak of my dino love. Case in point, I stopped in mid-sentence while talking about Grimstone's combined mode, right where I was about to mention the tail of one of the dino drones making for a huge heelspur and keeping the gestalt stable, because I had to go look up the name of the Hardhead dinosaur and copy-paste it, and got distracted. Besides, this is probably not an identification error, more a glitch in the packaging at the design stage. Of course, it should've been caught, but P followed by a huge string of letters...I'll let it slide this once. The Styracosaurus/Triceratops, thing, though, that's just bad form.
BWprowl wrote:Dang, I need to go looking for these things at some point. I want them bad, and I'd like to find them before the sales at the various stores run out.

I'm curious as to how they're going to fit these guys into their normal repaint scheme. How do you mix dinosaur drones in with regular drone vehicle teams?
I dunno, man. The best idea I came up with, and it's not that great, mind, is repaint Icepick, throw that sucker in with these guys, and make for a weird half-assed Monstructor/Dinoking homage. It'd be really odd, because Icepick'd need a new name, and the dinos wouldn't really resemble his teammates, but their re-shelled Japanese equivalents, and then only sorta, but that's the best I got. Of course, Dom's probably right, and these things'll get shitcanned now that I've found out I like 'em.
Dominic wrote: too many people likely would have enjoyed it as....well a house-elf gang-bang.
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