Your Classics Wishlist

[Dominic]

The problem with merge teams is that Puzzlor still beats most of the guys Prowl listed.

I had Magna Boss and Tripredacus. If not for the fact they were Beast-era combiners, nobody would remember them as anything other than cumbersome and forced. Build King ain't much better.

Scramble Power is nice. But, I would be happy to trade it for a combiner team that does not require piles of extra bits in order to work. Devastator, as much as I like the characters, is a terrible toy.

Devastator and Puzzlor are a perfect case study of how much Hasbro's investment in content paid off for "Transformers".

Puzzlor had a gun that did not fit anywhere unless the toy was fully combined. Of course, given how much Hasbro has slipped back with integrated weapons in recent years, that does not seem so bad.


Trekkie, you are one of the few people who does not want more Decepticons, especially planes. When you get right down to it, personal favorites aside, "Transformers" only has a few A-listers. (And, really, how many Primes, Starscreams and Megatrons can you soak up?) I am happy to have Acid Storm and not have his bio-note read like it was written by the kid who was kicked out of the gaming club.

Of course, Hasbro releasing all 3 of the Rainmakers would pretty much kill any chance of them releasing Sunstorm or Thundercracker. (If nothing else, one of the Rainmakers was blue.)

Dom
-will still consider getting a re-issue Devastator.

[Shockwave]

That's kind of my point, there were already plenty of existing army-building characters to pull from without having to invent random character who only had one scene in that one episode that one time. I will admit to being weird in the sense that the original 6 seekers are some of my favorite characters and you would think that I would want there to be more of them. I actually probably would have liked Acid Storm better if he had just been lime/florescent green. Sunstorm I'm a little more tolerant of because I actually did have the "Yay more seekers!" reaction at first, but he's been crammed down our throats so much at this point that I'm as sick of him now as I am of Ultra Magnus being relagated to a white Optimus Prime, Nemesis Prime, and Cliffjumper being a red Bumblebee.

[138 Scourge]

And here I keep thinking Sunstorm was one of the Rainmakers. No? Well, they had a yellow one, right? Close enough. Make a yellow one, call him Sunstorm, I'll say he's in the Rainmakers now and call it good.

Actually, I'm pretty happy with Animated Sunstorm, so I'm not too worried about a Classics one showing up. If it does, awesome, I'm on it. If not, whutevah.

Build King ain't that bad. He's got his flaws, but he's okay.

Y'know what I'd punch a baby to see in Universe 3.0 but definitely won't happen, ever? Some new-mold tributes to some Neo guys. Kinda borderline-obsessed with that line at the moment, just because of how wonderfully bizarre a lot of the design choices are. I dunno, they want to represent the breadth of the Transformers brand, that's definitely one of the stranger and more entertaining corners to go with.

And if they made a Dead End, they could totally do a yellow repaint with a new head and finally have a damn "Scrounge" toy. Beast Scrounge, admittedly, but that'd still be wicked cool.

[Shockwave]

I thought the rainmakers were Sunstorm/Acid Storm/Whatevertheblueguy'snameis. I will confess that I like Animated Sunstorm and if they make a Classics one, I'll get that too in spite of my 'tude.

I liked both Rail Racer and Landfill.

Classics BW Neo mint candy nautilus FTW!!

Scrounge would be totally awesome!

[BWprowl]

The Yellow Rainmaker is not Sunstorm. That guy was all yellow, while Sunstorm is a very distinctive orange-creamsicle color scheme. He's actually got, like, designs on him, and stuff.

What would you want them to become? A merge form without limbs is gonna look ridiculous. The interchangeable limbs thing adds versatility to the concept. The only thing that had always irritated me about the original Devastator was that they weren't interchangeable.

I'm not saying the merge form shouldn't have limbs. I'm saying they should come up with a combination scheme beyond "Central guy folds up and four others just stick their ass-ends on him to become limbs". It's lame, and cheap, and uncreative, and 90% of all gestalts do it that way. I actually love Devastator caompared to the Scramble City guys because his components actually had a dedicated combination scheme. With the Scramble City guys, every single member could become ANYTHING on ANY of the combined forms. Just straighten them out, stick a hand or a foot on them, and plug their head into the central guy. They hardly invested any creativity in that transformation at all. Drill a couple holes in 'em, and any Transformer could be a Sramble City limb! And people wonder why the Combiner limbs are so non-memorable, they're all just anonymous limb-blocks! Try harder, Hasbro!

God, have I mentioned I hate Scramble City Combiners? Magnaboss, Tripredacus, Magmatron, and JRX all managed to bring something new to the table, combination-scheme-wise.

Dom, you're crazy, Magnaboss rules. He's a Gestalt, with a unified color scheme in combined mode, who holds together perfectly, and is made up of guys of totally different sizes! It's awesome, and he's only barely beaten out by JRX, in my opinion.

[Shockwave]

The Yellow Rainmaker is not Sunstorm. That guy was all yellow, while Sunstorm is a very distinctive orange-creamsicle color scheme. He's actually got, like, designs on him, and stuff.

Of course he is. Hasbro actually said it at one point (I don't remember where, probably when they announced Acid Storm) that the three "rainmakers" were Sunstorm, Acid Storm and Rainstorm and were intended to be the same three jets seen in that one scene in that one episode of G1. I don't buy for a second that they're not the same character just because the toy happens to be a slightly different color than the cartoon.

I like combiners of any kind, I think the interchangeable limb settup allows for more diversity cause you're not limited to a set look every time. Although some of the more unique combiners have really been the best figures (Railracer being a shining example of this).

[Dominic]

I am sick of mandatory repaints like Magnus from Prime, or Cliffjumper from Bumblebee. But, I am not against repaints conceptually, especialy in the case of guys like the F15s.

As for merge team, Magna boss is cumbersome. It feels forced. 1/3 of that toy, (the eagle), feels like it was thrown in ad, or even post, hoc.

I can see the appeal of having dedicated combiner components, as is the case with Devastator. (If nothing else, it theoretically allows for more variety in combiner design.) But, Devastator is terrible. There is almost as much, if not more, plastic in the add-on bits as there is in the figures themselves. (Of course, nothing will beat the Micromaster combiners, whiche are some of the worst combiners I have ever seen.)

Dom
-would just settle for TFU returning at some point.

[BWprowl]

Of course he is. Hasbro actually said it at one point (I don't remember where, probably when they announced Acid Storm) that the three "rainmakers" were Sunstorm, Acid Storm and Rainstorm and were intended to be the same three jets seen in that one scene in that one episode of G1. I don't buy for a second that they're not the same character just because the toy happens to be a slightly different color than the cartoon.

Link to a reference or it didn't happen. Sorry, but I kind of really hate that idea.

I like combiners of any kind, I think the interchangeable limb settup allows for more diversity cause you're not limited to a set look every time. Although some of the more unique combiners have really been the best figures (Railracer being a shining example of this).

You know what else allows for more diversity and isn't limited to a set look every time? Lego blocks. The Scramble City limbs are just Transformers who transform into Lego blocks.

As for merge team, Magna boss is cumbersome. It feels forced. 1/3 of that toy, (the eagle), feels like it was thrown in ad, or even post, hoc.

I'll give you that they could've made Silverbolt more integral to the combined form, besides forming the helmet and chest gun. But Magnaboss still wins for having proportionate body parts, and an interesting combination scheme that we haven't seen anything like since (The scheme also works really well, thematically, in the case of the BWII characters).

I can see the appeal of having dedicated combiner components, as is the case with Devastator. (If nothing else, it theoretically allows for more variety in combiner design.) But, Devastator is terrible. There is almost as much, if not more, plastic in the add-on bits as there is in the figures themselves.

I'll agree with you on this one, but Devastator is still light-years ahead of the Scramble City guys in terms of how much thought went into his combination scheme. And his resulting robot mode has better proportions AND more articulation to boot.

Dom, did you forget about Liokaiser? Only piece of combiner kibble that guy had was the head.

[Shockwave]

Link to a reference or it didn't happen.

Hate the idea, fine, but damn dude didja have to be so hostile about it? I don't really object to you asking me to submit proof of my statement (I certainly would have) but ya coulda been nicer about it. I mean, just because someone can't remember where they heard something doesn't mean it didn't happen. You mean to tell me that you never saw something and then couldn't remember where you'd seen it? Just because you can't remember where doesn't erase the fact that you saw it. /rant.

Incidently, we're of opposing opinions on this. You hate the idea of the yellow rainmaker being Sunstorm and I really hate the idea that he's not as that means we've gotten as much toy attention to a blink-and-you'll-miss-him character as we have for an uber bad ass main character like Shockwave. At least if he was the third rainmaker he'd have had at least two episodes with screentime which would *sort of* justify the attention.

Having said all of that, I did some research and it turns out you're right. Sort of. It seems to be accepted that Sunstorm was not the third rainmaker, although there's absolutely nothing official to back that up. Everything regarding that is speculation on the part of fans and absolutely nothing more (seriously, the first viable link to come up in a google search on the subject was actually a link to a page of a TFW thread). Wikipedia has a section of the article on seekers for the rainmakers where it states pretty definitively that Sunstorm is not the yellow rainmaker since the RM is a lighter, lemony yellow. It immediately disqualifies this statement with the next one stating that the purple one could be a miscolored Thundercracker. Really?! Well if that's the case, then one could just as easily say that the yellow one is just a miscolored Sunstorm. And there's absolutely nothing official to contradict that assertion. And I would further cite the series' consistent continuity/animation errors as a grounds to back it up. So far, the only official RM is Acid Storm. Unless Hasbro comes out with something to confirm the rest, they're nothing more than fan speculation, so believe what you want as your belief that he's not the third RM is just as valid as my opinion that he is.

[andersonh1]

Wasn't Sunstorm loosely based off the orange seeker from that one early scene in MTMTE, where the jets are shooting at Wheeljack and Bumblebee? Acid Storm is meant to be one of the Rainmakers, and I had found a link to support that at one point, so I'll see if I can dig it up.