Amelie wrote:These look like fun toys. Ryan - after having these in hand, are they a lot better than originally thought?
Yes and no. I liked the individual robots more than I thought I would and the odd upper leg/lower torso areas didn't bother me quite as much once I had them in hand. Prior to owning them, I thought the pay off with these would be the combined modes which I found to be very disappointing. They stay together fairly well, but the limited poseability and frustrating combined mode transformations with Japanese instructions made the combined modes not enjoyable to me. The inability to turn the heads of the combined mode also was a big disappointment (though I knew this going in).
While I didn't put batteries in my figures, I was very impressed by the electronics of these guys from the YouTube videos that I watched. Very elaborate. Almost too much so for what these figures were.
They're some of my least favorite figures from the Transformers line. I would love to know more about the origins of these toys. As we've discussed on the Seibertron.com podcast, it seems like these figures were intended for another transforming toy line such as Brave. It is very obvious that a designer spent a crazy amount of time working on these but unfortunately they just didn't turn out that great in the end.
Ultimately, I'm just bummed that this is the best that they can come up with for Combiners. I don't understand why Combiners are such a difficult concept for Hasbro and Takara these days. Pretty much everything 1992 and on has been a disappointment for combiners.