Transformers Power of the Primes Volcanicus Package Art Pencils by Marcelo Matere

Here's the actual toy for comparison:



And differences there are, but not many noteworthy ones:

- Sludge and Snarl have switched positions, though the art is in line with his Earth Wars depiction.
- Snarl has his tail treated like Sludge's and Slag's, even tho the toy has it split, like the G1 one.
- Sludge has his back feet flip inward, something not possible with the toy. Also, the front feet seem to be twisted 180.

I got Leader Optimus yesterday, the main robot mode is great, and I love how involved the transformation from robot to trailer is. The truck cab is a horrible kibbly mess when viewed from any angle other than the front, it could do with a couple of extra panels on the sides to cover Orion's folded up arms at the back, though Orion's robot mode is a nice fun figure on his own.

JelZe GoldRabbit wrote:Here's the actual toy for comparison:



And differences there are, but not many noteworthy ones:

- Sludge and Snarl have switched positions, though the art is in line with his Earth Wars depiction.
- Snarl has his tail treated like Sludge's and Slag's, even tho the toy has it split, like the G1 one.
- Sludge has his back feet flip inward, something not possible with the toy. Also, the front feet seem to be twisted 180.

Don’t forget about the biggest difference , that’s a drawing

Randomhero wrote:Don’t forget about the biggest difference , that’s a drawing

And your point is?

Skritz wrote:I get the impression Volcaniconiconiicus Volcanicus is a bit more poorly received because he's an 'unwanted' combiner, since the majority of the fanbase did not want/expect a combining Dinobot. I mean, from what I can gather, the CW torso weren't received anywhere as poorly as the PotP ones but was it really due to better engineering or just because the G1 Combiners got new toys?

I think it's more the Combiner gimmick is "too intrusive" on them? Swoop, Slag, Sludge and Snarl all seem to be perfectly made as limbs from the get-go, but Grimlock as a torso not so much. At this point we have Combiner fatigue, plus where's Piranacon?!

JelZe GoldRabbit wrote:I think it's more the Combiner gimmick is "too intrusive" on them? Swoop, Slag, Sludge and Snarl all seem to be perfectly made as limbs from the get-go, but Grimlock as a torso not so much. At this point we have Combiner fatigue, plus where's Piranacon?!

Maybe its because I got back into collecting with Titans Return and only got a few CW figures after the line ended. To me this isn't as 'tired' or 'played out'. As for Piranacon, I speculated waaay back that he's entirely doable within the PotP lineup as a late-wave combiner. In fact, looking at Grimlock I wonder if he couldn't be re-engineered into Snaptrap. Sure, it would be a heavy retool but not an impossible one. Well, either him or Hun-Grr. The rest of the Seacons' seafood-with-limbs-design is entirely doable with pre-existing and/or upcoming molds, such as:

• Rippernsapper into Overbite and Scalor
• Swoop or Cutthroat as Seawing
• Blot heavily retooled to Tentakill
• Nautilator as a new legends-class figure who turn into a gun

Twitchythe3rd wrote:Maybe it's both? Forced combiners for the sake of gimmickry plus the looming threat of CW levels of mold reuse?

Could very well be. Though mold reuse has been less obvious, less numerous by Wave 3, and it's more Titans Return-style part sharing:

Metalhawk into Alpha Trion

Sludge shares with Slug
Cutthroat shares with Swoop

Starscream into Elita-1
Hot Spot into Inferno with redecos of Hun-Gurr's Engima and Combiner feet.

Happy New Year, Seibertronians! Power of the Primes has FINALLY come to the Twin Cities area in full force. I was able to pick up almost everything from the first wave between New Year's Eve and New Year's Day between Target and Toys 'R' Us. I've opened up everything except for the Prime Masters (because Target wouldn't sell them to me, more on that later) and the Leader Class figures, as I'll get to those after work tomorrow evening.

First, with the Prime Masters, I ask if anyone else in the U.S. has bought them from Target? The ones I found on the pegs last night were marked with a street date of 04/20/2018! I had no idea until they tried to ring them up at the register. I was able to purchase the Legends and Deluxe figures without problem. In fact, one of the employees stocking the shelves was kind enough to open up a fresh case of Legends figures from the back so I could pick out the best paint jobs available. Ultimately, the management of the store decided to give me a discount of $5.00 off each of the Legends figures instead of just selling the Prime Masters, so it's not a total loss, but still, I want my Prime Masters! I wasn't able to find them at all today. No other stores I checked even had them yet, and they were completely removed from the shelves at that same Target when I checked again today. A clerk at the store looked into it for me and discovered they were put back away in the stock room because of the "04/20/2018 street date." Again, they refused to sell them because of such. Luckily, I found Leaders Optimus Prime and Rodimus Prime had been put out on the shelves of that same Target today, so I grabbed them up too. The trip wasn't a total loss. There were only one of each.

Now, with that rant out of the way, here are my musings on what I've gotten my paws on so far. First, the Legends figures are all excellent. Windcharger looks fantastic in person. He's deliciously G1. The face sculpt doesn't bother me at all, and the coloring is pretty much spot on. He's way better than his Combiner Wars version from a few years ago, especially in terms of proportion (no skinny legs or tiny pin head). Beachcomber is pretty much perfect. Again, very G1 with a simple and effective transformation. Slash is pretty fun too. She's got no G1 equivalent, of course, but does seem to fit right in with the rest of the Dinobot crew. I like her transformation, which turns out to be a lot easier than you might think at first blush, looking at her robot mode. I didn't pick up the reissue Shrapnel. I've got the Takara version for my "Classics" shelf and three of the Thrilling 30 release as his clone swarm.

Next, the Deluxes. Jazz is a neat little toy. There's nothing egregiously wrong with him, if you need a Classics Jazz for your collection, but the Reveal the Shield/Transformers United version is a superior figure in every way, honestly. The only thing that might make PotP Jazz more appealing for some would be a more cartoon accurate silhouette, what with the front tires moved behind the shoulders and the door wings missing in robot mode. This Jazz will eventually serve as a combiner limb in my collection, as RtS/United Jazz will remain my defacto Classics version. Dreadwind was a nice little surprise too. The retooling from his original Arialbot form is extensive and well done. It's a satisfying little transformation, despite being pretty played out for half of the steps. I definitely look forward to getting Darkwing and combining the two together in alt mode. The paint work on Dreadwind is great too. Very nice for a Hasbro release.

For that matter, Jazz has great paint work too, though it's a bit sad that, given they went to the trouble of making him form accurate to the cartoon, they didn't get some of the finer coloring details right on robot mode, like black hands, unpainted kneecaps, blue highlights on his pelvis, silver abs, etc. Again, the RtS/United version of Jazz does the coloring details far better and looks perfectly fine in form compared to the original G1 toy. The sad part about PotP Jazz is that Takara won't be touching up Hasbro's paint job at all, so there is no hope of a "perfect" cartoon Jazz figure, at least not any time soon.

The two deluxe Dinobots, Slag and Swoop, are good figures. They don't really blow me away, per se, but there's nothing very "wrong" with them, as far as I can tell. The combining gimmick is not obtrusive in either. It would be nice if they were a little bit bigger, but honesly, what are you gonna do? It was going to be deluxe or nothing for everyone but Grimlock. The paint work is good, and I like the effect of painting the clear plastic underneath the surface to give each that "glassy shell" look of the G1 toys.

Now for Grimlock. The Target I got most of my figures from had no Voyagers on the shelf. Grimlock was the only figure I had to get from Toys 'R' Us instead (for $29.99 at that). Grimlock is a good figure, but does have a bit of a flaw in that he doesn't tab together as tightly as I would like. You can eventually get everything to sit in the right place in robot and in dino mode, but you can't really fiddle or play with him lest something pop out of place. The flaw, I think, is in the plastic used. The tolerances for the pegs are off, so they don't really "snap" in tightly. Grimlock looks great posed on my Classics shelf, though, along side Slag and Swoop. Again, it would be nice if he were just a bit bigger, but he sure looks the part of G1 Grimlock, despite only slightly edging out Classics Voyager Optimus Prime in height. I gave PotP Grimlock the sword from Fall of Cybertron Grimlock and Titan Master "Clobber" as his blaster. Sadly, I can't find a good way to attach the shield accessory from FoC Grimlock to his PotP counterpart. TRU didn't have Starscream, so I've got no opinion on him yet.

Like I said earlier, I haven't opened up Optimus Prime or Rodimus Prime yet, so I'll give me thoughts on those another time. With any luck, I'll be able to track down the Prime Masters again before too long.

bodrock wrote:I already must have Abominus, but I would have to buy an update for Piranacon and Monstructor -- here's hoping.

At nycc, when they showed off Cuttroat, he had a head based off of Wildfly from the Pretender Monsters, so we are most likely getting Monstructor in some form.

Skritz wrote:One gets the impression Hasbro did indeed drop the ball for the end of the Prime Wars trilogy and I suspect this is probably the result of poor planning/not knowing what the main gimmick of the last one should be, resulting in them mashing everything together in hope it works. That said, the fact we're at least getting (at least) two more pre-existing Combiners who didn't show up in CW is still a plus: Abominus and Predaking are 100% confirmed with Monstructor somewhat hinted by an odd Cutthroat-with-Wildfly-head and Piranacon as pure speculation right now.

Honestly, if they wanted to make Combiner Wars 2.0 they should just have done so, given that people complain about characters whose nature as a combiner torso make them weaker figures. Granted, Dinobot combiner is exactly where I'd go if I was Hasbro and realized most named combiners left are Decepticons. So, really, even in the hypothetical scenario I do think we'd have ended with a Dinobot combiner. Predaking as a regular CW combiner could have certainly filled waves and they could have potentially used him as a basis for a new combiner to fill the Autobots rank which brings me to the frankly wasted potential of a CW 2.0: we could have had entirely new stuff and saved all the bitching from 'waah they ruined a Starscream/Jazz' because at least it would have been a line upfront about doing unfinished or new combiner teams rather than use existing characters as combiner components, which was something which had already sat poorly with fans during Combiner Wars.

Of course this lead to the problem of Leader class figures not integrating with the gimmick when all you do are combiners, which is why I think they wanted to keep the TR elements with the Prime Masters, Enigma and Matrices. Which I do not one bit hate. But! But, one get the impression the planning was certainly poor and that PotP was the rushed finale since the leader evolution+not!powermaster gimmicks make one seriously wonder why the **** a Powermaster Optimus remake wasn't in this line. Had it been planned properly from the get go, he would have made more sense: that way a PM Optimus could have a proper Powermaster, same with Overlord and we'd have been spared the wonkyness that is Orion-Optimus Evolution.

The way I see it, Power of the Primes has been okay so far, but I'd prefer if the Prime Masters did something other than just clipping into things, if they were more like Mini-Cons or Cyber Planet Keys where plugging them in to somewhere unlocks a hidden feature on the main toy. Personally I'm tired of Combiners, so when I do get every PotP Dinobot I don't intend to display them as Volcanicus, or even combine them at all, but that's just me.