Transformers Combiner Wars: The Stunticons: general thoughts, Motormaster and Blackjack

So to kick things off for the blog, I wanted to do a review of the Stunticons from the current Transformers: Combiner Wars line. I'm hoping to add more pictures as I go along. Right now, things are in their infancy here at the Coffin (lol), and I felt it would be best to get myself writing and make things prettier once I got some traction. So, without any further ado, here we go.

In general, the Combiner Wars Deluxes are all pretty good looking figures. Except for a few relatively minor alterations, things like new or different heads or faces, the figures look like the G1 characters that they are supposed to be modernizations of. That’s fairly important, as if these are supposed to be “Classics”-style updates of the G1 combiner teams, looking like the G1 characters works in their favor. Something that would stand as a welcome contrast to other combining team figures reaching back to the Unicron Trilogy era, particularly the Energon combiners. Just naming an airplane Skydive is not the same thing as having a figure of Skydive, regardless of what people say when they want to make it seem like this is some kind of overly neckbeardish thing. Characters do not always have to be visually the same as they were in 1985, but nameslaps do not actually make toys into characters, regardless of the tears of apologists.

All the Deluxe figures are pretty posable, really only lacking joints where the joints aren’t exactly feasible. They have no wrist or ankle joints but still manage a real range of movement and posability.

Motormaster:

                Motormaster is pretty nice. From pictures and even holding the box in hand, Motormaster looks like a robot that turns into a truck, and neither thing is particularly inspired. In hand though, Motormaster is fun. He’s an imposing robot, with a comically small head and pretty stupid weapons. But he looks good. He looks big and tough, the way the character has always been styled. Motormaster is supposed to be the mean and manipulative leader of the Stunticons, using fear and intimidation to keep his crew in line, and this figure gives that vibe. The things that make the CW Prime look dumb to me (even though I don’t own one) make Motormaster a success. The head is a little small taken on its own, but if you look at the figure as a whole, it works.

                Truck mode wise, he’s ok. Not anything terribly special, looks like it takes some cues from AoE Galvatron’s truck mode, and it works well. The colors are a lot less bland than I’d initially thought they were. Motormaster is primarily grey with black, and in robot mode he at least has his big black chest piece to break up a whole lot of grey. In truck mode his windows are this light purple, and despite being such a minimal touch of color it pops pretty well; along with some darker purple lines on his side panels, there is a less is more approach to paint going on here, and it works nicely for me. I’ve read a lot of people who dislike that, and they say he’s too bland. Yeah, a bit, but at times I think the look works better than it should.

                Torso mode is pretty bad, and in the standard configuration Menasor looks squat and dopey. Straightening out the legs though…..much better.

                Weapons are a small and silly looking sword and a ‘gun’ that combine into Menasor’s sword, and combined it’s fairly menacing looking. Individually, they look lame.

Blackjack:

                The Combiner Wars line is trying to integrate Legends sized figures into the gestalt modes of the combined teams. While this is a neat idea, it is certainly not going to work well all the time. The Aerialbots are adding Powerglide as a gun, and the Stunticons add Blackjack, a small black car, as a chest piece for Menasor. It is supposed to be an armor upgrade reminiscent of the Motormaster accessory that formed Menasor’s chest in the G1 iteration, but in practice, it just looks like Menasor stuck a car to his chest.

                As a standalone toy, Blackjack is cool. He’s got some good posability and everything, and his transformation is pretty interesting, as the top of the car more or less flips over the entire length of the robot body, essentially elongating the robot into a car. It’s neat. Blackjack is neat, but mainly as a stand alone figure. In combined Menasor mode, Blackjack looks like he belongs on Menasor, and truthfully the super robot looks a bit naked without the little guy. Vehicle mode is basically a car that you’d expect to find in the Legends line. For the most part, Blackjack is a nice figure and he is fun to transform back and forth, but the integration part works better thus far with figures that turn into weapons. Powerglide and Bombshell, who also has a gun mode, are much more interesting additions to the teams, where Blackjack just looks like something that should be a part of Menasor in the first place, thus not bringing any sense of addition or bonus to his inclusion.