Damn it Combiner Wars,
stop making me buy you.
The second set of Autobot repaints yielded two good figures
and two boring figures. Smokescreen and Trailbreaker are colorful and
interesting looking toys; Wheeljack and Hound are boring as all get out. I knew
from the moment I saw Trailbreaker in a store that I would be waging a war
against myself until I bought him, and I think I did a good job of holding out
for a while. Had I not bought him now, I’d have picked him up on the secondary
market at some point.
Another repaint of Offroad, I’m a little surprised the First
Aid mold wasn’t used instead, what with being more of a van and all, evoking
that G1 camper truck alt mode. But Trailbreaker wears this mold better than
Ironhide does, and boy does he look good doing it. Mostly black with red legs
and a silver gun hand, Trailbreaker like Smokescreen is a repaint that is
visually interesting and very, very colorful. He comes with the standard
loadout for this mold, but the hand foot gun is different. The fingers are two
large blocks, making the hand something like that of a Ninja Turtle. Ah geez, I
hope that wasn’t a speciesist comment. The fingers are silver, and if you prop
the hand foot gun behind the robot head, it is supposed to elicit the idea of
the G1 toys’ force field generator, that part that stuck into the back of the
robot head. Similar in intent is the silver gun barrel right arm, meant to call
back to the accessory arm of the G1 figure. How well this works is a matter of
opinion: I don’t find the references too strong, but I do appreciate there
being a different Combiner Wars figure.
I appreciate there being a different hand, and I kind of wish there’d have been
more variation among them for the duration of the line. It would have been
nice, had there been different weapons on the ends of the pieces, and the
rotation of missiles/chain guns/vague laser array isn’t that impressive. But
I’ve already been down that road. The weapon is again an ax, but oh how nice it
would have been for this guy to come with something different the way the
Autobot uses of the Dead End mold come with that totally plausible triple
barreled shotgun instead of the pipe the Stunticons carry. How much of an
impact the weapon makes is debatable, thanks to the gun arm. I don’t think my
Trailbreaker has even held the ax, aside from for the photo op. 
I’d initially decided against this Trailbreaker because I
own the Generations Trailbreaker from
2013. That was one of the first toys I bought after my then-finance and I moved
to our current apartment. That doesn’t matter in terms of my appreciation of
the figures at all; it’s just the kind of thing that I always remember and
remind myself of. Anyway, that 2013 Trailbreaker and this one differ in several
ways, enough that they are clearly different versions of the character. 2013
Trailbreaker is smaller and has a sleeker, tougher looking sort of futuristic
alt mode, while new Trailbreaker is just a pick-up truck. It’s a nice truck,
but it’s just a truck, and one that at this point has been experienced before.
It’s a real world truck versus what you could imagine Trailbreaker would have
looked like had he been a Season 3/post-86 movie character. 2013 Trailbreaker
is squat and has that field generator part behind his head, but the weapon is
some bizarre guns/shield combination, and it honestly doesn’t make a lot of
sense. It serves as the top of the truck mode, but it is not very functional in
robot mode. There is a handle that pegs into a fist hole, but parts of the
shield have to be wrapped around the robot fist in order to hold the weapon in
a way that looks good.
2013 Trailbreaker has a far more involved transformation,
but that figure is a standalone toy, not one that is designed to be part of a
combiner. Combiner Wars has
occasionally been criticized for its simplicity, but that is a quality that is
needed in a line that is devoted to a larger functionality: the whole is a sum
of its parts, but the parts are mainly parts of a whole. In other words, while
individual figures are better when they are good individually, the real payoff
comes when they are merged into their respective combined forms. Some parts of
the line have done this better than others, but that doesn’t inhibit Generations Trailbreaker. Particularly
of issue on the figure is the shoulders, which swing out and twist around from
under the truck hood, to be held in place by a slot and tab arrangement made
from the side mirrors of the truck. It doesn’t always hold together, and if the
ball joints are floppy, as they are on mine, the arms are unposable. In terms
of their robot modes, 2013 Trailbreaker is very much the character from the IDW
comics of that time, while Combiner Wars Trailbreaker
is far more of a cartoony representation of the character, just not the G1
cartoon. The things that didn’t work out for Ironhide do work for Trailbreaker.
Ironhide is too slender and young looking; Trailbreaker looks spry and active.
Maybe not characteristics we generally associate with the guy, but it is a look
that works overall. Again, he’s cartoony: the grin on his face helps with that.
But I think this mold has problems when the attempt is made to turn it into
someone else. Originally as Offroad the mold is fine; but Offroad is a
non-entity, so there are no expectations or precedent for representations of
him. With Ironhide, and now Trailbreaker, we’ve got some concept of what these
guys are supposed to look like, and in this body type, they are a little too
lithe and thin. Ironhide is old and sturdy; Trailbreaker is rugged and also
sturdy. These looks don’t really announce either character to me, but Trailbreaker
at least has a head that represents him well. 
It’s hard to say which is the ‘better’ Trailbreaker, as in
almost every category they are so different from each other. My original
thinking was that the Generations one
was the only modern Trailbreaker I needed, but much like with Combiner Wars Smokescreen, the general
appeal of the toys’ appearance made me give in. this is not as good a mold as
the Smokescreen one, but the figure itself is very good, and it’s fun one to play with. Again, a much different
toy than the 2013 version, but if you had to pick one for a shelf, like a
unified shelf of say, updated 1984 Autobots, I almost have to say that you
should go with the Generations one.
It is more of a stand-alone toy, whereas the Combiner Wars release is meant to be part of a combiner. The 2013
version does not look out of place among other updated, Classics styled G1
characters; the Combiner Wars figures
look out of place when they are not dedicated members of a combiner team. Dead
End looks fine with Classics Decepticons; Combiner
Sunstreaker does not look as good compared to Classics Sunstreaker. It’s a
condition of the overall aesthetic of the toylines. In the end what matters is
what you want your display to look like. I like both of these Trailbreakers for
what they are, but the new one is not a Classics Trailbreaker. It’s one of
those horrible choices that we sometimes have to make. Which one of these good
toys is the one good toy you should buy? Pft. I bought them both, and have no
ill feelings about doing so. The new one isn’t so much an upgrade as it is an
alternate, and if you could maybe think of them as alternate universe or
different continuity versions of the character then having both may not be any
kind of issue. I don’t care that much, I just think they’re fun toys, but I’m
trying to sound professional here. 
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