Transformers: Power of the Primes Dreadwind

 

Power of the Primes Dreadwind is a pretty extensive reworking of the Combiner Wars Sky Dive figure, which has never been featured on this blog by itself, but is a part of the G2 Superion boxed set, the Unite Warriors Grand Galvatron boxed set (as the Ghost of Starscream), and the Platinum Edition Liokaiser boxed set, as Fellbat. After so many reuses as different, remolded characters, it seems fitting that the mold pulls a Titans Return Chromedome and is employed yet again at the start of a new, different toy line.

Dreadwind, a name that is in constant need of verification, is a G1 Powermaster and the American version of Super God Master Force character Buster, where he was an actual character. The American version may have gotten a few comic panels’ worth of facetime, and so it is easier for me to just think of this as Buster, the angsty and misguided German youth who fell in with Mega and Giga and the Destrons, always trashtalking Cancer and Bullhorn and Wilder and Blood and Dauros and Gilmer.

With the figure being reused so many times now, a general sense of it is pretty immediate, and that is something that actually works against this version. The mold did some neat things for its time, a whole three years ago, such as the leg scissoring bit where the legs split open to enclose the thighs for a more compact transformation. Frankly, that’s the beginning and end of the wily transformation steps, as Dreadwind follows most of the general robot-to-jet pattern afterwards, that being “twist the head around, flatten the arms at the sides”. All of the Combiner Wars Aerialbots would follow this same pattern, but Dreadwind here introduces an additional step, that of swinging forward the large, leg-mounted wings that are pretty interestingly attached via arms that allow them to be connected to the legs in robot mode, but the midsection of the jet in jet mode. One wonders if this addition was made just so as to make the Power of the Primes reuse of this mold different from all of the others, which really only differ in terms of deco. This is the Titans Return Chromedome part: one alteration to an otherwise undisturbed mold.

Besides the wings, and a new head, which should more or less be assumed, the main difference here is the chest, as an addition has been made to the Combiner Wars-standard combiner peg, in the form of a pretty large protrusion. Initially, when images of the Deluxes for the new line were just starting to surface, it was theorized that these new chest parts were intended to simply obscure the combiner peg, making for a surprise reveal when the figures were finally in hand. This has always been a humorous idea, as anyone who was actually looking at the images could clearly see that the combiner gimmick was transferring over to the new toy line. Some diehard Hasbro loyalists did the best they could to declare such talk baseless speculation, with nothing being true until Hasbro declared it so, but there was very little reason to think that such a conclusion needed Hasbro’s verification. But the real purpose for this new chest piece is that a panel of it flips down, revealing a 5mm port that the new combiner hand can attach, forming a sort of armored front piece that can also accommodate a new Primemaster, the rebranding of the Titanmasters from the last toy line. Dreadwind does not come with a Primemaster figure, but rather a small, teal plastic plate the covers the Primemaster-sized gap in the combiner part which can, with some imagination, double as a second blaster for the robot mode.

 

This arrangement looks horrible. It gives the figure the Cybertronian equivalent of one of those baby carrying harnesses that you see. The narrative purpose of this thing is that it allows Cybertronians to interact with the Primemasters and gain some kind of enhancement, different depending on which Primemaster they link with. So what we have is essentially the same narrative enhancements that the various Titanmaster partners bestow, or the same general idea of the Minicons from Armada, in a format that is trying to fuse both the Titanmaster and Minicon into one singular piece of plastic. It certainly captures the unwieldy nature of the Minicon well. The piece also ruins the profile of the figure, turning it into something needlessly blocky and hiding the actual sculpt of the figure. This useage of the combiner hand is a total mystery in terms of who thought this would look good, and the play pattern is pretty dumb. The line is still incredibly new, and maybe people will come around more to this gimmick as time goes by, but so far, it is a real loss.

The new combiner hand is also bad. It is an effort to improve on the Combiner Wars hand foot gun piece, which wasn’t great but also could have been worse. It could have been the Power of the Primes hand. The hand has two thumbs rather than the swiveling thumb of the other version, and can be attached to the back of the different and dedicated combiner foot parts, adding a heel for extra stability. This is a great idea, but the hand itself suffers for it. Unlike the Combiner Wars hand foot gun that this is intended to be an improvement on, the new hand offer nothing to the individual figure other than being this rather ridiculous Primemaster harness, which may end up being a good thing in terms of the play pattern (although I honestly cannot see how. It just makes the figure look awful. –mr) but really just makes the figure an eyesore. It is a literal mashing together of the gimmicks of the last two toy lines, and it blows. Hasbro could have kept going with both combiners and Headmasters, both gimmicks were doing just swell, but instead felt the need to stick them both together, and while admittedly this is only one figure, it does not work.

An actual promotional image form Hasbro for the Power of the Primes toy line.

The jet mode is nice, and looks like the G1 version. Apparently it has been confirmed that Dreadwind and Blackwing (the new name for Darkwing, or Hydra in Japan) will be able to combine to form their superjet mode, which is excellent. The only real difference between the jet mode here and the jet modes of the other mold uses are the new wings, which add some size to the plane in a really good way. They also help to cover up the robot arms a little bit more, which is a very good thing, because while they are still visible here, the Combiner Wars Aerialbots are incredibly bad at making any effort to obscure the arms in alt mode. The paint on the wings is real cool, and the teal, white and purple color scheme absolutely works on the alt mode.

Aside from the combiner hand part, the only accessory the figure comes with is a single teal blaster. This, just as with previous versions of the mold, can be mounted underneath the wings in alt mode, but since there is only one it causes the alt mode to look unbalanced. Combiner Wars’ hand foot gun at least allowed for another under wing mounted weapon, but Dreadwind here has nothing. It’s a shame, and the jet mode looks better without the blaster.

It has been known from the beginning that the Power of the Primes line wasn’t going to offer anything new in terms of gimmick or even figures, and Dreadwind makes that abundantly clear. Yes, it is only one figure, and by itself, if considered a Combiner Wars figure, because that is what it is, Dreadwind is pretty good, or at least of the general quality that came to be expected of Combiner Wars. It isn’t necessary to offer claims of needing Primemaster mini figures to really understand the play pattern, because the Primemasters are simply Titanmasters with cosmetic differences. Ultimately Dreadwind is nice but suffers from a total sense of fatigue of both lines that his is attempting to resuscitate, both of which were good lines but truly seem lessened by this attempt at rebranding them for no real or needed reason. Despite the new coat of very nice paint, this is the same figure that's in your collection several times over by now, same empty legs and all. And even though is came from one of the best Transformers toy lines in memory, it is a figure that by now is way past its prime and has really out kicked its coverage in terms of being interesting. The line isn’t of much interest around the Coffin, and while the truth of this statement remains to be seen, there aren’t a lot of plans to buy much from it. Dreadwind was on the list from the get go, and is a nice figure on its own. But the general feeling about it is apathy, and it is hard to tell how much of that infects the response to the figure itself. This toy doesn’t offer anything new, or different, or even anything that can be called an advancement from the current state of official product. A strong, strong “Meh”.