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| Yeah bro, I love combining robots, they're so . . . AAAHHHH!!!! |
Early in January, interesting news began to pop up regarding
future Combiner Wars releases.
Images, incomplete and unofficial at first, began appearing that seemed to be
showing parts of two new combiner figures, Computron and Liokaiser. The
Technobots have been a terribly kept secret, as there is a Scattershot figure
coming to mass retail, and one of the Botcon toys for 2016 is Brawl with a
drill. Really, only Hasbro brand hyper loyalists, the kind that religiously
repeat mantras of Hasbro being some infallible entity, denied the eventuality
of Computron, mainly because a year ago Hasbro said they weren’t planning one
right now, which, in Hasbro sycophant, translates into ‘guaranteed, never, ever
ever.’
Liokaiser is a surprise, the Japanese only gestalt that lots
of fans love having zero American presence whatsoever. The leaked photos of box
art got me ramblin’ at the wife again, this time about the interesting elements
the original Liokaiser figures introduced to the world of transforming, merging
robots. Things like the integrated hands and feet, elements that are always
bemoaned by fans and collectors for having not
been included in other combining figures, Combiner
Wars included. People often cry out, “Liokasier has integrated hands; why
can’t Hasbro do that? It was possible in the late 80’s; why not in 20**?”
Hasbro did try it once. It was Fall of Cybertron Bruticus.
Clearly the most ambitious figures of the Fall of Cybertron line were the
Combaticons, and their combined form of Bruticus. This was to be the first
combiner toy following the bizarre and generally disliked Power Core Combiners line, which hadn’t really worked out as well
as it sh/could have. But, that’s another story for another time. Prior to Power Core, the live action Devastator
was the most recent combiner, and before that, the Unicron Trilogy featured a
lot of combine-ing, but only Energon had actual combiners. FoC Bruticus was greeted with
optimism, but almost as soon as pictures began to surface, that optimism faded.
Oh boy.
I almost don’t know where to start.
