megatronus wrote:Funny - I have the opposite reaction. I think FP Menasor is great, but would easily choose CW Superion over Uranos.
I'm surprised at how angry you get at silly things like the add on sets. The prevailing opinion is that Wings really completed Uranos' look. And for Hercules, options are good, no? If you don't want to use the add-ons, then don't buy them. But there's no point in getting angry at them.
If you were taking the "why are they hitting us with add-ons instead of including those accessories from the get go" tack, I would be behind you there.
Well with Hercules it just seems kind of pointless. From what I've seen of him he's pretty much perfect "vanilla". He also has the least amount of partsforming of just about any combiner, and the combined mode forearms engineering is just awesome. The RoH set...doesn't really add anything. If it replaced the transparent red weapons with more purple weapons (which would then also free up the transparent weapons for other figures) and just included the extra head, then yeah. It's the arm additions I don't really get. They ruin his near perfect transformation, and they really don't add much. It looks a bit nicer, but that's it.
With WotU, I agree it makes him look a bit better, but here's the thing. Looks aren't the only important part of a Transformer. As someone who enjoys fiddling with, constantly reposing and "playing with" (not in the way a kid would of course, but it's the only real analogy I can think of) my figures, and really enjoys good engineering, it just frustrates me. I think half the enjoyment of a Transformer comes from the engineering, mechanical design and the joy of seeing something transform into something completely different. The WotU set, and combiner kibble in general, somewhat cheapens that experience, basically cheating on the transformation. It goes from "5 Transformers who can combine into one giant robot!" into "5 Transformers who form a giant robot who is actually 50% parts completely unrelated to those robots". It just doesn't seem in the spirit of the thing. Also it makes the whole thing a lot less fun, as you're having to add a bunch of miscellaneous crap to the figure to make it look decent, rather than just transforming your 5 figures, connecting them and *BANG* giant robot.
TL,DR: Stuff like WotU, and combiner kibble in general, makes combiners look better but feel worse.
With CW Superion...I dunno, the figures just look way too blocky and clunky for my liking, especially Silverbolt. A team of jet-bots, to me at least, should be at least somewhat aerodynamic.
FP Menasor is a nice looking set, but there are 2 things putting me off: Motormaster (he looks good and he's well engineered, but I have never liked Motormaster's design, especially the scale shenanigans caused by his transformation) and the total redundancy of the leg-bots. I'll wait until CW Menasor comes out so I can compare them- I do like Intimidator, but there's things that put me off.
Also, I would love to see a 3P Liokaiser. Not only because he's awesome and one of the biggest G1 combiners ever, but also because unlike basically every other combiner ever he's almost totally self-contained, and I would love to see a 3P company make that work with a modern toy.
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