Update on my thoughts on Motormaster now that I at least have two CW limb figures to go with him:
I have noticed the issue with the shoulder sockets (Motormaster's forearms becoming untabbed from his own shoulders), though this can be mitigated by where you hold him. It's just a pity he wasn't designed so that the truck side panels could be flipped and tabbed into the torso to help lock the forearms in place in torso mode.
I have also noticed another issue: the stupid slanting design of Motormaster's feet (which I'm sure was done to better support "dynamic" standing poses) gets in the way if you do his torso mode according to the instructions; whoever you have attached as legs will grind against them when you bend him at the knee. So instead, you should have the tire side of his legs face forward in torso mode. This will give much better clearance, to the point that you can even connect the leg robots undercarriage-forward and still be able to bend him at the knee a bit.
I can also say that the Drag Strip mold would be better if it was closer to the original toy's design in a couple of ways. The first and most crucial is this: the shoulders being at the same position in car mode as they are in robot mode and tucked in via sliding, instead of swinging down to tuck in. That swinging down makes his arms stick down too far past the waist to be tucked into their car-mode position in arm mode. So instead you have to settle for folding the fists in and bending the arms over where his head goes and it just looks really sloppy. The other way is his front end could have done with being hinged as it was on the original toy, so you could have his robot mode be oriented the same way (with the cockpit as the chest) and in combination with the arm thing you could use it as a pauldron in arm mode like with the original toy.
As for the Dead End mold.. This one could have done with the peg being mounted so that it stuck out more when folded out for arm mode (or the Combiner Wars connector plugs in general could have gone with being longer..) because as-is it has major clearance issues when connected that way. Lovely!
Edit: So I double-checked the instructions, and they say to pull out the arms and tilt them outward for arm mode... which kinda leaves them flapping loose, so I stand by my statement.
...You know, forget asking for a Combiner Wars Predaking of any kind. Predaking should be at the bottom of the priority list. I think we should be more focused on asking for Stunticon do-overs.
Please tell me the Aerialbots (should I ever have the budget to get them or the luck to find them at thrift) are better about clearance
