The Energon Pub

Rogue-Primal wrote:Does anyone know if the second lineup of prime master are rare in stores. I own Cloudburst Skullgrin and Metalhawk but no sign of Landmine or Bludgeon. Are these two shortpacked or are they being targeted by online scalpers?

Wave 2 had problems getting saturated in the US, but with Target and now Walmart getting shipments they should appear soon. Them appearing in Europe is a whole different matter tho, honestly, I was surprised a line made it well past Wave 2 when I last visited Combiner Wars never made past Wave 1 before I moved.

JelZe GoldRabbit wrote:

Rogue-Primal wrote:Does anyone know if the second lineup of prime master are rare in stores. I own Cloudburst Skullgrin and Metalhawk but no sign of Landmine or Bludgeon. Are these two shortpacked or are they being targeted by online scalpers?

Wave 2 had problems getting saturated in the US, but with Target and now Walmart getting shipments they should appear soon. Them appearing in Europe is a whole different matter tho, honestly, I was surprised a line made it well past Wave 2 when I last visited Combiner Wars never made past Wave 1 before I moved.

Its mostly arriving in hobby store called Nexus. Toys'R'us just 2 months late
They didnt even get titans return and TRU jumped straigbt into power of the primes deluxe waves instead too got started getting ghe 3 prime masters i bought at the comic/hobby store and they are 3 times more expensive too. My currency closely translates to 8£ Pounds but toys'r'us sells them at nearly 18/20 pounds for a mere prime master/decoy armor a pop

I was thinking about Punch/Counterpunch, and how people keep saying he does not properly represent the line. Well, I think he represents it perfectly thanks to one thing: how random he is and how he has a gimmick being returned to long ignored.

Think about PotP. We got Dinobots and the 2 season 3 beast combiners. We also got new characters, season 1, and season 3 guys all in the legends class, plus a reimagined duocon. We got a Starscream, Inferno and Jazz alongside some long overdue females. And we got a trukk and a munky, along with 2 Roddy Primes evil and good.

Simply put, PotP was a wide assortment with many seeing new gimmicks, new G1 iterations of characters that have originated elsewhere, revisiting gimmicks for some teams and individuals, and basically, it was fairly random yet organized. P/CP may not be a limb, but his inclusion really isn't as non-representative as some may think.

Well, he also only has Prime Master/Titan Master compatibility in the form of his roof pegs; he doesn't have an accessory they can be stuck in or anything. But he still fits timing-wise, helping to fill out the "The Rebirth"/"The Headmasters" cast. Honestly, people shouldn't be complaining about him.

What I do have to complain about is so many of the Prime Masters ending up as exclusives. It kinda spoils the gimmick for me. I liked the Pretender decoy armors and was hoping for a full set (and I'm particularly miffed Submarauder/Diver got left out considering that A. It leaves a Pretender team incomplete) and B. the Cloudburst/Phoenix retool that would have been used as Grand's shell looked an awful lot like him). And their presence at the bottom price point meant one could feasibly buy duplicates in the quite likely event of multiple characters' biocards having the same Prime Master featured, or just to customize the fantasized powers to taste. Some of the Prime Masters becoming exclusives... that kinda ruins that idea.

ZeldaTheSwordsman wrote:Well, he also only has Prime Master/Titan Master compatibility in the form of his roof pegs; he doesn't have an accessory they can be stuck in or anything. But he still fits timing-wise, helping to fill out the "The Rebirth"/"The Headmasters" cast. Honestly, people shouldn't be complaining about him.

What I do have to complain about is so many of the Prime Masters ending up as exclusives. It kinda spoils the gimmick for me. I liked the Pretender decoy armors and was hoping for a full set (and I'm particularly miffed Submarauder/Diver got left out considering that A. It leaves a Pretender team incomplete) and B. the Cloudburst/Phoenix retool that would have been used as Grand's shell looked an awful lot like him). And their presence at the bottom price point meant one could feasibly buy duplicates in the quite likely event of multiple characters' biocards having the same Prime Master featured, or just to customize the fantasized powers to taste. Some of the Prime Masters becoming exclusives... that kinda ruins that idea.

Part of me suspect this wasn't originally the intent, with Prime Masters like Onyx/Amalgamous and Prima being intended to have special variants with exclusives. This line up with Solus, Megatronus and Prima all receiving a special translucent version (with Prima getting a normal version with the Throne).

Yeah... I have to wonder if the extent to which Skullgrin/Dauros with the Liege Maximo shelfwarmed might have forced a change of plans. Because hooo boy was he unpopular (at least in my area.) During the delay on stores actually getting Wave 2 in, I was seeing Transformers sections that were picked entirely or almost entirely clean of Power of the Primes stuff... except for him, whom they had in plenty.

Still not as bad as what happened with Titans Return in my area, where stupid bloody Turbo Changer Dragonstorm clogged the shelf space for Generations Leader figures and thus they never got Sky Shadow and Overlord in stock.

I've said it before (Not sure if it was in this thread) but given how Hasbro reused Combiner Wars molds (to great effect in some cases, mind you) for POTP it baffles me that they didn't use use CW Sunstreaker variation of Breakdown of to release Sideswipe and Red Alert. Not only would the brothers have been complete but you would also have been able to complete the Inferno Combiner who, by the way, could have really benefited from these two cars given their color scheme.

Either that or just give us a mass retail CW Ratchet.

There was probably some decisions about them that was made that we'll never be privy to, and it may come down to a belief that people didn't need complete teams for the combiners and that they would just regularly mix and match depending on mood. From my perspective, them being incomplete doesn't matter as I love the idea that elita could just blaze in there with her gals and then link up with two other remaining combiner members and then get some retribution.

Had they known that Sideswipe wasn't going to be made by either Hasbro or Takara, Fun Pub would have done him for us, as a straight redeco of Breakdown.

I look at P/CP as being in the same vein as Battletrap, something set aside from the rest of the line with no real connection to the rest the line. Let's face it, the Prime Master interaction for Battleslash and Roadtrap was a poorly executed afterthought, they can't sit on them properly, you have to bend their knees backwards to sit. They're a pair of great figures that don't let the line gimmick get in their way and did their own thing just like P/CP.

Emerje

Emerje wrote:I look at P/CP as being in the same vein as Battletrap, something set aside from the rest of the line with no real connection to the rest the line. Let's face it, the Prime Master interaction for Battleslash and Roadtrap was a poorly executed afterthought, they can't sit on them properly, you have to bend their knees backwards to sit. They're a pair of great figures that don't let the line gimmick get in their way and did their own thing just like P/CP.

Emerje

Bending the knees backwards for Slash, Battleslash and Roadtrap was a subtle hint that they're supposed to attach in Spark Mode, not Robot. Then again, that would defeat the purpose of the Prime Armor for the Deluxes and Voyagers, other than "Hand and Feet".

Punch/Counterpunch may not have Titan Master heads or even a Titan/Prime Master compatible accessory. Nor is he a combiner limb. But that's because he already had his own unique gimmick that being a headmaster or combiner limb would have gotten in the way of! He was a feature character in "The Rebirth" and The Headmasters, so he fits in with recent figures in that regard, and he does at least have Titan/Prime Master-compatible pegs. Does he have the same gimmick as the main PotP Deluxes? No, but then maybe THAT'S WHY HE'S AN ONLINE EXCLUSIVE!

o. supreme, while I personally don't mind doing combiner limb versions of some of the original Autobot cars, I hotly disagree with the idea that they need to do all of them - the only reason we're even approaching that is because during Combiner Wars, Hasbro decided to just pick Autobot redecoes to do at random instead of applying any real logic. Like, say, referencing the episode "Masquerade" by doing Optimus, Mirage, Jazz, Sideswipe, and Windcharger. But no, all we got of those 5 was Optimus and Mirage. It wasn't until Power of the Primes that we got Jazz and we're still waiting on Sideswipe and Windcharger (though who knows, maybe WFC Seige Sideswipe will be a combiner limb.) They could also have done redecoes homaging Energon Optimus' drones since CW Optimus has some major detail homages to him in torso mode... but they didn't do that either. Just random redecoes that mostly happened to be 1984 characters, with no actual set teams to speak of (so I don't think there are any gaps in the sets, since there aren't any true sets of them to have gaps in). And of course no new molds to give us actual G1 combiners in that style like Abominus (who we at least got in PotP) or Piranacon (who we're still waiting on).

Speaking of Power of the Primes Jazz, I strongly suspect we're going to see a Braver retool of him at some point. He turns into the right kind of car for it, he's a combiner limb, the Prime Armor gimmick could easily be transitioned to the Brainmasters' shields...
And they definitely have the 1989 combiners on the brain - the Cutthroat version of Swoop's mold has Wildfly/Yokuryu's head as an alternate head.

ZeldaTheSwordsman wrote:o. supreme, while I personally don't mind doing combiner limb versions of some of the original Autobot cars, I hotly disagree with the idea that they need to do all of them - the only reason we're even approaching that is because during Combiner Wars, Hasbro decided to just pick Autobot redecoes to do at random instead of applying any real logic. Like, say, referencing the episode "Masquerade" by doing Optimus, Mirage, Jazz, Sideswipe, and Windcharger. But no, all we got of those 5 was Optimus and Mirage. It wasn't until Power of the Primes that we got Jazz and we're still waiting on Sideswipe and Windcharger (though who knows, maybe WFC Seige Sideswipe will be a combiner limb.) They could also have done redecoes homaging Energon Optimus' drones since CW Optimus has some major detail homages to him in torso mode... but they didn't do that either. Just random redecoes that mostly happened to be 1984 characters, with no actual set teams to speak of (so I don't think there are any gaps in the sets, since there aren't any true sets of them to have gaps in). And of course no new molds to give us actual G1 combiners in that style like Abominus (who we at least got in PotP) or Piranacon (who we're still waiting on).

The issue, though, is that the entirety of Prime Wars really flirts with giving us the entire Season 1-4 G1 cast. It's certainly closer to achieving that than it is to being a mere coincidence. That leaves a lot of fans feeling that things are left unfinished now that we're changing gears completely for a whole new trilogy with a completely different focus. Even if we cheat a little bit and count some of what we got with Thrilling 30 in the Prime Wars trilogy, we're still short a few key characters that very well could have been realized if, for instance, Titans Return had two more waves or if Power of the Prime had lasted another half or even whole year. Hasbro was in a rush to get back to square one, it seems. With another two waves of Titans Return, we might have gotten Apeface and Snapdragon along with new Triplechanging Headmaster forms of Springer and Sandstorm to complete that "set." We might have gotten the Autobot Targetmasters Crosshairs, Pointblank, and Sureshot. With more Power of the Primes, we might have gotten Pretender shells for all of the 13 Primes. We might have gotten the last few Autobot cars we needed from Season 1 and 2. We might have gotten some more Decepticon jet repaints from Combiner Wars molds. We might have gotten the last few Minibots from the 1987 line up. The list goes on. Now, it might be years until we can pick back up where the Prime Wars trilogy has abruptly left off. We're getting hints that some of this might be addressed, maybe by Takara with some Legends EX releases or maybe through release in other concurrent Transformers lines, like how we're getting Frenzy (blue tablet) with that exclusive Bumblebee movie Target three-pack. Even if that's the plan, that's a VERY slow trickle over the next few years.

I honestly don't know if you guys give a sold **** or not or if it's even considered information people care about after being told no one gave a flying well you know on another site "all accessories have 5mm handles, it's like saying a transformer transforms," but the scepter of sparks has a 5mm handle near the tip of the handle on the silver part. so it could be held by other figures if you want, at this point i dont care if you do or not, some fan sites are full of total elitist jerks

I give you, my complete Megascream!



Blastoff actually really lines up well with my poor Parts Swap Dragstrip, so I am glad I picked him up last summer, came in use and perfectly too!

I really hope this Punch Counterpunch discussion is just because we are bored about not having anymore POTP stuff to talk about while we wait for the last remnants to be available, and not legitimate complaints. Because if people are really complaining that this Punch Counterpunch, I hope Hasbro does not look at this thread, because what Hasbro has done here is great. There is really nothing to complain about. We finally got a real good update to Punch Counterpunch with his original gimmick, unhindered by a combiner port. Who wouldnt be happy? And I am glad its coming out now and not in Seige where the alt mode will have to be cybertronian and be overly detailed. No thanks.

And plus, so as not to confuse the retail market, its released as an exclusive. But not just at some retailer only found in the US, no its online with the retailer with the biggest global reach.
Of course, not all can get it, but its more accessible than any exclusive I have witnessed the past years and he has a long preorder window.

This is an excellent release, and if Hasbro is reading this, you did great here, thanks!

TrypticonCarne wrote:I honestly don't know if you guys give a sold **** or not or if it's even considered information people care about after being told no one gave a flying well you know on another site "all accessories have 5mm handles, it's like saying a transformer transforms," but the scepter of sparks has a 5mm handle near the tip of the handle on the silver part. so it could be held by other figures if you want, at this point i dont care if you do or not, some fan sites are full of total elitist jerks

Do you think this site is as well? We seem like a fun bunch here, any info is fun so thanks for sharing.

william-james88 wrote:

TrypticonCarne wrote:I honestly don't know if you guys give a sold **** or not or if it's even considered information people care about after being told no one gave a flying well you know on another site "all accessories have 5mm handles, it's like saying a transformer transforms," but the scepter of sparks has a 5mm handle near the tip of the handle on the silver part. so it could be held by other figures if you want, at this point i dont care if you do or not, some fan sites are full of total elitist jerks

Do you think this site is as well? We seem like a fun bunch here, any info is fun so thanks for sharing.

No. If it wasn't for this site I would stop being a social person about this series. You guys no matter what I say in anger you all make feel like I am wanted

TrypticonCarne wrote:

william-james88 wrote:

TrypticonCarne wrote:I honestly don't know if you guys give a sold **** or not or if it's even considered information people care about after being told no one gave a flying well you know on another site "all accessories have 5mm handles, it's like saying a transformer transforms," but the scepter of sparks has a 5mm handle near the tip of the handle on the silver part. so it could be held by other figures if you want, at this point i dont care if you do or not, some fan sites are full of total elitist jerks

Do you think this site is as well? We seem like a fun bunch here, any info is fun so thanks for sharing.

No. If it wasn't for this site I would stop being a social person about this series. You guys no matter what I say in anger you all make feel like I am wanted

HIGH FIVE!

The fact that other bots can wield the scepter is AWESOME news and I'm glad to hear it! I'd be disappointed if they couldn't.
Indeed, thanks for sharing!

Cobotron wrote:HIGH FIVE!

The fact that other bots can wield the scepter is AWESOME news and I'm glad to hear it! I'd be disappointed if they couldn't.
Indeed, thanks for sharing!

Now I just need to know if Masterpiece Shockwave can hold it...


Also, I may be a few days late to the party, but I've finally assembled my Inferno combiner!

D-Maximal_Primal wrote:I give you, my complete Megascream!



Blastoff actually really lines up well with my poor Parts Swap Dragstrip, so I am glad I picked him up last summer, came in use and perfectly too!

So why Dragstrip?

Autobot N wrote:

Cobotron wrote:HIGH FIVE!

The fact that other bots can wield the scepter is AWESOME news and I'm glad to hear it! I'd be disappointed if they couldn't.
Indeed, thanks for sharing!

Now I just need to know if Masterpiece Shockwave can hold it...


Also, I may be a few days late to the party, but I've finally assembled my Inferno combiner!

Firestormer.jpg

I've tried and no, not really. only stays in his closed hand by the power of balancing and like a coin on it's edge, it will fall at a slight shake or vibration

TrypticonCarne wrote:I've tried and no, not really. only stays in his closed hand by the power of balancing and like a coin on it's edge, it will fall at a slight shake or vibration

That's kind of a shame.