The Energon Pub

Yes yes yes. Size does throw me a bit, but oh well it's ABOMINUS!

I really do like what I see in the pics, but I'm hesitant to pull the trigger on the preorder. I want a product that matches what we'll be getting in Maketoys Not-Computron for playability and battle poseability and I worry about mixing and matching competing 3rds.

At first I thought "Oh boy, if their Predaking is anything to go by this is gonna suck..."

But seeing this, it looks great!

Also, by the sounds of things he's going to be huge, which is awesome.

I kinda wish they hadn't bothered with the separate feet though. The base of Blot in leg mode looks to be nearly flat anyway, I'm sure they could have worked in a few flip out toes. Really the only thing he'd miss out on would be an ankle tilt, and who really cares that much about ankle tilts?

Delta Magnus wrote:who really cares that much about ankle tilts?

Blasphemy!!!

Delta Magnus wrote:At first I thought "Oh boy, if their Predaking is anything to go by this is gonna suck..."

But seeing this, it looks great!

Also, by the sounds of things he's going to be huge, which is awesome.

I kinda wish they hadn't bothered with the separate feet though. The base of Blot in leg mode looks to be nearly flat anyway, I'm sure they could have worked in a few flip out toes. Really the only thing he'd miss out on would be an ankle tilt, and who really cares that much about ankle tilts?

Ankle pivots help a lot keeping the toy stable especially when posing the figure .

The only issue i can see in Combined mode is Cutthroat , i can't make out what going on with the wings

The ankle tilts things was a joke- I know it's become downright memetic in some corners of the fandom (particularly TFW) for some reason.

I still think that they could have pulled it off without separate feet, but oh well, as long as the feet go somewhere.

Intelligent Grimlock's voice is awesome.

Cheeky digibash via bobbysbay @ TFW.



..but as was mentioned in the same thread..

Monari wrote:That's a sick looking bash, but we already know his combiner parts are a deeper red than the purple color that was used.

Oh why did they have to make him another warbotron ? So many people like my self love the aesthetic but will probally pass due to the scale and combiner height.

Also why make cutthroat an arm ? Thats silly TF Prime beast hunter crap. And abominus didnt even make the Beast Hunters cartoon. So its pretty lame to make a clear G1 homage but use beast hunters configuration.

Yeah, X makes a compelling argument. As good as this looks, I think I may wait and see what MMC will do with this character... I'm keeping the preorder for the moment, but I'm leaning away from this.

Rated X wrote:Oh why did they have to make him another warbotron ? So many people like my self love the aesthetic but will probally pass due to the scale and combiner height.

Also why make cutthroat an arm ? Thats silly TF Prime beast hunter crap. And abominus didnt even make the Beast Hunters cartoon. So its pretty lame to make a clear G1 homage but use beast hunters configuration.

Beast Hunters had this configuration:

Arms: Windrazor (Cutthroat) and Twinstrike (Sinnertwin)
Legs: Blight (Blot) and Rippersnapper

G1 had:

Arms: Blot and Rippersnapper
Legs: Cutthroat and Sinnertwin

But Dreamwave had this:



Arms: Cutthroat and Rippersnapper
Legs: Blot and Sinnertwin

...which matches Ordin to a tee.

I wouldn't get worked up about scale yet were I you. Just posting a measurement is really misleading. Why would they make this dwarf their take on Predaking? The shin there doesn't seem like it's larger than MMC's Predaking's shin does it?

The configurations is thanks to them using Dreamwave as a reference isn't it? That's just UT not doing their homework. Way to go, guys.

I'm holding off judgement until I see some real comparison pictures.

I can forgive the non-scramble style parts, and I can even deal with the modified configuration from G1 because I really, really like the angry, snappy, bitey knees.

I'm still in wait and see mode, though.
I'm kind of hoping another company does this guy, my preference being TFC, but if this is what we get, I'll be OK with it.

I didnt even know the dreamwave configuration existed because Im not an avid comic reader. I read the ones that com free with figures, but im not trying to buy them. Isnt dreamwave the guys that changed their name to IDW ? (hence the DW in IDW) I didnt know they even sold comics in the asian continent ? I thought those were american based companies...

Rated X wrote:I didnt even know the dreamwave configuration existed because Im not an avid comic reader. I read the ones that com free with figures, but im not trying to buy them. Isnt dreamwave the guys that changed their name to IDW ? (hence the DW in IDW) I didnt know they even sold comics in the asian continent ? I thought those were american based companies...

They take inspiration from anywhere, in this case the configuration comes from Dreamwave's More than Meets the Eye profile books, his only appearance.

Dreamwave art is used everywhere for things like wikis. I don't think they went out and bought a bunch of Dreamwave books; they probably just looked online for inspiration.

Eh, I don't really care about the configuration. It will be nice if they are Scramble City style, but it's no big deal. I think it's possible that they did the configuration like this for engineering reasons- wings on an arm can be excused as a shield/pauldron whilst wings on a leg just look a bit silly.

Also, I have to be honest...I actually wish they'd taken a bit of liberty with the G1 designs here. He looks cool, don't get me wrong, but he doesn't really look very...abominable. He just looks like a brightly coloured normal robot. Nothing about him really screams "monster" to me. I actually think if they'd gone for a mix of G1, Prime and Movieverse aesthetics he would have looked a bit better- more curves, spines, spikes and organic "monstrous" details. Myself, I think G1 Abominus was one of the less impressive looking combiners, and I'd like to see a proper update that gives them a more bestial appearance- maybe clawed hands, a hunchback and a more grotesque head. Even a tail, maybe. I know that you can get good-looking G1 style combiners that have a more organic design- look at Pirhanacon for example. I just think they could stand to stray a bit from the source material and give him a more unique look. it worked for Quantron (who looks awesome) and I reckon it would look good for him.

That said, I reckon that the colours aren't doing him a lot of favours- if they made the colours a bit darker, more saturated and less pastel, and broke up the block colouring with painted detail, weathering and panel lining I reckon he'd look much better.

Regarding scale, I'm not too fussed as for one thing, scale and Transformers have never gone well together, and for another I actually think an Abominus towering over Computron makes sense- raw size and power against intelligence and advanced technology. David and Goliath so to speak, but with combiners.

Delta Magnus wrote:Also, I have to be honest...I actually wish they'd taken a bit of liberty with the G1 designs here. He looks cool, don't get me wrong, but he doesn't really look very...abominable. He just looks like a brightly coloured normal robot. Nothing about him really screams "monster" to me.

I'm torn on this one.

I often prefer my 3P stuff to be pretty slavish to G1 aesthetics, but I have to agree on this character.

One of the things I always loved about Predaking was his massive proportions. It gave the combined form somewhat beastial proportions that matched the animalistic style of individual members.

Abominous doesn't have that.
With Abominous you have 5 monster beasties that turn into a guy that looks basically like Superion with a pink chest shield.

rpetras wrote:

Delta Magnus wrote:Also, I have to be honest...I actually wish they'd taken a bit of liberty with the G1 designs here. He looks cool, don't get me wrong, but he doesn't really look very...abominable. He just looks like a brightly coloured normal robot. Nothing about him really screams "monster" to me.

I'm torn on this one.

I often prefer my 3P stuff to be pretty slavish to G1 aesthetics, but I have to agree on this character.

One of the things I always loved about Predaking was his massive proportions. It gave the combined form somewhat beastial proportions that matched the animalistic style of individual members.

Abominous doesn't have that.
With Abominous you have 5 monster beasties that turn into a guy that looks basically like Superion with a pink chest shield.

I gotta agree with you two on this. Abominus should be... a bit abominable, you know?

RK_Striker_JK_5 wrote:

rpetras wrote:

Delta Magnus wrote:Also, I have to be honest...I actually wish they'd taken a bit of liberty with the G1 designs here. He looks cool, don't get me wrong, but he doesn't really look very...abominable. He just looks like a brightly coloured normal robot. Nothing about him really screams "monster" to me.

I'm torn on this one.

I often prefer my 3P stuff to be pretty slavish to G1 aesthetics, but I have to agree on this character.

One of the things I always loved about Predaking was his massive proportions. It gave the combined form somewhat beastial proportions that matched the animalistic style of individual members.

Abominous doesn't have that.
With Abominous you have 5 monster beasties that turn into a guy that looks basically like Superion with a pink chest shield.

I gotta agree with you two on this. Abominus should be... a bit abominable, you know?

In that case, whichever 3rd party's Abominus that comes with a new combined beast mode gets the money in my wallet. The original Abby never did leave any impression in me, so anything neo/extra wow factor to update the character is a plus in my book

I just aw a comparison pic of this with one of the Warbotron guys. Yep, UT has shifted scale. Kinda smart to compete with Warbo, as they don't have any competition in their weight class. But it's crazy that they've abandoned their take on Predaking so completely. Although it kinda was the loser of the Predaking wars.

Well, I'm gonna keep my pre-order for now. Blot was the only one of these guys I had as a kid. I still got him somewhere, actually. And I... dimly recall some sketches or some such way back when for someone else to do him, but it's been a bit.

Abominus was my favorite combiner toy as a kid because hun-grrrs legs added articulatikn other combiners didnt have. Im not one to claim to have "connections" to particular characters, but I loved this guy and would hate to see him get the so called "neo" treatment just because of his name. I may be in the minority here, but Im happy with the aesthetic chosen. I dont want a hunchback top heavy troll for the combiner mode. We already have one...its called ROTF Devastator. Im not a fan of how Maketoys is butchering Scorponok either. As I pointed out earlier, the aesthetic of Ordin is just as awesome as warbotrons. But that damn size kills it for me. Im not a fan of stand alone figures. Its gotta somewhat be in scale with my other combiners. Whats funny is the feral rex bots are taller than the Hercules bots individually, but somehow compact into a combiner the same height as Hercules. I can deal with that. But warbotron combiner height ? Nope, not for me.

Rated X wrote:But warbotron combiner height ? Nope, not for me.

If that does pan out to be the case, that will kill this for me too.

If he turns out to be more like TFC Superion or MMC Predaking, I'll be on board with that.