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How would you improve the combiner for classics 2.0 or the new animated series

Posted:
Sun Aug 05, 2007 8:39 pm
by shortround
Well we all know the energon combiners had a large amount of problem. So I'm wondering with the announcment of a new combiner coming our way either in the classics 2.0 line or the new animated series. How would you improve the figure so the same mistakes are not made again. For me personal I would like to see them have arms and there legs more like the g1 style of figure so they don't end up looking lop sided, and they should have a foot stand as well which fit into a center hole on the legs, Also I would like them to have more old school head were it fit over leaders regular head kind of like classics jetfire. As far as what these new figure should be I really don't care as long as they fix these problems.

Posted:
Sun Aug 05, 2007 8:45 pm
by Koloth
I don't think there was really anything majorly wrong with the energon combiners. They just needed real hands and more than 2 basic molds. 4 unique molds for the limbs and real hands would fix everything.

Posted:
Sun Aug 05, 2007 8:50 pm
by Overcracker
I agree with the Klingon.
Real hands and feet, and 4 different moulds for the limbs.
I would also like the Limbs and the center piece to have guns the could combine into 1 or 2 large guns for the Gestalt. Kinda like R.I.D Bruticus.
Other than that they were pretty good. They could improve the limbs a bit so they have a elbow for the Gestalt.

Posted:
Mon Aug 06, 2007 1:10 am
by waaaaghlord
Probably not going to happen but I'd like to see bots with absolutely no combiner kibble like we saw in RiD. If we were talking about a five bot combiner this would mean the gestalt head folding away somewhere within the torsobot, the armbots having MP style hands that tucked into their individual bot mode's legs and the same for the legbots and the gesyalt feet. Obviously there wouldn't be a 'scramble' style feature to such bots, but I think that would be a small price to pay. Weapons combined from the individual bot's weapons are also a nice touch, Liokaiser or Railracer are good examples of this. Knee and Elbow articulation, this should hopefully be somewhere around the limbbot's waists so could be acheived with a pivoting ratchet joint.
Well that's what I'd like to see. I'm still predicting a combiner in the later waves of Animated and a set of reworked E Combaticons as a store exclusive during Universe but hey, that's just me.

Posted:
Mon Aug 06, 2007 3:17 am
by shortround
These are great Ideas but for me T
he one thing I didn't like about the energon combiners was the way they did the legs because it just looked off to me. As far as the hands go I would like them to be separte but mp like. The reason I like the old school head design is because then it is more centered on the larger robots body. Also as far as the arms have elbow joints and legs having knee joints there was a great custom devestor that somone did were they had arm and knee extention that attached to the robot that would become the arms and legs letting them have that type of posability.

Posted:
Mon Aug 06, 2007 3:25 am
by Bass X0
Koloth wrote:I don't think there was really anything majorly wrong with the energon combiners. They just needed real hands and more than 2 basic molds. 4 unique molds for the limbs and real hands would fix everything.
Some Cybertron Scouts should have been made to be limbs for the Energon combiners.

Posted:
Mon Aug 06, 2007 4:20 am
by Tramp
waaaaghlord wrote:Probably not going to happen but I'd like to see bots with absolutely no combiner kibble like we saw in RiD. If we were talking about a five bot combiner this would mean the gestalt head folding away somewhere within the torsobot, the armbots having MP style hands that tucked into their individual bot mode's legs and the same for the legbots and the gesyalt feet. Obviously there wouldn't be a 'scramble' style feature to such bots, but I think that would be a small price to pay. Weapons combined from the individual bot's weapons are also a nice touch, Liokaiser or Railracer are good examples of this. Knee and Elbow articulation, this should hopefully be somewhere around the limbbot's waists so could be acheived with a pivoting ratchet joint.
Well that's what I'd like to see. I'm still predicting a combiner in the later waves of Animated and a set of reworked E Combaticons as a store exclusive during Universe but hey, that's just me.
I have to agree you you there, having combiners that didn't require any Combiner "kibble" would be perfect, If they could do it with
Voltron, why not with
TransFormer combiners? Have the super robot's hands, feet and heads built into the component robots.

Posted:
Mon Aug 06, 2007 6:47 am
by City Commander
I'd like to see 4 different tfs for limbs, and maybe a six-piece deluxe gestalt team, ala Devastator in G1.
I'd like to see articulation arms and legs; like an actual elbow joint. And masterpiece style hands, that are fitted rather than part of the tf limb.
Energon Superion did have elbow joints, and can accomadate G1 Superion's hands, so he's half way there.

Posted:
Mon Aug 06, 2007 7:03 am
by roy_flagg00
scale up the combiners.
the limbs should be deluxe instead of basic
the torso should be voyager instead of deluxe

Posted:
Mon Aug 06, 2007 8:54 am
by bumblezzz
roy_flagg00 wrote:scale up the combiners.
the limbs should be deluxe instead of basic
the torso should be voyager instead of deluxe
I comepletely agree with you, but I think it will be in animated because tom kenny is voicing a constructicon
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transforme ... charactersI really want a classics superion!

Posted:
Mon Aug 06, 2007 8:55 am
by bumblezzz
roy_flagg00 wrote:scale up the combiners.
the limbs should be deluxe instead of basic
the torso should be voyager instead of deluxe
I comepletely agree with you, but I think it will be in animated because tom kenny is voicing a construsticon
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transforme ... charactersI really want a classics superion!

Posted:
Mon Aug 06, 2007 10:45 am
by Prowl86
Classics Bruticus for the win!!!

Posted:
Mon Aug 06, 2007 5:26 pm
by Tramp
The Master Blaster wrote:I'd like to see 4 different tfs for limbs, and maybe a six-piece deluxe gestalt team, ala Devastator in G1.
I'd like to see articulation arms and legs; like an actual elbow joint. And masterpiece style hands, that are fitted rather than part of the tf limb.
Energon Superion did have elbow joints, and can accomadate G1 Superion's hands, so he's half way there.
Why would you want the hands and feet separate? Why would you want the "combiner kibble". That is one of the biggest problems with TF combiners. If they could incorporate all of the combined robot's parts into its component robots, it would be uch better.

Posted:
Mon Aug 06, 2007 7:47 pm
by microclone
i'd like to see the gestalt looking a bit more integrated into a bot, so the individual bots are less recognisable, well not overly so, you know how bruticus has very obvious vehicles for arms, to try and reduce that a bit and also to get the arms and legs more similar even from different individual bot modes, in effect each becomes a triple changer of sorts. i honestly thought the energon gestalts were really ugly, although top prize for ugly gestalt could be the RID landmine. ah and yes, as said earlier theyd be better as fully self contained toys, ie no extras to store in separate mode (eg feet)

Posted:
Mon Aug 06, 2007 7:55 pm
by Creature SH
I've been thinking about how one could include combiner hands and feet into the bots for a while now. We know that the head can be done nicely, as evidenced by the Protectobots.
It would probably require either very bulky limb-components to store the extremities or a multitude of joints to re-transform their components.
I'm sure that it is possible, but the question is:
Would it cost out for Hasbro ?

Posted:
Mon Aug 06, 2007 10:36 pm
by shortround
That is why I like the old school way doing the hands and feet. Because they could design a single hole for the hands to fit into make it dead center and the same goes for the feet. It would make the figure look amazing, also like I have said before have a couple of extention piece for knee and elbow joints then have robot that forms the hands and feet attach to those. They have done it with custom g1 devestor and it looked amazing he looked so close to anime version I was in ah.

Posted:
Mon Aug 06, 2007 10:40 pm
by Tramp
Yuo still end up with all this useless kibble when they aren't combined though, and that is a problem.

Posted:
Tue Aug 07, 2007 12:05 am
by shortround
But on the other hand including the hands and feet in robot itself never works out well especial if you want it to have decent articulation. Rid train brothers hands when they were in combine form were not really well articulate that is why. I think you have to do a throw back to the g1 era also the legs will not be so I don't even know what you would call them I mean they did do a good job with rid train brothers but again I prefer the predacon style of foot were it can become a weapon of sorts.

Posted:
Tue Aug 07, 2007 12:25 am
by Tramp
shortround wrote:But on the other hand including the hands and feet in robot itself never works out well especial if you want it to have decent articulation. Rid train brothers hands when they were in combine form were not really well articulate that is why. I think you have to do a throw back to the g1 era also the legs will not be so I don't even know what you would call them I mean they did do a good job with rid train brothers but again I prefer the predacon style of foot were it can become a weapon of sorts.
If they could do it with
Voltron, they can do it with Transformers. Hands don't need articulated fingers. Niehter of the
Voltrons relied on spearate hands and feet attached after the fact, or any external parts to allow them to combine. They were all part of the individual robot lions/vehicles that made up each Voltron, and they didn't lack for articulation either, particularly the Lion Voltron, and both of them were around at the same time if not before the Transformers and their Japanese predecessors, the
Diaclones

Posted:
Tue Aug 07, 2007 5:23 am
by shortround
Yeah it work alright if all he was going to have is a sword but if you wanted him to hold a gun or someother weapon it doesn't work well the way your decribing it. As far as voltron goes he was an o.k. toy there is nothing special about him. People want a little more from the transformers interms of articulation. But I guess we will have to wait and see what hasbro does this time around.

Posted:
Tue Aug 07, 2007 2:32 pm
by Tramp
shortround wrote:Yeah it work alright if all he was going to have is a sword but if you wanted him to hold a gun or someother weapon it doesn't work well the way your decribing it. As far as voltron goes he was an o.k. toy there is nothing special about him. People want a little more from the transformers interms of articulation. But I guess we will have to wait and see what hasbro does this time around.
The only articulation Lion Force Voltron lacked was torso twist, head turning, and horizontal hip movement. From what I understand, the most recent model has all of those. Both Voltron toys had full arm articulation at the shoulders and elbows, whereas Transformers of the time were generally much more limited in articulation, particularly the combiners. How much articulation did Superion, Defensor, Bruticus, or Menasor have? How much did Devastator have? How about Abominous or Computron? They didn't even have half the articulation that Voltron did and
he didn't require any extra kibble to combine. So, you tell me how having combiner kibble is better than having fully integrated parts in terms of articulation?

Posted:
Tue Aug 07, 2007 5:42 pm
by shortround
Whatever I'm glad you beleave in what you are saying but ultimatly it will be hasbro desion as what this combiner looks like. I like have the hands, feet and head separte but some people hate what you term kibble, it doen't bug me at all.

Posted:
Tue Aug 07, 2007 5:47 pm
by Tramp
The question is why?. Why would you want them separate? Think about it. "If' these were real, then the hands, feet, and head would be incorporated anyway. They would simply pop out of nowhere.From a toy perspecitve, it also means more parts to lose. Lose those parts and you really can't form the combiner. Fully integrated parts mean fewr parts lost and a more realistic combiner formation, as well as probably better articulation.

Posted:
Wed Aug 08, 2007 11:02 am
by Ballistic90
I was looking at the Classics Devastator (the recolor) and a few thoughts came to mind about how to make it work better. First, there has to be at least 1 weapon or gun. Make them attach somewhere or make it come from the individual robots, I don't care. Second, Classics Devastator wasn't TOO bad for hands, they at least looked kinda like hands, even if they couldn't grip anything. Hasbro/Takara could cheat by putting in holes into the robots to accomodate the standard weapon size and I'd be happy. Third, make the head a part of the center robot. And finally, add in articulation to give it elbows and knees. Doesn't take too much to make me happy, in my opinion.