The Energon Pub

Why are these all so crappy?

Seriously, someone sell me on this.

Another EPIC FAIL for the PCC Transformers



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This one looks the worst of the bunch. I'll wait and see if they do a G1-inspired repaint. Otherwise it's a pass.

The core scouts seem like nice figures, But the combined modes just don't look good.

Yeah... no. Pass, pass and more pass. Total waste, there.

The first thing that came to my mind was, "cool! Another Valkrie transformation!" I'm not very impressed with these so far. I'll probably get the early wave to see how they are. Good news is my expectations are so low that it won't take much to impress me about these.

In my opinion those are the worst designs that I have ever seen. It is highly evident that Hasbro is trying to save money with this new line. The drones look like penny racers from the eighties. Universe, and the movie line will be getting my money this year.

Ye Gods. What were they thinking with the limbs? Stubby spatula-arm, spindly hook arm, munched up jet foot and incredibly unstable looking copter-foot! Seriously, it cannot have been too hard to design the legs to fold so the cockpits became feet, heel-spurs folded from the back?! As for the arms, they are just a mess.

The central scouts seem OK, and where they could fill a gap in my Classics collection I may grab them, (ie Huffer) but the premise of the PCC set is a huge flop in my opinion, unless future 5 packs improve the 'limb-i-ness' of the limbs.

I am tending to go with the crowd here, I am not digging these. Not digging these at all.

Wow.

The central figure looks dreadful.

The combined mode looks worse.

Combaticons superior. Aerialbots inferior. At least the Deceps look like i can remove the gimmick and install articulation.

Dang.

Cruddy though the combined form may be, I really love Silverbolt's jet mode, even if it will be ridiculously small next to everyone else.

Wondering yet again if these are all gang-molded together or if we might see the scout commanders repainted separately.

Hm, I guess Skyburst looks alright, as he is and combined, however I don't like some of his drones. I never liked when a helicopter piece of a combiner just had it's rotor siting in an awkward position, like the one on his leg. If it was an arm and the rotor was on the shoulder, then that would be fine, but not as is. Moving on to the yellow chopper, I find that he looks awkward as an arm and seems overly long and ugly. The rest of him looks OK, but for one of the first round of 5-pack transformers, I would think that they would have taken less of a chance with the drones and made them look like pretty typical arms and legs.

Anyways, I'm still liking these guys, besides a few minor quibbles. I still look forward to getting them. I've always been a sucker for combiners. Hoping for a Train and a Boat.

Looks to me, like Hasbro is taking a page out of Bandai's Machine Robo Rescue line.

A central Robot that has 4 drones follow him and then combine into a larger robot.
Of course Bandai used the same mold for all 4 limbs (and gave them robot modes, bad ones but robot modes nonetheless). But the theory is pretty much the same.

One has to question the decision of giving them weird looking claw arms. Having already forfeited the robot mode, I'm sure it would have been easier to design normal looking arms with regular humanoid fists and legs from the drones, than these weird claw arms with the springy automorph. Lose the Autmorph and make them humanoid looking limbs and it would be acceptable. (But I guess some would complain that they'd look like Power Ranger Knockoffs).

And damn that Apache chopper leg looks extremely unstable. I mean he's standing on the tip of the cockpit.

Still the central robots look decent enough on their own.

I'm sure if a few more sets like these are released, there may be enough drones to mix together a decent looking larger robot.

Other than that the drones are quite worthless.

Overcracker wrote:Looks to me, like Hasbro is taking a page out of Bandai's Machine Robo Rescue line.

If these grow on me like Machine Robo did, then it will be a cool line. But the central figure has got to sell it. And I do like the fact that the drones do have bot modes of their own. Isn't there a lot of add on weaponry too? These lack that piece too.

tigertracks 24 wrote:

Overcracker wrote:Looks to me, like Hasbro is taking a page out of Bandai's Machine Robo Rescue line.

If these grow on me like Machine Robo did, then it will be a cool line. But the central figure has got to sell it. And I do like the fact that the drones do have bot modes of their own. Isn't there a lot of add on weaponry too? These lack that piece too.

Yeah, the Robos had guns and weapons for the drones. But you know how Hasbro hates accessories with their figures for some reason.

Blurrz wrote:

Megazarak wrote:Hoping for a Train and a Boat.

The next two combiners are race cars and monster trucks.

Thanks, but I know. I didn't necessarily mean either of those as a 5-pack, I actually meant as a 2-pack with a mini-con. Anyways, speaking of these guys, they both look really good and am interested to seeing them and their combined forms.

Besides, there may more waves of Power Core figures, so you never know. It would also be pretty cool if they brought Tidal Wave (boat of course) as a Commander (though it seems like they're staying away from established names) with the Dark Fleet as his Drones.

The jets seem decent as limbs - but the helicopters SUCK.

These are just horrible. Easy pass.

Double Clutch looks potentially good, I'm really interested to see how that turns out.

Now that I've watched the entire video, here are my further thoughts: It's almost as if Skyburst was designed for the torso mode, and the other two modes were somewhat of an after-thought, design-wise. The torso mode actually looks pretty decent, but the robot mode is overly simplistic, and both robot and alt suffer from pretty bad kibble.

Both of the helicopter limbs look terrible, the other ones are passable.

Still, if this sees a G1-ish repaint I might pick it up, otherwise no.