Takara Tomy Pre-Orders up for Transformers Power of the Primes Throne of the Primes

Wolfman Jake wrote:

Cobotron wrote:

o.supreme wrote:

Nemesis Primal wrote:Unpopular opinion: I like the HFGs better than these Prime Armors.

I actually do too

Yup! Me too. While the ankle tilt on the new feet is great, and the ability to beef up the feet by adding the hands is awesome. I still think the creativity in finding a reasonable solution with the CW HFGs trumps all that. I don't know if I like HFGs better, but I never had a problem with them, and am still able to get my Combiners into some great poses.

The Hand-Foot-Gun (or "HFG" for short) idea was pretty brilliant back in "Combiner Wars." It solved the problem of how to package individual "Scramble City" style combiner limbs that could function as either an arm or a leg by including just one piece that could be either a hand or a foot. So, you need only one additional accessory for any Deluxe class figure to make a Combiner out of any other three Deluxe figures and one Voyager figure of your choosing. This also eliminated some of the issues that I'm sure Hasbro saw with their "Fall of Cybertron" Bruticus experiment, building in integrated hands and feet to eat limb bot to cover either need. Not doing so probably allowed Hasbro and Takara to design better toys with smaller part counts and cleaner transformations to make much more appealing looking figures overall. The second stroke of brilliance was making the had and foot convert into an accessory that could be used as a weapon in robot mode or as an extra piece of the alt mode (if not a weapon there too). This solved Hasbro's other major fear: losing important pieces of a figure or set! Now, instead of storing away the hands or feet your not using when your figures are not combined, they can wear them in robot mode or alt mode so you can keep track of them without worry. Unfortunately, this all worked better in theory than in execution, as the hands were too big and the feet too small in proportion to the rest of the gestalt form of most combiners. Also, the usefulness as added weapons for most robot modes was dubious, as it was still mostly a big chunk of monochrome (or sometimes two-toned) plastic that made for oversized, cumbersome accessories for most figures. There are a few instances, such as with Sunstreaker, where the HFG works perfectly as his engine booster in alt mode and his iconic booster backpack in robot mode, but such instances are certainly the exception, not the norm.

With "Power of the Primes" refreshing the combiner gimmick, Hasbro obviously tried to tweak the HFG idea a bit, both to introduce a new play pattern and to better address some of the shortcomings of the Combiner Wars system of combination. Relegating both combiner feet to the Voyagers and giving the Deluxes left/right switchable hands was a better idea, giving us somewhat better proportions for each, but still not perfect, as the hands are still a bit big and the feet not big enough, though connecting the spare hands to the feet helps a lot. That was inspired engineering! Unfortunately, this still doesn't help the fact that as accessories, even when integrating the Prime Spark power-up gimmick, these accessories still don't integrate well into most bot or alt modes of these figures. The "foot-gauntlets" of the Voyagers work out just a bit better than the "hand-chestplates" of the Deluxes. Overall, the change up for PotP's Combiner kibble was just a lateral move from what CW did.

In reality, the best solution for most people, logistically and aesthetically, is dedicated hands and feet. Of course, this is hard to implement for individual releases, but works fine for box sets, like Combiner Wars Computron and Victorion, or Unite Warriors Megatronia and Baldigus. Most adult collectors (and probably older kids too) have a place to store excess accessories when not needed, so the prospect of losing these pieces is a non-issue for a majority of the audience who will receive these toys (at least in my opinion). It is a little "partsformeresque" to relegate the combiner hands and feet to separate pieces, but it's still a far cry from the G1 days when combiner sets also expected you to slap on extra pieces of armor and the head to complete the gestalt form of any combiner team. Two hands and two feet, by comparison, isn't too much to keep track of.

Nemesis_Apoc wrote:Obvious Guard City homage is obvious to everyone except OP.