While the kid-focused Transformers toys of 2015 will revolve around the upcoming animated series, the adult collector catering Generations line is going combiner crazy, with new takes on the massive amalgams of Aerialbots and Stunticons — Superion and Menasor.
The first two of what I hope to be a full line of revitalised gestalt sets, Superion and Menasor were the original rival combiner teams. The Constructicons and Devastator came first, but instead of facing off against a similarly functioning enemy team, their arch enemy was Omega Supreme, a regular Omega with sour cream and tomatoes.
Superion and Menasor arrived together, a matched set. The Decepticons flew and the Autobots drove, so these two sets were meant to fill gaping holes in each army’s lines.
Superion is formed from five planes. The Voyager-class Silverbolt (famous from the original cartoon for being afraid of heights) forms Superion’s torso.
While three planes — Skydive, Airraid and Firely — and one helicopter (Alpha Bravo who?) form the Deluxe-class limbs.
[clear] [clear]
[clear] [clear]
[clear] [clear]
[clear] [clear]
When they come together, they form the mighty Superion.
Meanwhile, in evil land, Menasor begins with Voyager-class Motormaster, who seems a lot more compact than I remember.
And the limbs are deluxe Offroad, Dragstrip, Dead End and Breakdown.
[clear] [clear]
[clear] [clear]
[clear] [clear]
[clear] [clear]
Alone they are powerful, but together — they’re pretty unstable.
I’m loving the look of the new combined forms. I’m just hoping they aren’t quite as flat as they were back in the old days. Give me a beefy combiner, like Magnaboss from Beast Wars. Or just give me all of the combiners, re-engineered to today’s standards. Brutacus (yes, again), Defensor, Computron, Abominus — bring the whole thing together with a retooled Predaking (we can never have too many).
2015 is going to be an excellent year for Transformers. Between the Combiner Wars! and the Robots In Disguise cartoon toys (loving the new Bumblebee), Hasbro is going to have all of my money forever.
Comments
17 responses to “Next Year’s Transformers Combine To Form Awesome”
Not sure I like Bumblebees car mode.
But love the Combiners, shame they lost a few names, it’s why we have Offroad (Wildrider) and Alpha Bravo (Slingshot). But at least the colour schemes are pretty G1 faithful.
Also I’m not sure about Superion but I know Menasor has a 6th robot, there is a Legends Class chestplate, and it seems Superion may have one as well.
The reason sling shot is gone is they killed him in the comics
Air Raid and Skydive were the first two transformers I ever owned. Not a big fan of the fact they’ve changed Air Raid to an F-14 though I guess that it makes sense since Starscream, Thundercracker and Skywarp have the F-15 well represented.
Also, points of order: the Aerialbots & Stunticons weren’t intended as a set to fill in gaps in each other’s lineups, they were all designed as part of a larger ‘Scramble City’ set in Japan (which included 3 teams for each side – Aerialbots, Protectobots and Technobots on one side, Stunticons, Combaticons and Terrorcons on the other). The Terrorcons and Technobots were held back a year in the US and instead the Decepticon line also got the Predacons (which IIRC are an original team originally designed as Autobots for the movie, which also released the same year).
Also the red F-4 Phantom in the Aerialbots set is Fireflight, not Firefly. Don’t know why Slingshot’s been renamed to Alpha Bravo either. He looks like a Vortex ripoff 🙁
Pretty sure they lost the name rights to those. And Fireflight was known as Firefly in some territories. Not sure if was Europe or the US. Probably the US since we got the Europe releases for most things.
Nope, he’s always been Fireflight or Firebolt in the Japanese releases.
Losing the rights to the character name explains the change though. It looks like they’re renaming him to Firefly for this release too.
Notice that he also doesn’t appear to be part of the Superion model? Same arm on both sides.
You’re right, that’s quite odd. Also he used to be one of the legs!
I reckon I know the reason we have an offroad vehicle and a helicopter – with a bit of a remold/repaint they could easily become Vortex & Swindle – then we’d only need three or four new figures to make a Bruticus. Hasbro likes to make the most of their molds.
But we have a a recent Combaticons team. Although to be honest I’ll take another one so I can have Cybertron and Earth versions of Bruticus.
There’s always Third Party stuff too. I’m grabbing the Warbotron Combaticons as they release. Nice and big and fairly detailed. A bit expensive though 🙁
Because this is tying into the next IDW arc, which is mainly set on Earth (as far as we know), I reckon they’ll opt for a new Earth-mode Bruticus. I reckon we’re going to see the Protectobots too.
the individual robots looks good but the combined mode looks like shit.
check out Fansprojects Stunticons/Menasor
http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3678/12263646415_da9e13aa4e_o.jpg
All the want. Though I’m not a huge fan of the new motormaster look, the G1 toy kinda sucked (roller blading aside) but he was cool in the cartoon
F’yeah Motormaster!
You know the more I look at it the more I like the mold of Bumblebee, just not him as Bumblebee, a Redeco might be nice, although chances are it will be Black Bumblebee, Flame (Red) Bumblebee or some variant of other colour Bumblebee.
He wouldn’t make a bad Rodimus.
From what I’d heard about the new series, isn’t this the one where Bumblebee is actually a Prime/Leader of the ‘bots? If so, it’s nice to see them doing something a little different with his character – even if it’ll only last until mid-season when Prime gets bought back in…
They’re good, but not as good as this:
http://www.capturedprey.com/store/image/cache/data/products/fansproject_ca13_diesel_04-700×700.jpg
http://www.majhost.com/gallery/TCracker/M3/p1050210.jpg
I am confused by the Superion Image, do you need 2 of the same Minibots (the red plane) to create him? in the image he has 2 of the same on each shoulder. sorry I don;t know their names, I’m here becasue it’s toys, not because they’re Transformers.
Yes you are correct one of those shoulders should be the black plane. But I’m guessing they didn’t have it ready in time so they just used two red ones.