Reprolabels Upgrade: Transformers G1 Combaticons / Bruticus

This review has been in the works for quite some time. I've been a big fan of Reprolabels and I've slowly picked up a few sticker sets to spruce up some various G1 Transformers in my collection.  When they started to do their upgrade sets I was very curious andtempted to try a set, but I just never got around to it. Then I saw them roll out upgrades to the Combaticons spread out in different sets. These really caught my eye as the stickers would transform the characters to look more like their cartoon counterparts.

I always loved the Combaticons and th eir animation models from the television show and I had longed wish that the toys better resembled their show counterparts. It's been close to 2 months now, but I saw a buddy selling the complete Combaticon upgrade sticker set over at TFW2005 for a mere $20.00 so I had to jump on it. After gathering up the toys and the needed accessories I finally got the stickers applied and photographed. This review is more on the sticker upgrades themselves than of the actual toys. Perhaps one day I'll go a proper Bruticus review, but for now enjoy the pictures.

We'll start off with Blast Off. He probably benefited the most from this upgrade set. His stickers are part of the Upgrade Set #5. Primarily an olive green (such an odd color for a space shuttle!), Blast Off looked nothing like his show counterpart.  

Wow! What a different a few stickers can make. The purple stickers are actually several different pieces, but are easily applied.

I like how the purple from the nose and sides of the space shuttle carry over into robot mode as it gives the upper body some much needed color. The large chest sticker is also a huge improvement.  There are also two small purple stickers to be applied to the feet.

By far I think Blast Off's stickers are the best of the bunch. Not to be outdone though let's take a look at his fellow Combaticon member, Swindle.

Swindle's stickers are part of Upgrade Set #8. This is another fantastic set and should be a top priority.

Let me start off by saying Swindle's original stickers are horrible...very ugly. I removed just about all of the factory stickers - only leaving the ones on the legs. I love how the new stickers incorporate the front part of his jeep's alt mode.

 

If you are a fan of the rub symbols you may not like the fact that the purple hood sticker now covers it up. I however love the addition of the hood sticker and I'm glad they incorporated the Decepticon emblem into the sticker. The blue windshield is also a nice touch.

As an added bonus I suppose the guys at Reprolabels threw in a little dash sticker to apply in vehicle mode.

Brawl did get a small sticker sheet as part of Upgrade Set #7, but after receiving the stickers I just didn't care for them. One of the stickers would take the place of the large Decepticon sticker on the front of the tank / chest in robot mode. The others were so small I just decided to skip them.

Vortex oddly enough was shut out from the upgrade set. Not sure why, but at least his original stickers aren't that bad.

Onslaught also picked up a few upgraded stickers for both vehicle and robot modes. Some of them are small, but they all make a big difference in the end. His sticker sheet can be found in Upgrade Set #6.

For starters Onslaught received a split Decepticon symbol for the hood plus some small silver headlights.

On each side of the flat bed are small blue stickers with olive green "detail". The flash made the blue on the sticker stand out much more than it actually looks.

In my haste to finish up this review I totally forgot to take pictures of Onslaught before I applied his new stickers. Thankfully the awesome Resources section at TFW2005 (where I'm a contributor) had a good picture for me to borrow. The same style sticker applied to the sides of the vehicle are also applied to the knees. One of the more obvious stickers is the waist as it looks it stepped right out of the cartoon. The chest piece is now covered by one large blue sticker that matches the chest sticker w/ the Decepticon symbol. This large sticker on the chest piece does cover up the molded detail, but looks great in my opinion.

While Onslaught may not look exactly like his animated self the new stickers do a great job overall.

I know, I know - you want to see how all the stickers come together when the Combaticons are merged together to form Bruticus...right? Well wait no longer.

Wow! I love the new chest piece stickers! The Bruticus stickers are also part of Upgrade Set #6. If there was only one set of stickers you'd buy make it #6.

I forgot to point out one of Swindle's new stickers in robot mode. You can see it here in this rear shot. There is a spare tire sticker that is applied on the underside of the jeep's hood portion.

While this may be one of the smallest stickers in the set it's also one of the best as it pays homage to a big part of Bruticus as portrayed in the television show. As you may (or may not) remember Starscream is the creator of the Combaticons. He stole the personalities (or sparks if you will) of renegade Decepticons and inserted them into old war vehicles he found. His purpose of his new team was to take down Megatron to become the new leader of the Decepticons. He soon found out his new troops weren't all that willing to be good little soldiers and when combined as Bruticus it wasn't much better. I believe as a fail safe of sorts there were 4 small dots on Bruticus' back than one depressed would power down the gestalt. You have to remove Onslaught's cannon to really see this sticker, but it's small touches like this that help make the upgrade sets so worth it.

Buying all the needed upgrade sets can be sort of pricey, but at least most of them come with addition stickers for other Transformers. Since this mold has been used so many times now these stickers breath new life into the toy. I am so glad I decided to pick these up and will give the other upgrade stickers sets a good look over in the near future.

Transformers Power Core Combiners: Bombshock with Combaticons

Tech Spec: Bombshock was once a member of the most elite unit in the Cybertronian military. He betrayed his comrades, and his reward was to become commander of a powerful Power Core team. Even alone, each of his drones has as much firepower as the average Autobot. Together, they are nearly unstoppable.

Strength: 9 Intelligence: 7 Speed: 6 Endurance: 10

Rank: 7 Courage: 9 Fireblast: 10 Skill: 7

I'm back with a look at Hasbro's new Power Core Combiner sub-line of Transformers. Today we'll look at the Decepticon Bombshock and his squad of Combaticons.

We'll start off by taking a look at the packaging. The Power Core Combiners are sold in two different varieties. The commander size figures are sold individually with a Mini-Con as well as packaged in a giftset form with 4 drones. Bombshock here comes with a set of 4 military themed drones aptly called the Combaticons. The toys are displayed in a removable plastic insert tray. The drones are in a light blue plastic while the commander figure comes in a clear tray. For all of those who hated the plastic & wire twisty ties rejoice! They have been replaced with a paper like tie that is much easier to remove. I'm guessing this is a move on the part of Hasbro to be more green as they say. The skill level for the toy is marked a 3 for intermediate, but in my opinion it could easily be a 2. More on that later.

The back of the box depicts the commander figure and each drone separate as well as in their combined form. Interestingly enough the combined form isn't given it's own name. One would think since the drones are called Combaticons the merged robot would be called Bruticus. Nope. The box just refers to this form as Bombshock's power-up mode. At first I thought that was lame, but the more I think about the lack of name it makes sense. These are mindless drones that each commander controls so whether they are separate or combined together each respective commander has complete control. Back in the days of G1 a combiner robot would be comprised for 5-6 individual sentient robots that would share control basically of the combined robot.

 

Since Bombshock is the only sentient robot there is only one tech spec for the toy. Instead of it being printed on the back of the packaging as they are normally it is packaged in the left side of the box. I trimmed the photo down, but above the bio is the rest of the packaging artwork that wraps around to the front of the box. Very nice art by the way.

The right side of the box presents a vague story behind the Power Core technology. It also depicts how the toys are sold and how you can mix and match the toys to create your own combinations.

The bottom has a cross sell section showing 2 other commanders that are sold individually (Searchlight w/ Backwing and Smolder w/ Chopster) along with the only other Power Core giftset released at the moment, Skyburst w/ Aerialbots.

Now let's take a closer look at the actual toys by starting off with the drones.

This is the missile carrier drone. The packaging depicts the toy in a olive green color, but it's actually a pale green. It has a bulldozer like shovel on the front of the tank and two large immovable missiles on the top. Note the Mini-Con port on the top. The drones as a whole don't do much by themselves, but this one has good free rolling wheels underneath. This drone forms the right arm/hand.

Simply called the tank drone. Like with the other tank drone the packaging depicts the colors as gray with olive green down the sides. The green is actually a dark gray or black. The turret can be rotated a full 360 degrees and it too has free rolling wheels underneath. There is also a Mini-Con port on top of the turret. This drone forms the left arm/hand.

This is the APC drone. It's mostly a desert beige color with splashes of gray. There is a small gun mounted on the top of the vehicle, but it isn't movable. The Mini-Con port sits on top. The front wheels roll while underneath the tank treads is another set of free rolling wheels. This drone forms the right leg/foot.

Finally we have the armored car drone. It featured a black missile launcher on the rear portion of the vehicle with a Mini-Con post. It does rotate 360 degrees, but not up and down. All 4 wheels roll well. Does this remind anyone of Swindle? This drone forms the left leg/foot.

The commander of the group is Bombshock. He resembles the G1 Combaticon Onslaught which I'm sure was no coincidence. Mostly olive green with splashes of gray and yellow. The commanders are slightly larger than your average scout class figure if you are wondering. Features 6 free rolling wheels. The double cannon turret does rotate 360 degrees and the cannons are able to be moved up and down. My only gripe about this vehicle form is the back. The blue combiner pegs jut out from the back making it look really odd. I know you can't tell from the angle of my picture, but I really wish the designers were able to do something different. Overall though it's a solid vehicle form.

Bombshock's robot mode is pretty good as well. To me he's a little stubby and short, but still looks menacing. The cannons can be positioned in a variety of ways. I like them over the shoulders since he doesn't have a hand gun to wield. The robot seems to be a little top heavy and wants to lean forward. There isn't a whole lot of posesability in the legs so I had to try a few different poses before I was able to have Bombshock stand on his own. If you'll note the left arm you'll see the glaringly blue connector port just hangs off the back of the arms. Disappointing, but I can live with it.

This is Bombshock transformed into his torso mode just waiting for the drones to be attached. it has a very clever transformation from robot mode to this form. Basically the upper half of the robot is the back of the turret. The new head the lifts up from the turret is excellent. It's just the right size for the combined form and the red eye visor is a great touch. Now as to why Hasbro/Takara/Tomy decided to go with blue for the connector ports I have no idea. Thankfully once the drones are attached it isn't much of an issue.

Finally we have the combined mode. I think it's a very convincing Decepticon combiner. While it doesn't feature the standard hand/fist and feet the G1 combiners had the Power Core combiners do have better hands and feet than the Energon combiners Superion Maximus & Bruticus Maximus did. The whole robot stands at about 7 inches tall. It's very light weight too which can be a good thing or a bad thing. When each drone is attached to the connector port it auto transforms into the limb. At first I thought this was a rather cheesy gimmick, but after combining the toy myself I think these have the potential to be fun little toys. It's nice that you don't have to worry about adding additional parts when combining the toy. I can see how this adds a lot of play value as it doesn't slow down the play pattern and there isn't any fear of losing that all important combiner part.

There is some articulation in the combined form which surprised me. Each arm can be rotated a full 360 degrees. The head rotates as well as the cannons on the back. There is minor articulation in the hips and full 360 degree rotation at the knees.

The only fault I can find with this form are the legs and feet. Since the drones featured spring activated transformation the springs may get weak with continuous transformation and cause the feet to fold up under the weight of the combined figure. I had to slightly rotate each leg out to get a good stance on my figure.

Here are some additional pictures of the combined form.

 

All in all I am very pleased with my purchase. While I don't plan on buying all of these Power Core toys I do like the gimmick - though until you see the combination and hold the toys in your hands I can see how some fans and collectors would be skeptical. As one the podcast host on TFW2005.com stated these Power Core toys are very reminiscent to Bandai's Machine Robo Rescue toys - only on steroids. I was a fan on that MRR line and I could agree more on a better comparison. These aren't your traditional Transformer combiners, but then again they aren't designed to be. If you're looking for a new twist on the combining robot toy gimmick then do yourself a favor and at least pick up the Bombshock w/ Combaticons set.