Welcome to Kimia, Room 113 review Huffer and Caliburst

So I've decided to dust off the old writing skills and do some more old school style text with some funny pictures toy reviews. Now I'm not going to pick the newest stuff I've got or the popular stuff. I'm going to do what I fancy and what I fancy reviewing first is what I feel is "my" toyline. 

Transformers Power Core Combiners.
Listed here after as PCC for the sake of my tiny typing fingers. 

I'm not sure what drew me in with PCC's, maybe it was the shared play feature of the limbs, maybe it was the mass of "blank palettes" that was the characters of the line. Sure some of them are named after pre-existing characters but it was never said implicitly that that's who they are. 
I like to think of PCC as it's own universe or part of the "mash everything together" that the classics/generations line is now. 
Whatever it is I was pulled into the line like nothing before. 
Hell I even started the P.C.C N.W.O (4 life!).

I'll be doing a complete breakdown on the main PCC toys, I wont be touching to much on the Japanese united EX stuff as I don't own any (yet), going into each character/figure on a "by the waves they were released" order (if you want to know who's going where I'll be using the TFwiki's wave by wave break down list). 
I'll be reviewing the repaints separately from the original molds. Lets face it there isn't any difference between the original and the repaints apart from colours and mini-con he's paired with but I feel the need to talk about them as their own toys.
I'll be doing separate reviews of the third party stuff I have at some point. I'll slot them in whenever I feel like it. There wasn't much done third party wise but I'd like to cover it along with the mainline toys.

So where do we start?

Huffer and Caliburst

So my first review is also the first figure I bought from the PCC line. Huffer W/ Caliburst. Bought as a "let's check these guys out" purchase from my local Argos.
So Huffer is named after the G1 character and going off what little bio there is it implies that he is the same grumpy Autobot we all love.
So after doing some research it ends up there are two different types of this figure, one has a orange hood piece, one doesn't.
Mine doesn't. 
Huffer transforms into a yellow semi truck cab and a robot (shocking!). As a semi cab he's a solid enough little vehicle with some nice details on it. Plenty of reverts and some nice exhausts. There's not a lot more to say about the alt mode, so lets make a start on his robot mode.
So the robot mode is a solid little scout figure. Now the elbow joints on mine have gone a little loose on mine but easily fixed.  Huffer doesn't have  proper hand holes so he can't exactly hold some of the Mini-Con's that some of the PCC's come with. Fortunately he has a power-linx point right under his right arm Which works perfectly with Caliburst (who I'll get to later) as an underslung cannon.
He has a swing out Power-linx port on his chest, something most of the commanders have so that they can use the Mini-Con's armour mode.
His lower body is pretty standard, "universal" hip joints and a basic knee joint. He's got feet, well kinda. They're not very big due to needing them to not scrape on the ground when he's in alt mode. The bright side is his PCC pegs are great heels, with the joint they're on you can use them to help balance him in some other poses than stood straight. 
He's got a decent splash of paint apps, mostly on his torso. A block of blue with some yellow to break it up.
I feel I should mention the PCC pegs. A lot of the negativity I see against PCC as a toy line was drawn against these pegs. I can see why, each commander body has 4 of these blocks so you can attach the limbs. Without these PCC's wouldn't have their famous gimmick and without this gimmick you wouldn't have the FOC Bruticus and without FOC Bruticus (and a shed load of third party guys) you wouldn't have Combiner Wars. Some molds did a good job of hiding the pegs, and some didn't...
Huffer does. His shoulder pegs tuck away nicely behind his arms and don't cause any kind of obstruction. 
He's got a solid enough face sculpt, nothing that explicitly screams Huffer to me but enough detail work and paint apps to make sure it isn't a block of black on a body.

So lets move on to his torso mode. Each commander transforms into a torso so the drone limbs can help them form a super robot.

Now like the peg situation some have good torso modes, and again some don't. 
Huffer is somewhere in the middle. His legs hinge open to make the legs thicker, revealing more detail work. His arm's clip onto his torso giving him a  much bulkier chest and all 4 of his PCC pegs fold out so you can attach the limbs. His head tucks away and the hood of the truck opens up revealing his combined mode head. The head REEKS of Menasor, if Huffer was repainted in black he'd be a spot on for it (Oh wait that happened. Twice). It's got some detail to, picked out in silver and has some nice (put on your best Thew voice) LIGHT PIPING!
As I said, it falls somewhere in the middle, it's by no means the worst torso out there but it's also not fantastic. It does some simple tricks to bulk out the scout body. 
No particular set of limbs work/don't work with him. I currently have the Aerialbot drones on him and they fit ok. 
I've even tried him with the third party add on sets, Iron army and the Mobine sets.

So I better wrap this up with Caliburst, Huffers Mini-Con partner. 

There's not a lot to say on the little guy. He's mostly clear blue with some silver paint and some grey parts. He transforms from a robot into a gun, chest armour and a gun for the truck mode, wow quad changing Mini-cons! One thing I feel I have to mention is the (for him) giant gun barrel attached to his arm. It's ball jointed so it doesn't get in the way much. His armour mode is my favorite of all of his modes his legs fold up to cover his chest and his shoulder fold open to form the armour. The gun can either be left pointed out giving him a asymmetrical feel or  you can spin the gun inwards even you need that symmetry.

All in all Huffer W/ Caliburst was a good start for me and PCC's but I had no idea where this one purchase would take me. 
Would I recommend him? Yeah. He's a solid enough toy and a good example of the gimmick/play pattern. He's by no means my favourite or the best from the line but he's not my least favourite either.
Huffer is the middle ground on all levels, guess he was the perfect place to start. 
And with that I'm done for now,  thank you for reading and I hope you enjoyed it, now remember, 
P.C.C N.W.O IS 4 LIFE!

Stu "Darkageis" Murray is a found member of The Old Oilhouse, a lifelong transformers nut and colector of Sentai is all it's forms.
He sometimes takes epic trips to Newcastle, and tells tales of these sagas often.