This was the first 5 pack I picked up but I'd already had a donation of the Combaticon limbs from Mr Grufflock. Having an spare set of limbs does work out quite well some times.
I have a lot of affection for the Combaticons from G1, one of the few VHS tapes of Transformers I had was “The revenge of Bruticus/Dinobot island”, this video was watched and re-watched over and over. This is the very reason I like the Dinobots and the Combaticons so much. They were my Transformers at a young age, I never owned enough of the toys as a child but what Dinobots and Combaticons were cherished items.
Seeing something use the Combaticon name will always generate interest from me, most of the time it's a slew of military based repaints (I'm looking at you Energon Bruticus Maximus) but these were something different.
Lets make a start shall we?
Bombshock is a Twin barrelled artillery cannon truck in military green (Really?! NO!). He has a rotating turret with some sculpted detail representing (to me any way) missile pods. The two cannons have their own hinge as well as a main hinge to raise and lower the guns.
His alt mode does suffer a lot from the fact it's a torso and a robot. The turret which transforms into the torsos chest is viable as the back of the turret. He's hollow in places too. He's only got two of his PCC pegs on show, right at the back of his truck. This does have one advantage which I'll talk about later. It's not the worst alt mode of the line but he's a close second. He's got two Mini-Con pegs on his turret but one of them isn't usable in alt mode, it only becomes useful once you transform him.
So lets do that.
He has some nicely sculpted detail for his head and his torso with some nice paint apps, in yellow, to help break up the grey and green he's soaked in.
His head has some nice detail work, no light piping (boo), his face is picked out in brass and he has silver “goggles”on his head.
TORSOOO...... HEEEENNNNNSHIN!!!
There's not much else I can say about his torso mode as there isn't much else to say about it really.
Obviously Bombshock is paired with the Combaticons but as part of the gimmick he can combine with any of the other limb sets out there.
Since it's my first limb review I better do a little bit here about the limbs in general for the line.
The idea with the PCC limbs is as follows, each team has 4 “kinda transforming” drones, they auto morph from a vehicle to a arm or leg, no robot modes!
Now they don't have the same ability as the more traditional three modes combiner limbs where you can use, say Air Raid, as an arm or a leg. These drones form a leg or an arm. No more, no less, you can't swap an arm drone for a leg drone and expect it to work at all. While I feel this limits the “swap them around” gimmick I can see why they did it, PCC was a “filler” line between movie releases. They didn't want to invest a lot of time or cash into it, extra limb transformations means extra cash.
They're by no means the worst set out there, not by a long shot (they'll come with a future wave for a sneaky hint) but for my first experience I wasn't blown away. It did leave me hopeful for future releases though.
So that's out first 5 pack all done, only one more to go and then all of wave 1 will have been done. So who's next? Well let's just say their up, up and away!
| Stu "Darkageis" Murray is a founding member of The Old Oilhouse, a lifelong transformers nut and collector of Sentai and Kamen rider in all it's forms. He sometimes takes epic trips to Newcastle, and tells tales of these sagas often. When not watching people in spandex fight each other he paints miniatures, go HERE to take a look. |