Dave's Kre-O Rant: Microchangers Combiners Wave 1 Superion Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/KREO/Combiner3 Continuing the first wave, one set at a time. CAPSULE $10-13 price point. Superion: Four tries at making a better jet-mode MicroChanger, four misses. Significant sticker cheating (stickers that have to be on for the combiner, but off for the individual). The combined mode is okay, but not worth the set's price on its own. While I can't definitively call this the worst of the wave yet, having not opened Predaking, I really hope Predaking isn't worse...because this is pretty bad. Mild recommendation to avoid. RANTS Packaging: Same as for Devastator. Note that some of the G1 names were lost in Trademark Hell (TM), and it hit the Aerialbots pretty hard, with both Slingshot (blind bag) and Fireflight losing their names. It's not as bad as the Predacons get, though. Also, as the only Autobot in the set, I suppose they had to pick a nemesis for him. Of the three others, Bruticus makes the most sense. Why didn't they make Menasor in this wave? Well, they might have been reluctant to have too many duplicate designs in these sets. Motormaster/Motorbreath would be about the same as Onslaught, and while Dragstrip would be a unique design, you'd pretty much be stuck with two nearly identical carformers as the other two members. This set skirts that issue by using three wing styles and differentiating the two arm-wing characters by using different nosecones. One advantage of an all-jet set is that none of the wing styles available require flak vests. Autobot: SUPERION Assortment: A2226 Components: Silverbolt, Skydive, Firestrike (Fireflight), Air Raid Total Pieces: 76 Kibble Bag Pieces: 19 (11 limb bits, 2 feet soles) Leftover Pieces: 14 (6 from heads/helmets, the usual 2 extra joints) Blindbag Buddy: Quickslinger (Slingshot), wave 1. Bio: It is I! SUPERION! Defender of the skies! Scourge of the DECEPTICONS! I am the Combiner perfected, with absolutely no mental or physical flaws! Why, I just might be the most awesome AUTOBOT ever created! Hobbies: Defending the skies. Talking about myself. Rival: The beastly BRUTICUS. Fondest memory: The day I first combine into this awesome form you see before you! Thus continuing the Kre-O tradition of Autobots being jerks. Also, grammar is clearly not one of the ways in which he is superior. Looks: Uses Skydive's head and helmet, and looks pretty good, except for the wings sticking out the backs of the boots. And for once the result isn't more spindly than the G1 toy it's referencing. 4.25" (11cm) tall. The color balance is pretty good, but the toy really suffers from their inability to make the joint pieces in anything but black, or make opaque stickers. Seriously, a clear red sticker on a black block gives you a faintly reddish black block, not a red block. Stability: So-so. Even washing the waists doesn't help much with fall-apart-spine syndrome, and the backpack is very weakly held together. Overall: A decent combiner, if a bit finicky. AUTOBOT: SKYDIVE Altmode: Jet Robot Mode: This is one of the two that clips full sized wings onto the forearms, where they flop around pretty badly. There's also tail sections pegged onto the legs, making for a fairly awkward robot mode all around. It has one of the rare black head pieces, featuring red goggles and a teeth-gritted snarl. The arms, hands, pelvis, Prowl-style helmet, wings, tailfins and pistol are also black plastic, with the gray usually used on heads instead used on the torso and legs. Good printed detail on the chest and shins. 4 leftover pieces, the three used for the tail and the one used for the nosecone. You can assemble them into a sort of gun drone or camera or something. Altmode: Replace the helmet with a 1-stud cone, peg the tail assembly onto the bottom of the feet, turn head around, lie on its back. Looks decent, with a 7cm wingspan, but the tail is a little awkward and the wings are very floppy. The only unused pieces are the helmet and pistol. I did try washing the figure thoroughly in soap and water, but residual mold release oil is only part of the problem. The real problem is just that the clips are too loose. Washing does seem to help a bit more on the waist problem, though. Overall: While the arm-clip wings look better on paper, the lack of stability pretty much sinks any design that tries to use them. AUTOBOT: SILVERBOLT Altmode: Jet (more or less) Robot Mode: Uncharacteristically cocky looking, with a smug smirk printed on his face. Most of the pieces, including the Hound-style helmet, are white, with black hands and red pelvis. The backpack is formed from a 2x2 backpack base, small red and gray pieces and two triangular flats as wings. The large cannon is black. Good printing on the chest, and black toes. The backpack rides pretty high, probably to keep it from looking like a cape, but the result is...eh. I prefer to drop it one level. 8 pieces unused, although you could pile a few more on the backpack without making it significantly more awkward. In fact, it looks pretty good if you just assemble the vehicle mode wing section and peg it onto the back in robot mode at the height of your choice with the tailfin pegged onto the centerline (in fact, the main reason I can think of for those centerline peg bricks in the first place was that this was the original intent, but it was trimmed down to be less bulky later). Altmode: Well, they try for the SST shape as best as they can without making new specialized wing pieces, but the result looks more like a gun for a full-sized Transformer than it looks like any kind of vehicle. It didn't help that someone thought it'd be okay to make the front end black instead of white, so it stands out like a gun barrel rather than a fuselage. It just leaves out the helmet and the cannon, and is 9cm long. If you bend the legs and fiddle a little with how the tail pieces are put together, you get a pretty good raygun mode. Sticker Cheating: There's two sticker that goes on Silverbolt's pieces ONLY in the Superion instructions, and are left off in the individual instructions as well as on photos of the completed model. The stickers look very out of place for a jet, but okay on the space gun mode I made. Overall: Well, they did try something different for the altmode, it just happens to have not worked very well. Also, points off for the sticker cheating. AUTOBOT: FIRESTRIKE Altmode: Jet Originally known as Fireflight before the trademark was lost. Robot Mode: A red and white Starscream, to a large extent. Has the seeker-style wingpack in white, a white Starscream helmet, white arms and legs. The torso, pelvis, and three fins (one on each leg, one on the center of the backpack) are red, the hands and two pistols are black. He has a simple frown, blue goggles, so-so chest printing, and chevrons on the kneecaps. A bit boring, but solid. Uses all but 2 pieces, a helmet-replacing black cone and a little black "coffee cup" piece used to let the tail fin be on the centerline. Altmode: Like seekers, it puts the wingpack between torso and pelvis, making the already iffy joint there even weaker. And the coffee cup piece does a poor job of making the tail look right, although I can't really think of a better solution given the limitations of the Kre-O part set. Finally, like any altmode using the bent wingpack piece, it just doesn't look right with the wings bent upward like that. The only piece left out is the helmet. Overall: There's only so much you can do with a wingpack originally designed to look good on a non-transforming Kreon, and that's demonstrated again here. AUTOBOT: AIR RAID Altmode: Jet Robot Mode: Same basic design as Skydive, but with a conehead helmet. They also give him arm-clip Seeker-style guns, and assemble some of the unused pieces into a weapon to compensate for the fact he can't put arm-clip guns on when he has arm-clip wings. Well, you could put the guns at the wingtips, but...yyyyyeah. Standard head with blue goggles and smirk, white arms, all the other robot bits are black. One gray piece is used as the core of the weapon, and a single coffee-cup piece is left unused. Decent printing on the chest, plus red toes. Altmode: Turn the helmet around and lie on its back, and you have the basics. Two coffee cup pieces are pegged into the botttoms of the feet and the seeker cannons attached to them. The core of the robot's weapon is the only unused piece in this mode. Between the shape of the helmet/cockpit and the positioning of the guns, this looks more like a black redeco of Powerglide than it does any version of Air Raid. Overall: Just as floppy-winged as Skydive, but they do seem to have put a little more thought into the design. Dave Van Domelen, thinks it's a bad sign when a brick company won't even change the color of a standard piece to make the model look better.