Dave's Kre-O Rant: Microchange Combiners Wave 3 Computron Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/KREO/Combiner9 Brace for incoming renames! CAPSULE $10-13 price point Computron: Mostly good-looking designs, but really suffers from the weakness of Kreon waist joints. Mildly recommended unless you're willing to customize a bit to improve the connections. RANT To save myself some time here, I'm going to start with a general complaint about design here. The waist joints on Kreons are iffy enough in robot mode (seriously, the legs just fall out sometimes), they really should stop designing altmodes that require inserting backpack pieces or wings between the torso and legs. It pretty much guarantees that the altmode will fall apart when you look at them funny. They really should have redesigned the waists so that the pegs had a slight snap-in or something (allowing for snug or interrupted fit). AUTOBOT: COMPUTRON Assortment: A7307/A2204 Components: Scattershot, Strafe, Afterburst, Lightstorm Total Pieces: 75 Blindbag Buddy: Nosecone, wave 3 Rather than include enough limb stickers to cover both sides of each piece, they tossed in three Kre-O logo stickers and two spare Autobot symbols. D'oh. And you can't even really use the Autobot symbols on Scattorshot or Strafe, as they have gray square backgrounds rather than clear. Scattershot comments: Kinda weird how this one comes with two pistols that aren't even used in robot mode, being purely for ship mode. Instead, the robot uses the big gun that Computron also wields. Additionally, two "coffee cup" pieces, a cone, and an angled connector are unused in this mode. Can sort of make a gun drone from the extras. Ship mode is pretty clever, finding a new way to attach wings and making for a larger-looking vehicle mode with minimal extra pieces. The only bits not used are the helmet and the big gun. Strafe comments: Not sure if it's simply the choice of colors, but this one feels kinda knockoffy. Uses the standard Seeker wingpack, and has a pair of orange pistols. If the Seacons epitomized the approaching G2 color aesthetic, the Technobots certainly had shades of it. As it were. Official transformation involves putting the wings between waist and legs, but I'd rather just do the head swap (replace head with a block and wedge) and lift the arms, so you get swept-forward wings and less horrible stability. Afterburst comments: Afterburner renamed, I guess they kinda got close. Sounds like something you get after guzzling your energon too quickly. Good robot mode that uses all but three pieces, one of which is a wheel. Sadly, the vehicle mode takes an okay idea for a motorcycle and then horribly mis-implements it. A lot depends on things on a backpack piece, but the block they put on the neck to secure it is way too short. To make it clear how badly designed this is, putting the backpack on the waist instead of the neck actually IMPROVES this design. Lightstorm comments: Lightspeed renamed. Hm, given that the original had a "light-burst" gun, calling him Lightburst would have worked too, although "Afterstorm" not so much. Like most cars, it comes with several pieces not used in robot mode, mostly flat-tops. Unlike most cars, it uses all four wheels in robot mode. Looks pretty good. Car mode looks good and uses all but the head and helmet, but it's another waist-backpack design. You need to ignore the instructions and flip the legs upside down, or the backpack won't sit flush against the waist. Computron comments: The instructions have the same weird leg-sticker placement advice as on Menasor, although the photo on the front of the instructions clearly shows a more sensible arrangement. The instructions are also kinda unclear on where Scattershot's wings are supposed to go, but it looks like they're meant to be hip armor skirts. Yeah, all of the waist joints in the torso were incredibly loose, and the head popped off easily, so I just gave up and put poster putty into each of those joints to gum them up and make them less slippery. Even with that, the main waist keeps falling apart on its own. On the plus side, it's a very efficient design, using all but three heads/helmets, two arms, one wheel, and one pistol. Overall: It all looks pretty good, but they REALLY need to make the waists snap together if they're going to continue using designs like these. The waist joints are a real achilles heel (to be anatomically malapropistic) for both vehicles and the combiner. Dave Van Domelen, managed to get through another series of storm-induced power flickers without actually shunting over to the UPS.