Dave's Power Core Combiners Rant: Commander Wave 4 Undertow with Waterlog (jet boat) Skyhammer with Airlift (fighter jet) Heavytread with Groundspike (tank) Salvage with Bomb-burst (Mudslinger redeco with Chainclaw redeco, not reviewed) Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/PCC/Commander4 Sigh. I almost had all three new molds, but a snafu with HTS cost me Heavytread. No stores around here got any of them, and very few online stores even had enough in stock to go around. I ended up finding Undertow and Skyhammer at entertainmentearth.com, but they had to cancel my Heavytread order because Hasbro decided to stop shipping any more. I passed on Salvage, though, as it's just a redeco and I'm not paying full price plus shipping for that. If I can get Heavytread for a reasonable price, I'll amend this review, but right now I don't hold out much hope. [Later note: I got Heavytread as part of a bundle exclusive at Walmart back in December, but it got pushed back in the queue so I could review stuff that was newer.] CAPSULES Undertow with Waterlog: Undertow is pretty good in all modes, but suffers from some loose joints that can't be easily fixed. Undertow is definitely one of the better Mini-Cons in this line. Recommended. $9.99 at entertainmentearth.com. Skyhammer with Airlift: Decent design, but loose in both modes and some of the color choices are iffy. Airlift is a good Targetmaster, but the armor mode is a write-off. Mildly recommended. $9.99 at EE. Heavytread with Groundspike: Heavytread is definitely one of the best core figures, Groundspike one of the worst Mini-Cons. Strongly recommended. Part of a $10 two-pack with the Combiner Constructicons. Odds are you'll need to get it on the secondary market, though. Salvage with Bomb-Burst: I didn't give Mudslinger a solo recommendation, but I'd call the mold about a "mildly recommended." Chainclaw is a decent mold as well, if not great. If this had actually been on shelves anywhere, I might have gotten the set. RANTS Packaging: Same as previous Commander waves. In the case of Heavy Tread, they just taped his blister card to the box with the Constructicons, and slapped a few extra stickers on. DECEPTICON: UNDERTOW Altmode: Jet boat Transformation Difficulty: Intermediate (3) Previous Name Use: None Previous Mold Use: None Mini-Con: Waterlog (name used in Armada) Function: Aquatic Warfare Motto: "Because SHUT UP!" UNDERTOW was stupid and mean even before the Power Core process turned him into a Combiner. He hates folks who think they're smart, and now he has more than enough power to smash those guys to pieces. STR 10 INT 4 SPD 7 END 9 RNK 7 COUR 9 FRB 8 SKL 5 Avg 7.375 Undertow is so stupid he thinks he's related to Under-Three. Fanon techspec adjustments if Mini-Con is missing: -1 FRB. Packaging: Robot mode held into the blister by 4 rattan strings, and one more string holds Waterlog in robot mode. Co-sell is Salvage with Bomb-Burst. Robot Mode: A well-proportioned (other than the big boots) humanoid form with an aesthetic that makes me think of various power armor anime, especially the helmet with clear visor that covers the entire top front quarter of the head. Mainly colored in cool light gray, black and pale dull gold, with some flashes of green and shiny gold. There's a single hardpoint on the abdomen. 4.5" (11.5cm) tall at the head, the PCC connectors flanking the head can be raised like smokestacks to increase the height if you wish. Black plastic is used on the PCC struts, boots, sideways knee transformation joints, hip joints, head and arm cannons. A light cool gray is used on the shoulders, forearms, pelvis, thighs and most of the torso. A pale dull gold plastic is used on the knees, elbows, shoulders, neck area and a set of dual cannons on each side of the chest (they're pointed up and are non-poseable). The top front of the helmet is covered in clear aqua-green plastic, which is also used on the windshield that forms the center of the chest. Rather than have the back of the head be clear, there's some slits in the back of the head to let light into the lightpiping that connects to the visor. Shiny gold paint is used on a helmet crest, the tops of the toes and the barrels of the forearm cannons. A duller "antique" gold is used on some cylinder details on the abdomen and a bit of the central pelvis. There's some little bits of orange on the sides of the waist, and the face is painted silver. There's a couple of other paint details, but they're meant for vehicle mode. The neck swivels, the waist does not move. The shoulders are ball joints, and the elbows are dual joints with a hinge on top and a ball joint on the bottom. The forearm cannons are on swivels so they can be swung out of the way. The hips are universal joints. There's a sideways joint for transformation, then a swivel below that and above the hinge knees. The toes can swing up or down, but don't provide much support. The boots have an annoying tendency to pop apart when moving the legs. The chest panel can swing up on its transformation hinge to become a sort of external targeting screen for Undertow. Or a sneezeguard. Transformation: Flip the toes up and then unfold the boots into the hull sides. The shoulder connections swing forward and the PCC connectors fold upward to make room for the legs to swing up along the sides (after a few complicated spins). The arms straighten and peg onto the hulls, then spin the weapons around to point forward. The clear chestplate folds down to mostly cover the robot head. Vehicle Mode: This is a dual-hulled speedboat with loads of weapons tacked onto it. A real boat of this type would be torn to pieces by recoil the first time it tried firing the rotary cannons of course. :) It's hard to peg the scale since it's got so many fantasy elements, but I'm going to work from the assumption that the cockpit window is 1m tall to make this a one-person craft. The front half, roughly, is just the split hull pieces, with all of the engine and cockpit space being in the rear half. There's some robot junk in back, and the whole thing isn't exactly aerodynamic, but the arms have to go somewhere, yes? A big 8-cylinder engine is mounted behind the cockpit, two-barrel weapons (lasers?) flank the cockpit, and four-barrel rotary cannons are mounted on the sides on the robot arms. A non-folding hardpoint is atop the center of the engine. From the front, you can see the robot head under the cockpit and some PCC connectors. 5" (12.5cm) long, and based on my earlier assumption, I'm calling it somewhere between 1:72 (standard wargaming) and 1:87 (common in modeling) scale, for a "real" length of 9-11 meters (30-36 feet). The cool gray is confined mainly to the engine area and the arms flanking it, and most of the dull gold plastic is covered up in this mode (just the cannons are visible). The cockpit is clear green. Paint meant for this mode includes a black border on the cockpit window, gold stripes on the sides of the hull, and light matte gray paint on the tops of the hulls on the inner sides (as if they were sharpened blades). A small silver Decepticon symbol is printed on the left hull near the tip on the outer side. Stability is okay. The front hull pieces are really just held in place by joint friction, which is a minor problem. The robot arms peg in place, but the cannon joints are stiffer than those pegs can handle, making it a little tricky to get things aligned. There are no wheels, and other than being able to elevate the rotary cannons no articulation. Torso Mode: This probably has the most difficult head swap of all the PCCs, with the outer torso rotating around the central torso core with almost no clearance (so, a kitbash repaint would have to be dyed, any paint around here would scrape off). The regular head is hidden in the abdomen and a new head modeled after a old-timey diving helmet replaces it. The legs use the fairly standard trick of turning the hip and knee joints into an extended hip joint, so that the old shins are now thighs and the stance is spread apart. The boot fronts have a new connection point higher up the leg so that the tips of the hulls now cover the hips. The robot arms fold behind the back, with the hands gripping onto pegs on the old robot shoulders and the arm cannons becoming shoulder cannons. I find it looks a little better and is more stable if I bring the elbows together so that they almost touch, this also brings the cannons closer together flanking the head. The overall effect is thunder thighs and a somewhat scrawny torso even with Mini-Con armor on it. Total height is 4.75" (12cm), height measured to the center of the shoulder connection is 3.75" (9.5cm). The new head is clear green plastic painted over in gold to only leave the windows on top, front and sides. I decided to stress-test this and Skyhammer's torso modes by tossing them in a canvas bag with a few other light objects and hauling them to the office one afternoon. Everything stayed together. Unfortunately, there's a stability issue unrelated to holding together: the knees. The PCC struts lock into "straight leg" pose, but that's about all they're good for. Unlock them and they become really loose, keeping the combined mode from holding any sort of stable dynamic pose. Mini-Con: Waterlog reminds me of the old Centurions (Power X-TREME!) toys, with a head that looks more like a flight helmet than a diving helmet and a wingpack on the back. Mainly clear green and dull gold in color, it stands 2.25" (5.5cm) tall at the head, 2.75" (7cm) at the tops of the twin cannon barrels sticking up behind the back. There's a Mini-Con connector socket on the chest and a hardpoint on the back. The forearms have a pair of tabs on them vaguely reminiscent of the scallops on Batman's gloves and 1/16" peg holes in the palms. There's 1/16" pegs on the hips. The arms and thighs are made of pale dull gold plastic, everything else is the same clear green/aqua plastic seen on Undertow. Silver paint picks out the faceplate and "air hose" details connected to it, the goggle-like eyes are outlined in black, and orange paint is sloppily applied to the tips of the cannons. There are no faction symbols of any kind, molded or painted. The shoulders and hips are ball joints, the knees are hinges, and the head turns on a rather stiff swivel. If it hadn't been tilted slightly to the side in-package, I would probably never have noticed the neck joint, it's a bit tricky to work. The wings are hinged to fold forward like a cloak wrapping around the arms. To get them to fold backwards requires forcing them past a blockage meant to prevent that sort of thing. For robot weapon mode, kneel the robot mode down with arms at the sides and then fold the wings forward to cover the arms. You can also turn the head around to partially conceal the face. There's holes on the hands that seem intended to go onto pegs on the hips, but this forces the legs forward a bit more than I think looks good. The hardpoint on the back becomes the grip of the weapon. Vehicle weapon mode makes for a nice independent vehicle of its own. Tabs on the heels peg into slots on the back (although the right heel doesn't like staying put on mine), so that the Mini-Con connector on the chest can attach to hardpoints on another toy. The "Batman" spurs on the forearms clip around those pegs on the hips for a little extra stability. It's a little winged gun drone 2" (5cm) long with a wingspan of 2.25" (5.5cm). When attached to Undertow, you can fold the wings down to rest on Undertow's "tail fins". Armor mode is pretty much just the vehicle weapon mode, although you might want to fold the wings down a little. Attached to Undertow it makes his chest deeper but not much wider, so the look isn't that good. Undertow might be better off with a different chest armor, like Searchlight. Waterlog is definitely one of the better Mini-Con partners in the line, it's a pity we're not likely to see a redeco appear anywhere, unless they resurrect the line in some fashion after the Dark of the Moon toy line dies down. Overall: Suffers from some loose hinges, but I like the design otherwise, on both functional and aesthetic levels. DECEPTICON: SKYHAMMER Altmode: Fighter jet Transformation Difficulty: Intermediate (3) Previous Name Use: G1, U2 (subsequent use in DotM) Previous Mold Use: None Mini-Con: Airlift Function: Environmental Warfare Motto: "Forecast calls for PAIN!" The boiling clouds of an approaching thunderstorm hold terror for any AUTOBOT caught in the open. SKYHAMMER manipulates the weather to generate ferocious winds, torrential rains and destructive blasts of lightning. As soon as his enemies are disoriented by the pounding storm, he descends from the clouds, smashing into his opponents like a hammer. STR 9 INT 8 SPD 9 END 6 RNK 6 COUR 9 FRB 8 SKL 7 Avg 7.75 Fanon techspec adjustments if Mini-Con is missing: -1 FRB. Packaging: A single rattan string holds robot mode in place, and one more for the Mini-Con. The wings are flat across in package, but should be folded up about thirty degrees in official robot mode. Co-sell is Heavytread with Groundspike. Robot Mode: If they ever bring these molds back for redecos, Skyhammer is a shoo-in for Jhiaxus. Yeah, the vehicle mode isn't all that close, but the head is almost a dead ringer for the G2 Decepticon leader's, and the way the wings make for massive shoulderpads adds to the regal appearance. In addition to wing-mounted missiles (molded, not fireable), there's backwards- pointing guns on the forearms. 4.5" (11.5cm) tall at the head, a bit taller if you count a piece sticking up behind the head or the tops of the wings. It's mainly a mix of light blue-gray and dark gray, with accents in orange and silver. Dark cool gray is used for the front of the head, the piece behind the head, the general collar area, the upper arms, the pelvis, the thighs and the toes. A light blue-gray is used on the wings, chest, forearms and boots. A bright orange plastic is found on the fold-out chest hardpoint, the PCC connector struts, the elbows, the shoulder roots, the hip joints, the knee joints, the ankle joints and a joint inside the torso. Clear orange plastic is used on the lightpiping and the fold-out helmet. The backwards-facing elbow guns are totally covered in paint, but I'm guessing they're dark gray plastic. As usual, the actual PCC connectors are bright blue. There's extensive dark gray paint on the wings, I'll discuss that more in vehicle mode. The face is painted gold, the elbow guns are gunmetal. There's silver on the chest and abdomen from vehicle mode bits, and much of the boot front is painted silver, with orange ovals below the kneecaps. A small black Decepticon symbol is printed on the left side of the chest. The head is on a ball joint that's restricted to it can either turn or tilt upwards, but not tilt to the side. The waist is immobile due to how things are pegged together there. The shoulders are ball joints. The arms are a little odd. There's a hinge that's definitely meant to be the true elbow, but in the forearm there's a ball joint that lets the forearm rotate (for vehicle mode) or fold up (for torso mode). The arm can bend double using this second joint, but the orange plastic segment in the middle is long enough that it looks more like someone broke his arm. The hips are universal joints, and the knees are double hinges. The legs can lock in a straight position by inserting a peg on the kneecap into the space above the upper joint. The toes are hinged but so loose they offer no support. The PCC struts are used as heel spurs, and those joints are sufficiently stiff. There are fold-out hardpoints on both the chest and the back, and the fists can hold 5mm pegs. Stability is okay, but the torso tends to come unpegged very easily, and the forearm balljoints can pop apart if you're not careful when turning the forearms. Transformation: The torso unfolds along four hinges to make up most of the airplane, with the head folding back and being covered by the panel that was behind it in robot mode. The arms fold together along the center line, and the legs flank them with pegs on the jet intakes going into slots by the ankles. The legs aren't immediately obvious, but pretty easy to transform once you figure them out (or, I suppose, look at the instructions). Vehicle Mode: TFWiki calls this a Su-35, and I can certainly see some resemblance, but it's about as close to the Su-27, the Su-37 and even the MiG-29 as it is to the Su-35. Also, due to how the nose has to curl up inside the torso, they blunted it and gave it a MiG-19 style of intake nose (despite also having proper intakes for the engines under each wing). The wingtips are also an odd shape not seen on any real warplane that I can find, echoing the semi-hexagonal shape of the trailing edges of the tail winglets. It lacks proper thruster nozzles, with the robot hips sitting awkwardly in that position and not really molded to look like nozzles. There's a general "junk in the trunk" appearance to this mode. 5" (12.5cm) long with a 4.75" (12cm) wingspan. If you assume it has the Su-35's wingspan, it's around 1:128 scale. Most of the orange plastic is hidden in the undercarriage, with just the fold-up hardpoint between the thrusters being made of orange plastic. The center of the fuselage is dark gray plastic. Otherwise, the plane parts are all that cool slate gray plastic. A sort of "might be camoflage" pattern in dark gray paint is on the top of the wings. The nose front is dark gray with an orange tip, the wings and vertical tail pieces have black and orange striping at the tips, and the horizontal tail pieces have dark gray tips in the pseudo-camo pattern. The cockpit and jet intakes are silver. The small printed Decepticon symbol ends up on the left wing root next to the cockpit. The dark gray part of the fuselage top has slate gray paint in a good (but not perfect, it's a bit too light) match with the plastic, completing the not-camo pattern. The nose wheel (black plastic) folds down, but the other two wheels are fixed details of orange plastic. The backwards-pointing forearm guns are now forwards-pointing underbody guns...of course, to see them you have to look at all the orange and bright blue robot kibble. Stability is weak. The nose end doesn't really peg together properly, the wings flap up with little provocation, and the tail pieces fold up and down too easily. At least the fuselage core holds together well. Torso Mode: Fairly simple, especially by comparison to Undertow. A helmet folds up over the head, the legs collapse backwards at the knee (kneecaps peg onto mid-thigh), wings fold up, arms fold back to point elbows forward and make those backwards guns on the arms point forward. Then just fold out the PCC connectors. What had been a somewhat oversized chest on the robot mode is about right in torso mode, although due to the leg transformation you end up with a somewhat narrow-hipped combiner mode. Like Undertow, it survived the canvas bag test, although the weak abdomen to waist connection is still a problem in normal handling. The fold-out helmet looks kind of like Captain America's flight helmet or something, with winglets on the top sides and a goggled appearance. It's clear orange plastic just painted around the goggles, but the back piece is dark gray plastic and almost completely covers the inner head's lightpiping. The combined head turns on a swivel. Mini-Con: A little orange and black gun-armed bot with Gundam-like boots and a chest design that echoes Iron Man's. 2.25" (5.5cm) tall, with a Mini-Con connector port on the chest and a hardpoint on the back, much like Waterlog. There's additional 3/32" (yes, I'm pretty sure it was designed in inches, not millimeters) peg holes on both the chest and the back above and flanking the main connector on each side. The design includes a plate behind the head, so that if you turn the head all the way around the face is hidden. The arms and thighs are matte black plastic, the rest is made of clear orange plastic. The helmet is painted gunmetal and the face is painted gloss black. There are no faction symbols on it, painted or molded. The shoulders and hips are ball joints, the knees are regular hinges. The waist turns, but the head is attached to the pelvis via a spine that runs the length of the torso. So, really, it's the torso that turns, while the head faces the same way as the pelvis at all times (insert "typical male" joke here). Shoulder details prevent the arms from being pointed straight out to the sides, but they come close enough. Odd as it may be, the spinal mount trick does allow for some pretty good poses. Both weapon modes are essentially just "pegs on heels insert into holes on upper torso, raise arms as gun barrels" designs, both 2.25" (5.5cm) long. But the clever bit is that they didn't make the knees work both directions. Instead, the waist joint is used to spin the whole lower body (and the head) around so that for robot weapon mode the heels plug into the upper chest instead of the upper back. So, one way exposes a hardpoint for a handle, the other exposes a Mini-Con connector. The robot mode has the advantage of hiding the Mini-Con's face, making it look a little less like a folded up robot. Either weapon mode can be made more compact simply by swinging the arms around the other way. Armor mode is just embarrassing by contrast. Seriously, it just looks like a Mini-Con clinging to his chest. Vehicle mode pegged to Skyhammer's back looks marginally acceptable, though. If the knees were ball joints rather than hinges, something more attractive might have been possible. The best I could come up with goes like this: rotate head to hide it. Lift arms straight up and then spread them as far to the sides as possible. Rotate the legs so that they stick out to the sides and the open facing of the hip socket is on the same side as the robot chest's front. Bend the knees slightly so that the heel pegs are just touching the arms from the robot's front (so that they go behind the arms in armor mode). It's not great, but it widens the look of the chest and looks less like Clingy Baby Mode. Still looks bad on Skyhammer himself, but might be okay for a flatter-chester Commander like Huffer. A pretty good Targetmaster Mini-Con, though, if you ignore the armor mode. Overall: With only two airplane molds in the line, it doesn't take much to be the best airplane PCC, and Skyhammer does manage to be better than Skyburst/Darkstream. But yeah, that's damning with faint praise, and the looseness of both modes is a significant problem. The orange also verges on GeeToo ugliness. If PCC weren't dead, I'd recommend waiting for a redeco, btu as it stands I'll simply say it's not worth paying scalper prices for and leave it at that. AUTOBOT: HEAVYTREAD Altmode: Tank Transformation Difficulty: Intermediate (3) Previous Name Use: U2 ("Heavy Tread" as two words was G1) Previous Mold Use: None Mini-Con: Groundspike Function: Defender Motto: "Breaking things only proves you're weak." At his core, HEAVYTREAD is a gentle soul. He enjoys the fragile beauty of Earth, appreciating it all the more because of the ease with which it could be ruined. He is glad of the power he now wields, because it gives him the ability to defend the delicate creatures he loves. STR 10 INT 6 SPD 5 END 9 RNK 7 COUR 8 FRB 9 SKL 4 Avg 7.25 So, basically TF:A Bulkhead. Fanon techspec adjustments if Mini-Con is missing: -1 STR Packaging: Three strings hold the robot mode into the blister, one string holds Groundspike's robot mode in place. There's a little plastic shield on Heavytread's chest held on by friction, and his turret is disconnected from his back and just stuck in the blister behind him. A rubber band keeps the head from flopping forward. Robot Mode: A fairly standard treads on the limbs, turret as backpack sort of tankbot. You can almost make a Gobots Defender turret-head mode by folding the head down and flipping up the turret, but it's a bit too far back to work. The chest sticks very far forward in a sort of monoboob, but there's nothing about the rest of this chunky bot that suggests a femmebot. The head mold is blocky and reminiscent of the sort of padded armor worn by bomb squad members or boxing sparring partners. There's obvious PCC connectors on the elbows, but the leg ones are hidden inside the boots. The shins are tank treads, and the rest of the treads are a bit awkwardly placed on the insides of the forearms and covering the thumbs. In fact, it almost looks like the front treads are long fingers wrapped down against the forearms. 4" (10cm) tall at the heads, but the turret cannon rises to 5.5" (14cm). A mix of light and dark olive green, and black, for the most part. Interestingly, the lightpiping block is opaque black, although they probably decided to change it from clear because that block also includes the neck ball joint strut. Black is also used on the elbow and knee joints, roots of the PCC connectors, some internal torso bits, the kneecap tread pieces and the forearm/hand tread pieces. Light olive/tan is used on the shoulders, upper arms, outer forearm armor plate bits, abdomen, pelvis, turret and boots. A darker olive green is used on the head front, chest, thughs, internal lower legs and main gun. The PCC connectors themselves are the usual AllSpark Blue. Light olive paint is used on the chest in a camo pattern, with complementary darker olive paint on the shoulders, forearms, turret and boots. Dark silver paint is used on the forehead, mouthplate, window blocks on the chest, and a silver printed Autobot symbol on the left forearm armor. Plenty of black paint is used on tread pieces that aren't black plastic, plus a bit on the pelvis front. A bright canary yellow accent color is found on the shoulders, forearms, pelvis and turret. The head is on a ball joint, and the waist swivels. The buttflap folds down for transformation or coolant flushing. The shoulders are ball joints on shrug struts, and there's a hinge connecting them to the upper arms for transformation. There isn't a swivel in the upper arm, and the bulk of the shoulderpads makes it difficult to fake that motion with the shoulder joints. The elbows are hinges, and there's a swivel in the forearm just below the elbow. The bulk of the forearms limits how much you can do with that swivel, though. Universal joint hips, thigh swivels, hinge knees. No ankle articulation. The turret on the back can turn, and the cannon is hinged to swing sideways. A block at the back of the turret can swing around to make a Megatron-ish underarm cannon. Connectors are a bit sparse. The hands can hold 5mm pegs, and there's a 5mm peg hole on the right forearm. A 5mm hardpoint folds out from the center of the chest for attaching armor-mode Mini-Cons, but it's cleverly molded to look like a short cannon barrel. If PCC hadn't been cancelled, odds are pretty good this mold would have been redecoed as Warpath. The tip of the main gun is 3mm in diameter, but mine has a little mold flash that had to be trimmed before it could act as a C-clip connector. Transformation: The weird arm articulation is all so that they can fold up into the front halves of the tread assembly. Fold the head in and flip the turret up. The abdomen unclips from under the chest and the whole lower body folds up and back, with the buttflap folding down to provide a rear deck for the tank. The boots swing out and forward to complete the treads, leaving the PCC knee connectors sticking out the back, as in a lot of PCC vehicle modes. Vehicle Mode: TFWiki claims this is a Merkava main battle tank, a mode Hasbro's designers seem partial to lately. However, not only does it lack the distinctive wavy sides (as seen on the Energon Combaticon tanks), pretty much every line is wrong. The chassis is actually pretty close to an M1 Abrams. I can see where the turret might evoke one of the Merkava designs from above, but the side view is wrong...can't find anything closer on Wikipedia, though. Other than the PCC pegs sticking out the back, it's a very tightly constructed tank, with no major gaps or kibble bits. It even has a proper rear deck with engine exhaust venting, and obvious chobham-style reactive armor panels along the sides. The chassis-proper is 3.75" (9.5cm) long, but if you count the protruding cannon barrel in front and the PCC connectors in the back, the total length is 4.25" (11cm). Working from the chassis length and the assumption it's based on an Abrams, it's about 1:84 scale. Most of the darker plastics are hidden in this mode, with the cannon and the center front chassis being the main bits that aren't light olive. The Autobot symbol ends up on the left front fender, and most of the yellow bits are clearly intended to be lights. It has the usual little casters in the treads, but they don't roll very well. The turret can turn 360 degrees, but the cannon can't elevate. The forearm peg hole (which is actually octagonal, oddly enough) is on the right front fender to allow one other weapon mounting. The "chest cannon" fold-out peg is now at the center front, for attachment of Groundspike's minesweeper mode. Torso Mode: Nicely solid, both in looks and actuality. The head is blocky and armored without looking like a badguy head, and that mysterious hinged bit on the back of the turret is used to give him an extra shoulder cannon to balance out the main gun. The instructions have it pointing straight up, but I prefer having it point forward to break the symmetry. A fairly simple transformation from vehicle mode, most of the tricky bits involve the pelvis (insert joke about it being the most complicated part of most people). The combiner head rises up out of the collar area to form a sort of armor shell for the commander head, and the treads end up on the back of the thighs rather than their shin-front position from robot mode. The overall effect is to make this mode significantly less black-looking than the commander robot mode. The combiner head is the darker olive plastic, with eyes painted metallic medium blue and the mouthplate painted silver. The vehicle-front fold out hardpoint is now in the center of the chest for attachment of Mini-Con armor. Good range of motion on the combiner joints, but they snap firmly into at-rest positions so there's little concern that it'll sag over while standing in display. The commander's buttflap is now a fold-down codpiece, but they were clueful enough to make sure the countersink for the bolt behind it was a non-peg size (about 4mm) and rounded off at the lip to reduce the odds someone will be able to jam a weapon in there. Definitely one of the best torso modes that Power Core Combiners served up. Mini-Con: It's a good thing I got two sets, because Groundspike's hip snapped apart within five minutes of my opening the package! I was able to repair it well enough to review, but it seems like the hips are a design flaw: trivially easy to apply enough force to snap the struts if you move the legs in the wrong way. Robot mode is 2.5" (6cm) tall and badly proportioned, legs make up 2/3 of the total height and the arms are pretty stubby. The thighs are made of light olive plastic, everything else is clear light blue plastic...so even without the design flaw, the joints are likely to break over time as clear plastic gets brittle with age. There's dark silver paint on the blades molded into the arms, but no other paint. Ball joints at shoulders and hips (but the hips are practically designed to apply excessive force to themselves), hinge knees and ankles. The heels are much longer than the toes, making it look like he's standing backwards. There's Mini-Con ports on the chest and the back, and a hardpoint/handle sticking up behind the rather squat head. The vehicle-mount weapon mode is like a brushcutter blade with a big pincer under it. It's probably meant to be some sort of minesweeper, but it does let the tank mode grab enemies. The robot weapon feels like an afterthought, a vaguely claw-like tool of some sort. The leverage limb-snapping issues are worst when trying to make the robot weapon. You can kind of fake up a sort of bat'leth-y weapon, I suppose. The armor mode seems to have had its instructions written by someone who was guessing and guessed wrong. The protrusions on the backs of the thighs are clearly meant to fit into notches on the arm-wing pieces, resulting in a broader and more coherent armor piece than the instructions show. You do need to bend the legs backwards a bit to let the notches line up with the bumps, though: http://www.dvandom.com/images/pccheavy.JPG The design of the arms goes beyond just blades, they look like they're supposed to be the wings of a flight mode. It was in trying to figure out a flight mode that I broke the hip, in fact. Even if it hadn't broken within minutes of package opening, I expect I would still find this a disappointing Mini-Con. All of the design went into making something that would look appropriate stuck on the front of a tank, with all three other modes getting the fuzzy end of the dropped popsicle. Overall: Definitely one of the best Commander figures, sadly saddled with one of the worst Mini-Cons. Still, definitely worth seeking out on the secondary market. Dave Van Domelen, gonna call that a wrap on Power Core Combiners, not interested in the remaining redeco sets.