Given Menasor’s appearance in the cartoon and Motormaster’s whole ass trailer; he is uniquely able to pull something like that off.
You can’t get away with that with the others though.
Yeah, I was really disappointed they didn't show off his limb mode, after they kept hinting at it. I want to see what they're going for here. Are they completely abandoning the Scramble City gimmick to focus on better character-specific engineering and cartoon accuracy? (Completely ignoring the actual Scramble City special, of course.) I mean, they did keep specifically referring to his third mode. Makes sense that they could get better, less generic toys by abandoning the need to have each limb bot be able to form either an arm or leg that's compatible with any torso.
Definitely going to be keeping all my CW combiner sets in any case.
I keep seeing this sentiment, but I never had the original mold. What makes this worse?
Nostalgia.
In all seriousness though, it really looks like the main figure is a great update to the original. The G2 figure's articulation was fantastic for its time. In this day and age, a guy whose signature weapon is a sword, but who doesn't have any wrist articulation, is disappointing. He's also missing other articulation that is pretty standard these days, like a thigh swivel. It would be disappointing if he doesn't have a gun (can't tell if that gun on the base mode is removeable or not), and he loses out on the light-up weapon effect if you care about that (I don't), but he gains more than he loses IMHO.
The place where the original is legitimately better is the trailer. This new one seems fine, and even captures the look of the original better than I was really expecting. But the original is a much bigger base with multiple weapon emplacements that actually launch missiles. There was no way any modern toy was going to match that. So if that trailer/base is important to you, the new figure is going to be a letdown.
Deco-wise, the new one maybe features less-vibrant shades of red and blue (though the actual toy appears brighter than the renders) and lacks the ultra-90s decals, but otherwise is very faithful. The biggest change I see is it adds in the movie Optimus truck nose flames instead of just randomly switching from red to black, which is a change I really like. He does lose paint apps for the horns and lights on the truck roof. The other deco differences are very much a matter of taste, and I'm sure Toyhax will provide a set for those who want them.
