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But even there the arms aren't overlong. They end where they're supposed to, not going past the knees. And the torso isn't larger than the waist and legs. So it isn't proportioned like a thug.

And like I said. I agree that the sculpted details are Prime. But the overall proportions in robot and combined mode seem a lot more in line with Motormaster.

Edit:
If you really want to go into it, they had to have had both in mind from that start, just like almost every single other use of moulds in this line. So while a lot of sculpt is derived from Prime, I think the overall proportions have Motormnaster in mind. I think the mould works a lot better as Motormaster than as Prime because of this. Even if the details are there for Prime the proportions make it looks off.

I really don't want to have a long back and forth going over the finer points of my statements. I guess you think the mould is more Prime through and through, but the proportions make it work better as MM.

And I disagree with you about the proportions in robot mode being more in line with Motormaster. They're more like a chunky version of the G1 Optimus toy design, which I also brought up.
Also:
1. The CW Optimus/MM torso is NOT larger than the legs. Are you only counting the thighs? If so, I'll just remind you that the scrawny thighs are very Optimus.
2. It's not really larger (by which I'm guessing you mean wider) than the waist either. You're acting like the waist is just the groin section - it isn't. The outer part of his waist is actually part of the thighs, just like on TR Powermaster Optimus Prime or the SIEGE Seeker mold.

For my money, the combined mode is more in line with a trainwreck than anything else IMO it's not really in line with Motormaster; I think if it was the torso mode would be built more along the lines of Silverbolt, Hot Spot/Onslaught, and Hun-Gurrr's torso modes.
Proportion-wise it actually compares more to Energon Optimus' super mode.. But mostly, it's a just a bloody mess.

Yeah, we'll just have to agree to disagree.

the proportions are way more MM than Prime. It looks like they took Prime's details and stretched them to fit a mould that wasn't really meant to be him. I don't know how I can explain it better than that. Even if it has all the right details and colours they're all starched out.

The hips are much smaller than the shoulders. The arms are thick, blocky, and go far past the knees. More suited to a bute sort of character than a heroic type. If you can't agree with that, then I dunno what to tell you, man.

ZeldaTheSwordsman wrote:And I disagree with you about the proportions in robot mode being more in line with Motormaster. They're more like a chunky version of the G1 Optimus toy design, which I also brought up.
Also:
1. The CW Optimus/MM torso is NOT larger than the legs. Are you only counting the thighs? If so, I'll just remind you that the scrawny thighs are very Optimus.
2. It's not really larger (by which I'm guessing you mean wider) than the waist either. You're acting like the waist is just the groin section - it isn't. The outer part of his waist is actually part of the thighs, just like on TR Powermaster Optimus Prime or the SIEGE Seeker mold.

For my money, the combined mode is more in line with a trainwreck than anything else IMO it's not really in line with Motormaster; I think if it was the torso mode would be built more along the lines of Silverbolt, Hot Spot/Onslaught, and Hun-Gurrr's torso modes.
Proportion-wise it actually compares more to Energon Optimus' super mode.. But mostly, it's a just a bloody mess.

I think your right about the proportions. Torso mode really makes me think back to Energon as you point out. I'd say that for all we know, there could have been a seperate Motormaster mold which got cut (how many times would you have been able to redeco that and retool?) so someone said, "Oh just stick MM head on Prime body and everyone will be alright with that" once that was done it would have been easy to add the points for Blackjack to attach to. Also wouldn't be the first time a Motormaster had been repainted from Optimus Prime originally, look at the Botcon Animated set

You know what? I can't agree with that. Because on top of the fact that shoulders normally stick out wider than the hips... 1. The big broad shoulders and blocky arms thing is also true of heroic builds (I mean, just look at Cybertron Optimus Prime - or Powermaster Optimus Prime's super mode), 2. Again, scrawny hips is a normal thing for Optimus Prime, 3. The extra-long arms are a quirk of the G1 Optimus Prime toy design. With his arms by his sides, his hands come down to just above his tires just like the Combiner Wars toy, and 4. The legs as a whole are fairly standard Optimus in proportion. All of that contributes heavily to me thinking that the mold was designed as mainly as "Chunky G1 Optimus Prime", with the Motormaster and combining aspects playing second fiddle to that.

Adding to that is the fact that this is what Motormaster looked like in G1:




And Menasor:



So I stick by my view that it was designed as an Optimus Prime first and foremost, with the Motormaster and combiner aspects receiving lower priority. IMO if the toy had been designed mainly as Motormaster, then the combined mode would be proportioned more like Superion, Defensor, and Bruticus. Instead...

It's proportioned more like Super Energon Optimus (although less graceful) and is barely functional.

I'll have to agree that the mold was designed with Optimus first, but not for the same reason as Zelda. The main reason was the fact that the line needed an Optimus figure, because all lines get at least 1. The designers knew that since the line was Combiner Wars, eventually there was going to be a Motormaster, so instead of giving both Prime and MM their own mold like they should have, they just tried to go cheap and use the same for both. The MM figure by itself could squeak by, but the Menasor combiner suffered for it. For me it is tied with PoTP Grimlock as the worst torso in Prime Wars. They both cause out of proportioned floppy messes for gestalts. Hence why I use Cyclonus with the Stunticons and Sky Lynx with the Dinobots when I display them.

Rodimus Prime wrote:I'll have to agree that the mold was designed with Optimus first, but not for the same reason as Zelda. The main reason was the fact that the line needed an Optimus figure, because all lines get at least 1. The designers knew that since the line was Combiner Wars, eventually there was going to be a Motormaster, so instead of giving both Prime and MM their own mold like they should have, they just tried to go cheap and use the same for both. The MM figure by itself could squeak by, but the Menasor combiner suffered for it. For me it is tied with PoTP Grimlock as the worst torso in Prime Wars. They both cause out of proportioned floppy messes for gestalts. Hence why I use Cyclonus with the Stunticons and Sky Lynx with the Dinobots when I display them.

They had to "go cheap" in order to have it appeal to the higher-ups for approval. But Motormaster and Optimus Prime being reshells is still a step up from these redecos:


Transformers Classics Menasor Gallery


Transformers Generations Motorbreath Gallery

... they couldn't even be bothered to tool new heads! (I know, it's the size... at least the latter got a spiffy sword)

I do agree that the Motormaster/Optimus Prime torso is the worst proportionally, and that's not mentioning the shoulders are set a bit too far back. I can't comment on Menasor himself since I don't have enough CW limbs with appropriate HFG parts.

I remember those toys. Yuck! I remember thinking that version of "Menasor" was a bad joke. I don't think any many toys got proper remoulds back in those days so you just had to be happy with something like a Blaster with Soundwave's head.

Speaking of Prime based remoulds, remember this guy?



I can only imagine if they made a retool of Huffer with a more relevant Prime. Like a remould of Cybertron Optimus ... but it's Huffer. It would be so dumb it would almost be worth owning.

Say what you will, Roddy, but I've never had the trouble with Grimlock that I have with Motormaster. Grimlock's arms lock together in a more suitable way for torso mode as long as the tabs are lined up right, and they have Grimlock's dino torso halves to help anchor them.
And Volcanicus' proportions get a pass for me, because in his case it's not like there was an existing design to live up to.

When I took a picture of Volcanicus bludgeoning Abominus with Menasor... let's just say Volcanicus wasn't the weak link there when trying to set it up.

If they do a Combiner Wars rerun, I hope they do a new Motormaster mold. And a new Drag Strip mold for preference, but that's just for looks.

ZeldaTheSwordsman wrote:Say what you will, Roddy, but I've never had the trouble with Grimlock that I have with Motormaster. Grimlock's arms lock together in a more suitable way for torso mode as long as the tabs are lined up right, and they have Grimlock's dino torso halves to help anchor them.
And Volcanicus' proportions get a pass for me, because in his case it's not like there was an existing design to live up to.

Yeah, to each his own. I'm glad you have a solid Grimmy, mine is a floppy mess. I don't like how Volcanicus looks anyway, so it's no big deal. But like you said, they weren't combiners before, so there's no real precedent to follow.

If they do a Combiner Wars rerun, I hope they do a new Motormaster mold. And a new Drag Strip mold for preference, but that's just for looks.

If that happens, I hope it won't be for about 6-8 years, otherwise what was the point of getting the CW line, since they will be most likely inferior to the new ones? I think Drag Strip is a good figure, even if the mold was designed with Mirage in mind first. But yeah, definitely need a new Motormaster.

By the looks of that Cybertron legends figure, I wonder if a redeco of the actual Cybertron Prime into MM would have been able to pull it off.

JelZe, you forgot Titasor!

Rodimus Prime wrote:

ZeldaTheSwordsman wrote:Say what you will, Roddy, but I've never had the trouble with Grimlock that I have with Motormaster. Grimlock's arms lock together in a more suitable way for torso mode as long as the tabs are lined up right, and they have Grimlock's dino torso halves to help anchor them.
And Volcanicus' proportions get a pass for me, because in his case it's not like there was an existing design to live up to.

Yeah, to each his own. I'm glad you have a solid Grimmy, mine is a floppy mess.

I wonder if I can help somehow. Hmm.

Rodimus Prime wrote:

If they do a Combiner Wars rerun, I hope they do a new Motormaster mold. And a new Drag Strip mold for preference, but that's just for looks.

If that happens, I hope it won't be for about 6-8 years, otherwise what was the point of getting the CW line, since they will be most likely inferior to the new ones?

When I said rerun, I meant having the line be reissues of CW/UW/PotP combiners toys (hence my specifying new molds for Motormaster and maybe Drag Strip).
The point would be for people who missed out on Combiner Wars and don't want to spend $40 or more per limb to complete combiners.

Rodimus Prime wrote:I think Drag Strip is a good figure, even if the mold was designed with Mirage in mind first.

That, I'm not so sure about; he feels like "Drag Strip but they got his upper half backwards" (and it's a bit backwards for Mirage too)

Rodimus Prime wrote:But yeah, definitely need a new Motormaster.

Indeed.

The problem with my Grimlock is the tabs on his arms that supposed go into his sides/shoulders in torso mode. They don't want to stay, especially when adding the weight of the limb. I doubt anything short of gluing it would fix it. But then he would be permanently in torso mode.

As for Drag Strip, I said the mold is Mirage first, because otherwise there would be space for Drag Strip's 2nd set of front wheels.

Rodimus Prime wrote:The problem with my Grimlock is the tabs on his arms that supposed go into his sides/shoulders in torso mode. They don't want to stay, especially when adding the weight of the limb. I doubt anything short of gluing it would fix it. But then he would be permanently in torso mode.

I see. Are you absolutely sure you're putting them into the right slots? I know from experience that Grimlock has a "false friend" slot on each arm right next to the correct one.

Rodimus Prime wrote:As for Drag Strip, I said the mold is Mirage first, because otherwise there would be space for Drag Strip's 2nd set of front wheels.

Maybe... But that could also be down to genericizing of the car mode. After all, having four front wheels is peculiar to the Tyrrell P34.

Im going to jump in as a neutral third party with no attachment to the original toy and cartoon and say based on a basic photo comparison I would say Motormaster owns that mold much better visually and technically than OP

@M. Spector
I'm afraid you're wrong about him owning it better technically, thanks to the torso mode. Neither of them are particularly great there thanks to the atrocious design of the arm setup, but for whatever reason... of the two, Motormaster is the more prone to having his arms come untabbed in truck mode (not that Optimus is super-great, but Motormaster's tabs seem to have a notably worse grip). Which is just slagging great, because guess which OG combiner made up of cars is a sword user? It really does feel that making him look like a standalone Optimus that could also double as Motormaster took priority over the Motormaster aspect proper - and over making the combiner torso function well.

Visually I'd say they wear it about equally well as individuals, but Motormaster a bit better in torso mode. At least, going with the Hasbro deco.

I personally enjoy CW Optimus a lot as a standalone Optimus. I like his size and his looks a lot better than the Classics Voyager.

M. Spector wrote:Im going to jump in as a neutral third party with no attachment to the original toy and cartoon and say based on a basic photo comparison I would say Motormaster owns that mold much better visually and technically than OP

I didn't even bother with optimus other than the white version as it didn't really look like him. Most of the other chunky optimus suffer from the legs being too short rather than the arms being too long.

_______________

Looking at the UW and CW versions the UW menasor is definitely the winner, they might not have sorted the miscolored black panels out on dragstrip (which is weird when they corrected rest of the cars) but at least it has the red markings and in the correct direction. It's a safe bet to say dragstrip was modelled with optimus prime in mind with him only having four wheels... Jk :p

Most complete combiners can be found preowned at £80ish so limb over pricing doesn't make sense though I really wouldn't be surprised if a new devestator shows up in the wfc line and it would be nice to have base mode combiners for those that had them. Don't really want to upgrade the combiner wars versions but if improvements are made, I might.

blackeyedprime wrote:

M. Spector wrote:Im going to jump in as a neutral third party with no attachment to the original toy and cartoon and say based on a basic photo comparison I would say Motormaster owns that mold much better visually and technically than OP

I didn't even bother with optimus other than the white version as it didn't really look like him. Most of the other chunky optimus suffer from the legs being too short rather than the arms being too long.

_______________

Looking at the UW and CW versions the UW menasor is definitely the winner, they might not have sorted the miscolored black panels out on dragstrip (which is weird when they corrected rest of the cars) but at least it has the red markings and in the correct direction. It's a safe bet to say dragstrip was modelled with optimus prime in mind with him only having four wheels... Jk :p

Most complete combiners can be found preowned at £80ish so limb over pricing doesn't make sense though I really wouldn't be surprised if a new devestator shows up in the wfc line and it would be nice to have base mode combiners for those that had them. Don't really want to upgrade the combiner wars versions but if improvements are made, I might.

See I don't think we'll get a new devy just yet, as they made Siege omega supreme to scale with CW devy. Releasing a new one now would be a bit daft. We will get another one but not just yet (maybe in whatever follows the War for Cybertron trilogy, when they may put scale in the bin for a while)

I wouldn't mind another Devastator if he scaled with the other gestalts. CW Devy is way too big. If it happens, and we get a Devy that's 6 deluxes instead of 6 voyagers that would be perfect. Then CW Devy would move over to my MP shelf, because he scales well with those.

I got a CW Prime, but I also got a 3rd party kit for him called SND-1 and it upgraded hom to leader size and made him look just like IDW Prime. Obviously I don't combine him with anyone.

Did anyone ever release anything to make battle core prime into more like IDW Nova?

Rodimus Prime wrote:I wouldn't mind another Devastator if he scaled with the other gestalts. CW Devy is way too big. If it happens, and we get a Devy that's 6 deluxes instead of 6 voyagers that would be perfect. Then CW Devy would move over to my MP shelf, because he scales well with those.

Well, he technically scales with them at the cartoon "Big enough to step on everyone" size.. But that could just as easily be achieved with a non-Titan Devy and Legion-class versions of the regular characters.
There is a USKO of CW Devy that scales properly with CW combiners, so there's that.

Rodimus Prime wrote:I got a CW Prime, but I also got a 3rd party kit for him called SND-1 and it upgraded hom to leader size and made him look just like IDW Prime. Obviously I don't combine him with anyone.

I got him to use as a standalone since he's taller and more G1-looking than the Classics figure was. Combining is more of a bonus feature for him AFAIC.

Did my tip about Grimlock's tabs help at all?

ZeroWolf wrote:Did anyone ever release anything to make battle core prime into more like IDW Nova?

Yes, the Primo X-Mortis kit.

Rodimus Prime wrote:I wouldn't mind another Devastator if he scaled with the other gestalts. CW Devy is way too big.

I feel the same way. I get that he's important, but he towers over the other Combiners.

I have the old 3rd party Giant standing with the CW combiners. He's just a tad smaller than they are. I have no idea what he's going for these days. He's old, but I still like him.

Scaling combiners gives me a bit of a headache if I think about it too much, TBH.

ZeroWolf wrote:Did anyone ever release anything to make battle core prime into more like IDW Nova?

I think someone did, but I like my Battle Core Prime as his own 1-off thing. When i get the original red one here, I plan to replace the hips between the 2 (and maybe some other parts for fun to investigate) and then keep Battle Core Prime as the individual

ZeroWolf wrote:Did anyone ever release anything to make battle core prime into more like IDW Nova?

Yes, toyhax, I got their set, does a pretty nice job.

https://toyhax.com/for-comb-wars/1896-l ... prime.html

TF-fan kev777 wrote:

ZeroWolf wrote:Did anyone ever release anything to make battle core prime into more like IDW Nova?

Yes, toyhax, I got their set, does a pretty nice job.

https://toyhax.com/for-comb-wars/1896-l ... prime.html

There's also an actual add-on kit, SD-04 Primo X-Mortis.

Just had an observation re: the Optimus/Motormaster mold. Another way the design skews toward Optimus: The placement of the truck grill halves in robot mode mimics the original Optimus Prime's silver upper-arm stripes.

CW got me back into Transformers in a big way after a few years of only sort of caring here and there. Menasor has issues and Volcanicus is straight up bad as a combiner, (Although they look great as individuals) but I otherwise love what came of the line and the modern combiner technology. I hope we see more in the near future.