Combiner Hunters

Review by Dkun

Thanks to Hasbro for sending us a review sample of this awesome set in advance!

Combiner Wars has been a fun subset of toys with an equally fun and insane comic book tie in as well. The next part of this storyline is set to include a one shot comic known as Combiner Hunters featuring Arcee, Chromia, and Windblade all using gigantic weapons to take down combiners. Which to me, sounds freaking AWESOME!

So having a special set of the three Autobots with new weapons and paint for San Diego Comic Con was the logical step, and I'm very happy to be able to review it.

First up is Arcee. In an incredibly garish but sleek color scheme of hot pink and black, her Floro Dery-looking car mode looks striking. There's loads of extra paint applications and tampo work that makes this thing just pop.

Now there's something worth noting about the comic book version of Arcee; She's kind of insane. She usually goes around slaughtering robots happily with a manic grin on her face. Meanwhile, the Generations toy she has is very much based on G1 Arcee with a very maternal expression on her face. So seeing her done up in this extreme paint job with the Autobot paint on her face seems really funny in a way that I dig a lot.

Here's a quite side by side with the original Arcee toy.

The most notable thing about Arcee is that she has newy molded hands which are designed to hold standard 5mm weapons. The problem with this though, is that she can't really hold her included standard swords very well. Also her two blasters are completely missing as well.

Honestly that's okay with me though because she comes with this MASSIVE SWORD.

All of these giant weapons that the three figures come with are from various Titans or Beast Hunters toys and are an incredibly smart reuse of out of scale weapons to make them seem gigantic to these smaller figures.

Arcee has some pretty stable feet and so she can manage to one hand this thing pretty easily. Not to mention pull off one of the best "Obari poses" I've seen in quite some time.

Perhaps as the most insane member of the trio, Arcee having the biggest sword is quite well suited to the toy.

Chromia is next in the set and is possibly the second most crazy person on the team. Her vehicle is a light cycle looking bike that looks quite excellent. Initial pictures made Chromia look the most plain to me at first, but upon closer inspection I really dig the silver and red that accents the rest of the figure.

In robot mode, Chromia has a lot of subtle accents to her paint. Most noticeable her face which actually looks quite horrifying.

Those beady eyes just pierce through the back of your skull.

Here's another side by side comparison with the original Chromia toy. The head looks a lot better despite just having some alternate paint applications.

Chromia comes with her tiny little gun and this is the last time I'm going to mention it.

Mostly because she also comes with a massive sword! Although it's a lot less elaborate and violent looking, there's a nice touch to this weapon as well.

Namely the marked notches on the blade to indicate just how many combiners she's taken down. Now that's awesome.

Chromia's ball jointed wrists go a long way to helping her swing this thing around like a champ and cut Decepticon legs off for days.

The final member of this trio is Windblade! Now I mentioned earlier that both Arcee and Chromia are kind of insane. It probably would have been faster to just say that Windblade is the only sound minded individual here. And I gotta say I think I like her the best.

The easiest way to sum up Windblade's color scheme is that it's an inversion of her regular color scheme with some red and black. And in jet mode, it's easy to see why.

But a lot more paint work shows up in robot mode. Loads of gold accents line her and bits of translucent orange show up too. It's just lovely to look at in person.

I thought her face was remolded because of how smaller and feminine her face looked, but it actually just loads of pain placed in alternate locations. Plus not to mention how many different paints were used in such precise amounts.

She honestly makes the original Windblade toy look quite plain in comparison.

Now, I have lots of strong feelings towards this toy. Namely to say that almost all of these pictures were shot using a stand because I hate her feet.

And honestly despite that, I like this toy a lot. Something about its colors and slightly improved tolerances just make me happy to have her flying around on my desk.

Windblade comes with the most reasonable and practical weapon out of the bunch in the form of a giant staff.

It reminds me a whole lot of a Spark Extractor. So I can imagine Arcee and Chromia going in first and chopping off the limbs while Windblade finishes it off by pulling their spark out. Dark, but seemingly appropriate for the insanity that is Combiner Wars.

The Combiner Hunters set is an incredibly awesome set of three pretty neat toys in very cool and ellaborate paint schemes with giant weapons. My inner Zanger Zonvolt screamed to the heavens to smite evil when I saw these, and I'm quite happy to have them. If you're at San Diego Comic Con, I highly recommend you pick them up. And if you're not, additional stock will be sold at Hasbrotoyshop after the convention as well, so get it there!