Maybe this is the whole reason I do the toy reviews on the website.

Granted, that might be giving Victorion too much credit because, this being the internet and all, I think we can all agree that the main reason I review toys is to show off. I mean, isn’t that the whole point of internet review sites? [Yeah, sure, now stop being a dick and get on with it, huh? – Ed.]

Okay, the reason I started the review like this is that through the process of taking pics of the Torchbearers, the toy really started to grow on me. There are still some flaws, which we’ll cover a bit later.

First off, I’ll say this is the first time I’ve bought one of Hasbro’s Combiner gift sets. [You mean aside from Devastator? – Ed.] Maybe the better way to say it would be that this is the first of the recent sets of Combiner gift sets…consisting of G2 Superion, G2 Menasor, G2 Bruticus and Victorion…that I’ve bought. It was cool to get the character card for the combined form and a mini-poster, which kinda makes me want to hunt down the other sets, as well as makes me look forward to the upcoming Computron and LioKaiser ones.

Let’s move on to the main toy here. At this late stage in Combiner Wars, you should know what to expect here. Aside from the bonuses listed above, Victorion also comes with set hands and feet…not the hand/feet combos that have been present in all 5-member combiner teams to this point. This has pluses and minuses. It does allow for a better aesthetic for the combined robot mode…but when the bots are in their individual forms, you run into the same problem that you ran into with all the G1 combiners…leftover kibble. It’s nice that Jumpstream can wear one of the feet as kind of a jetpack or backpack…but that still leaves you with a stray foot that no one else can really use. The other alternative is that Pyra Magna can wear them on either side of the ladder on her back, which isn’t too noticeable in her robot mode…but in vehicle mode, she looks like a fire truck with two giant feet hanging from the ladder. I say hanging because, unfortunately, the pegs on the feet are a little too small and thus kind of dangle a bit. It’s not all bad though…because the hands do store inside the feet, so that’s at least two bits of anatomy that aren’t left hanging around.

Looking at the component bots…well, that’s one of my biggest beefs with the figure. On the one hand, it IS kinda cool to have a combiner with a unified color scheme…just to see what it’d look like. And while it does work well…I wouldn’t want to see this become the routine. [Um…Devastator? – Ed.] Yeah, that’s true, Devastator has a unified scheme…and Predaking too…although there’s still been no announcement from Hasbro as to whether or not he’s ever coming down the pike. But amongst the Scramble type combiners, Victorion is a first. But my biggest turn-off to the figure is the molds used. Now, I do have to give Pyra Magna a bit of a pass…but just a bit…as I’m just glad it wasn’t yet ANOTHER reuse of Silverbolt. That being said, given that Hot Spot and Onslaught are still fairly fresh in the memory, to get a third use of this mold so soon was pretty ho-hum. And, to be blunt, those two previous modes did a MUCH better job of concealing the combined mode head. With Pyra Magna, Victorion’s head is just kinda there at the end of the ladder. The twin helicopters are up next, Stormclash and Skyburst…and like any set of twins, good luck remembering who’s who. All things considered, we haven’t seen much of the helicopter mold in Combiner Wars…Alpha Bravo for Superion, Blades for Defensor and Vortex for Bruticus…but Victorion here proves that two of any one mold in a combiner, for me, just feels like overkill. I think one ‘copter would’ve been fine…and while I can understand the appeal of two of a mold (matching arms or matching legs)…well, we got those kind of combiners back in Energon and while at the time we were just excited to have Scramble type combiners again, looking back I can’t really say the execution was there. My biggest beef with Victorion has to be with the use of the car molds…AGAIN. Holy expletive EXPLETIVE am I sick of these molds. Every combiner save for Superion has at least one use of either the Dead End or Breakdown mold. [Bruticus doesn’t use it either. – Ed.] Okay, fine, but you’ve got Menasor that uses, well, obviously Dead End and Breakdown (or Dead End twice if you have the Wildrider/Breakneck figure), Streetwise for Defensor (Dead End mold), Sunstreaker (Breakdown) and Prowl (Dead End) for Optimus Maximus/Ultra Prime, and Wheeljack (Breakdown) and Smokescreen (Dead End) for Sky Reign…that’s 8 of these molds! Plus, we’re due to get another one with Computron in Lightsteed/Lightspeed (depends on if you get the American or Japanese release). So 9. Nine car molds. Yeah…I’m done with this mold.

All in all, I do like this set…probably more than I should. The new feet and hands are cool, but unfortunately really don’t integrate into the team when separated as well as I’d like. The new combining sword is mostly pretty cool…but ultimately the car-bots get the short end of the stick with bits of hilt that they tried to make into a shield and…bladed knuckles(?)…I guess. The unified color scheme is neat…but I wish they’d have picked a better variety of component bots to make up the combiner. Heh…you know, that’s pretty much Victorion in a nut-shell…you’re gonna find something you like about the figure, but for each one of those, you’re going to find something negative. To be completely honest, the new things she brings to the table aren’t enough to push a recommendation. At best, I can only recommend her if you are a completionist like me, a fan of the character in the comics or can find her on the cheap.

#actionfigures #transformers #toys