Just when you think the Combiner Wars toyline is dead, they keep chugging along with even more obscure subgroups.  This time they have given us a character that you may be unfamiliar with unless you watched the Japanese G1 cartoon series Victory back in the 1980’s.   A group originally named Breastforce (no I’m not making that up and yes, you are allowed to giggle) has been reborn as the Destrons (the JP name for Decepticons in general) who combine into an almighty gestalt!  So here we go, a big review for a name as long as some of the old Street Fighter games, Combiner Wars Liokaiser: Platinum Edition!

Please note: As all these toy molds have had numerous iterations already, I will be mainly talking about any changes made rather than going over old ground.  I will put in links to other reviews of these molds as appropriate.

 

Ironbison

Renamed from Killbison as it sounded like he was related to the Bufflekill’s from The Simpsons.  Here we see the usual CW Brawl (for a review of Brawl – see HERE) remold but with added horns on his head to represent the original toy/character.  I found the limbs on mine to be a bit loose, very hard to pose him without the shoulders sagging.  But the mustard and silver colour scheme work together and he looks nice and tough.

 

Drillhorn

Probably the only limb figure here whose updated alt-mode doesn’t look as cool as the original one.  This has been remolded from CW Nosecone and they probably would have done better to use the UW Nosecone mode (for a comparison between those two toys – see HERE).  Also the drill bit does not fit in the gap properly with mine which is quite annoying, I have to use the double-barreled rifle on top to keep it in place.  A nice little touch is a horn that pops out of his forehead in robot mode which adds that extra unique touch.

 

Guyhawk

Did this guy pick his ultra-masculine name to make up for his colour scheme?  The most pink in a Transformer I’ve seen this side of G1 Sparkstalker!  But the colour actually seems to work quite well, it’s very vibrant indeed!  Nice head sculpt, the only one of the limb characters that doesn’t require pop-out bits.  Remade from CW Air Raid.

 

Fellbat

Renamed from Hellbat because, well…. pretty crappy reasons actually because Hellbat was a much cooler name.  Remade from CW Skydive, this guy has his signature little bat-wing fins that pop out of the sides of his head and is one of the few characters from Victory I can remember from my one watching of the series.  Already killed off in the IDW comics which is a shame, hope that doesn’t stop Liokaiser showing up there.  A nice touch in jet mode is they have given his missiles a striking red paint job.

 

Dezarus

Ok, here is where it gets a bit trippy, follow me if you can.  The original Breastforce (again, insert requisite giggle) had two characters that made up the torso – Leozack and Jallguar.  Since all CW gestalts (excepting CW Devastator) are mainly four smaller bots as limbs and a larger single one as the torso, these two characters were dumped for Dezarus.  Dezarus is in turn based on Deathsaurus who was the leader of the Destron army in the Victory cartoon.  To add further confusion, since Deathsaurus’ had a bipedal bird-monster alt-mode, they chose to recolour CW Sky Lynx (for a review of Sky Lynx – see HERE) to make him.

Keeping up?  Well done!  Because I’m writing this bloody review and even I’m getting lost!

Anyway, Dezarus here has the same modes as Sky Lynx (rather than his original ones) and his colour scheme makes the shuttle mode look a bit odd.  One thing I was pretty happy with though was how easily the toy lent itself to being put in a bipedal position, even achieving a certain limited poseability!  Yes it’s a stretch, but it’s the closest you are going to get Dezarus to Deathsaurus that you can.

 

Ion Scythe

Another weird but welcome inclusion, put in mainly I suspect to keep up the now set pattern of all these CW groups having six members.  Ion Scythe is based on an old Arms Micron toy and despite his name turns not into a scythe but a sword.  The original Breastforce group (ok, you’ve had your laughs, time to get over it now) had little animal partners so it could be Ion Scythe’s inclusion is a shout out to that.

 

Liokaiser

The head from Sky Reign (find the review of Sky Reign HERE) has been retooled to look more like the original Liokaiser and both share the animalistic helmet.  There are plenty more tricks you can do to make this toy look more G1 Victory accurate.  These include positioning Fellbats wings up and horizontal, placing Fellbat and Guyhawks grey guns either side of the right fist and turning Ironbison and Drillhorn outwards so that their treads face inwards.  All these little things help, the only problem is rotating the lower legs means he can’t use his knees, but that’s easy to turn back when you want to do some action poses.  It really is a nice looking combiner overall with plenty of poseability and mismatching-yet-working colours.  Ironically Ion Scythe is far more suited to be a CW hand weapon than the likes of CW Powerglide and CW Shockwave (for a review of Shockwave – see HERE) who both were too heavy and pulled down their gestalts arms – Ion Scythe seems to be just the right size and weight!

 

Worth Getting?

Overall I would have to say yes.  These are characters that haven’t had new toys since they first appeared in Victory nearly 30 years ago.  I would advise shopping around; I got mine for a good price whereas if I had ordered it through my usual international source I would have paid about $50 more.  And for those who have Masterpiece Star Saber – that big fragger now has someone to fight!