Late to the Party: Review of Gunslinger and Brake-Neck

I realize I’m extremely late to the party here.  Combiner Wars gestalt limbs and torsos have been on shelves for months, and Gunnslinger and Brake-Neck were released online about a month ago.  A lot has been said about these toys, about how wonderful they are, how awesome it is to be building a combiner, and more of the like.  Sure, CW has its flaws, and it isn’t everyonen’s cup of tea, but for the most part, everyone likes the toys.

So what can I say about Gunslinger and Brake-Neck that hasn’t been said already?

How about — I finally understand what everyone has been talking about.  These toys are the most fun Transformers I’ve played with in a long time. To be able to intuitively deducce transformations without resorting to the instructions, to marvel at the nifty bits of engineering, to just all around wish for more of these things — this is great.  I never had a full combiner as a kid, and I definitely never had the original versions of these toys.  But I suspect this is a bit like what it was like to get a full combiner toy as a kid.

Right now, I’m going to concentrate on the two online only limbs – Gunslinger and Brake Neck.  You’ve read everyone else about them, so I wont bore you to death with details.

Gunslinger the Aerialbot has a great looking robot mode. He has a nice head sculpt, a very faithful deco, great poseability.  His jet mode is pertty good, although mine has a tendancy to lean to the left a bit.  Still, it’s a pretty good design. Like most Transformer airplanes, you have to ignore the robot pieces underneath, but it’s still decent.  His gun felt a little loose in his hand, but that could just be my particular figure.

The transformation has some nifty bits — while not integral to the robot to jet change, I do love how his head and middle pivot around for use as a limb.  Pieces fold in and out nicely, and the only thing I had to check was the position of the arms to snap into the jet.

Brake-Neck is also a marvel of toy engineering.  Things just WORK.  I intuitively got him into car mode on the first try, and I love how his legs come apart and rotate to become the rear of the car.  The panel that flips up from his chest to cover the head doesn’t lie as flat as I like, but it’s not too bad.  The car mode has seams from panels coming together, but I hardly notice them. As for the robot mode, again he as great poseability, his weapon fits in his hand nicely, and he has a nice grey and purply-maroon color.

If you can still find these guys online, get them. You can never have too many Combiner Wars deluxe figures, what with Optimus and Cyclonus needing team members.  I will hopefully get to review Superion and Menasor in the near future.  If they are like these two toys, I will be ecstatic.