Phil's Powercore Smoulder & Chopster Review

Smoulder's the first of the Powercore Combiner figures I've obtained so they'll be a little more detail here than on the other reviews. He comes with a Minicon - Chopster - which I'll review separately. He certainly knows how to make an entrance - he, Bombshock and Seaspray arrived on Saturday while the TMUK guys were gathering in my living room for Swincon. So while the family and I went through the bath 4 Scotsmen were enjoying pre-release Transformers toys!

Smoulder's a fire truck - a support vehicle for a Fire Engine. Essentially he's a pickup truck with a box on the back - quite similar to G1 Trailbreaker. His dimensions are 9.5cm long x 4.5cm wide x 4cm tall. He's the same length as ROTF Dead End (Nightbeat/Slapdash) and the cab is the same width too - it's the box on the back of the pickup that gives him the extra width, height and bulk. In an odd way he reminds me of the chunkiness of Energon's Strongarm. The primary colour of the toy is a dark red,with black for the front bumper & wheels and clear orange for the light bar. He has some white painted details on the truck including a Decepticon logo which Mr Burns points out is painted as if on fire. Nice.

On the top of the roof at the back, making a very welcome return, is a Minicon Socket - this is used for mounting Chopster in cannon mode where I presume he acts as a water cannon..... though given that it's a Decepticon toy he's Chopster's more likely to be a flame thrower with Smoulder as the sort of fireman seen in Fahrenheit 451! Incidentally, for those who might have been worried otherwise, the Minicon ports on this toy are the same as the older Minicon ports - I attached Longarm to Smoulder as a test - allowing old Minicons to be attached to the new Powercore toys.

In what is possibly a first for a Transformer toy of this size Smoulder has an opening bonnet - hood to our American readers. Fold up from in front of the cab windows taking the bumper up with it revealing an engine compartment containing two square blue blocks. Yes it is just to tuck the Powercore connection points away but it does look like Smoulder has some alien machinery for an engine which is a nice touch.

Transform: Remove Minicon. Fold the bonnet up, and the two Powercore connectors out to the sides. Turn toy over so the underside faces up and orientate so the head is at the top. Split the back of the vehicle in two by pulling out to the sides and up. Shoulders will be revealed and these parts want to be extending from the body at right angles. Fold the panels with the wheel arches in back 180 degrees and fold the arms down. Fold the cab forward 180 degrees to form the legs. Fold the lightbars up and then the cab roof up to form the feet. Stand.

Far bigger and chunkier than the ROTF Scouts, Smoulder's robot mode feels like a return to the glory days of the Energon scouts. In many ways he reminds me of Strongarm which is one of my yardsticks for toys of this size. He's 11cm high to the top of his head - 13 to the top of the shoulder units (think Laser Prime's shoulders) - the widest point of the toy is the 8.5cm from shoulder to shoulder. The colours are spread out thus in robot mode - black feet, upper legs, head & neck, shoulder connection bars and lower arms. Lower legs, body and upper arms/shoulders are the red. No new clear orange here, just the vehicle lightbars on his feet now. Sadly this means now lightpipe for his robot mode head which is more in the traditional style than then ROTF toys. He's got a gold face with protruding black horns but the horns come through a nicely moulded fireman's helmet ! Two new Decepticon symbols are revealed on the front of each shoulder panel. Hands are back to the moulded fist with 5mm peg hole drilled right the way through. A result in my opinion allowing him to use older Transformer weapons. It's here he can use another of Chopster's modes - he becomes an axe which Smoulder can hold by the handle.

Smoulder's vehicle mode Minicon peg has ended up on the back of his right shoulder, which isn't too useful in this mode with Chopster. But Smoulder does have a second Minicon peg in this mode. It's mounted in his chest and folds up - almost like a small chest cannon. The purpose of this peg is to allow you to mount Chopster in armour mode..... the problem here is Chopster's handle then is, ahem, at waist level and pointing.... well it doesn't really matter which way it's pointing to be honest, it leaves little to the imagination what it looks like.

I can see the chest peg being useful to use certain other Minicon's alternate modes as armour - particularly some of the cars and planes. I also think he'd look good With Skyblast - the Saturn 5 rocket in the Space Team stuck out of his chest as a missile. Further testing has revealed that most of the cars and planes look a bit odd but Tidal Wave's Ramjet and the Air Defence Team's Jetstorm are good for the planes. The best car was Downshift from the Race Team transformed into his shield component. Some other good toys for chest armour were odd ones that added weapons to the toy: Iceberg's vehicle with the blades pointing down and the legs extended and facing forward, Waterlog similarly pointing down with the robot legs turned forward and the fans facing front. Best of all was Wreckage - Land Military Team - in tank mode facing down with his missiles over Smoulder's shoulders. But for the love of God don't attach Safeguard pointing downwards with his gun barrel folded up!

Articulation: His ankles - connected to foot & heel spur - bend as do the knees. There's a rotating thigh joint, a universal hip which bends to the sides and turns. No waist swivel I'm afraid but the head's on a ball joint - chances are you'll pop it off so slide it back on through the hole in the back, not underneath. The shoulders shrug upwards at the body and then, via a short connecting piece, turn at the arm. Finally the double bending elbow has a straight bending joint at the top and a ball joint at the bottom.

Smoulder has a third mode - he forms the core of a Powercore combiner. Fold the feet down & back, rotate each leg in 90 degrees and then fold up at the knee so the vehicle roof faces out. Fold the Powercore connectors on the robot's knees so they point straight down. Fold the arms up and the panels down to cover the side of them - a peg on arm matches a hole on the panels at the elbow end of the wheel arch. Essentially that bit is the same as if you're returning to robot mode. Rotate each arm down at the shoulder so the top of the vehicle faces forward then bend up at the shoulder so the sides of the vehicle become the horizontal tops of the shoulders with the robot's shoulder joints locked off. Fold out another Powercore connector from each shoulder. Finally fold down the chest - everything from the black neck piece forward and fold back the robot head into the chest in the process folding up the combined robot head - a fabulous thing with a lightpiped clear orange visor and breathing gear over the faceplate ! The core of the combined robot can then have limbs plugged into it.

Without passing comment on the limbs - I'm using Bombshock's Combaticons here - the combined robot isn't the worst I've seen by a long way. Yes the shoulders are big - 13.5 cm from shoulder joint to shoulder joint - projecting the arms a little way away from the body but that then gives them full clearance to move and apes the similar look found on the standard robot mode. The arms can move - the Powercore connectors at the shoulder turn as do the ones at the knees which do also bend in the right direction. The hips still move in this mode and the new combined robot head is ball jointed like the normal robot head. The chest is unobscured so the peg on the chest can be swung up and used as a mount for chest armour Minicons. The combined robot - using Combaticon legs is about 16 cm high of which 10cm is made up of the core robot. The maximum width - from shoulder missile tip to the gun barrels on the other shoulder is 23 cm - very wide. Broadly - ho, ho - speaking he's a similar size to the new Voyager Seaspray. As a postscript to the combined mode Smoulder can transform back to vehicle mode without passing through robot mode and he can assume vehicle mode with the combined robot head left out although it does stick out the back of the vehicle somewhat.

Overall: Superb toy. Lovely chunky vehicle and robot bringing back some old favourite features and styling plus a decent combined robot torso. Everything I was hoping for from this toy.

I must admit to having been quite impressed with both Smoulder and Chopster.

The latter has a really good humanoid mode and still manages to get two sensible looking weapon modes into a small frame as well. It is quite impressively engineered for a small toy.

Smoulder is rather a nice toy too. As you observe he is a bit schunkier than the basics that we have had in the movie lines, I also noticed that he felt a lot more durable as well which rather pleases me. There are some lovely little touches - like the aforementioned head design features and the logo that suggests that smoulder is the "other sort" of Fire Truck which further endear him to me.

I must admit that from not being terribly impressed with the Powercore figures from the early pictures to thinking that they are a lot better than I gave them credit for initially.

Karl

Stakeout with Protectorbots

Smolder is repainted as the Autobot Stakeout. The red body of the fire engine is swapped for white turning him into an ambulance with a clear dark blue lightbar. His robot mode is a little odd with most of the black being swapped for a light blue, presumably as a homage to the original Protectobot Leader Hotspot or possibly Armada Red Alert who uses a darker blue. My initial thoughts when I saw the photo light blue doesn't really work and the problem was compounded by the hips & shoulders still being black which makes them stand out rather. However in the plastic the blue works really well, even though it's just subtly different from the blue used for the Powercore connector blocks. Still think the black should have been the same colour though! Indeed all the black might have been better as red making him a more blatant First Aid homage. Meanwhile the clear orange, also used on Smolder's previous partner Chopster, becomes a clear dark blue. Lots of new paint applications are added to the toy bringing out lots of detail on the vehicle roof, robot chest and especially the combined robot head.

Stakeout has played the "pack in swapping" game, loosing Chopster, but he now comes boxed and packed with four drone repaints previously available elsewhere: From the Aerialbots he gets a blue Dirge like repaint of the Fighter Jet drone and a red Helicopter drone repaint of the Chopper drone while from the Combaticons the grey Tank drone becomes the green Mobile Artillery drone and the green APC drone becomes a sandy coloured APC drone. Of these drones only the red Helicopter drone, probably a fire department helicopter, feels like a traditional rescue themed Protectobot while the others are more Protect as in Military Defence. The helicopter drone stays on much better than it's chopper drone predecessor, the fighter jet drone feels a little better while the APC drone is about the same but the Mobile Artillery Drone has popped off a few times the toys I've attached it to.

Chopster's repaint, Razorbeam likewise has his colour changed to clear dark blue, but is now packed with Darkstream, a repaint of Skyburst, which is a ridiculous decision as Skyburst doesn't have deep enough 5mm peg holes to hold the Darkstream properly. So in my house Stakeout has deprived Darkstream of his weapon.

The combined mode of the Protectobots is no real Defensor homage. The Combaticon repaints stand out somewhat from the more peaceful forms of Stakeout and the chopper drone. I like Stakeout as a core but I feel he could have benefited from some new drone limbs similar in vehicle mode to the original Protectobots.

Nah, given that he has absolutely no Prime design cues, I'd say that is very unlikely!