Hasbro has a long history of putting gimmicks into Transformers, from Mini-cons to Powerlink to Cyber Keys. The next generation of gimmick-driven Transformers are the Power-Core Combiners. In this review I’ll take a look at Skyburst and the Aerialbots.
The Skyburst set includes everything you need for one Combiner. This includes the main Commander figure, Skyburst, and his drones. Skyburst himself is a traditional Transformer with an alt mode and robot mode. The gimmick comes in with his Commander mode.
The drone vehicles however, are not traditional Transformers. These are exactly what you would expect of drones, they have vehicle modes and limb modes, no robot modes. This is mainly because of the gimmick feature. When these drones are plugged into the Power-Core ports on the Commander torso figure, spring loaded mechanisms cause the drones to unfold and expand into spindly legs and arms.
Once fully connected, you have your full Power-Core Combiner. This full figure has somewhat limited articulation, mostly in the limbs, again due to the automatic transforming gimmick.
The real fun of these sets is their “Scramble City” like feature, that all Power-Core Combiners are compatible. So you can take these drones and connect them with other, separately sold Commander figures, and create different torso modes with these drones.
Coming soon – Searchlight with Backwind Commander Combiner!
The figures pictured in this review were provided by Hasbro.
These are incredibly cool and much more exciting than I thought they would be. As mentioned in the review, the ability to plug other drones into the commander bots makes for a new figure everytime you recombine. My favorite thus far is the Rallybots set, but I’m looking forward to the Dinobots!