Last year Transformers fans from around the world voted the first all-female combiner team into existence. Now Toy Time finally gets the chance to combine six robots into on giant robot woman. Rust Renegades, combine to form Victorion!
My enthusiasm for the Combiner Wars Transformers line has waned a bit since I started covering it early last year. The revival of classic gestalt teams hit its peak with the massive Devastator last summer. Since then we’ve gotten a bunch of recolors and retooling of existing toys and a handful of classic characters modified to fit the combiner mold. The toys I’ve been most excited for are ridiculously scarce (looking at you, Sky Lynx), to the point that I barely look anymore.
Victorion, released exclusively online in a $99 box set, is no exception to the retooling rule. She’s a pair of helicopters, which we’ve seen a ton of in the line, a couple of repainted sports cars with new heads, a recolored Legends-class Groove for a chest piece and a torso that’s a redo of Hot Spot, leader of the Protectobots.
A team of explorers known as the Torchbearers exploring the Sea of Rust were forever bonded together by the energies of the Enigma of Combination. Rescue vehicle Pyra Magna, cars Dust Up and Jumpstream, helicopters Skyburst and Stormclash and motorcycle Rust Dust became the Rust Renegades, with the ability to combine into the massive, color-coordinated Victorion.
Check out the video atop the post for a more in-depth look at each individual robot and vehicle.
The dark orange and green color scheme is meant to evoke rust. I find it evokes both rust and minty freshness, but at least the final colors turned out better than the announcement shots, which I was not at all fond of.
While all of Victorion is repaints and slight remolds, Hasbro does mix things up a bit to make the prospect of paying $99 for six things that are slightly different from other things more attractive.
There’s Victorion’s massive blade, formed from the individual weapons of the smaller robots. The blue and silver accents help offset the overwhelming rusty mint flavor of the combined form, though the method for having Victorion wield the sword in her slender hands is a bit strange.
Instead of holding the weapon in her fist, the sword pegs into the soft area between her thumb and forefinger. Sounds painful, really.
Then we’ve got the custom feet.
Yeah, they’re a bit heel-y, but they’re unique to the line and quite striking. Plus they can be pegged into Pyra Magna’s back in robot mode for a cool shoulderpad effect.
I’m not 100 percent satisfied with Victorion. I hate Rust Dust as a chest plate and had tons of trouble keeping her attached. I’m also not a huge fan of the loose-hanging propeller assembly on Combiner Wars helicopter models, and we’ve got two in this set.
Still, I appreciate that Victorion represents a major milestone in Transformers history, even if there was a female Minicon combiner back in the days of the Unicron trilogy of Transformers series. Minicons don’t count.
Victorion is a powerful robot woman made up of five powerful robot women and Rust Dust. Her team is a welcome addition to the Transformers team . . . team.