Allegiances: Autobot
Size: Crash Combiner 2-pack
Overall Rating: 4.1
 

Grimlock

Difficulty of Transformation: Very Easy
Color Scheme: Black, moderately light milky green, and some light blue and pale metallic bronze
Individual Rating: 3.4

    Grimlock's t-rex-ish beast mode ends up being pretty poor for his Crash Combiner version, which is a shame, as the alt modes are usually the best on these small toys. His body is really out-of-proportion, looking like one big long "tail" all the way down, with no tapering off much at the front end or widening out at the midsection. Obviously this is so that he makes for slightly more proportional combiner legs given his transformation, but it's a pretty bad look in this mode. There's also some chunks of plastic that are just there to make either of the other modes look more streamlined, like a chunk on the back of his tail, and some robot mode details like his chest sticking out near where his butt would be in this mode. The robot feet also stick out rather oddly below the t-rex head, almost like he's got a small shovel on the front of his body. The t-rex head itself is decent, if a tad small, with nice mold detailing. Same goes for the arms and legs-- they're a bit small, or the body's a bit big-- sometimes it's hard to tell. The mold detailing on them is surprisingly on-the-nose, even when it comes to the small details, like the circular details around the hips and the small individual claws on the hands. However, as you might expect from a Crash Combiner, there really isn't any paint to bring these details out-- just some light blue on the eyes and pale bronze on the headcrest. Otherwise, the body is green, and everything else is black-- also not really all that accurate to the usual color scheme breakup of this mode. For articulation in this mode, Grimlock can move back-and-forth at the shoulders and hips-- which honestly is just about the most articulation any Crash Combiner toy has.
    The transformation is SLIGHTLY more complicated than on your average Crash Combiner, but still pretty darned easy. Slide back the legs some to form the robot mode hands, then fold in the beast head to become the heels and split open the body a bit to become the legs. Fold the tail behind the robot back, and then unfold Grimlock's robot head from inside his robot chest, and you're done. The end result looks much better than his beast mode, though admittedly that's a pretty low bar. Like basically all individual Crash Combiner members, Grimlock's robot mode details are etched into the underside of his alt mode, though in this case that still leaves him pretty proportional-- his upper legs are a bit thick, but that's about it. His tail hangs off his back rather obviously if you look at Grimlock from an angle other than straight-on, and his dino arms hang off the lower legs regardless, but compared to how bad Crash Combiner proportions can get in this mode it's not all that bad. The mold detailing is, again, surprisingly good in this mode, with all of Grimlock's major details there, from the fingers on his molded hands on the bottom of his dino feet, to the angular bits on his chest, to his toed feet. His headsculpt is also prety spot-on, and like in beast mode, it's the only place he has paint in this mode-- bronze on his face and light blue on his eyes. Color-wise, the rest of this mode breaks up into green for the legs and black on the upper body and arms. Again, more paint would have been GREATLY appreciated, even moreso than for most other individual Crash Combiner toys. For articulation in this mode, he can move back-and-forth at the arms-- the same movement he had for his legs in beast mode.
 

Optimus Prime

Difficulty of Transformation: Very Easy
Color Scheme: Dark milky semi-metallic blue, milky semi-metallic red, and some black, dull forest green, and silver
Individual Rating: 2.5

(NOTE: Because this toy is a repaint, this is not a full-blown review. This mainly covers any changes made to the mold and the color schemes, and merely compares it to the original RID2015 Optimus Prime Crash Combiner toy. For a review on the mold itself, read the review of the original RID2015 Primestrong set here.)

    Optimus Prime makes yet another appearance in the Crash Combiner line, this time with some remolding-- however, all of the remolding is saved for his combined mode parts. In his individual robot and vehicle mode, he's basically the same (bad) toy he was in the first release. The mold detailing and pieces for these modes is the same, including the weird stretched proportions in robot mode and just a horrible central section on the vehicle mode. The shade of red used is more of a medium shade than a medium-dark shade on the original, but other than that the color scheme is the same-- minus the extra green that's visible from some of the combined mode parts on the back half of the vehicle mode. This comes down to the same black paint apps used on the windows and silver on the robot face-- though this version of Prime doesn't have his eyes painted because of the extra paint apps on the combined mode pieces.
 

Primelock (Combined Form)

Difficulty of Transformation: Easy
Individual Rating: 6.3

    Primelock is the combined form of both of them, and since Optimus is a remold of the orignal Primestrong Optimus, the same overall construction for the upper body is here, including the same elbow-only articulation, the legs on the back of the hands, etc. What IS different are most of the molded-in details for the upper half. The head now has Optimus' headcrest, but with a faceplate and larger eyes like G1 Grimlock. The chest has some teeth detailing above the abs, as well as a belt across the waist. The lower arms have some more angular mechanical details on the sides compared to Primestrong's lower arms, and the shoulders have-- awesomely-- t-rex head silhouettes on them. The green paint really helps bring out these awesome details, and is used on the belt as well, though it also should've been used on the "jaws" on the chest. The abs are painted silver, and the headsculpt is a dark blue around the helmet, with lighter blue eyes and a silver faceplate. There's also some silver used on the front of the upper arms. All of the paint for this mode is used on the upper body, though, and the lower body is completely unpainted. It consists mostly of the back of Grimlock's robot mode, but split mostly in half down the middle, and the robot arms/dino legs moved down a bit from Grimlock's shoulders. The end result makes for pretty iffy legs, all things considered. Yeah, the color breakup does make it obvious the green portions are the "real" legs and the rest of this portion of the toy is to be de-emphasized, but that doesn't negate the fact there's robot arms and dino arms just hanging unceremoniously off the sides of each leg, and tail halves hanging off the front-- and too low and towards the center to look like proper "kneecaps", either. The heels from Grimlock's robot mode make for decent toes here, but overall the legs of this combined more are definitely pretty weak and kibble-y. As with other Crash Combiner lower bodies, the legs can move side-to-side VERY slightly, but that's it.
 

    I understand the need to have all the main characters from RID2015 all repersented in some Crash Combiner form, but overall this is the weakest pair of molds of all the Crash Combiner sets. Optimus was already one of the weakest molds in the subline, and his essential construction hasn't changed, just some of the combined form details (even though some of the new details ARE cool). I would have preferred a Crash Combiner form of Drift instead, who could probably pull off his design much better in both modes despite the simplistic transformation and gimmick limitations. Grimlock, meanwhile, has an... okay individual robot mode, but his beast mode is bad and just obviously was not designed with any sort of combination in mind, and it shows with horrible proportions. Grimlock's combined form isn't much better, with the arms of BOTH modes just hanging off the legs uncermoniously and it not at all looking solid. Not recommended.
 

Review by Beastbot

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