The packaging for the Power of the Primes figures may seem familiar. It shares the same overall design that started back with Combiner Wars and then carried over to Titans Return. Transformers is written in the same large red block letters down the right side of the packaging, the same as the previous Prime Wars trilogy lines as well as the movie toys *shudder*. I love the large new character art on the front of the card.
On the left side of the cardboard insert inside the blister bubble features some new art of Starscream as a combiner. Just like early Combiner War images, both factions are shown to comprise a larger combiner. In this case you have Dreadwind as an arm for Starscream, along with the Autobots Jazz, Dinobot Swoop and Dinobot Slug. Weird, but cool art none the less.
If this mold looks familiar to you, it should as it was first used in Combiner Wars as Aerialbot Skydive. Hasbro did a great job retooling this mold to make it look like the iconic G1 Powermaster. The colors are pretty spot on and the tampographed designs on the wings look good. I really wasn't sure when I first saw the images of him online if those were stickers or not. The mold doesn't appear to show any signs of "mold rot". The wings, arms and legs all seem firm.
Transformation from jet to robot is pretty much the same as with previous versions of this mold. I do have to say that while I liked the Titans Return line, it's refreshing to see a Transformer with a normal sized robot head again.
Speaking of the head, what a great sculpt. Again, the designs did a good job capturing the likeness of his G1 self.
Unlike his G1 self, this version of Dreadwind only comes with one blaster. It's a teal color versus the original dark gray, but its a great looking gun so I can't knock it too much.
Dreadwind still sports a good amount of articulation in both his arms and legs. I'm not the best with coming up w/ dynamic poses and such for action figures, but hopefully you get the picture.
The gimmick in Power of the Primes are the Prime Masters. These are essential retool Titan Masters (or Headmasters if you will) that interact with the Legion, Deluxe, Voyager and Leader classes. Each deluxe figure comes with a combiner hand that can double has chest armor. In Dreadwind's case, there is a teal piece of plastic that covers the cavity the Prime Master will fit into. The picture on the right shows a Titan Master figure inserted as I've yet to acquire my first Prime Master.
From a straight on view you really can't tell the armor has been attached to his chest, but from an angeled or side view it appears that Dreadwind is carrying a Baby Bjorn! Personally I don't care for this look and don't plan on displaying any of my Power of the Prime toys with this "armor" attached.
I should have taken a picture of the combiner hand piece as it's been changed since the Combiner War days. Now there are two semi-articulated thumbs. Yes, each hand has two thumbs. They attach via a ball joint so I guess you could pop off the back thumb if it bothers you that much (raises his hand!).
This combiner hand / armor piece can also attach to the top of Dreadwind in his vehicle mode. If this doesn't remind you of the G2 Decepticon seeker jets with their bulky electronic pack I don't know what will! If you look carefully, you'll see both thumbs spread out on each side.
Lastly, Dreadwind's blaster can be mounted under either wing or you can use the same port on the top of the jet the armor piece uses and mount the gun there. I don't mind it underneath the wing, but he really needs two guns if you're going to do that in my opinion.
Hasbro continues the trend of including small cardboard cards of the characters, but this time there are 12 different versions of the cards for each character! Each Prime Master is represented, in this case Megatronus. This will make it very difficult for some collectors (such as myself) that love the cards. This will also make it rather challenging for me to catalog all of these different card images as a part of the Transformers Bio Card Database. I'm gonna need plenty of help from the fandom and fellow collectors if I'm going to fill this area out.
All in all I'm very impressed with my first exposure to Hasbro's newest Transformers outing. Of course I'm axious to see what kind of changes Takara Tomy make to both the toys and the packaging, but this is a very sold release by Hasbro. It seems the MSRP has risen a few dollars to $16.99 USD with these deluxes, but as long as Hasbro delivers a good product I'm OK with the price.
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