User:TheLastGherkin/Sandbox
Compatible toys in other lines
With Combiner Wars eclipsing previous attempts at combiner toys in both quantity and quality, it came as no surprise that the line's engineering would become the default method to represent combining characters in the years that followed. What began as simple cosmetic differences applied to Combiner Wars toys would soon lead to extensive retools and dedicated molds, all of which are cross-compatible with the combination play pattern.
Unite Warriors
Combiner Wars' concurrent counterpart in TakaraTomy markets, Unite Warriors consisted largely of combiners sold in box sets of one torso and four limbs, omitting the Legends Class weaponry that would characterise the Hasbro line. Unite Warriors toys featured elaborate decos to more accurately reflect each character's appearance in the original animated series. The line would omit Hasbro original characters, such as Alpha Bravo and Offroad, in favour of replicating each team's traditional members, in two cases creating brand new molds to better reflect the vintage combiners (incidentally, these "missing members" would make it back to Hasbro markets sooner or much later). As time went on, Unite Warriors would diverge even further from Combiner Wars, introducing its own exclusive combiner teams in the form of the Commandos and Grand Galvatron, as well as an original character, Megatronia. The level of divergence was most noticeable when comparing the Hasbro and TakaraTomy versions of the Technobots, which featured only two molds out of five in common!
The Combiner Wars-compatible toys in Unite Warriors are:
Power of the Primes
The third part of the Prime Wars Trilogy, Power of the Primes focussed on the unified gimmick of "powering up", such as gaining the abilities of one of the original Thirteen Primes or evolving to Primehood, so it of course went back to the Combiner Wars well to bring back the Terrorcons as well as other classic characters in new combiner-compatible forms. The majority of the toys in Power of the Primes were newly-designed to match the Combiner Wars system, with only a handful reusing tooling from that line.
Power of the Primes was the first in the so-called "brand unification" of Hasbro and Takara's Transformers ranges, meaning that, aside from release dates and ID numbers, each toy released in both lines was virtually identical, ending the long-running tradition of Japanese toys getting different paint jobs and tooling.
Combiner Wars-compatible toys in Power of the Primes include:
Generations Selects (TakaraTomy)
Only forget all that about Japanese-exclusive variants being over and done with, because as soon as TakaraTomy got its hands on the Generations Selects name, it produced two full sets of Seacons that were heavily retooled from Power of the Primes molds. These were followed by distinct versions of the Terrorcons and Dinobots, making use of new decoes, retooled parts, and accessories largely to better resemble the teams' depictions in the original cartoon. Essentially, this was a revival of the Unite Warriors style of combiners, complete with three out of the four teams being sold in giftsets. Each of these releases would also be imported to U.S. markets by Hasbro Pulse.
The compatible toys from TakaraTomy's Generations Selects consist of:
| Torsos | Limbs
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And all the rest
A small selection of combiner-compatible toys were sold in other lines where combination wasn't necessarily the main focus. For limb bots, this was predominantly in aid of releasing desirable characters or deco variants in collector-aimed lines—for example, the Hasbro version of Generations Selects, which directly tied into Power of the Primes and War for Cybertron: Siege.
With Unite Warriors omitting the Legends Class molds from Combiner Wars, TakaraTomy elected to release them in the concurrent Adventure and Legends (no relation) lines. This included the molds for the combiner teams' littlest members, which retained the ability to become a weapon or armour for compatible combiners, regardless of whether or not this functionality was advertised in their instructions. The outlier in this group is the later Titans Return Cosmos, a Hasbro toy, which retained limited combiner compatibility thanks to a retooled part that debuted with Combiner Wars Scrounge.
Finally, there is the unique case of Legends Godbomber, who was designed to partsform like his original 1980s toy to facilitate the contemporary Super Ginrai's "God" form. While many of his parts are connected by 5 mm ports and posts, Godbomber's legs make use of Combiner Wars-style ports; as a result, his legs can be used with any combiner torso, and his thighs are compatible with any of the limb bots (the latter of which appeared as a selling point in his pack-in fiction).
Limbs
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Weapons
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Other
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