Prime Wars Trilogy
The "Prime Wars Trilogy" is Hasbro's designation for a segment of the Transformers: Generations line that was launched in late 2014. While primarily based around the toy lines that make up the trilogy, it is also accompanied by cartoons of the same names and even has tie-ins in IDW's comic books.
| Prime Wars Trilogy: | ||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Combiner Wars (2014-2016) |
Titans Return (2016-) |
Power of the Primes (2017?) | ||||||||||
Toys
The Combiner Wars toy line was launched in late 2014, continued throughout 2015 and ended in early 2016, upon which was succeeded by Titans Return.
Initially, Hasbro had planned to simply continue the assortments for Titans Return, as implied by the product code and assortment numbers for the Legends, Deluxe, Voyager and Leader Class figures, but for unknown reasons eventually decided to relaunch the assortments instead. Despite this, Buzzsaw, a toy designed with the Titans Return play pattern in mind, was released as part of the penultimate wave of the Combiner Wars Legends Class assortment.
Aside from the single figure assortments available at general retail, both segments also included giftsets featuring mostly redecos and retools of existing toys. The Combiner Wars sets (officially referred to as "Collection Packs") were mostly "online exclusives", while the Titans Return sets were store exclusives.
Cartoons
The Combiner Wars cartoon, produced by Machinima and heavily promoted by Hasbro prior to its launch, didn't see a release until 2016, by which point the toys had already run their course as a general retail line. It consisted of eight five-minute episodes. To make matters worse, it drew devastatingly negative criticism. Despite this, Titans Return and Power of the Primes follow-ups were announced, which are likely to repeat their predecessor's poor timing at this point.
Comics
IDW Publishing's Generation 1 comic continuity featured a six-part Combiner Wars "event" comic that was told in alternating issues of the second Windblade miniseries and the The Transformers ongoing. Along with previous issues that also featured combiners, they were included (equipped with new covers) with the Deluxe Class toys that were distributed in the United States, Australia, New Zealand and Asia, while the figures available in Canada, Latin America and Europe replaced the comics with cards featuring artwork of the characters.
A Titans Return "event" story was told in a similar fashion in the form of a special Titans Return comic and two issues of The Transformers and More than Meets the Eye each. Unlike Combiner Wars, the Titans Return comics were not included with any toys.
