So far, I’ve only dipped my toe into the Combiner Wars line by picking up the Legends figures. I passed on the Hasbro Aerialbots in favor of the Takara versions, which should be coming my way later on in the Summer. The Stunticons, on the other hand… well, given my affinity for Decepticon cars, I just couldn’t resist these guys and even then it was after a lot of waffling because I wasn’t entirely pleased with what I was seeing in the official Hasbro photographs. Anyway, I decided to dive right in with Motormaster himself, so let’s check him out…

Hasbro really loves their black packaging! Motormaster comes in a mostly black window box which feels very un-Transformers-y to me despite the fact that it’s branded right along the right side of the front of the box. The artwork is kind of cool, though, and can’t say I’m totally hating on the deco. It does, however, have an awful lot of Autobot symbols on it for a Decepticon. Just saying! The back shows the other Stunticon figures and roughly how they combine together to form Menasor. Motormaster is packaged in his robot mode, but as you might have guessed already, I’m starting things off with his alt mode.

Motormaster is a very modern looking truck cab and not a bad one at that. I am getting flashbacks to Age of Extinction Galvatron, but then I rather liked his alt mode too. It’s not a particularly attractive vehicle, as there’s a lot of seaming on the sides and the sculpted detail is kind of soft, but I don’t need my Motormaster’s alt mode to be pretty, just so long as he’s a giant evil truck and this fits the bill. Everything locks together quite well, he rolls beautifully, and you can store his gun on his trailer hitch.

In cab mode, the paint (or lack there of) on this figure is disappointing, albeit Motormaster is helped by the fact that the gray base plastic matches his primary color. It doesn’t look nearly as bad as if, oh I don’t know, let’s say someone were to use this mold for Optimus Prime and leave unpainted gray plastic corners where red should be. That having been said, I’m still not a fan of the bare gray plastic, especially when I get a look at the little area of metallic gray paint on the back of the sides and get a sad glimmer of how good this truck could have looked. Also, the lack of purple paint on some of the windows really is inexcusable. On the flip side, there’s some nice silver paint on the grill along with a lovingly tampo a tiny Decepticon logo as a hood ornament. Also, the purple stripes on the sides help to give him a gloriously traditional Decepticon deco. All in all, I’d say the good outweighs the bad here, but I’m still going to take a hard look at Takara’s version to see if it will warrant some double-dipping.

Motormaster’s transformation isn’t ground-breaking. The legs form the back hitch area, the arms fold into the cab sides, the head flips out of the top. We’ve seen something like it countless times before with good old Optimus, albeit now with some tweaks. Let’s just say it’s a case of the same dance, different tune and it works just fine.

It’s in robot mode where I really begin to fall in love with this figure, possibly even more than he deserves. He’s a big and beefy bot and the oddly enough the proportions here don’t bother me, whereas they most definitely do on the Optimus version of the mold. With the exception of some extra packed kibble on his forearms, Motormaster sports a pretty clean robot mode and while he’s definitely a broad design, the backpack helps to give him a little depth and even things out. There’s a lot more sculpted detail to be seen in the robot mode than the cab mode, and I do like how they kept the overall shape of the torso in line with the look of the Sunbow character model.

The portrait is pretty much money. In my mind, you can’t have Motormaster without having that box around his head. The countours on the face might be a little too organic for my liking, but I’m not going to quibble about it when the reast of his noggin looks so good.

Motormaster’s coloring works much better for me in robot mode. The bare gray plastic is enhanced by some high gloss black and purple on the chest as well as a crisp Decepticon insignia. You get some more purple accents scattered about the figure and more black plastic, giving him a nice, traditional Decepticon look.

The articulation here is quite serviceable. The arms rotate and are hinged at the shoulders. The elbows are double hinged for transformation, but because of the sculpt, you can really only make use of one of those hinges for forward movement of the forearm. He legs are have universal movement at the hips and hinges at the knees. Motormaster can swivel at the waist and his neck is ball jointed. The hips feature nice ratchet joints to support the figure.

Motormaster comes with two weapons, a sword and a gun, both are complex sculpts and painted silver. They can also combine to form a larger sword, which is intended for Bruticus, but Motormaster actually looks fine wielding it himself.

I picked up Motormaster for $25, which I guess is about what Voyagers are going for these days. He’s a remarkably, and somewhat surprisingly, solid figure that’s only held back by Hasbro’s unending desire to cheap out when it comes to paint. I’ve always loved the idea of Motormaster as a character and it’s nice to see Hasbro finally give him his due again, especially when the figure turned out this good. You’ll notice I didn’t cover his torso mode, but I’m not going to bother with that until I’ve got a team of Stunticons to do it right. Not sure how long that will take, but I do know that next week on Transformers Thursday, I’ll be checking out Dragstrip!