You know, when I looked at Legacy Snarl a couple weeks back, I talked about the downside of slowly releasing the members of a combiner team, but there’s also an upside to it: The fun of slowly assembling the giant robot as the members of the team come to you. That’s something you can’t get when they just all come in a big box. And that’s the case with Volcanicus, the Dinobot combiner, who I’ve been slowly building up for what feels like a year now.
The original monster.
The idea of a Dinobot combiner’s one that’s existed in the fandom hivemind pretty much ever since the Predacons were introduced in 1986, since they were very much the Dinobot’s opposites, except they could combine. In fact, there’s an older, fiction-only Dinobot combiner, The Beast (pictured above), from a rather notorious two-part pack-in comic, The Beast Within. As an aside, you can listen to a very interesting interview with that comic’s creator here, on Our Worlds are In Danger. Meanwhile, the official Dinobot combiner, Volcanicus, made his debut in 2017’s Power of the Primes, earning him a role in the Machinima web series tied to it.
This is a deceptively flattering photo.
But that combiner (and its later fancy Takara repaint, which put in fictional appearances in the Generations Selects manga), wasn’t really known for its quality, mainly its spindly proportions and general instability. And a later Cyberverse version of the combiner didn’t actually combine, it was just a standalone big figure (though it did get a fun appearance in the cartoon).
It did have a cool combined dinosaur mode, at least.
So for this third go-around, there was a real impetus to do the big beastly bot right, even if it was at a smaller scale. Well, he’s finally completed, so I decided to roll out the red carpet for him, and have a look at what the full combination is like.
Transformation and Combination
The starting lineup.
I’ve talked a bit during the individual reviews of the Dinobots about their transformations to their combined forms, but one thing I want to stress when transforming all of them is that it’s a surprisingly complex, involved procedure. This isn’t the sort of “turn them into bricks and slap them together” business of the old G1 combiner teams, there’s a lot of steps involved. On the other hand, it’s nowhere near as complicated as the modern Combiner Wars full-sized combiner teams, even if it isn’t exactly smooth.
The torso alone is quite the journey.
I’d say the thing that makes the full combination most difficult is just that it’s not intuitively obvious how each Dino transforms into their combined mode, because most of them really do just become random lumps of parts without any obvious visual form or function until you tab them together.
Good luck remembering how this goes.
I don’t think I’m going to need to keep unfolding the six sheets of instructions to combine them, but I can’t see myself doing this combination without at least looking at some photos to figure out how the whole thing’s supposed to go. One last bit of housekeeping: Half of Swoop’s two-part fist has gone missing, and after tearing apart my Transformers room, and most of the rest of the house (hence the delay on this), I think it’s just consigned to the void for now. So, just imagine the fist on his right arm isn’t oddly skinny.
It’s supposed to look like this.
The one, and only mode
How the instructions tell you to do it.
Finish up the combination, and you’ve got a giant, wide, bulky super-robot. Well, I say giant, but he’s only giant by Core-class standards, whereas by mainline standards, he’s pretty flatly a Voyager, standing a bit shorter than most War for Cybertron-era ones, but a fair bit wider.
Optimus and the Dinobots still don’t see eye to eye.
And he really does have a ton of width, and general mass. Unfortunately, that mass is all in his torso and arms.
The better to flex with.
You know, I knew it was coming when Grimlock came out, but it’s true, this large man skipped leg day. He has huge beefy arms, and a wide torso, but puny, small legs. The thing is, there’s obvious hints in the design that there were going to be foot pads to enhance the proportions of his legs. There’s even what looks to be bespoke ports of some kind on the bottoms of his feet that point to that (and they’re not 5 millimeter ports, so you can’t improvise something with a Weaponizer.) Before all the members of the team were revealed, it was even speculated that the later Dinobot releases might come with foot pads as accessories. But he doesn’t have them, and it’s a little bit disappointing. Still, I can at least pretend it’s an intentional bit of character design, where he’s got amazing arm strength, but is very slow.
These boots were not made for walking.
As for the rest of him, it’s a busy sculpt, as you’d expect from a figure made out of six dinosaurs that have been contorted into jumbled mush in the shape of a person. Without much of an obvious visual “correctness” to the design, there’s some room to fiddle with his specifics, to make him look a bit more dynamic. I tend to unfurl Swoop’s wings, instead of fold them away, as the instructions say, and I sometimes unfold and rotate Scarr’s robot arms upwards, because doing so unlocks a bit more arm articulation.
How I usually configure his arms.
To be clear, I don’t think his busy, jumbled nature is a bad thing at all, it fits what I imagine the personality of this lumbering, chaotic brute would be.
Scourge of the Core Class ‘Cons.
And as for colors, it’s equally jumbled, but does benefit from the Dinobots having a unified colorscheme, meaning he’s mostly silvery-grey, with accents of black, gold and red all across him, plus a couple hits of blue.
He’s got a brontosaurus watching his back.
Still, there’s at least a strong central presence to the design, with Slug’s Triceratops head in the middle of his chest, and a good-looking headsculpt. Basically, it’s Grimlock’s robot head, in black and red, with a gold Gundam-like crest on his forehead. It’s funny that it’s just a powered-up Grimlock head, when it actually comes out of Slag’s weapon. It also manages to give the combined robot the illusion of even more size, due to it being kind of a pinhead.
They made the mistake of calling him a pinhead.
So, a big worry about this guy as he came out was build quality, which has, in my experience, always been a huge problem with modern large-scale combiners. How many of those Combiner Wars guys could actually stay standing, especially if you tried to pose them? Or had pieces fall off of them when you handled them? My Victorion has both of those problems. Well, the good news here is that scaling this combiner down seems to have fixed most of the stability problems with this guy, emphasis on “mostly.” He may not have foot pads, but his feet still have a big imprint, and it’s very easy to keep him standing. I even managed to get him to do a midair kick! Can your Prime Wars Combiners, or Legacy Menasor do that?
Be honest: How many combiners can do this pose, and also actually stay standing?
He’s not perfect, though, in terms of construction. His hips are a bit looser than I’d like, and his topheavyness makes his torso flail around when I pose him. And in terms of stuff falling off, his right fist (the one Scarr comes with) actually does have a problem staying on. At rest, he’s fine, but if I lightly brush it, it tends to pop off.
This happens a lot.
Another less-critical problem: Grimlock’s T-Rex head, and some of the stuff around it, which sits below his knee, isn’t really fastened down, and will come out of place when you move his knee. It’s not a huge issue, it’s just a visual annoyance.
Grimlock’s watching his step.
Still, it’s definitely a lot less troublesome than most combiners. And his limbs all stay on perfectly fine, which was a worry some people had, since they’re really just holding on there with standard 5-millimeter pegs and holes, instead of something more robust. But so far, so good.
Again, how many combiner teams can do this?
The funny thing about his articulation is that I’m pretty sure it’s on par with most modern combiners, but the thing is that it feels like he’s way more poseable than they are, because he’s stable and solid enough that you can actually use his joints. So, let’s run down what he’s got: On his lower half, he’s got standard knee joints, thigh swivels, omni-directional hips, and a waist joint. Uptop, his head’s on a swivel, and he’s got multi-directional shoulders through a combination of the pegs his arms attach with, and joints that the pegs themselves are on, though there’s a bit of a limit to their range, since his arms tend to bump his torso. His elbows are, admittedly, a bit strange, using the hip and knee joints from Swoop and Scarr to simulate a double-elbow bicep curl, but in their default position, they bend inwards, and not forwards. You can use Swoop’s waist joint as a bicep swivel to move his elbows into a more standard position, but you need to undo Skarr’s robot-mode arms to do so (as mentioned above), and the position of his fists (which don’t swivel or anything, not that I was expecting them to) points to that not being the preferred configuration.
The better to Superhero Land with.
Still, it’s an easy fix. Importantly, this guy just feels way more bendy than his beefy proportions would suggest, and he poses surprisingly well.
A proud parent.
With real hugging-his-Dad action!
For features and accessories, technically Volcanicus doesn’t really have any, his existence is the feature. But there’s a bit you can still do with him. If you want to give him a tiny sword, Snarl’s weapon, which normally stores on his leg, fits nicely, even if it’s hilariously puny.
Don’t tell him that, though.
And his fists are 5-millimeter compatible, so he can hold accessories from mainline figures.
“You call that a knife, Autobot?”
“Bucket-head right, THIS a knife!”
That being said, I think the black paint on the fists was laid on a bit thick, fitting most accessories in there’s a tight enough squeeze that you’re better off taking the fist off, putting an accessory in, and then re-attaching the fist.
Worth it, though.
And, as you’ve seen from previous reviews, the entire combiner works on a series of bog-standard 5-millimeter pegs and holes, so you can swap his limbs out for other stuff, or even give his limbs to other figures. He can’t scramble his limbs in the traditional way, but there’s more than one way to scramble a combiner.
“Me Volcanicus not think this fair trade.”
The Team and the Combiner Overall
You know, despite the stumpy feet, I like this combined form a lot more than I thought I would. He holds together nicely, is pleasantly bendy, and just looks and feels cool.
And he can dance!
But he’s not perfect, and in particular, as you read in the individual reviews (which you DID read, right?), a lot of the actual team members are pretty janky.
Some of these guys are rough, and I’m not talking about their personalities.
Swoop and Snarl are the two strongest ones, worth getting on their own, with Slug in a decently close third (he really just needs some elbows), while Scarr, Grimlock and Sludge are varying degrees of compromised, with those latter two being so for the sake of the combination (Scarr’s problem is mostly that he’s bad at standing up in robot mode, though). And, Core-class prices being what they are, you’re looking at something in the neighborhood of $110 Canadian dollars (after taxes) to complete this guy, meaning you’re getting a team that’s 50 percent good, and 50 percent middling-to-bad.
Their batting average would be higher if Slash was on the team.
That being said, I still think there’s more good than bad here, and I’m having fun with this guy. I wouldn’t call him an essential buy-him-now kind of bot (especially since you need to put work in to find all the components), but if you think he looks fun, you’re going to have fun, just be prepared to put up with a couple weak team members. Heck, it’s an open secret that he’s going to be repainted and retooled into Dinoking, the Decepticon combiner from Transformers: Victory, and released in some kind of exclusive boxset, so maybe that version will come out a bit nicer (it might even have foot pads, though I expect it’ll cost more because of that).
Imagine Volcanicus in these colors, with this head, and those foot pads.
Here’s the most important thing: I love the idea here, and I love having a mini-combiner that fits easily on my desk. And because of that, I’d like to see Hasbro and Takara make more of these miniature combiner teams. I’ve never really been the kind of collector that had the space and cash for a bunch of full-sized teams, and, despite my usual grousing about Core-class figures costing a bit too much, I’d rather pay what I did for this reasonably-sized robot than break the bank buying a Commander-class Motormaster and four Deluxe Stunticons, and then trying to figure out where I’d even fit them on my shelves. This scale of combiner is just right for me, and I will 100 percent buy into more of them. Maybe they could do some mini-Constructicons, since they were also a team of six equally-sized bots. Or if they wanted to try one of the 1986-and-on five-bot combiners, they could do the torso as a Deluxe, and pack in the foot pads and other combiner bits with that torso. Bottom line: I hope this small Volcanicus (and the inevitable Dinoking retool) isn’t just a one-off, because this feels like a proof-of-concept for a whole series that I’d be very into.
Hopefully, the first of many.
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