Collectibles: Transformers POTP - Rippersnapper

Power of the Primes Decepticon Rippersnapper, Abominus Combiner

I love toys! There I said it! I'm not talking about big kid toys like electronics, and such. I'm talking about figurines of my favorite super heroes, Transformers, anime characters etc. Truth be told, I don't hold a figure in each and make fight sounds as I bash them together, like I used to. These days, I just display them on shelves and every once in a while I'll change their position or posture for a different look or I'll use them as photo props. Some of my favorite toys are still in the original packaging! Anyways, I thought it'd be helpful for those of you who, like me, score a lot their loot online because it's just way to hard or not possible to find them in stores anymore. Maybe extra images or my 'take' on the toy, will help you decide if it's worth adding to your collection or not.

Hasbro's has introduced this remake of the Decepticon Rippersnapper as a Deluxe Class figure in the Transformers - Power of the Primes toy line in 2018. He is part of the 'combiner team' known as the Terrorcons and transforms into a beast with a shark's head. This five and a half inch figure comes with a collectible card, a blaster, and his Prime Armor which transforms into the hand of Abominus. What makes the combiner teams special is their 'ability' to merge into one giant robot. This means that each member of the team will have a third transformation mode, one that's specifically for the giant robot. The groups will typically consist of five members, one of them being larger than the others (Voyager Class figure) and will transform into the torso/head of the giant robot. The other four will transform into a limb, either an arm or a leg and you can place them however you like. NOTE: Some combiners, whose 3rd transformation is a limb, (when sold/purchased separately) only come with the hand attachment (Prime Armor) which means that the foot attachment will then be included with the torso figure. Since Combiners from the Combiner Wars and Power of the Primes toy lines are interchangeable and not all of them have the same hand/feet pieces you'll have to really look at the included pieces if you're planning on mixing and matching to create your own Combiner team. This is what caused my dilemma and resulted in my "Collectibles" series of posts. More info below.

Rippersnapper's light gray and blue color scheme looks pretty good, I think it's the best color scheme amongst all the Terrorcons. On my figure, the paint job is even and without defects. The faux rub sticker of the Decepticon emblem is straight and is the largest of the limb Bots. In shark mode, the head cannot move but the jaw is on a hinge so the mouth can open to reveal a nice set of silver shark teeth. The blaster cannons can be pegged just behind each shoulder. The prime armor can fit on the back near the tail which doesn't look awkward. A Prime master can be pegged in just below the dorsal fin and in my opinion putting one there looks awkward. The tail is hinged but only allows for small up and down motion. The arms in shark/beast mode are the same for the robot mode. They are on ball joints at the shoulders and uniquely they can move up and down as if he was shrugging. There is no bicep swivel but there is a ball joint elbow. The hands are swiveled at the wrists and the claws are permanently extended meaning in robot mode, Rippersnapper is impersonating Marvel's Wolverine, haha. The legs are swiveled at the hip which allows for the leg to rotate 360 and the only other joint is at the knees. In robot mode, the head can turn 360 and tilt slightly up and down. There is a chest panel that you can flip down to reveal a port which you can plug the Prime Armor, which I think looks ugly. Like all the other Terrorcons, the hips are on a 360 degree swivel. There is a thigh swivel and a knee hinge on the legs. The thing I find most disturbing is that the joints are not uniformly tight. For example one arms bicep swivel is tighter than the other or one beast mode leg is so loose that it won't stay in place while the other is snug. Or some parts are way to finnicky to snap into place consistently, as in this case, you can tell from the gif that I couldn't get the legs in monster mode to snap together properly. Maybe it's my copy, I don't know but since I won't be moving it around too much and will keep it in limb mode, it'll be ok. Also, it doesn't take much force to pop a part off the ball joints but it's easy to pop back in. For example, the Prime Armor piece transforms into the hand by flipping out the fingers and folding down the thumbs (the two pointy parts with the holes in it). It kind of looks stupid to me, having a hand with a thumb on the top and bottom, so I pulled off the bottom thumb. More of my 'mods' below.

Official Build:

Terrorcons	Merge into	Abominus
Hun-gurrr	Transforms into	Torso
Blot	Transforms into	Right Arm
Rippersnapper	Transforms into	Left Arm
Sinnertwin	Transforms into	Right Leg
Cutthroat	Transforms into	Left Leg

A year or so ago I caught a glimpse of Sky lynx in a gift shop within the Hong Kong Airport. I walked straight in and bought it and while waiting to board my flight I looked it over and I realized it was a combiner! Bonus! The only issue now is who to use for the limbs, since I wanted an all dino or monster theme. Couldn't think of any at the time so I put it off for awhile. Many months later I saw a Terrorcon Combiner in a toy store in Singapore and bing, that was it. I recently acquired all 4 Terrorcons to complete my version of Abominus (I think I'll have to rename my version, though). It was only after opening all the figures that I realized that Sky Lynx did not come with feet!!! So a few swear words later, I was back online looking for solutions since the feet are packaged with Hun-Gurrr (the torso). I had decided long ago not to get Hun-Gurrr because I'm not a big fan of pink robots, the monster mode looks weird to me and one 2 headed dragon/monster on the team is enough. What I found online was something called a Perfect Effect upgrade kit. They make a whole bunch of different kits for Combiners. Some are just hands and feet, others have weapons, chest plate add ons and limb widening add ons. Some of them look really awesome and I'm considering a couple of kits, however, they are quite pricey. While searching I also found some cheaper, different styled, different colored sets that were not from the Perfect Effect brand. I ordered the least expensive one I could find. It was a very pleasant surprise that both the hands and the feet can be transformed into weapons. The feet can transform into a really big double barreled blaster or separated into two blasters while the hands transform to something like a rifle. In foot mode, the tips of the barrels can be removed so that they don't protrude from the back of the foot. I think the feet look better without the protruding barrels. The peg for the leg is on a swivel for better posing stability.

Pictured below are the Prime Armor and original feet attachments. The Prime Armor is a gimmick designed to induce more sales of toys, in my opinion. It's an add on weapon/shield/engine part or whatever you make it out to be, and meant to accommodate a Prime Master. A Prime Master is a little figure that transforms into a 'spark mode' to fit into a compatible component, like the Prime Armor. This transformation is as easy as folding it in half to make it look like a cube. It is sold with an exo suit which just opens up to fit the Prime Master inside. This exo suit transforms into some kind of weapon (different Prime Masters have different exo suits). I included this info because some Combiner teams don't have a large weapon for the merged figure so I got some of these Prime Masters to use in weapon mode.The foot attachment is from another figure that I wanted to show just as an example of roughly what some of the older hand/feet look like. The older ones are also dual purpose, they can be either hands or feet. The original one should look similar but have a Prime Master port, a swivel peg and cannot transform into a hand. Just make sure to look for a peg that sticks out from the top. That's the peg that inserts into the leg.

Original Hand	Original Foot

The moral of this story is, if you're like me and collect toys based on how much you like the toy, set, theme or whichever and whatever, then you're probably going to mix and match. If you do, please make sure you are set on parts (usually missing feet) as mentioned above and that the figure you plan on using for the torso is actually capable of that third transformation. For example, just because the figure is from the Combiner Wars series doesn't mean it is a Combiner. I made that mistake...now I have two Ultra Magnus'! Lucky he's one of my favorite characters, so I don't really mind. If you have older Combiners using the older feet (like the one picture above), you can use the hands for feet then the Prime Armors for hands, that way you don't have to buy an upgrade kit.

In case you're wondering what my version looks like here's a preview (I left the extra thumb on the left hand so you can see the difference between pulling the bottom one off or not):

I'll call him "Primal Reign."Hope you enjoyed this post as much as I enoyed making it. Have fun with your toys !!!

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