Once upon a time Devastator was the biggest, meanest, most popular combiner in Transformers history. He was the original, the guy responsibly for the slew of combining Transformers who followed. Superion, Defensor, Computron... - they'd be nothing without Devastator.
Then along came Michael Bay, the wrecking balls, and the biggest, meanest combiner was turned into a complete joke.
Saying this, I was never really Devastator's biggest fan. No, I was a Predaking man - though owned neither when I was small. I had a couple of bits of Superion but managed to twist off Fireflight's head inside Silverbolt's leg, where it remains to this very day.
For those who don't know, and are wondering what on Earth I'm rambling on about, Transformer combiners - as the name implies - are a group of small, independently transforming robots who in addition join together to form a giant robot.
Despite his known popularity, Hasbro have never made an updated 80s-like Devastator. Instead it was down to the 3rd Party fan companies. There are actually two competing ones out at the moment. One by MakeToys, the other by TFC. This is a review of the latter who, for reasons of not wanting Hasbro to sue, has been named 'Hercules'.
I'm skipping over talking about the individual robots for the time being. While they're pretty good (overall), in their own right, it's really the combined mode that everyone is buying these for.
And what a mode it is!
Hercules - or forget it, there's no point trying to hide who he really is - Devastator is big. Really big. He towers over standard 'deluxe' size Transformers. Heck, he towers over 'leader' class figures. He's also very sturdy, which is a major improvement over the original. His feet are big and chunky which helps immensely in this regard.
Actually, the entire robot has been designed to be chunky which really suits him. There are no fragile-looking pieces, as would be expected from something built from cranes, diggers, and the like.
The poseability is very good with loads of joints. His arms hold their position - not perfectly - but pretty darn well. The separate pieces click together very strongly, to the point where it can be a bit of a fight to separate them again.
There was a problem or flaw with every one of the smaller robots, however judging him solely in Devastator-mode he's perfect. None of the issues with the small robots matter at all when combined together.
Although...
This is a bit of a minor nit-pick, but I'm puzzled as to why TFC didn't include instructions as to how to put together the small guns to form the big one.
I'm even more puzzled as to what the heck this piece is for -
I assumed the function of it, when it mysteriously came with Dr. Crank (aka not-Mixmaster), would become clear when I had all the Hercules component robots, but I'm still completely baffled. It can be stuck randomly on the gun and numerous other places on Hercules, but I have zero idea what the official purpose of it is.
Unless... Maybe it's there just to cause me confusion?
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