Sledge and Throttler

Height: Sledge 11cm tall in Robot Mode, 9cm long (less scoop) in Vehicle Mode; Throttler 5.5cm overall height in Robot Mode.

Articulation: Huffer- 15 points total in Robot Mode: Ball-joint neck; 3 joints each arm- ball-joint shoulder, upper-arm swivel, ball-joint elbows; 4 joints each leg- universal joint hips, thigh swivels, hinged knees.
Caliburst- 10 joints total in Robot Mode: ball-joint shoulders, ball-joint elbows, ball-joint hips, thigh swivels, hinged knees.

Colors: Huffer: Molded pale yellow, black, purple, and light blue. Painted silver, black and red (eyes).
Caliburst: Molded translucent purple and black. Painted silver.

Release Data: Released August 2010 at an MSRP of $9.99.

Author: RAC

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It was his deep loyalty to Megatron - and his deeper dedication to destruction and mayhem - that won Sledge the opportunity to upgrade his abilities through combination. His partner Throttler is a vile little creature every bit as mean as Sledge.

I waited a full week to open this just so the review would be fresh and collected. So let's get right to it!

Robot Mode

Sledge is a kind of squat and wide-looking. The wideness is helped by both the two halves of the scoop on his arms, and the fact that his Robot Mode is made of a bunch of flat parts folded up to form a torso. His relatively tiny head is responsible for the rest. It seems like they were going for a muted version of the standard Constucticon color scheme here: he's an ugly yellow with just the slightest hint of green, and his forearms and a few other spots are a deep, dark purple. His face is interesting: there's still some of the overdetailed movie influence, but something about the surly expression reminds me of Derek Yaniger's G2 work. In particular he reminds me of Jhiaxus. The head is also interesting in that it serves as both Robot and Torso Mode heads, with a shifting faceplate that covers whichever side isn't in use. It's a very Punch/Counterpunch kind of solution. The grinding wheel on his torso looks like it'd make a great close-quarters weapon, but unfortunately there's no way to get the Mini-Con port out of the way- it'll always stick out farther.

His head turns a full 360 degrees and tilts front-to-back slightly. You're very likely to have to readjust his faceplates after you move it. The shoulder joint has a decent 90-degree range if you swing the scoop-halves out of the way. Otherwise you stand a fair chance of popping them off, which I've done about twice on each side now. No restrictions on forward swivel. There's an upper-arm swivel that must be used for transformation, as it has a 90-degree range and serves no real purpose since the elbow-joint is a ball-joint with plenty of clearance. The elbow has a 90-degree flex and unrestricted swivel. There's a standard-size peg under each of Sledge's wrists to allow him to equip weapons; like Huffer he has non-standard, more detailed hands.

No waist again, which I can once again live with. His hips are great, with a 180-degree frontward arc and 90 degrees out to the side. It's the absolute most you could get from these shapes. The knees get a nice tight V, like the hips they're the best you could get from this single joint. I also like how the treads have a kneecap cutout that automatically moves back or forward based on the position of the leg. The feet are halves of the shovel, and they're not very strong at all. I tend to pose him bended at the knees to keep him from tipping forward.



Transformation

It's the most elaborate bit of folding I've yet done on a PCC. The trickiest part is to line up the limb-mounting posts with the indentations on the bottom of the vehicle. They're hard to turn without a limb attached- this has been nearly universally true of Power Core Combiners so far -and sometimes come misaligned, so be prepared to have to brute force a couple of them. Lining up the swivels and ball-joints in order to get the scoop together can be a tricky proposition too, but all together it's nothing too complex. Complex by the standards of, say, Huffer, but it's no Alternator. Besides which, it doesn't have my hated enemy: interlocking panels that love to pop loose if you don't do them right.


Vehicle Mode

I'm not sure if Sledge is based on any real world backhoe model, but I doubt it. None of the Google Image Search suggestions I (ahem) saw have the big grinding wheel in front. The driver compartment has a Mini-Con port on top, and the scoop has one on the back. The scoop is also pretty well articulated, with three points making it able to bend over on itself easily. The hands sticking out of the top of the scoop are noticeable sometimes, but not horribly so. The wheels built into the treads function reasonably well but have a strange habit of rolling better backward than forward. To me, this Vehicle Mode is similar to Bombshock's in that the robot basically resolves into a big rectangle. The scoop, saw and shovel help spice things up a bit, but it's just not a really exciting vehicle to me. I guess we all outgrow the thrill of construction equipment eventually.


Torso Mode


It's not an awful-looking torso. I especially like the head, which looks to me like G1 Soundwave wearing Dinobot's helmet. What I don't like is how the Robot arms just sit on top of the shoulders, scoop-halves pointed forward, doing nothing. It wouldn't have taken much to fold them into the torso somehow and bulk it up, since he is fairly slim. Pretty simple transformation here, though. Two tricky points: the Mini-Con port on the torso is centered by unfolding a very tight double-hinged piece and folding it across the chest at a fairly specific angle. Getting the legs arranged is kind of difficult too, as again there's a double-hinged piece to arrange, except this time you can't see it since it's inside the lower leg.

Since the legs don't lock down, Sledge makes for the most fidgety torso I've yet encountered. As his legs keep flopping around the drones keep wanting to fall off or pop off. The arms are okay, at least. Also, I'm finding that my original set of Drones are getting touchy with reuse anyway and often abandon their posts, in a manner of speaking. Hey Hasbro, I'm ready for my articulated and not springloaded drones now, okay? At least think about it.


Throttler

Ah, now we're to the reason I bought this set. Throttler is a pleasantly simple Mini-Con molded in transparent purple and opaque black, with a smudge of silver paint for his face. He has excellent articulation stemming from the eight ball-joints and the knee-swivels neccessary for his transformation. Shoulders and hips both get a full 360 degrees provided you can get the other limbs out of their way. Elbows get a full 90 degrees and knees do a bit better- though the location of the hinge makes this a kind of odd-looking leg. His feet are angled and his kneecaps keep him from straightening his legs completely, so like Sledge himself, Throttler stands best with knees bent.

So what's so special about him? Well, he turns into a big drill- and three years later I still find myself enough of a Gurren Lagann fan that this is a major selling point. (As ExVee said when I told him: "Of course you want the drill.") It's a nice easy transformation too: fold up the legs, then swing all four limbs behind Throttler and lock them down and boom, you've got your drill. There's two ways to connect him to a Transformer, either using the Mini-Con port on his stomach or attaching it to a forearm or hand by the peg... which is also Throttler's head. I do worry about that rubbing paint off of his nondescript little face but, hey! Pegs doubling as nondescript faces is one of the few Scramble City tricks that Power Core Combiners hadn't used by now. The drill can even rotate when plugged into a Mini-Con port, with Throttler's front torso-plate rotating to make this possible. This is almost a waste; it's perfectly possible to rotate the drill on the port anyway, and the connection is so tight it's not really able to turn freely. (Which makes sense, since otherwise Throttler's torso would be misaligned constantly.) I'd almost thing this feature was an accident, but then why put a big metal pin in to attach the torso in the first place?

Armor Mode is basically Robot Mode turned upside-down and the legs folded up. It actually looks pretty good, again among the best-looking Mini-Cons in the line to date. While most PCC Mini-Cons have four separate modes, there's absolutely no difference between Throttler's Robot and Vehicle Weapon Modes. Attach it to Sledge's scoop, it's a vehicle weapon. Attach it to his forearm or chest, Robot Weapon. I think between that and the fact that the drill tabs together very securely, it's the best Mini-Con I've seen in PCC yet. That said, I can't think of any PCCs other than Sledge that have forward-facing Mini-Con ports in Vehicle Mode. None that I have, certainly. Furthermore, he's going to be totally useless to Huffer, who only has a port on his arm and no other way to hold Throttler. He can at least mount the drill on his chest, which I guess is what Hasbro's banking on to make Throttler interchangeable with everybody, but he's not going to be universally useful in the way that most of the other Mini-Cons are. That's really the only drawback I can think of to him, however.


Closing Remarks

It's hard to recommend this set wholeheartedly. I'm certain that most Transformers fans won't be as happy to see a drill Mini-Con as I was, but Throttler really is the best Mini-Con in the Power Core Combiners line so far. Sledge, on the other hand, is not the best Combiner by any stretch, with a decent Robot Mode, a functional but dull Vehicle Mode, and a pretty frustrating Torso Mode. At the time of this writing the Throttler mold hasn't been shown re-used in a later assortment, but most of the PCC Mini-Cons to date have, so if you bide your time you may be able to get the Drill That Pierces the Autobots with a better core figure. As it is, I'll rate the figures separately for now: Sledge is Good and Throttler is Excellent.

-RAC