Heavytread with Groundspike

Neck and neck with Undertow for being best among the Powercore Combiner figures, regardless, the winner is you! ...if you can find one to buy... Overall rating: Very Good

Height: 10cm to top of head;

Articulation: 20 total points - Ball joint neck; 5 points each arm: Double jointed shoulder, upper arm hinge, hinge elbow, forearm swivel; swivel waist; 4 points each leg: Universal hips, thigh swivel, hinge knee.

Colors: Molded Fall Green, Camouflage Green, black, clear blue (Mini-Con only); Painted Camouflage Green, black, silver, yellow.

Accessories: Groundspike Mini-Con

Release Data: Available on Hasbro Toy Shop during early 2011 but has long since sold out. US$9.99 if/when you could find it.

Author: ExVee

(more...)

At his core, Heavytread is a gentle soul. He enjoys the fragile beauty of Earth, appreciating it all the more because of the ease with which it could be ruined.  He is glad of the power he now wields, because it gives him the ability to defend the delicate creatures he loves.

See also: Rhinox.

And so it is that we come to the end of Powercore Combiners. At least in terms of new molds. Salvage and Over-Run could be considered subsequent to Heavytread, but being recolors there's only one of the two I care to any degree about, and most likely for not the right reasons. However, I can assure you there is no wrong way to care about Heavytread. Just like Undertow, I see it as an example of PCC when it's on its game, breaking the chains that otherwise seemed to define the rest of the line. Just in time to die off. Sigh.


Robot Mode

I can see how people would tend to associate Heavytread with Brawl, as there are many elements in common, and what isn't quite the same between them are things I'd expect to see changed in an update of the original Brawl toy anyway. The chest is still the central hull of the tank and extends some distance forward of the head, and the head itself is definitely in the style of Scramble City peg heads. The arms are still the front half of the track sections, though with the miracle of articulation can be pointed forward without vanishing back into the tank configuration. There's even the turret backpack with the cannon rising behind the head if you so choose. The legs are the most different with the treads facing front, but if you don't mind giving up the knee joint, swiveling the waist can easily solve that. As much as I want to see influences of existing characters and toys in otherwise original characters with Powercore Combiners, like Leadfoot's similarities to Slapdash, or Crankcase's Motormaster/Menasor vibe, Heavytread feels pretty intentional in how it's channeling Brawl. Had the line continued and saw this figure recolored, by greatest dream would have been a bright green and purple camo deco to echo Brawl's G2 coloring.

Heavytread is one of the best Commander figures the line turned out, and in robot mode is probably only barely edged out by Undertow. The range of joints in the arm are even bolstered a bit by transformation hinges. The only thing you might consider to be missing is a swivel in the upper arm, but the structure of the shoulders can even help overcome that in some cases. Heavytread has another mild similarity with Brawl in terms of hands, where they're mostly implied. Granted, for Brawl that meant the vague outline of a fist in sculpted relief inside the tank track blocks, but Heavytread has something more like a top-down view of a fist buried in the leading edge of the treads, with exact nature and position of fingers less defined. Even this being the case, the opening in the fists while irregularly shaped was still made 5mm compatible, as well as the right forearm having an extra 5mm weapon port in the armor plate should that be more to your liking.

The legs are about average or maybe a tiny bit less for a Scout. But aside from having a less than convincing kneel, what articulation is there serves most any need I'd see really being called for. The joints are all strong and are more than up to the job of supporting the toy's weight, even all on one leg. The weak link is the hinge just past the knee used to transform the legs for torso mode. It's quite a bit weaker than the actual posing joints and it may be possible that some poses could be compromised as a result. There's no poseability of any kind past the knee in robot mode, and in this case I'm fine with that. Heavytread has big tank-block boots and it gives him a firm stance and solid balance. The squareness still gives stability even in a wide legged pose, so ankle jointing is not missed on this toy.

As briefly noted above, the waist does have a swivel if that's important to you. It's a big, solid joint, so there's no weakness of any kind because of it, and unless you accidentally turn it or go looking you might not even realize it's there at first. The turret backpack can also rotate on the back to suit your display preference. Heavytread's neck doesn't articulate correctly to let the toy look forward while bent over, so posing using the cannon in robot mode in the way you'd probably think of first doesn't work. But you can use a transformation joint to help a little. The turret will unlock from the back and hinges up. The cannon can sit just above the head, making the toy not need to lean forward nearly as much. The turret can also be rotated just off to the toy's right and the cannon hinged to point straight forward in a normal posture. The turret does look a little awkward hanging at an angle off the back of the shoulders, but don't blame me; you're the one who wanted to use the cannon in this mode. But yes, the head is on a ball joint, but up and down movement is basically limited to fold the head in to the torso, it can't really rock backward. Side to side swivel is unrestricted, and it can tilt to the sides a bit too. The head also seems to have been designed for lightpiping, but for whatever reason the eye piece landed on (one of?) the black plastic sprues.


Transformation

Compressing down in to a tank isn't difficult. And compression is basically what it comes down to. The arms collapse on to themselves to make the solid forward drive blocks and the lower legs hinge up over the hips to fill in the back end. The only thing even a little complicated is remembering at what point to flip the extra panels that finish closing in the tank structure to where they're going so everything comes together smoothly.


Vehicle Mode

Unlike Brawl's old Leopard, Heavytread becomes yet another instance of the Merkava. Also seen recently as Universe Galvatron, and a few others in varying degrees of modification. The vehicle mode comes together solidly, and as far as a tank's tendency to be a rolling armored box with guns, Heavytread is an unqualified success! The only moving elements in this mode are on the turret, which itself has unlimited rotation. The cannon doesn't have any kind of elevation possible, although my example features a cannon bent slightly upward. It still has the sideways hinge for the really pointless action of turning the gun all by itself to point to the vehicle's left. There's also a large block that makes up the rear portion of the turret which is made to hinge out to the left as well, but if there's a purpose for it in vehicle mode, it certainly escapes me. Incidentally, the position of sculpted and painted "lights" on the turret to either side of the cannon manage to do nothing so well as make a face appear in the vehicle mode. Now instead of Brawl I want to see this redone as Vehicon Tankor even though there's no similarity between vehicles outside of the vague appearance of a face. I hate me sometimes. Heavytread has little roller wheels under the treads as is common practice. But the forward pair cannot, at least on my copy of the toy, complete a single revolution. Probably some mold flash on one surface or another someplace I can't get to. The rear wheels can roll all the way, but not very freely. Bottom line here is that in most all cases it looks like Heavytread is more gonna drag along a surface instead of rolling easily.


Combiner Mode

If there is any place that this toy absolutely shines, it's this mode. What we have is hands-down the greatest torso mode of any Powercore Combiner figure. And as the torso is roughly the halfway point between vehicle and robot modes, it's equally easy to reach regardless of which mode you start with.

Aside from the torso being a little on the short side in terms of distance between shoulders and hips, the proportions on this torso are really great. It's wide across the shoulders, but completely solid in appearance as well as structure. The hips aren't spaced so far apart as to look unnatural, but have enough distance between them so the average leg drone will still fit okay. The stiffness of the leg joints as noted before also serve this purpose so you're spared the wild legs many Commanders come out with under the load of connected limb drones. And that applies just as well to the knee specific to combiner mode above the PCC connectors. While the instructions depict the combiner mode as having the waist turned compared to robot mode, either way works in terms of articulation. And treads-front may even be a little better since it seems to add a soft-ratchet effect to the knee joint, making it more stable.

The odd hinged element on the back of the turret as well as the sideways hinge on the cannon finally make sense in this mode. The turret is intended to be turned sideways itself, and the gun pointed up over the right shoulder, while the hinged element of the turret can similarly be angled to your liking behind or over the left shoulder. Mind, there's nothing to hold the turret in place back there, so you'll probably end up with this off kilter somewhat depending where you find to brace against the toy when adding drones or posing. Remember I said Heavytread's head didn't resemble Brawl outside of being vaguely shaped like a square peg? The combiner head fixes that. The combiner head also contributes to the appearance of proper body proportions here, as it is without a doubt the largest combiner head on any of these figures that have featured separate super robot noggins. It's not SUPER Brawlish, but especially if you look at the cartoon design you can see where the inspiration was taken in the general shapes, and then majorly up-detailed. This head is locked to swivel-only, though you can pull back a bit harder and get the piece it's attached to hinge back a bit, giving a little ability to awkwardly look up-ish.


Groundspike

Meanwhile, one of the best figures in the series comes with one of the weakest Mini-Cons. While clearly made like most of the others to fulfill one particular purpose and then shoehorned to the other several arrangements PCC Mini-Cons are supposed to fill out, Groundspike was built with the vehicle mode attachments in mind before anything else. As a result, the robot mode is very, very ...badly planned out. The legs make up at least 3/4 of the overall height, with the torso being a pretty flat block atop them. The head is unpainted and is so poorly defined that you'd be hard pressed to actually find the suggestion of a face without a magnifying glass - otherwise you're likely to assume the handle peg itself is intended to serve as the head. The arms are more like chicken wings, just big flaps that can't really do anything useful. ...actually, Groundspike has committed the ultimate crime with that realization, as it has led to me recalling Blazemaster and his similar appendages. Damn you, Mini-Con. Damn you.

The weapon mode is similarly troubled. The intent is to be some kind of claw weapon for melee combat. I guess I can kind of see it, but the "blades" of the "claw" are so blunt, what with their entirely square sides and flat edges, that it looks like a pair of fingers. Too bad the legs couldn't have had another joint each - at least that might have opened the possibility is making more of a pincer weapon. Wouldn't have been great, but definitely better than this. Another alternative is to straighten the legs and flatten out the wings and try to pass it off as some kind of firearm. A crossbow, maybe. Depending how you work with it, the Mini-Con port could be the barrel/emitter/whatever.

Groundspike fares so much better in the remaining modes. What this was obviously designed with primary intent for was the vehicle function. When plugged in to Heavytread's Mini-Con hardpoint in vehicle mode, it becomes a minesweeping plow. A kind of bad one since it doesn't actually touch the ground, but this is the only place where you can tell it's doing what it's supposed to. Extending from this, the armor mode works pretty well too. I prefer this to be left for combiner mode, since otherwise it ends up being much wider than the torso. The instructions show to do this with the legs angled up behind the "wings", which can work. But the hinge for the Mini-Con hardpoint is a little weak on my toy, so it'll frequently sag. The alternative I found was to bend the legs inward so that they fit under the chest overhang. Doing this braces them against the lower torso and helps to keep the armor in place. Though I will sadly admit that the Mini-Con's feet do end up in a less than ideal location and angle this way, in case that would be something which will actually bother you. You CAN turn the Mini-Con to the other side and bend the legs back so the feet are braced flat against the torso. But you can't show the painted surfaces of the wings like this, and it ends up actually looking like a robot jammed on to a bigger robot's chest, where that's mostly disguised otherwise.


Closing Remarks

The worst part of Heavytread is the Mini-Con. The main figure manages to just idle at "fine" in its worst moments and utterly excel at its best. This is the PCC figure that I imagine many, many people were wanting from the start. But as often happens in experimental lines, it takes time for the designers to figure out how to balance all the elements and deliver truly outstanding toys like this. It mirrors the Energon combiners to a degree, where the development path is easily traced from start to finish based on how well the toys do what they're supposed to. We've definitely reached the level-off point with PCC with Heavytread and the rest of his assortment. Even though Undertow pulls a little bit ahead for basic robot mode, Heavytread's combiner mode is an example of how it should be done. Heavytread is itself Excellent and only reduced to Very Good because of the severely lacking Mini-Con. Any theoretical reuse of this mold recolored in a five pack would probably go back to Excellent, though.

Actually, there is one other bad part about Heavytread. Availability. Since this wave never reached stores in the US, they're scarce as heck, and even Hasbro Toy Shop went through their supply in just a few weeks. Currently (as of the week of August 15th, anyway) Heavytread can still be ordered from Entertainment Earth ...in a whole case pack with Skyhammer and some rerun figures for something like $80 shipped. The only upside is that case of six figures has two each of Skyhammer and Heavytread, so you can recover some of the costs by selling the extras. I know anybody set on completing the line will find a way to get a Heavytread regardless, but otherwise I'd say that Heavytread might be worth up to $20 if you really really want one. It's a great figure, but remember it is just a Scout. Finding someone to split a case order with would definitely be the best way to get this right now, or just hope for them to find their way to Ross and Marshall's eventually.

-ExVee