Combiner Wars Dragstrip review

So the Combiner Wars are well underway. Wave 1 has been out for like, two months, and Wave 2 is seemingly starting to trickle out. And since I'm always behind, I'm just now buying something from it! 

In alt mode, Dragstrip is an open-wheel race car, the type you'd see in Formula 1. It's a realistic one, not the silly six wheeled thing he was in G1, and it's absolutely gorgeous. It's clean, sleek, and just all around sexy. The colors are good, he has plenty of paint everywhere he'd need it, my only issue with the deco is that it's pretty easy to tell between what's the plastic color and what's painted, which is a bit jarring and breaks up the look in certain spots. And it's surprisingly big. He's short in height, but he's quite a bit longer than your average Deluxe vehicle. There's a variety of ways to mount the weapons on the car, but all of them look super dumb, as you'd probably expect. But overall, a damn good alt mode.

The transformation is a blast. It's very simple, but I think that's more to its credit than a detriment. I love switching this guy back and forth, it's easy, intuitive and has a certain flow to it.

Being a combiner limb, Dragstrip has, well, limb modes. So let's briefly touch on those. The leg mode is... okay. There's not really much to it. It's not a huge change from the car mode, and I really don't like the look of the back of the car being on display at the front, it looks ugly and, to use an extremely tired phrase, hollow. I dig the arm mode, though. It looks really clean and solid, though I wish the robot arms had somewhere to lock in place. And for some reason, I really like the look of putting the dagger in the hand like a little knife for Menasor. Also, gotta love those delicious ratcheted connector pegs.

Robot mode has a somewhat basic aesthetic. Colors are a bit of a weak point, he's made up of a lot of solid yellows, reds and grays without much detail to break it up. And those screws really are ugly. I'd go as far as to say he looks boring... if his head weren't so fucking awesome. I ADORE the visor design with the little "tear" marks, it's so characterful, and kind of creepy. Dragstrip looks sadistic. Articulation is pretty good, though I think the neck and shoulders are too tight, and I don't like how the head is mounted on some weird pole thing. It's just... odd. Still, you can get him into some good poses.

In terms of accessories, Dragstrip has some sort of dagger, which the design of kind of reminds me of the little Star Saber from PRID Voyager Optimus, and the hand/foot piece that can also be a gun. The dagger is cool, I like the ongoing trend of Dragstrip being a sword fighter, but the gun is dumber than dumb. It's way too wide, and you can blatantly see the fingers on top. You can sort of mount it on the shoulder like a shield, but that's not really any better looking. And there's nowhere else to store it, so it goes off to the side when he's not a limb. 

Overall, Dragstrip is pretty good. He's not amazing, but has a gorgeous alt mode, a fun transformation, some serviceable limb modes and a decent robot mode with an awesome head design.