Transformers: Combiner Wars Scrounge is Something That Exists

OK, bare with me with this one. This is gonna be one of those articles where I talk about the wider context of a toy more than the toy itself. I fell down a rabbit hole on this one.

Scrounge's wiki picture

Scrounge is a lesser-known character from the Marvel comics, one of a number of "non-toy" characters created by Bob Budiansky. Bundiansky’s work isn't as well-respected as Simon Furman was, whom took over and wrote the popular bits later on, but the man hasn't tanked his reputation like Furman did. Scrounge was an Autobot whom remained on Cybertron, an eager to please spy whom hung around with the dark and brooding take on Blaster. He ran-afoul of the similarly non-toy Lord Straxus, and was sacrificed on the altar of drama. Aside from being noteworthy for being an early & lasting death in Transformers media, Scrounge was notable for his altmode. He turned into a wheel. Not a unicycle or owt like that, a simple, self-mobile, wheel. Oh, and he has a special arm designed for surveillance. Nobody at the time, and indeed after, thought this guy was gonna have a toy. Obviously, that changed, but it took a long while.

 

The 2016 Combiner Wars Computron toy, that's the lad in the upper-right

 

Advance thirty odd years. The time was 2016, and Combiner Wars was coming to a close. As the name implies, this line was about combining robot teams, and we were eating good. Possibly too good, as every mould was aggressively reused, and there was another problem. Hasbro and TakaraTomy were treating the toys rather differently. Hasbro was remixing and expanding teams rather than doing straight G1, while TakaraTomy was going full Sunbow G1 and modifying toys towards that aim. It wasn't exactly difficult for them to do this; Japanese Transformers releases are basically subsidised by Hasbro and the Western market, so unless we're talking about Masterpieces, risks and costs are lesser for them. While these were aimed at the Japanese collector market, which has its own character versus the West, Geewunners of course loved the TT versions, the discourse on this no doubt inspiring some silly things in the years ahead, but the Japanese versions broke the play pattern in the name of accuracy. Most combiner teams had received an additional Legends scale sixth member, which TakaraTomy ignored and shuffled off to act as filler elsewhere. The full ups and downs of East versus West are too lengthy a topic to go into here, but it arguably peaked with the Technobots. These were a latter G1 combiner team, of relatively modest fictional presence, whose main claim to fame was being created by Grimlock during a brief case of Super-Intellect. He got better. However, things played out a bit differently in Japan, whom made Transformers cartoons for longer, and the Technobots were somewhat more of a thing. Thus Hasbro and TakaraTomy took radically different approaches to them. Hasbro was more toy-based than anything, while TT used different moulds with new toolings on top of that. Which is better? I honestly don't know, I own neither, and haven't really handled either. I lean towards the Japanese version simply on the amount of effort put in, it doesn't use the flawed Brawl mould either, but there's a discussion you can have there, clearly. And a big part of that discussion is, well, our review subject.

 

This, after some 500 odd words, leads us to Scrounge. He was promoted, and presumably resurrected, to the sixth member of the Technobots. And he brought a seventh, Cybaxx. This is because Hasbro got a bit creative for the Technobots, swapping out the hand/foot guns for new combiner kibble, and threw in the 2014 vintage Cosmos toy as a sixth member, which also brought a seventh. Suffice to say, the resulting Scrounge toy was the highlight of the set, which I eventually acquired for a realtively cheap but non-trivial sum. On with the write-up then? Err, no. We have to talk about Cybaxx first. Who the cinnamon toast fuck is Cybaxx then? Well, imagine my utter surprise to find out that he's another Budiansky creation according to the wiki, actually Boltax by another name. One more easily trademarked apparently. Boltax was similarly another yellow dead dude, whom invites a really lengthy tangent about the Underbase storyline, a method to kill off a bunch of characters to make room for new toys. No, not the 1986 film, but close. Boltax was the caretaker of a functionally magical repository of Transformers knowledge, the Underbase, and was brutally killed by Megatron. Boltax had however become part of the Underbase beforehand, so it was less that he died so much as his puppet was destroyed. Later fiction from Fun Publications would resurrect him as Cybaxx. As to why Cybaxx is here? Well, the Cosmos mould came with a Micromaster called Payload, actually Blast Master, another legal thing, and I presume somebody remembered that Boltax was presented as a winged chap in yellow, and things flowed from there. Now, like the majority of the Thrilling 30 Legends partner dudes, Cybaxx is a quite simplistic but largely inoffensive chap. These are basically an upgraded accessory for the larger figure, so Cybaxx has a meh shuttle mode, a fairly decent gun mode, and a robot mode with two points of articulation and no fist holes. He's definitely got more going on than say Needlenose's guns, although the base mould is somewhat mid-tier in comparison to his tiny kin. Furthermore, this guy has precisely two paint applications and thus is extremely yellow. He's not bad, but he's not why you are here.

A comic panel of Boltax's Puppet, sourced from the wiki.

Scrounge meanwhile, to finally get to the main event, is also very yellow. He's got more paint on him, with three different colours no less, but we are still in ice lolly territory here, and the deco layout is fairly close to the original. As mentioned, Scrounge is based off the Thrilling 30 Cosmos mould, which is both a good fit for the Technobots as sixth member and a flat-out good toy in the first place. As far as Scrounge is concerned, becoming a UFO is a win. It's a fine upgrade, maintaining his fundamentally wheelly nature while gaining the power of flight. The lad got lucky, he so easily could have been one of those spring-loaded data disks from Fall of Cybertron. It's a nice sculpt, lots of good surface detail, guns up front, some engines and a tailfin out back. This is a modernised take on Cosmos' alt mode, not perfectly circular, but not the cutesy proportions of the recent Legacy toy. Aside from whooshing it around, there's a couple things you can do. Cybaxx can bolt on the front, and you can then bolt them on Computron as a shoulder shield. Not bad for a toy that predates the modern trend for 5mm ports, although not hugely exciting. Or safe, now that I come to think of it. Where the UFO suffers though is directly on the underside where the robot bits are, and where the new head sits. It's smaller than the original and rattles. 

 

 

The robot mode is where we see more pronounced differences from Cosmos, Scrounge having but one plastic colour, different shoulder decos, and a new head. The phrase "faithful to a fault" does come to mind here. Yes, the 80's comic did block colour him in yellow, but having a secondary colour would have helped. The head, meanwhile, is based off the more recent IDW version, and understandably isn't like a 1d4 in shape. On the plus side, the above is purely in the realm of subjective complaints. As far as robots made from discs go, this is basically ideal, and a good match for any comparably sized modern toy in terms of articulation and play value. He's got some well-placed balljoints, a swivel neck, a waist, and a few transformation joints you can make use of. There's oddities, sure, he's got a difficult altmode, but he's nicely posable, a heroic look, and has a gun friend. Oh, and the engines form a rocket-pack, gotta love that.

 

Doing the write-up for this guy was a bit of a trip, as a fell down a wiki rabbit hole and reminisced about old fandom arguments. Basically, the toy is a good one. I had Cosmos in the first place so I kinda already knew that, but handling Scrounge was like having the first impression all over again. So, he and Cybaxx are worth tracking down, although doing so is gonna be a right pain in the arse. That's why I leapt on the toy when I saw it. Combiner Wars sets tend to be serious money on the secondary market, and people aren’t like likely to part with the adorable wheel chap. What else can I say? Well, the colour choices at play here make me wonder how the multi-pack was budgeted. What came first here? The toy, the character, or the need to justify a mono-coloured repaint? I don't know. I'll leave that to the better informed. But certainly, Combiner Wars Scrounge and Cybaxx are something that exists. Let's end on some glamour shots.