My interest in Prime has gone out the window.
I hate that Predaking is not a combiner. I also
hate that Predaking seems to be warmed over Scourge (the three-headed
dragon) from Cybertron. It's like it's a doubly watered-down retread, and it's certainly not worthy of the name. Predaking is one of the best combiners and it tops many absolute favorite lists. Even if it's not your personal favorite, it's one of the most imposing and grand. This is an orange dragon thing. It's big and it makes Starscream nervous. So what?
If I had to sum up my problems with Beast Hunters, it's that there's nothing new. Half the molds are last year's figures that Hasbro colored with highlighters and glued spikes on. The rest look like the worst ideas from Beast Wars in an unholy mating with low-rent Digimon. It looks awful, cheap, and uninspired.
I also think that the further that Transformers gets from the idea of "robots in disguise", the lazier the designs get and the sillier the stories and toys become. It takes effort to make convincing vehicles that also turn into convincing robots, and Takara/Hasbro have really elevated this to an art form. Some of the Prime vehicles are so good, and it's amazing what they can design into a small toy. Even Beast Wars kept up the idea that they were taking existing forms and not just doing anything goes.
Beast Hunters is skipping that and going straight to the covered-in-mechanical-crap and it's-vaguely-a-monstery-dinosaury-thing stage. Predaking wouldn't even be in disguise on Westeros, though it might possibly fool some Power Rangers. About the only thing that's really notable about Predaking is that it's big. Again: so what? Dinosaurs are cool. Dinobots are even cooler. Orange pseudo-dragon things that look like Michael Bay blew up a Zord are not.
