Generations Selects King Poseidon

 

Prelude: For all that the Seacons and Piranacon never played a big role in the West, they were sure popular in Japan. They starred in Masterforce, appeared in Zone, and were repainted for Beast Wars II. So hail to the king of the seas, the one and only Targetmaster Combiner, and the first combiner in the Generations Selects series. We went through six individual Seacon reviews, now it’s finally time to look at the full package. King Poseidon, let’s say go!

Combined Mode: King Poseidon is composed of Turtler, who forms the torso, and you can freely choose from the other Seacons (Overbite, Tentakil, Kraken, Gulf, and Lobclaw) to assemble the limbs. Each Deluxe-sized Seacon can become an arm or a leg and there isn’t really a standard configuration here. If you wish to color-coordinate somewhat, you can have Gulf and Tentakil as legs and Kraken and Lobclaw as arms (or vice versa), but it’s really up to your personal preference. Turtler works okay as a torso, though personally I find him a bit too lean. The combiner head looks pretty good, so no complaints here.

Side note: my Tentakil does not work well as a leg, because the hole where the combiner foot plugs in is a tad too wide, the foot always comes off. Not sure if this is a general problem or not.

The main difference between King Poseidon / Piranacon and the other combiners is, of course, that there are actually six members, but only five combine into the actual robot. The sixth member becomes a weapon for the combiner to wield (the Seacons were actually advertised as the “Targetmaster Seacons” during G1). Which is a very cool idea in theory and worked reasonably well in practice in the days of G1 Piranacon, but comes with some complications for this larger Generations Selects version. Mainly that the weapons resulting from Deluxe-sized robots are really too heavy and unwieldy for the combiner to properly hold. The design with the weapons using the combiner port to plug into the back of the combiner’s hands is pretty well done, but no matter how you put the combiner together, the weapon (any of the five) is just too heavy to actually point without the help of a display stand.

Leaving the Targetmaster issue aside, King Poseidon is a very cool-looking combiner and has plenty of weapons even without using one of the Seacons as one. The six sword pieces carried by the individual members combine into a large trident-sword, somewhat resembling the weapon of the original G1 combiner. You can also give KP the big rifle of Turtler as a gun and attach additional guns from the other Seacons to your leisure (here, too, many variations are possible).

Articulation is pretty good. The Silverbolt mold that serves as the basis of Turtler might have been somewhat overused, yes, but that doesn’t take anything away from it working very well. King Poseidon has also gotten a hand upgrade, each of the fists has individually articulated fingers. The feet work fine (and feature yet more guns) and plugging two of the left-over combiner hands into them as heels gives King Poseidon great stability.

Overall King Poseidon is a pretty good combiner. His main selling point is the sixth member Targetmaster gimmick, of course, which doesn’t work that great, but apart from that I really like him. There is, of course, another way to assemble him, too. Let’s go into beast mode!

Beast Mode: The only sensible way to actually use all six Seacon members in a combination without one of them being a perpetually downward-pointed weapon is the beast mode. It’s a fan mode, of course, and as much as I would like to say differently, I am not the one who originally came up with this idea. I sadly have no idea who did, just saw a reposted picture and had to try it myself. You basically leave Turtler in torso mode, but leave the combiner head tucked away. Four Seacons forms his legs, with the combiner feet becoming his front paws (so to speak). The big rifle becomes the tail. Finally Overbite becomes the head of the beast. Put him in weapon mode, but with the beast head snapped into place, and use his rifle’s handle to plug him into the torso of Turtler. Parts of the sword become his crest. See the pictures for details and feel free to vary the position of the various weapons and extra parts.

In my personal opinion this is by far the superior form of King Poseidon and simply looks awesome. All six Seacons are included, as are all weapons, and no parts are left over. Sure, he takes up quite a bit more shelf space this way, but since when has that ever been a valid argument? Besides, in this form King Poseidon is the perfect foil for Sky Lynx, too.

Remarks: Neither King Poseidon nor his Western counterpart Piranacon ever had much luck when it came to their choice of opponents. In the Marvel comics Piranacon was taken down by Galvatron and Starscream, in Masterforce King Poseidon was frequently smashed by Super Ginrai, and in Zone he was taken apart by Dai Atlas. I’m actually not sure he ever won so much as a single fight. He sure looked scary, though.

King Poseidon is the first Takara-exclusive to the Generations Selects line (I think Star Convoy came a bit later than Turtler and Gulf, didn’t he?) and was spread out in three sets of two over the better part of a year. I got in late on the action, but was lucky enough to get all six of them at retail price rather than the somewhat bloated ebay prices they are going for now. While he is not perfect, I really like King Poseidon, especially in his unofficial beast mode. Looking just at the official configuration, I’d say he is good, but the rather imperfect execution of the Targetmaster gimmick prevents me giving him an A-rating. In beast mode, though, he is near-perfect. Fully recommended to all fans of combiners, unless you don’t like Transformers with beast modes.

Rating: B (official mode) / A- (fan mode)