Junkion Blacksmith Power of Destruction

Prelude: Power of Destruction is an upgrade set for G1 Devastator, created by third party provider Junkion Blacksmith and thus not an official Transformers product from Hasbro or Takara-Tomy.

Upgrade Set: The biggest problem of G1 Devastator was his complete lack of lower body articulation. While the arms could move somewhat, he was a statue from the waist down. Junkion Blacksmith fixes that by giving him a completely new hip, complete with upper legs and knee joints. It has little to do with that purple plate Devastator originally had in that place and finally gives the big guy some leg movement. It also makes him a good deal taller, too. The only thing the new hip / waist can't do is attach to Long Haul in vehicle mode, but that's a small price to pay, I think.

The new hip is the main part of the upgrade set, but far from the only one. The set also includes a new purple mixing drum for Mixmaster (apparently quite a few fans are kind of anal about the color of Mixmaster's mixing drum for some reason), a new chest shield for Devastator (not really that different from the original one, just a tad wider), a pair of new arms and two different heads. The arms are almost identical to the original ones in appearance, but they include elbow joints and articulated hands. The only downside to them is that you can't replace the fists with missiles, but again, a small price to pay. To go with the bigger hands, you also get a new rifle.

Finally the two new heads. Devastator had two vastly different animation models for his head in the original cartoon (sometimes switching within the same episode), so we got two heads you can chose from. Both look good, personally I like the one in the first few pictures the best, but that's really a matter of taste. Both heads are on a neck joint, so Devastator can look around now. So the bottom line: an all-around great improvement to the G1 combiner. Just about the only downside being that not all the new parts can attach to the vehicle modes of the Constructicons.

Remarks: Junkion Blacksmith wasn't the first third party company to issue an upgrade set to the original Transformers combiner to make him more cartoon accurate and give him proper articulation. I think CrazyDevy was the first, but I'm not certain. Anyway, this one here is the only one I've got and I can only say: good job. Seeing pre- and post-Uprade Devastator side by side (thanks to the magic of picture manipulation, of course) one would be hard-pressed to recognize them as basically the same guy. Upgraded Devastator looks pretty cool and probably as cartoon-accurate as you can make the original toy. So everyone who's got an original Devastator (or one of the reissues) should think about getting themselves one of these to get the most out of their classic toy.

Rating: A-

PS: I have added pictures of how the PoD set would look on G2 Devastator, plus a group picture of my season 1 G1 Transformers collection with upgraded Devastator looking in the background.