My turn!
The Superlink/Energon Superion.
Why I like it: The original five-member combiners, while fairly original in concept, were still pretty faulted. The individual figures all lacked any substantial articulation, and this was magnified in the larger mode, along with the problem of too many parts. (I'm not talking out of my ass here - this bugged me even when I was a kid).
With the advent of Superlink/Energon, we got the five-member scheme back for new sets of figures. Not only were the individual figures well-designed and articulated out the wazoo, but the gestalt modes were, too! In addition, the new designs rectified the lego-kit problem of the originals. The gestalt hands and feet are simply used as weapons for the other modes (or perhaps the weapons being used as hands/feet is more accurate). This was awesome!
My favorite out of the three was Superion. Not only did the toys themselves seem well-done, but their form as a small squadron gave the Autobots some military strength, as well. It didn't have molded fists, per se, but the gun assemblies could open and close, and that was close enough for me considering all the negative baggage from the G1 combiners was dumped. Besides, it made more sense for the gestalt mode to have guns instead of hands: if it needs to use hands, it could just disengage into the sub-bots; if the sub-bots need more firepower,
then they could combine to use more heavy arms.
Why other people dislike it: It ain't got no hands. People seem to have remarkably small imaginations when it comes to the aesthetic designs of alien-transforming-robots
With a little bit of mental play, all of the dis-human aspects of appearance and functionality can be easily and logically rectified, as above. But, alas, no...
There's also the matter of the reuse of molds, but that was because of financial limitations, so I've personally never considered that as a valid topic for critique.
Also, it is a little gawky-looking, but this seems immaterial as well. They combine for fire-power, not fashion styles
Anyway, whatever faults it does have seem to be vastly outweighed by the amount of things it gets right due to the advance in quality over the originals.
So nya.
Also, I don't think people have fully realized how cool the Robotmaster Seeker jet mold is yet. It's not quite as articulated as it needs to be, but it's a far-and-away improvement over the original just because it dumps all the spare parts.
No one (aside from Flec, anyway...) seems to pay these guys much attention, though.
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