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Collectible of the Week: The Heroic Maximal Magnaboss (Kenner; 1997)

My son, Joel, is quite taken with Transformers Prime and especially the earlier TV series, Beast Wars: Transformers.  I’ve been helping him collect all the toys from that line, and he recently got his hands on “The Heroic Maximal Magnaboss,” a combiner in which “3 beasts become [a] super robot!,” to quote the boy ox.  Those three beasts are: Prowl, Ironhide and Silverbolt.

Magnaboss consists of “lion, elephant and eagle”, and each component comes armed with “powerful weapons.”  Then they “team up to create [a] super robot with massive battle sword.”  

Even better, a “hidden energon chip reveals” Magnaboss’s “true identity!”

I don’t believe that Magnaboss was ever actually featured on the TV series, and Silverbolt is a “Fuzor” of a wolf and an eagle, if memory serves, so I’m not certain how he became involved in this, uh, threesome.  But here’s the “bio and tech specs” on the back of the box:

“A new breed of super robot blasts its way to the head of the Maximal battle lines with three times the fighting force! Prowl’s ferocity, Silverbolt’s swiftness, and Ironhide’s strength team up to form Magnaboss – a triple power threat capable of annihilating any Predacon enemy, even the ultra- combative Tripedacus.  Magnaboss owns the battlefield, arming itself with a massive, megaton battle sword composed of Silverbolt’s razor-tipped wing swords and Ironhide’s blunt-force battle clubs mounted on Prowl’s cyber tail claw.  If two heads are better than one, Magnaboss is way ahead of that game…times three!”

This spec sheet makes mention of the Predacon combiner, Tripedacus, which I also found and purchased for Joel recently, but was, alas, not in its box.  Even at five, Joel tells me he prefers his toys “mint in box.” 

Of course, that state of minty-goodness doesn’t prevent him from instantly going for the gusto to open the boxes and tear them to shreds.  I’ve trained him to be gentle, so I can preserve the boxes for later use and display.