I too found target stocked with the IDW figures.
Oh, hey
demonchylde, I forgot to mention that the Target that set out the Predacon Rising stuff also had new Construct Bots -- two of the smaller sets. I think one was Starscream.
Some thoughts on Abominus: what the holy hell is this?
First, there are some big differences from the package art to the final product. If you look at the box and some of the online pictures, it looks like there's more clear plastic than there really is. I had thought this, but wasn't sure till I got them all out. Some of them, like Blot/Blight, have some subtle clear plastic. But the back of the box would have you think it's mostly clear plastic, and it's not.
And that's a
big problem, because the clear plastic looks mostly good and the solid does...not. It's bad, mainly because of color choices. The back of the box has them all mislabeled, so I'm going to go with their G1 names. Sinnertwin/Twinstrike looks silly with baby blue. Cutthroat is done up in teal. Hun-Gurr is a light red plastic for the clear bits and a very light grey for the solid bits. It's not pink, but think of Barbie-style ruby jewelry.
Two unfortunate choices really sink the color scheme -- the first is a yellow accent paint that most of the figures share. It's a bright yellow that is actually quite cheery, or would be if the paint was a bit more heavily coated. The second is that all the weapons are molded in clear purple. Which, on it's own would be fine -- they look great.
Together, it looks like the Easter Bunny made a combiner.
It's all pastels and jewel tones, with light solid plastics and that silly yellow. Abominus is supposed to be
scary, but it's hard to be afraid of teal. Or watermelon jolly ranchers. Despite the fearsome sculpts, I can't get past the impression that this combiner is here to give me candy and plastic jewelry.
Plastic quality is pretty cheap. If I didn't buy it myself, I'd think this is one of those wacky third party knockoffs.
Sinnertwin/Twinstrike and Hun-Gurrr are pretty good in terms of sculpt -- they have decent beasts and good robot modes. Blot/Blight is somewhat an improvement over G1, which was a strange, strange...thing. But the robot hands just hang to the sides of the beast feet. It's ugly.
Cutthroat and Rippersnapper have very nice and clever robot modes. It's the beasts that are weird -- spindly or unconvincing. Rippersnapper is...I am at a loss for words. In G1, he was a shark-like thing and I don't even know what this is supposed to be anymore. It almost looks more like a plated insectoid rather than a beast. Cutthroat has a badass robot mode, but the beast gives the impression of a bird of prey in its chick phase, waiting in the nest for some worms. (The G1 sculpt was nothing to write home about either.)
The gestalt connections are a mix of great and horrifying. The arms are great -- two sets of double pegs for each arm. These are easy and stable connections. The only issue is that they depend on Hun-Gurrr's foot ball joints, and the soft plastic means they're not super tight. This can be fixed with nail polish. The arms are pretty mismatched -- one 'hand' is Rippersnapper's beak, which looks gimpy. The other is four of Sinnertwinstrike's appendages, which is grossly oversized.
The legs are
awful. It's a clever bit of inserting the dragon heads into the chest cavities and locking on to some clips. Unfortunately, because of the soft plastic and poor tolerance (and, perhaps, being shipped in Abominus configuration, which meant these were always connected, stressed, and stretched), they don't lock well. At all. It's better than early PCC spontaneous ejection, but not by much. On mine, Rippersnapper's sort of works, but Blot/Blight's is clearly not holding well. There really isn't much in the way of meaningful leg articulation, but this is a design disaster. Abominus has thunderthighs which don't hold together well -- a bad combination. At least it stands pretty well, but there won't be any dynamic poses.
Packaging is pretty good, though they got most of the names wrong -- it points to Hun-Gurrr and says Twinstrike, and on. Instructions are decent -- a different style, but not bad. Unfortunately, they're not very helpful. And Blot/Blight got left out -- I have an insert page that is Rippersnapper duplicated on both sides.
To sum it up: someone dropped the ball, bigtime. The color scheme is a colossal mistake. I have a kind of fondness for it, because it's super
stupid. But this is the most laughably colored combiner that doesn't involve Disney characters. It would be much better if it did look like the box, with its smoky greys and blues and a red that is actually red and not watermelon. The original Abominus had some odd colors, but here they are light instead of dark, cheerful instead of threatening, and completely
wrong.
The toy itself is not terrible, but it's a mix of bad and good ideas that are adversely affected by cheap, soft plastics, lack of articulation, and some strange design decisions. I don't know if the standalone figures will be better, but I will not be finding out. I recommend you avoid this and put the money toward something else.
in road trip to Houston 
