Mostly just to answer your question: I am a member of the club, and I think the exclusives are cool.

Same here. I wasnt real thrilled with Skyfall when it first came out. A little too muted on the colors for me and not really one of my favorite molds... but I really like Landquake and Breakaway. right now im pray they dont use any of the Constructicons for limbs/body. And I agree I hope they use Barricade for the body with a remolded Gestalt head ^^

I am not a member of the TF club and I don't think the exclusives are THAT great. Bah, neon-ish repaints!!

BUT, I do own the original Energon combiner teams (all 3 of 'em) and yes, it sucks that "Hasblow" re-used molds for each team. Also the combined 'big' robots: devastator, bruticus, & superion are only ok. However the individual molds are pretty neat.
IMHO.

I think the idea is pretty cool, although an entire Combiner set released over several years seems, politely, rather ambitious even at this point in the club's history.

(Unless, rather cynically, it is an attempt to prevent people from leaving the club by appealing to those oh-so-terrible completest instincts.)

The rub for everyone seems to be the use of the Energon Combiners; an idea that was great in concept, but so poor in execution.

(Wait, when was the last time we tooled a Combiner mold? Oh, think of the new technologies we can apply to such a concept nowadays! Think of the articulation, the awesome level of show-accuracy! Ah... bugger it. Let's just knock out some more disproportionate bricks already.)

Folks:

I liked the Energon combiners. If you look at Takara's recent giant-robot combiners before that (in the Brave series and late G1) you can see very clearly what an advance the Energon figures were. I can't think of any of those nine molds that weren't decent Transformers in their own right. All had good robot and vehicle modes of their own, and I liked the use of crane or shovel parts as features rather than kibble. I used to have Duststorm set up on my shelf with his claw attached, grabbing a retreating Autobot. Yoink!
Though the figures had weaknesses, I found these to be no worse than any other figure. There was none of the freakish mutation visited on the earlier Scramble City figures, such as Tentakil or Swindle.

On top of all that, you could combine them. Yes, there were recolored limbs. This wasn't fantastic, though I think a worse problem is that some of the recolors were so hard to find in stores (I still don't have Bonecrusher or Blackout). This let us get three new gestalts with nine new molds, however, and you can play Scramble City to get around it (I suppose Bruticus could have an A10 and a payloader and be his own air support and engineering corps).
It's also true that the limbs and hands weren't always the best, but some were okay and others could be improved with Invincible Robot Laboratory-style fan modes. Besides, I'd rather have hands made of usable weapon parts than hands that are just kibble in some modes. These combiners were very kibble-free.

These combiners, I think, didn't really get the recognition they deserved. There was a big to-do and fanfare, then boom! the series ended and they washed away on the flood of new "crack", never really getting any characterization or decent use in fiction. It's a shame.

It still really bugs me that they made Superion instead of Defensor. But I guess two cop cars and two motorcycles wouldn't have worked.

It's just kind of depressing that after the superawesomeness that was JRX/Rail Racer, who I found amazing in all aspects (OK, Midnight Express's legs were too big for his upper torso, but c'mon!) they regressed a little bit. If I ever find my inner Harvey Pekar and get over my ob/com-ness, I'm keeping my Alternators, my Beast Wars guys, and him.

And Defensor and Menasor.

Yep, I love getting TF gestalt teams.
I still think the G1 Technobots were THE BEST.
IMHO.

DL: They were for me too until JRX (Rail Racer) was released. Predaking and Devestator are great too.

Alas, poor Silverbolt has just too crappy of legs to make a solid Superion.

Autobus:

The Energon combiners do deserve some recognition; from their homage credentials, to the massive leaps in articulation at the individual level.

And I think we are all in agreement; despite the unfortunate name reassignment, Barricade was an amazing example of how the Scramble City gestalts could be brought up to date.

Unfortunately, the general feeling nowadays is that Barricade was, in many respects, the exception to the rule.

To be fair, whilst the 'repeating' nature of the individual limb molds was understandable, it really undercut fan interest. And then there was the utter misuse of these guys in the fiction. Oh, and the horrid, *horrid* energon weapon gimmick! That one did not die a death quick enough.

Nala has his Black Fire Convoy. (Well, *had*... now it's Black God Magnus.) I have dreams and aspirations of a Masterpiece Bruticus. Until such a day, I will look upon the Energon combiners as a missed opportunity...

Another problem I have with the Energon gestalts is that you can't do big fat head mode on any of them.

F McB:

Doesn't Steamhammer's self-conversation mode make up for that lack?

Yeah, it's kind of funny how you can pull a Willem Dafoe in Spider Man with him, but I still dig Hotspot with Defensor's head more. Good catch, I'd forgotten about that.

Maybe the big head thing is because I come from a long line of fatheaded Irishmen.