Combiner Wars is a subline imprint of the Generations toyline, constituting the first portion of the Prime Wars Trilogy.
Debuting at the very end of 2014, it saw Deluxe, Voyager, and some Legends Class figures able to form Combiner robots, primarily of the Scramble City variety that allows the Deluxe figures to be either an arm or a leg, and allowing mix-and-match combinations. The format for Legends Class was changed once again, dropping the small partner figures of the Thrilling 30 line.
The tradition of including IDW comic books with U.S. Deluxes (started by the Thrilling 30 segment) continued, whilst Legends, Voyagers, and non-U.S. Deluxes gained collector cards featuring art taken either from the Transformers Legends mobile game, or simply the toy's package art (which doubles as the comic book cover for the U.S. version). Each pack-in comic also included an expanded profile for the toy written by Mark Weber. However, due to production schedule problems, Deluxe wave 1's initial U.S. release featured the collector cards in lieu of comics. Along with the concurrently released Robots in Disguise line, Combiner Wars also heralded the return of multilingual packaging to the United States market, now in English, French, Spanish, and Portuguese. The sole exception to this was the Deluxe figures packaged with comic books, which retained English-only packaging.
Meanwhile, Combiner Wars marked the end of the Toys"R"Us exclusivity for Generations figures that had been in effect in several European markets since the launch of the original line in 2010 (which had usually resulted in only one wave per assortment ever being released in Europe). Not only did availability and distribution improve tremendously across the board—the Combiner Wars figures were even released in European markets where Generations figures had previously never been available at all! At the same time, European packaging reduced the number of languages from thirteen to a mere four (English, French, German, and Spanish), resulting in a less cluttered packaging design.
After the general retail assortments had run their course, the line was extended for several months via giftsets of complete teams featuring redecos and retools, referred to as "Collection Packs" in official promotional materials. Those sets were typically "shared exclusives" between online retailers and the online storefronts of "big box" retailers, though they were also available at brick and mortar retail in several non-U.S. markets.
The Japanese version of this line, Unite Warriors, was considerably smaller, being almost entirely boxed sets released on a very staggered schedule.