It's the last day of the month, and I remembered that I had for the very first time missed an installment of this feature last month. So, I thought over what I had backlogged for a post. That brought me to the "dinobot" category, which got its own post a while back, plus a follow-up for quite possibly the worst toy I have reviewed in the entire history of this feature that I bought new. (And as a reminder, I started with the patchisaurs...) I still had to think over how much I had that I hadn't covered before, which still left me with the two items I usually aim for as a minimum. As a bonus, they had something more in common: They are both incarnations of an authorized Transformers subline, specifically a bot who had the distinction of being possibly the most annoying character in the (animated) Transformers movie. Without further ado, here's Grimlock!
Now this is, to my best recollection, the more recent acquisition of the pair featured here. It's one of a number of specimens I have sighted in the last two or three years that seem to form their own line. The unifying features are that they are all based on G1 characters (or versions thereof), and are all quite large despite a low price for an authorized Transformer. I finally bought this guy at a sale price to see if it was worth buying more. Here's a couple pics to give an idea of what we're dealing with.
"I may look like I'm only a T. rex made of metal, but I'm really also... a far less threatening humanoid?"
So, the first thing I have to say is that I actually like the underlying idea here. The very plastic they're made of screams cheap, and close examination and handling will show them to be even more so than they might appear in my pics. The upside is, they are much sturdier and more robust than their new or old counterparts of any size or price. As a bonus, they actually do a good job covering both the collectible and actual toy markets. If you want 1980s nostalgia, it's a good return for the money. If you want something to give to a kid, it won't be in pieces within a day. The real problem is, it demonstrates all the worst qualities that a G1 Transformer could have. It's awkward, overcomplicated and just plain clunky, especially in the alt mode that is supposed to be the selling point. Here's one more closeup to show what I mean, with the second specimen for comparison.
Now for the second dino/ bot, I got him as another already cheap item at a reduced price, in a $5-10 range not much lower than what I got the big one for. What I got is in hindsight more streamlined and attractive than the one I got later. A few pics will show, however, that it shares most if not all of the same underlying problems.
"Small legs, smaller arms, what could possibly go wrong?"
What will be especially conspicuous are the stumpy legs of the dino mode. It is of further note that both designs have the tail of the dino folding back to form the legs of the humanoid bot, which is far from the most ungainly transformation step (at least the head isn't literally coming out of the pelvis...), but still a complication for both modes. A unique problem is that there is a very strange joint connecting the rib cage and head of the dino to the rest of the body (visible as the black panel on the back), which has repeatedly separated entirely when I do this. Here's a sequence to show this is supposed to work.
Hup, hup...
So far, so good...
Ta da!!!
Hmm...
Okay, this is not optimal.
Of course, the underlying problem is, what does a dino bot really do? In terms of camouflage, this is perhaps the single most egregious case of the transformer concept defeating itself. (Then again, there's also the one "disguised" as a flying saucer.) An obviously metal dino isn't really disguised as anything, which the authorized Dinobots did effectively admit. If you did make it look like an organic dinosaur (the simplest explanation for whatever the Hell the
Walmart cyborg dino was), then it's still something regular humans will know is "supposed" to have been extinct for many millions of years. By comparison, even the
Changeables disguised as things people eat make marginally more sense. (And, as I ranted in the
Gobots movie review, looking like
actual rocks would be close to ideal.) Then, even with disguise out of the picture, there's still the question of how the transformation improves on what you already have with the dinosaur, especially an already bipedal one like a tyrannosaur. A carnosaur has massive jaws, two arms and two legs that can all be further modified in size and functions. A humanoid robot has two arms and two legs. The real answer is that robot dinosaurs were both of the things '80s kids loved, and a Transformer that doesn't transform would have been admitting the jig was up.
And that brings us back around to the big bot. If you were wondering why I didn't show the humanoid bot before, the simple answer is, he's just too big to shoot without reorienting the camera. So, I waited till the end to try a pic, which required further experimentation with lighting on the Couch Mark 2. Here's the big guy with mini Grimlock, the reissue stego bot,
the Marx Japanese officer and the
Truckstop Queen. Behold, ye mighty, and despair!
That's all for now, more to come!
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