Phil's Beast Wars Transmetal Reviews

[Philip Ayres]

One of the other things on my list to do is the Armada Beasts as most of them only got 2 lines originally, and Cheetor got nothing at all.

Now I've done 2 already Terrorsaur and Megatron

So that leaves 3 to go. And having done them I'll be but 2 toys short of doing all the deluxe Transmetal toys - one of which is mostly covered already in the Beast Wars 10th anniversary reviews.

I don't expect to do these anywhere near as quickly as the Dinobot ones so you might be waiting a while for the last few especially as I'm in London for a couple of days this week and then we're going away.

So without further ado:

[Philip Ayres]

Transmetal Rhinox

www.tfu.info/1998/Maximal/Rhinox/rhinox.htm

Rhinox received a Transmetal form in the toyline, but kept his original form in the show - like Waspinator. Terrorsaur can be seen turning Transmetal in his dying moments so you like to think there's a TM Terrorsaur buried down there somewhere. The philosophy behind the Transmetal toyline is robotic beasts and more organic robots, and this certainly shows in Rhinox with plenty of mechanical detailing all over the body. The main colour in this mode is a dull silver grey with some dark green pieces like the horn and the feet, and large sections of metallic green covering the rear of the toy on which his name is found

Like all Transmetal toys Rhinox has a third "vehicle" mode. Fold down the skis under the forelegs and stretch those legs forward. Pull open the backs of the rear legs, and fold the lower part of the rear leg in. Pull down on the rear leg unlocking the bar the hip is connected to, and fold the legs down so the back of the legs - the tracks - are on the flat aligned with the skis in front. I've always thought of Rhinox as a tank, but I suppose he could be some form of Snowmobile - later developments will make this more of a possibility. Return to beast mode to start the TF to robot..

TF: Fold the bottom of the rear legs into the hole covered by the tank treads at the top of the legs. Fold the skis down on the front legs. Pull the front legs out to the side - they and the panel it's attached to should slide out. Turn this panel through 180 degrees so the front legs are near the rear of the beast. Open the chest, flip up the arms, separate the beast head in half and fold to the sides. Set the horn aside for later. Flip up the back panel and fold it over the front of the beast locking it into the space in the chest cavity revealing the robot head. Close the chest panels. Pull the back of the beast out and fold onto the robot's back. Bring the front beast legs together at the back of the beast to form the robot's legs. Insert horn as hand weapon.

The resulting robot exposes a lot more of the green, especially on the organic sections like the chest and the shoulders. The face plate is yellow as is a pattern on the chest. Articulation: Bending ankles and knees, ball jointed hips, turning head, shoulders that shrug up, turn fore and aft, and bend out to the sides at the bottom of the large shoulder panel. Elbows are ball joints again. You can see it's meant to be Rhinox at the head has some aspects of the character's animation model like the crest over the top, but compare it directly to the cartoon and it misses by a mile.

Overall: Not a bad toy. Needs a better face.

Fox Kids Transmetal Rhinox

www.tfu.info/2000/Maximal/FKTMRhinox/rhinox.htm

One of the great disasters of modern TFs. You could argue that Hasbro was new to the repainting lark but surely they could have made a better job than this ? The metallic green becomes a lighter green. OK. The dark green becomes grey. Still ok. The silver becomes bright light blue ? Bwuh ? What were you thinking Hasbro ? Black, yes. Dark green, yes. Bright blue ?? No. If anything it gets worse in robot mode when you flip it open and find the yellow is now red. Now I've long argued for a red BW Rhinox robot with black armour to be Ironhide. But with these colours ? No thank you. I'd like to argue that it's the worst FK repaint. But I've seen BW Waspinator. AVOID AT ALL COSTS !

Armada Rhinox with Armourhide

www.tfu.info/2003/Autobot/Rhinox/rhinox.htm

Thankfully a few years later Armada came along and brought with it some common sense !

Reviewed in package a few years back I said "TM Rhinox looks good in a browny red. The Minicon posts on his back legs are softer plastic inserted into the harder surround, and are coloured yellow, with a yellow energy like decal on the hip. Armourhide is a Blue Iceberg Adventure Team minicon. Overall looks nice but I have foresworn recolours. Mostly. "

The rust colour continues to appeal to me. I'd question the placing of the minicon ports now which are inaccessible in vehicle mode to most minicons. Maybe the round discs on each robot hip would have been more suitable ? I'd not spotted before today but there's another remold on the toy - the panel under the chest is remolded with a small Autobot symbol.

Armourhide is a Snowplough - a repaint of Iceberg of the Adventure Team. Now you see why I now think Rhinox could be a Snowmobile. Doesn't really marry well with Rhinox's beast mode though ! Armourhide maintains Iceberg's gear gimmick. Roll him along a flat surface and the jaws of the snow plough open and close. Alternately clip him to the underside of Armada Cyclonus and Cyclonus' rotor spinning action powers the plough moving gimmick.

TF: Pull the back out to form the legs. Pull up and back on the cab to reveal the head which is folded out. Close the cab up. Spin the waist 180 degrees.

Resulting robot moves at the waist, hips and shoulders. And unlike Predacon's Street Speed Team packs ins doesn't fall apart ! Decent pack in, though I always thought Rhinox worked better with a Land Military Minicon - would give him a missile launcher ! - and that the Beasts might have worked better as a marketing exercise with 2 of the combining weapons spread between them.

It's a decent version of Rhinox, and in an odd way is probably the best of the 3 TM versions with colours closest the original.

[Philip Ayres]

Transmetal Airazor www.tfu.info/1998/Maximal/TMAirazor/tmairazor.htm

Transmetal Airazor was on of the first TF toys I got by trading - loose versions of her, TM Terrorsaur, TM Waspinator and TM Scavenger.

Airazor is - as she was in her previous basic form - a bird of prey. She's gained a size class and had her colour changed drastically - gone is the brown but the yellow remains if moved in location and in come white and blue along with some chrome - either in blue or lilac. The wing and tail tips are painted in red, and there's a small amount of orange detailing too. Her name is written along the chromed back armour near the point where it splits for the TF. The wings fold forward or back - there's about a 90 degree range of movement. Her bird legs - the robot arms - bend at the hip knees and ankle. The beak doesn't open but can bend down. As a whole the bird mode is elegant with a nice colour set and does quite a bit.

She has a third vehicle mode: Fold the beak down, stretch the legs out behind her. Move the wings to the straight out the sides position and slide them back about 1cm. Unclip the blue front edges of the wing, swing round to point forward, fold them down, fold out the support strut and peg into the underside of the wing. Airazor is transformed into a plane, probably a sea plane by the appearance of the landing gear under each wing,. Pulling back on each wing has revealed a pair of engines. It's a decent looking vehicle, one of the best in the TM line.

TF: (from beast mode) Pull down on the legs unclipping the undercarriage - robot chest - from the rest of the bird. Fold the legs to the side to form the arms. Fold the head up and peg the robot chest to the back of the underside of the beast. Pull down slightly on the robot wings, unlocking the halves of the back armour. Fold the back armour to each side. Bring the robot legs out from, under the tail, and then fold the head down under the bird locking into the robot's chest. Rotate the wings through 180 degrees so the tops are now underneath the bird - on the same side as the robot's front - and fold them back. Fold back the tail, spin the forearms 180 degrees at the elbow and unfold the feet.

The resulting robot mode reveals a lot more of the yellow on the robot chest, head - painted in red with a crest very like the cartoon's Airazor, and on the robot's legs. The beast's hands hang off the end of the arms under the hand like some sort of three pronged attack claw weapon. She has a ball jointed neck, shoulders, elbows and hips while the knees and ankles bend. She does have a waist joint but since this is limited at the back by a strut in robot mode and doesn't need to be turned in the TF I don't really see the point of it. Her balance in this mode isn't great - vastly helped if the wings are folded down so the tips are providing support. If you want the wings pointing up I suggest you might want to lean her against something.

Incredibly she also has a fourth Armoured warrior mode. Fold the arms straight down the sides, then bring the wings forward, bend the chest armour forward and lock in front of the robot chest. It's not much but it's a nice touch.

Overall: My favourite TM toy, indeed one of my favourite BW toys. Decent modes, lovely colours, decent articulation, filled with personality. Get one.

Fox Kids Transmetal Airazor

www.tfu.info/2000/Maximal/FKTMAirazor/airazor.htm

When I first got this toy I said "Airazor - very like the original TM Airazor, just with less bright colours. About all I can say really.... "

It was after that looking at it besides the original and seeing the washed out colours that I coined the term "Zombie Airazor" to someone. It fits. It's like some of the vibrancy has been sucked out of it. It's not a bad repaint - if not a terribly original one being so close to the original - it's just less vivid than the original.

Armada Airazor with Nightscream

www.tfu.info/2003/Autobot/Airazor/airazor.htm

"TM Airazor is purple and dark grey with red and silver hints. One minicon post molded into each wing surrounded by a blue energy spark effect. She comes with Nightscream a dark purple Street Speed team minicon (I think it's Oval)"

This is a very effective repaint - almost a stealth version. The black replaces the white and some of the yellow & blue, the purple the metallic blue and the rest of the purple and blue. The purple is very dark, you need to look twice to distinguish it from the black. Highlights are in grey, silver and red plus the already mentioned energy sparks.

Nightscream is a car - a purple repaint of Oval from the Street Speed Team. The other 2 members of the team are repainted with Armada Predacon. Looks much better than the original.

TF: Pull back on the back of the car to form the legs. Fold the front of the car over onto the robot's body. Swing the sides down as arms, fold the roof down as the robot's back, Fold the head up.

Robot maintains the purple from the car exposing some grey on the body and upper legs, and having a green visor. He's got ball jointed hips, arms that move at the shoulders and bend in the middle. The mid arm joint is weak like the rest of the SST. Generally he holds together better than the other though, but the point where car front locks to robot body is weak.

Overall: Nice pairing, and a very good repaint of both parts.

[Philip Ayres]

Transmetal Cheetor www.tfu.info/1998/Maximal/Cheetor/cheetor.htm

Cheetor is one of the lead character in the Beast Wars show so it was obvious they'd try and do a new version of him. This mechanical version of the beast is mainly grey, with some green highlights and a large amount of gold chrome. The tail is fixed in shape, but can be removed and inserted the other way round giving him an axe for a tail. He's got ball jointed rear hips and rotating front hips, plus bending knees and ankles on all 4 legs. The beast head can be folded down a bit as part of the TF mechanism. The beast articulation is significantly improved from the earlier BW Cheetor.

Cheetor has a third mode of sorts: open the panels on his sides and flip out 2 jet boosters. Yup, that's it. A Cheetor with rockets. Probably the poorest of the TM vehicle modes (except maybe Monkey on a surfboard !)

TF: Straighten the rear legs behind the beast and fold down the heel spurs. Fold the bottom of the front legs up along the front of the top of the leg. Fold the front legs up so they face forward. Pull the back armour the legs are attached to up and back along the beast. Fold the beast head down under the beast and at the same time push the robot head up through the hole in the panel. Split the beast head in two and fold to the side as the robot arms. Turn the lower arms round so the hands face forward. Remove tail and place in hand as a hand weapon.

The robot exposes a lot of yellow on the robot chest, arms and inner legs, most of it patterned with Cheetor's black spots. The face looks like Cheetor, albeit one with a bit of a grimace. He bends at the ankle, twice near the knee, has ball jointed hips, shoulders, elbow and neck, and has a waist joint. It's nearly impossible to fold the boosters out in this mode.

Overall: Solid figure, a step up from the previous Cheetor in Beast Mode articulation.


Fox Kids Transmetal Cheetor www.tfu.info/1999/Maximal/FKTMCheetor/fktmcheetor.htm

This is another "What were they thinking ??" repaint ! The gold stays, the grey becomes a dark red and the green a sort of greeny brown. The yellow paint on the robot turns silver ! It's an odd car crash of colour scheme that has to be seen to be believed. Click on the link above to see TFU's pictures of this extraordinary toy. Hard to track down now !


Armada Cheetor www.tfu.info/2003/Autobot/Cheetor/cheetor.htm

with

Minicon Cliffjumper www.tfu.info/2003/Mini-Con/Cliffjumper/cliffjumper.htm


On the surface of it Armada Cheetor is odd too. The green is dark grey, the silver/grey is black, the gold is bright purple (!) and the yellow is neon red/pink. Train wreck ? No ! Somehow this weird mish mash of colours works. There's a general stealth theme to this toy - spoilt a little by the red/pink ! The minicon posts for this toy are the remolded ends of the boosters - inaccessible in robot mode, and pointing forward in "Vehicle" mode. Only certain minicons would look right attached to this - ones with ports at the back. Sky Blast is one - see previous comments in other reviews about packing a combining weapon with the Armada Beasts. Another is Ransack of the Adventure Team.

He's been repainted as Cliffjumper using the same purple and red/pink as Cheetor (so not red and black as per G1). I seem to remember somewhere that Armada Cliffjumper is a she. The gear gimmick is intact - she has a tow rope on the front that can be pulled out. Roll her along a flat surface and the rope retracts. Alternately clip her to the underside of Armada Cyclonus and Cyclonus' rotor spinning action powers the rope gimmick.

TF: Fold the back down to form the legs. Raise the arms. Simple.

As is the robot - bends at knee, hips and shoulders. More of the red/pink visible here.

Not bad combination - especially in terms of how the minicon attaches. Odd colour scheme that somehow works !

[Philip Ayres]

Transmetal Rattrap

www.tfu.info/1998/Maximal/Rattrap/rattrap.htm

Rattrap gets a size class upgrade when going to his Transmetal form - he becomes a deluxe where he was previously a basic. This new rat for has an articulated tail - 12 segments including the base and the tip that either bend up & down or to the sides in relation to the previous piece. There's not a lot of articulation in Beast mode other than that. There's 2 large wheels mounted on the rear hips, and 2 smaller wheels behind the front legs. The larger wheels and the middle of the body are picked out in metallic red, most of the head and the rear of the body is brown, the feet and the tail are a sort of brassy colour, and there's a little grey visible through the sides of the beast.

To TF vehicle mode - pull wheel panels to the sides at the back and fold rear legs in. Twist front legs so wheels are facing downwards. Fold the tail out straight behind it and flip the exhaust pipes out from the rear of the beast. It's basically a rat on wheels. Of all the TM vehicle modes only Waspinator's and Airazor's are any great shakes.

To TF robot - fold up rear wheels and remove tail. Unpeg robot legs from under rat and fold out in front of rat. Fold head halves out to each side. Fold the arm underneath him out to form his right arm. Fold out the arm inside him. Fold robot body and legs down, and then push on neck to pop robot head out . Rotate robot legs at thigh and straighten ankles.

Robot mode is articulated at ankles, knees and elbows, with a bicep and thigh swivel joint and ball & sockets at his shoulders and hips. His tail becomes a whip - preferred the gun he had as a basic robot. It appears as if his head is open and you can see brain within - this is picked out in orange as is some chest highlights, and there's some blue paint highlights on head and chest.

Overall - not bad, but I'm not so hot on most of the Transmetal characters as I am the original beast toys.


Wal mart Transmetal Rattrap
www.tfu.info/1999/Maximal/WalmartRattrap/walrat.htm

Walmart Rattrap aka Walrat aka TM Pakrat - after the early Botcon exclusive - is the first TF store exclusive that I can remember. He's a basic paint swap - blue for brown, metallic blue for metallic red, a pink/silver/grey for the brassy gold, and a more blue grey for the grey bits. The brain and chest highlights are now coloured green.

V nice repaint, works.


Puzzle Rattrap www.tfu.info/1999/Cybertron/PuzzleRattrap/rattrap.htm

Puzzle Rattrap was a Japanese exclusive packed with a Jigsaw puzzle - hence the name ! Again he's a basic paint swap - white for brown, metallic orange for metallic red, a silver/blue for the brassy gold, and a orange for the grey bits. The brain and chest highlights are now coloured blue.

Great colour combination, looks good. But rare - The only one I could find on eBay was £50 !


Fox Kids Transmetal Rattrap
www.tfu.info/2000/Maximal/FKTMRattrap/rattrap.htm

FK Rattrap is another example of the random throwing of paint at a toy seemingly practiced at times on this range. Red for brown, metallic blue for metallic red, a pale grey for the brassy gold, and a shiny grey for the grey bits. The brain and chest highlights are now coloured green. It's a tiny bit bright in places, not as bad as FK TM Rhinox but it's not a terribly great repaint.


Tenth Anniversary Rattrap

www.tfu.info/2006/Maximal/Rattrap/rattrap.htm

Transmetal Rattrap comes with A Better Mousetrap on DVD and Transmutate's right arm.

Ah yes the odd ball in the Tenth Anniversary assortment. Want an opinion ? This should have been a Basic Rattrap vs Basic Terrorsaur 2 pack. Wave 3 could then have been Blackarachnia, Tigertron and Airazor vs Quickstrike, Wave 4 could have been TM Cheetor, TM Tarantulus and TM Rattrap and Wave 5 could have been Silverbolt, TM2 Cheetor and TM2 Dinobot getting re-releases of all the show deluxe and basic figures out there.

Rattrap's main paint difference is his bronzey and grey plastics both becomes silver. Unlike earlier photos his red vac metal paint is still red vac metal. His robot mode acquires a maximal symbol on his left breast panel over his heart.

[Philip Ayres]

Transmetal Waspinator

www.tfu.info/1998/Predacon/Waspinator/waspinator.htm

Waspinator - like Rhinox and Airazor - got a Transmetal toy without it appearing in the show. Like the other TMs liberties were taken with the colour scheme for making this new toy, but here it just doesn't work - it isn't Waspinator. All 4 wings are a transparent blueish green. The legs and antennae are bright red. The eyes and the abdomen are gold chrome. The rest is black. I look at this and it doesn't say Waspinator to me. One solution to this problem would be to make the black green and the red black (and perhaps the clear green a clouded clear colour) A second solution is suggested by the vehicle mode though ! The wings move - the front upwards from the vertical (and back down again but no further) The rear wings are on ball joints. The front two pairs of legs have a ball joint at the body and the second elbow, the back legs bend down at the point they get beyond the abdomen. The mandibles move to the side.

TF to vehicle mode: Fold the plane nose and cockpit out from under the head and straighten both out. Fold the rear wings up and turn the paint lined sides in. Turn the end of the front wings back at the end till they meet the rest of the front wing, then fold them back along the sides of the body. Fold the rear legs under the vehicle, and fold the remaining legs under and back where possible. Resulting vehicle is a plane, a fighter jet - itself a homage to the episode where Waspinator gets possessed by the ghost of Starscream. Now if you'd made the black into grey, the red into blue (or maybe kept as red) the green into clear blue and the gold into metallic red this would have been a decentish Starscream tribute. If they did it now I'd buy it.

TF: Fold both wings back to their beast mode form. From jet mode fold the robot legs out from under the jet and bring them under the jet's nose. Remove the stinger from under the tail. Fold the beast head and robot legs down toward the abdomen, which should expose the robot head. You'll need to wiggle and bend the parts around to get it looking right but the robot head should be able to look out over the top of the beast head.

The robot has BW Waspinator's mutant face - together with a green lightpipe lighting up the eyes. He bends at the knee, ball jointed hips & and neck, shoulders move back and forth and to the sides, there's a bicep swivel and bending elbows. Stinger can be hand held or mounted on either side of either forearm. The only downside to this mode is that the front two pairs of legs are a bit all over the place with no obvious place to store them.

Overall: I think there's a good toy trying to get out here. Shame about the colour of it.


Fox Kids Transmetal Waspinator

www.tfu.info/2000/Predacon/FKTMWaspinator/waspinator.htm


Fortunately when it came to recolour it for the Fox Kids line a stroke of genius was had - the old BW Buzzsaw (Waspinator repaint) colour scheme was used. If they'd have done this for other TM's we could have had a TM Tigertron and TM Blackarachnia too ! Black becomes yellow, red, an orange/gold colour and pale green a brighter green. The metallic gold becomes a dark metallic purple. Near perfect. My only gripes - and they are tiny - is that the lightpipe is painted over (any ides how to remove that ?) and that I associate the robot face more with Buzzsaw to differentiate the two of them !

Fabulous repaint.

[Philip Ayres]

Transmetal Tarantulas

www.tfu.info/1998/Predacon/Tarantulas/tarantulas.htm

Of all the Transmetals Tarantulas is probably closest to his original colour scheme. There's purple, a really dark blue (for the black) and chromed orangey gold for the yellow. The eyes are picked out in a bright nearly day glo green. His new spider form has eight ball jointed legs - 4 on each side of his thorax. The mandibles at the front project straight out - I find these a lot better if you give each a 90 degree turn outward.

He has a vehicle mode. Of sorts. Pull the back out, give it a quarter turn anti clockwise and bend down as a rear wheel. Fold the front wheel down under the beast. Fold the legs down to stabilise it. Yup, it's a spider on 2 wheels. It's meant to be a motorcycle. I've seen better.

TF to robot: remove the front wheel. Fold back the beast shoulder panels where all the leg connections are. Fold the panels with the exhaust pipes to the side and unbend the arms. Spilt the wheel under the back of the spider in 2 - pull one half up and push the other half down. Rotate the wheel assembly 90 degrees to the side. Pull the wheel halves out. Fold the spider's mandibles down to form the robot legs bringing the robot chest with it. Spin the lower robot legs 180 degrees at the knee. Fold the wheel halves up to become the robot shoulders. Bring the robot arms forward and lock onto the shoulders - the shoulders have a tab which corresponds to a slit on the toy of the arm. Pop up the chrome panel on the spider's head, push the robot head up through it and fold the spider head down on top of the robot's chest. The front wheel goes into the robot's hand as a weapon.

Resulting robot bends at the ankles and elbows and has ball jointed hips, shoulders and neck. He looks quite sinister - the spider legs on his back can be positioned so the look like they're coming round the body, there's lots of purple, black and dark blue. The big wheeled shoulder look like some kind of missile or laser firing mechanism and the beast eyes are all over his chest. The arms can pop out of where they sit inside the shoulders - not off their ball joint - this is connected by a strut to the back of the robot - but the strut pops off the tab they're resting on.

Overall: Nice design update. Shame the gun's no good and he's lost the missile launcher/grappling line of the original.


Fox Kids Transmetal Tarantulas

www.tfu.info/1999/Predacon/FKTMTarantulas/tarantulas.htm

The FK repaint replaces the metallic orange with silver, the purple with black and makes the dark blue grey. The eyes become a very pale green. The end result is a little monochrome but at the same time makes the toy look a little like a ghost/zombie version. So this will be after his encounter with Tigerhawk then !

Decent repaint. Slightly hard to fin at the time and even harder now. The only one I could find on eBay was $70 carded ! Ouch.

[Philip Ayres]

Better motorcycle TFs. Though admittedly the record with motorcycles is more spotty than others.

And better TM Vehicle modes.

[Philip Ayres]

TM Optimus www.tfu.info/1998/Maximal/OptimusPrimal/optimusprimal.htm

This is the first reinvention of Optimus Primal as an Ape done in Beast Wars. I remember being a little disappointed with the toy when it first came out in that he'd been downsized and had lost all the great hidden action features the ultra ape had,.

Like all the Transmetal toys Optimus abides by the philosophy behind the sub group - robotic beasts and more animalistic robots. Primal's ape form is heavily covered in molded in robotic detailing. The head, chest and feet are chromed blue, the shoulders, back, hands, and back of the legs are purple and the rest of him is a silver grey. The look is spoilt a little by the robot mode gun being stuck on the side of the foot - this might have worked better if you'd have been able to hide the gun away in the body or if the launcher it contained had been concealed in a hand. Also when the beast is posed leaning on it's arms then the back of the legs - what is the purple lower robot legs and silver feet - remain pointing straight up. In ape mode his feet bend at the ankle a little to achieve the leaning forward pose, universal joint at the hips and shoulders, swivel at the waist and the biceps and a bending elbow. The head piece doesn't turn due to the TF, but looking at it some neck articulation could have been added with a little work. There's a pair of clubs - later to be used as missiles - mounted on the beast's back and he can hold these in beast mode, just as he can hold the robot's blaster/missile launcher. This is an ape that knows how to use tools.

He has an attempt at a vehicle mode: Make sure the back of the legs are folded as far back as possible, then bend them down at the back of the ankle making sure the little wheel in his heel stays downward and doesn't bend onto the front of the beast's knee. Fold the two pipes running out the back of the foot forward. Pull both feet up then on one leg only - the one that doesn't have the gun attached - turn the back of the leg through 180 degrees so the back is facing out the front. Manoeuvre the legs so both sets of pipes connect together. Raise the gun up so it's pointing like a jet engine out the side of the leg and then turn at the waist so Primal's facing away from the jet engine. Resulting mode is a monkey on a surf board and is a contender for poorest TM Vehicle mode (along with T-Rex on roller skates and cheetah with a jetpack) It should roll along on it's wheels but the balance is so poor that it just falls over, The wheels don't seem to touch the floor without the rest of the surf board touching too anyway !

TF to robot mode (start from beast mode) Fold the purple leg backs down. Fold the silver feet out. Pull the flaps away from the side of the chest and fold the back armour over the head. Pull the beast's back down, and fold up the robot head. Fold the beast head back and down into the beast's chest. Fold the chest and back back together and pose the head so it's facing out the beast's back - now the robot's chest. Fold the armour onto the robot's back and lock into place with the flaps that were beside the chest becoming shoulder pads. Turn the robot's waist round 180 degrees. Turn each robot arm round 180 degrees at the bicep. Split the robot's forearms in 2 down the middle and fold the inside half in. Pull the fist out to the sides and turn through 180 degrees so it's inside the forearm and the robot fist is outside of the forearm. Lock forearms together. Watch out for the beast feet/robot knee pads when TFing - the only thing holding them on is two small pins at the sides so they can easily pop off and I can see the pins getting damaged.

The resulting robot maintains much of the robotic nature of the beast mode but gains furry head, chest and hands - all molded in purple plastic. Through the purple plastic on the head sticks a painted silver crest and side antennae as per the standard Optimus Prime head. The face is quite gorilla like and has a mouth - the first original Optimus mode to do so (sadly not the last - Optimus has a faceplate !) Arm articulation is as per beast mode, while the legs gain a swivel above the knee, a bending knee and ankle and a swivel at the neck.

The gun can be stored on the leg like it's got a holster or held in the hand and used as a missile launcher with one of the clubs - which can also be held as hand weapons.

Primal has two bonus modes. IIRC the first was seen on the show - start from robot mode with the clubs stored on the back, unclip the back armour and fold it over the head. Stretch it out in front of the head as far as possible. Place the hands into the back of the shoulder pads. This is Primal deploying his weapons array and using the clubs as cannons.

The second bonus mode requires you to start from beast mode: Fold down the robot legs and then swap the beast head for the robot head. Turn the robot head forward. You then get a robot mode with the benefit of the metallic chest, robotic fists and the extended legs. It looks rather fetching, but would be even better if they re-released this toy with red chrome and swapped the purple for blue. (I'd buy one !)

Overall: OK ape mode - hindered by the feet and the robot legs. Poor vehicle mode. Adequate robot mode. But an OK bonus to the robot mode and second robot mode that's actually better than the official robot mode ! Yes he's not the Ultra ape, and he's not Optimal Optimus. But for a mega toy there's quite a lot in his box. Well worth a look.


Apelinq www.tfu.info/2000/Maximal/Apelinq/apelinq.htm

Two years later Optimus Primal returned as the Botcon Exclusive Apelinq. I have to say I think Apelinq's one of the laziest Botcon repaints: The grey of the limbs is slightly more silver, the purple is a touch brighter, the feet, backpack and weapons are now a dark blue and the silver paint is metallic green. It's just not different enough. I refer you to my comments about an Optimus Prime recolour above. Definite pass, and if I'd have attended Botcon that year I'd have felt let down.

[Philip Ayres]

Cheetor www.tfu.info/1999/Maximal/TM2Cheetor/cheetor.htm

Transmetal 2 is the 4th type of BW toys released in the west after BW, Fuzors (2 different beasts merged together) Transmetal (robot beasts and more organic robots - turning the concept on it's head). The idea here is the organic and the metal parts are mixed in both modes. Cheetor is the result of a very sudden encounter with the Transmetal 2 device that Megatron had that /mixed both of his modes together. So you end up with a toy that's covered in shredded yellow beast fur with chunks of purple robotic parts showing through. Very effective. Less so is the shape of the toy - it's all hunched up and fat round the body, not lean and straight like the TM version. It almost looks more bear like than Cheetah ! There's also some chrome purple plating on one forearm, his back and his hip. He's got a missile launcher on his back that can be raised and fired. The chrome plate on his hip folds up to reveal a green Autobot spark crystal underneath. The tail turns at it's base, the rear hips are ball jointed and there's 3 further bending joints on the rear legs. There's a waist joint - more for use in robot mode, Both shoulder & elbow are ball jointed on the arms/front leg - although the elbow join is very odd effectively fixing the angle of the lower arm and just allowing it to rotate. One wrist rotates which the other bends. Both have a moveable claw underneath which will fold up to become a thumb in robot mode. In addition the arm with the bending wrist has a fold up chromed panel. Why ?

TF: Fold the arms up above the robot's head. Turn the waist round 180 degrees. Remove tail and missile launcher. Open up the chest panel and fold it back via a joint mid way in the chest. When the chest panels are pointing down you should be able to push the robot head out a bit at the back and fold the beast head in. Once the beast head is sitting inside the lower robot chest you can fold the robot head up as far as it will go and turn it round. Fold down a little so the slots in the neck are level with the corresponding bits of plastic sticking out the inside of the robot chest. Fold the chest back in locking the head in place. Fold the shoulders up & forward so they lock round the chest. Spin each elbow round 180 degrees, turn the rotating wrist so the side of the hand is pointing up and fold both claws out to form thumbs. Put the missile launcher in one hand and the tail in the other - as a whip - but to be honest I usually end up keeping in in the tail socket

Resulting robot is still a tiny bit hunch backed but is much better proportioned than the beast. No real variation in what you can see - the robot chest is more of the same as what was visible in beast mode. Face is Cheetor - yellow fur round purple metal with red eyes and crest. The head turns, otherwise articulation is as per beast mode.

The aesthetic design of the toy doesn't appeal to some people - I rather like it. It was one of the first toys I received in trade long before the UK release so I have a little bit of a soft spot for it.

Tripredicus Agent
www.tfu.info/2001/Predacon/TripredacusAgent/tripredacusagent.htm

Original review from early in 2001: "My set of black Cheetor repaints/molds is complete. As is well known by now Tripredicus Agent is in fact Ravage rebuilt after his encounter with Rattrap at the end of Agenda Pt3. The toy suits this description well - it's as if the black (mainly fur) pieces are the remains of the original, the grey robotic pieces areas of damages and the gold chrome bits new stuff bolted on to finish off this mutated Frankenstein's monster of a warrior. I liked the original TM2 Cheetor - this one's better in many ways, the colour scheme works, the backstory works - something that I think a lot of people didn't quite grasp with the original was that it's story worked too - here's the alien Cheetor hideously mutated by the TM2 Driver. - and just gave the toy a good slagging. But I like em both. And woooo - did the TA smell when I got him out the box - the only thing that better that I've smelt recently was a friends POTJ Plo Koon "

[Stomski]

lol @ Tripedicus Agent smell!!

[Philip Ayres]

Oh it was good and rubbery !

[Philip Ayres]

Scourge www.tfu.info/1999/Predacon/Scourge/scourge.htm

Scourge is unique amongst the TM2 deluxe toys and indeed all the Beast Wars deluxe toys: He's never had a repaint of any description. Even Manterror was subtly altered when he came out in Japan

Scourge is a locust with a chromed head, abdomen and section between his wings. His left eyes lifts up to reveal a purple Predacon spark. His mandibles move up and down and all 6 legs are on ball joints - the rear pair having a bending joint above the ball joint. The wings can be folded to the sides, but are also part of an action feature: Press the lever between them forward and a missile fires out of his left wing. The right wing also contains a missile, but this is non firing.

TF: pull the front two pairs of legs and their connecting strut down from the body. Split the abdomen in two revealing a robot arm and fold down behind the rear legs. Close the abdomen up again. Swing the body round 90 degrees at the waist so the wings are pointing one way and the abdomen is hanging behind the other side. Fold the insect head and front legs round onto the side of the body they're attached to. Fold the wings back. Fold the other arm into place. Straighten the body. Fold down the feet and the heel spurs from the end of the rear legs and attempt to stand. Use the spare missile as a sword.

The resulting robot is a bit of a mess. He's got weird 3 part legs that are bent back at the knee. All the head and front legs are mounted on one arm which makes it look a bit of a mess. The contrasting red and purple doesn't help much either. But possibly it's biggest problem at the time was it wasn't the G1 Scourge or anything like him ! His head turns, ball joints at shoulder and elbow, very high turning waist, ball jointed hips, bending joints at 1st & 2nd knee and ankle.

Overall: Bit of a mess. And it's flaking all over my desktop as we speak !

[Philip Ayres]

Ramulus www.tfu.info/1999/Maximal/Ramulus/ramulus.htm

Ramulus was the third toy released in the first wave of Transmetal 2 deluxes and is one of the few toys that can be found on a Transmetal II card. As he's the non show character in the wave (also including Dinobot and Cheetor) he was only two per case to their three and he was also the first to go when the cases were revised. He's never been released in Japan.

Ramulus is a ram complete with two huge horns on his head. The horns have a joint mid way along them so can be folded up a bit or folded out to the sides. He's a combination of pinkish white, grey and mettalic pink chrome. For a beast mode the articulation is superb - front legs bend at shoulder & knee, while the back legs bend at shoulder and both knee joints. The head is posed looking down - bowed & about to charge - and the face is chromed and mounted on a flap which opens to reveal his Maximal spark crystal.

TF: Remove the horns and the section of head between them. Fold the horns up & to the sides and set aside as a weapon. Fold the robot head up onto his back. Fold the front legs out to the sides, then round so the chromed panels are facing forward, then bend the legs behind the back. Pull the robot arms out from the middle of the beast's underside. Straighten the rear legs out behind the beast & fold out the heel spurs. Lock the waist and the chest together. Insert weapon into hand.

Resulting robot has some more of the pinky white visible and less of the chrome from the front. Nice claw details on the arms. As per the robot back legs he bends at 2 knee joints - almost fawn like here - and at ball joints at the hip. The head turns, the shoulders are ball jointed and the arms bend.

Overall: One of the better non show TM2s - up with Prowl.

There is supposedly a green chrome variation on Ramulus as shown in the Botcon comic. I've seen a carded sample on eBay but it doesn't exist in huge numbers.


Universe Longhorn www.tfu.info/2005/Autobot/Longhorn/longhorn.htm

Longhorn is Ramulus minus the chrome and recoloured in several shades of blue with the white/pink replaced by a browny bronze colour. As Universe repaints go - see Optimus Primal & Silverbolt - this one's not too bad !

[Philip Ayres]

Jawbreaker www.tfu.info/1999/Maximal/Jawbreaker/jawbreaker.htm

In 1999 I wrote the following when reviewing Jawbreaker:

"Jawbreaker - this toy is a menace to society - I have difficulty getting the robot mode to hold together properly. The robot arms form the forebody and head of this toy, and are only held together by 2 pegs on the forelegs' hips. Sawblade in the back operated in the same manner as Rhinox's blade. Sword forms the tail. Robot chest with head folded inside it hangs under the arms. Pull the arms apart, fold the chest sections into the right place and stand on the forelegs. Simpleish transformation."

For a start I think there's a typo in there - I must have meant the beast mode ! The hyena doesn't look took bad with red chromed shoulders and a rotary saw blade sticking out the back Most of the rest of the fur is coloured black with some metallic blue robot parts. If anything my problems with it holding together have intensified over time - the saw blade has a crank handle which to operate it should be over the back panel, except it then rubs against some fur sticking up. You can have the panel pressing down on the crank, but then it doesn't work so well. Or you can have the tip of the crank resting against the side of the panel but that's hard to do. *then* we have the panel with the robot head in under the toy where the head won't fold away properly and the panel doesn't lock in place correctly. For the record the beast bends at the ankles, knees and hips/shoulders - with the back hips being ball joints. The tail moves up & down - but is yet another bad design feature on the toy: The tail needs to be removed as the hand weapon, but is held in place by 2 small bumps on it's base fitting into a slot with 2 small holes in. This had resulted in the plastic for the slot becoming distorted when the tail is removed - maybe a peg hole like TM Cheetor or even a peg hole in a ball joint might have been better ?

TF: Remove the tail. With the beast facing you unpeg the front leg on the right and swing to one side taking a robot arm with it. Swing the rest of the head and body out to the other side. Unfold the robot head from the panel under the chest and face downwards. Fold the entire body section down at where the robot's waist would be. Fold the chest up so that the space in the sides locks into the shoulders. Fold the lower leg on the arm on the right into the upper leg and swing the entire leg panel up onto the shoulder. Repeat for the head arm. Turn the head arm at the elbow so the hand faces in. Fold the teeth out the beast head a bit to form the hand. Straighten the legs and fold the feet down. Stand.

Robot doesn't look in proportion. Very thin upper arms with huge amounts of beast leg hanging off them. One thin lower arm and one absolutely huge one - the one with the sword blade in it. The legs look too thick and tall for the body which is then made to look small. The legs bend at ankle, halfway up the lower leg and at the knee. They're ball jointed at the hips as are the shoulders. The arm with the hand is ball jointed at the elbow, while the other has a low bicep swivel above the elbow and bends at the elbow. The head turns. Either hand or beast jaw can hold the sword.

Overall: Hugely flawed and a bit of a mess.

Interesting note about the toy: When released in the UK & Europe on Biocombat cards Jawbreaker was named Cackle !

Frostbite www.tfu.info/2005/Decepticon/Frostbite/frostbite.htm

Jawbreaker gets a white and blue makeover (like Ramulus) to form the Decepticon Frostbite. The colourscheme is greatly improved and more coherent though I strongly suspect that all the inherent problems with the toy design remain.

[Philip Ayres]

Iguanus www.tfu.info/1999/Predacon/Iguanus/iguanus.htm

I need to start this review by saying something about how I store my TFs in the loft. larger items that came in a box tend to go back in their box for storage. Smaller carded items - dlx & basic - live in big boxes together. All except Iguanus. Iguanus has a small, sealed ice cream tub to himself. Why will become clear.

Iguanus is the same character as the original Beast Wars basic back again in a larger TM2 form. He's mainly blue with chromed silver and painted orange frill round his neck. All four legs have ball joints at ankle and knee - the front legs have limited ball joints at the hip inside the body whereas the back legs just bend to the sides. The tail - which is posed in a curved position - is hinged up and down at it's base.

The frill on this version is in five separate pieces around the neck all connected into a plastic ring - there's a slot for each piece with a stud either side of the slot and a hole through each piece for the stud to rest in. Unfortunately they're rather loose and fall off, which is why Iguanus lives in a box - to keep all his bits together ! The frills are part of a gimmick in this mode. There's a trigger under his throat: press it and his jaw opens firing a missile & the frills spring up. The frills stay up till the missile is reinserted. Not a bad gimmick. The gimmick is powered by the central frill part - which is a little more solidly attached - so when reassembling the toy care must be taken to get the centre frill under the two either side of it and the outer frills on top of the two either side of them.

TF: Fire the missile and fold the mid body panels out to the sides. Separate the front legs and fold them out to the sides. Fold the head into the vacated cavity. Lock the legs back together to form the robot waist and fold the legs down from here - they are prone to springing apart again. The front of the knee should be turned so it's the opposite side of the leg to the frill/skirt and the toes on the foot should point out the same side. Pull the back beast legs out to the sides to form the arms and position them so they look right. Fold the opposable thumbs out. Turn the tail round to reveal the head and fold the tail down behind the head. Place missile in the robot's hand as a staff.

The resulting robot is mainly dark blue up the top and a more metallic blue lower down. His mid section, upper legs and lower arms are orange. The dark blue obscures some nice detail molded into the toy including a five missile array on one of the shoulder pads. A panel on the chest folds open to reveal a pinkish purple Predacon spark. The legs (formerly the beast forelegs) are ball jointed at ankle, knee & hip. The head can turn but is very limited by the beast tail behind it. The shoulders shrug up, turn and fold to the sides while the elbows and wrists are ball jointed.

Iguanus is a lot better than I remember it being - the intervening years since I got it having been spent hunting for missing frills which coloured my opinion. The chrome work is less widespread (or more confined in one place) than on other TM toys. He could do with a better hand weapon/some way of firing the missile in robot mode though.

Reptillion www.tfu.info/2003/Decepticon/Reptilion/reptilion.htm

Iguanus returned in the early stages of Transformers Universe as Reptillion. It was at this point that it felt like Hasbro was using all the spare plastic on these repaints resulting in some hideous toys. Reptillion swaps the blue for brown, the orange for a hideous neon lime green and looses the chrome painting it a lilacy purple. Hideous. This is a toy that's crying out to be done in a decent green with some black or possibly white with some silver/grey to show off the detailing. But these two are all we have,

I'm feeling rather sorry for the toy now. It deserves better colours than it's had.

[Deleted]

Oct 25, 2008 13:22:44 GMT Philip Ayres said:

If anything my problems with it holding together have intensified over time - the saw blade has a crank handle which to operate it should be over the back panel, except it then rubs against some fur sticking up. You can have the panel pressing down on the crank, but then it doesn't work so well. Or you can have the tip of the crank resting against the side of the panel but that's hard to do.

You aren't transforming it correctly if that is happening, which is understandable as Cackle/Jawbreaker is a deceptively hard figure to get right (not helped at all by the poor instructions). The whole back assembly pegs together snugly and securely if you do it properly and does not interfere with the lever at all. It sounds like you are trying to put the back straight, like a dog or a wolf, and not making the proper hyena hunchback if the back panel is getting in the way of the buzzsaw lever. There's a small peg/ledge thingy on the back panel that the buzzsaw arm/hunchback rests on when it is correctly aligned. You also have to ensure that the robot arms are sitting parallel to each other and that the square parts behind the ball joints are touching. Although it is true that the robot head/chest doesn't peg into position it doesn't need to as stays in its intended place perfectly well and helps the look of the best mode by providing a big belly. I also haven't had the same problems with the tail you have. I think you are just being a little over forceful if you have damaged it. It's easier to remove if you pull it upwards.

When properly transformed I'd say Cackle is actually the best quadrupedal mammal in the whole Beast Wars line in terms of both looks and useful articulation. The buzzsaw in his mane is a great idea, he's covered in fantastic detailing and he just looks so lethal. Practically every edge on him is a blade and I love the idea that he could slice someone in half by simply brushing against them. He's not such a strong contender in robot mode, soild but average I'd say, but I like the stubby little sawn-off psychopath look he has going for him and he works in the "mutated" Transmetal 2 context (certainly much better than the dreadful TM2 Cheetor with his limited arm articulation). The buzzsaw arm is great fun and he has a fantastic sword. I'd disagree about the beast mode legs being in the way on the arms as I think they look like nightmarish armour plating you might see on a fantasy evil knight. The only problem I have with him is his vac-metal paint is particularly delicate. I had to varnish mine because he was chipping so badly (well, more shedding than chipping, it was just brushing off when I moved the toy!). It did the trick but I'm still wary of fiddling with him too much which is why I love Frostbite so much. All the fun of Cackle but with no need to worry about him going bald! He's also very pretty in his "frozen" colour scheme and the toy works much better as an evil character.

[Philip Ayres]

Scavenger www.tfu.info/1998/Predacon/Scavenger/scavenger.htm

Scavenger is a robotic fire ant. I hinted when I reviewed Inferno that his shelf warming caused another toy to change it's name. That toy was Scavenger which is generally accepted to be Transmetal Inferno. If you can find a copy of Tomart's Action Figure Digest #64 on page 37 there's a picture labelled Scavenger but still sporting the Inferno name tag on it's abdomen. Reading the tech spec also makes it sound like the toy is meant to be a character that's appeared before.

Scavenger is also unique amongst the Transmetal toys in that he continues the Predacon identification of using clear plastic on some body parts presenting us with a unique combination of chromed and clear pieces. Incidentally the photo in Tomart mentioned above has the toy with 2 sorts of chrome - the clear red replaced by red chrome ! There seem to be several ways of posing the toy - the Tomart pictures have the abdomen raised up with the vehicle wheels underneath, only the middle of the toy touching the ground with the body arched up to the front and the head (with drills underneath) bent down. TFU.info have gone for flat on the ground with the wheels folded to the sides. I personally have the wheels folded up with the rest of the body flat on the ground. If you pose the toy right it is possible to get the legs to support the entire structure without any of the rest of it touching the floor. Said legs - six like Inferno - are ball jointed at body & first joint and bend at the second joint. Front & middle legs are identical, but the rear pair of legs have much longer sections after the ball mid leg joint. The mandibles at the front open & close and his antennae are ball jointed. His name can be found on the back of the toy - the Tomart version has the name above the molded vents, mine has it bellow the vents, and there's another version that has it on the clear panels at the sides bellow the chrome.

Scavenger has a vehicle mode and it's actually probably the best of all the TM toys ! Fold the wheels out to the side, and flatter the toy on the floor. Open the mandibles and fold the head back (via a strut under each head half that stretches back along the body) till it rests on the gold chrome on the mid section of the toy. I've never been 100% sure quite what you're meant to do with the legs at this point - I usually settle for folding them all back along the vehicle but I suppose you could have them sticking out to the sides as manipulators. Under where the head was are two drills. Yes Scavenger is the Takara favourite vehicle mode the Drill Tank ! And this is one that works ! Roll it along a flat surface and the drills spin round. Nice ! I suppose you could think of him as some sort of mining machinery....

From Ant mode he's TF'd to robot mode as follows: Fold the head back as per vehicle mode. Split the head and thorax in two straight down the middle and pull to each side. These form the arms, the rest of the body is hidden in the abdomen. The chrome cover of the abdomen pulls up from the front, fold under the toy and is reversed so it covers the wheels under the abdomen. Fold the feet out and the legs down. Stand. Fold the arms out to the sides. Raise the head. Point the arms up (for the robot). Swing the arms down at the shoulder so they're beside the robot. Pose the beast legs as you see fit.

Resulting robot is ... well there's a very demented look to the purple robot face complete with a pair of devil like horns. This toy commits one of my cardinal sins for a TF by not having hands but he somehow gets away with it - the drills are at the end of the arms. Possibly it's due to the lack of hand weapons.... As well as the purple on the head & limbs he's also gained a metallic green paint job on the body. He bends a little at the ankles, properly at the knees, has ball jointed hips, his head turns, the shoulders shrug up, turn & swing to the sides. The arms bend a little just bellow the shoulders,
properly at the elbow and then there's a swivel beneath the elbow. The drills spin - the wheel on the top of each forearm powers the gimmick - and also bend quite near their base. Why I've never worked out !

There's a lot to like about Scavenger - decent beast, good vehicle, odd but good robot. Yet he's hated and shelf warmed everywhere !

To the surprise of nobody when Scavenger was released in Japan as Beast Wars Metal toy D-46 (or in VS-46 with Depth Charge) he was named as Metals Inferno.

[Philip Ayres]

After a week away it's back to the TMs. Been dreading writing this, been doing a lot of looking at Spychangers to avoid starting work on Cybershark.

TM2 Cybershark www.tfu.info/1999/Maximal/Cybershark/cybershark.htm

Don't buy this toy.

Oh you want me to say something more detailed about it ? Must I ?

Cybershark is the only boxed toy released with both the Transmetal II and Transmetal 2 logos on it. It's an upgrade to the superb BW Deluxe toy Cybershark. He's lost the hammerhead look gaining a more traditional shark's head and gained a size class becoming a mega. The shark mode doesn't look too bad being a mixture of steel grey and chromed cyan (mainly the mid body and the tail) but the form is permanently set in a curved shape which doesn't help the toy - a more neutral pose would have been better. The tail fin is a separate piece with two green panels up the sides. The tail rotates as you spin a wheel mounted in the side of the tail. It's virtually the only part of the beast mode that moves - the fins rotate by virtue of being pegged in and they fold out to the sides on 2 panels with engines molded into them that seem to be parts of an aborted vehicle mode. There's a dual missile launcher in the mouth that should fire if you pull back on the shark's head but this feature never worked that well on mine.

TF: and here's where it starts to go very wrong indeed: Fold the engine/fin panels out to the sides. Fold the lower jaw and underside of the body down to form the legs. Remove the missile launcher from the back of the waist. Separate the tail into two halves and have them come off in your hands. If you're lucky it will just be at the clip to the shoulders. If you're unlucky the ball joint will have come apart where the strut enters the tail section. Reconnect the tail pieces. Pull one arm off the underside of the tail and fold down. Fold the other arm out from within the tail. Fold the remainder of the tail down then fold the outer shell of the tail back leaving what's in the middle that will become the robot chest behind (pausing only to reconnect the tail shell halves again) Lock the chest onto the robot's waist. Fold the tail halves back as much as you can and turn on the ball joints so they're facing out the sides. They'll almost certainly have fallen off again so plug them back in, as well as the shark's fins that will have fallen off - that's if the panels they're attached to haven't. You'll also probably need to slot the waist back together again too. Spread out the green panels on the tail at the end of his left arm to form a four pointed claw. Place missile launcher into his right fist.

And if you think that's bad try TF ing it back to Shark mode!! Getting all the bits of the tail lined up - especially the arm within it - is a nightmare.

Have you seen the Simpsons ? Lisa watches a cartoon called The Happy Little Elves which Bart refers to as the Cr^&&y Little Elves. TM2 Cybershark is Battle Armour Happy Little Elf. The robot mode is all green and grey, which isn't a good combination (Hasbro didn't learn - the same colour combination was back a few years later to ruin Armada Thrust's first appearance) In particular the face is green which isn't great, he's got an odd demented expression and it's topped by the shark's fin bent forward which looks like some odd Witches Hat ! The chest has a pair of eyes to each side and a pale green/blue Autobot spark in the middle. The one hand the toy has is orientated so that when the wrist bends it ends up on side on which is never a good thing - you want a weapon holding hand to be able to hold the weapon upright ! His right arm has ball joints at the elbow & shoulder, while the left claw arm bends at the elbow, has a low bicep joint and a ball joint at the shoulder. The head should turn to the sides but will probably be hampered by the tail armour. The hips are ball jointed, the legs bend twice at the knee with a small kneecap in between, there's a swivel joint at the ankle and the foot - formed from the shark's lower jaw - bends. The wheel to spin the claw hand is mounted under the left arm's elbow.

Overall: difficult TF, severe fall aparticon, limited robot mode (especially the hand's position and lack of second hand) and bad bad bad colour scheme.

AVOID ! And not just because of what I'm about to write ...


Car Robots Gelshark/RID Sky-Bite www.tfu.info/2001/Predacon/SkyByte/skybyte.htm

Car Robots recoloured Cybershark as Gelshark Car Robots Toy D-005. He's released unaltered in the US as Sky-Byte and that's the name I'll use. To the best of my knowledge he didn't have a UK release with the UK retailers having been scared off the Mega size assortment by sales disasters like B'Boom, Transquito, Inferno, TM Scavenger and TM2 Cybershark.

In 2000 I wrote the following:

"What do you call a TM2 Cybershark that transforms without falling to bits ? RID Cybershark that's what. I was surprised too ! It's a lovely recolour, lots of greys white, silvers and blues with some additional yellow on the robot mode. It no longer looks like Battle Armour Crappy Little Elf ! "

The beast mode starts off white at the bottom and graduates through grey to dark blue at the top. The robot panels - invisible on Cybershark - are picked out in silver and other colours for the lights on them. The inside of the lower jaw is coloured pink. The visible robot legs, tail sides and the missile launcher in the mouth are all a mustard yellow.

TFing to robot mode reveals that improvements have been made to the parts tolerances and that the toy holds together *much* better.

The robot mode reveals the grey replaced by pearly white or dark blue and the green replaced by mustard yellow (looks better on the face) and a metallic purple. The chest has some metallic sea blue paint as well as some silver dividing the face on the chest into organic and technological halves. The eyes are picked out in pink and there's a pink Predacon spark in the middle of the chest

A robot mode which was an eyesore joke is transformed into something that looks genuinely menacing.

This is the version of this mold you need to own.

And while I'm here "Sky-Byte saves the day" is one of the greatest TF cartoon episodes ever.

[legios]

Phil, I have to agree with you about TM Cybershark. I remember that at one point I owned one that I had acquired very cheaply - it was not a happy experience. Between the fact that I ended up pulling parts off it every time I tried to transform it, and the horrible colour scheme, I would go so far as to say it was the first extremely dissappointing Beast Wars toy that I bought. (It probably doesn't help that I am green-grey colour-blind which makes the toy look weird in a way that I can't really articulate except to say that the parts of the deco seem to bleed into each other in unpredictable ways).

All of which makes it all the more ironic that the CR/RiD version is a toy I have such fondness for. Perhaps it underlines the importance of a better colour scheme and an actual character attached to a toy.

Karl

[The Doctor]

"Who?! Sky-btye! That's me!"

Ahem.

-Ralph

[Philip Ayres]

Blackarachnia www.tfu.info/1999/Maximal/Blackarachnia/blackarachnia.htm

You can't talk about Blackarachnia without relaying some stories.

The first concerns what happened when she was released. Late in her development cycle - possibly even after a small number were in the wild - someone spotted that TM2 BA's chest looked like she'd gone topless. As a result an extra bit of plastic was added to the toy delaying the release, limiting the number sold and driving the price up....

..... flash forward to early 2001 when TM2 BA is doing about £30 UK on the secondary market with none officially released in the UK I quote from the email sent to TMUK-Chat:

"Some of you (those who I trade with regularly) will have heard this already but I think I have some spare now so can share with the rest of you....

It happened like this: I had Monday off and went out looking for some TFs for a few people who'd asked me if I could find anything. Generally a no joy day. So I came home and went swimming. On the way back from the pool I took a short (warm !) cut through a local dept store that was busy tidying up it's sale stock following the close of the sale the previous Saturday. In the midst of one of the remaining piles I spot a familiar looking box. Several in fact. Now I'm not normally a bulk buy man - but I'll make an exception for sales stock and seeing as this had survived the final day of reductions in a
busy shopping centre *and* seeing as it was about to disappear into the depths of the stock room destined who knows where I considered it an open target and (after confirming I could still buy them even though the sale had ended) took them home with me.

Transmetal 2 Blackarachnias. 17 of them in fact. US Boxes, Chinese Stickering. "

Blackarachnia keeps her spider form from her previous version but has it enlarged to Megs size. Body is mostly covered in pinky/purple chrome over a layer of purple plastic. The Spark is mounted on the base of the abdomen. If you fold the back of the abdomen down it allows you to turn the spark round making her either a Maximal (green) or a Predacon (pink) The pincers at the front of the mouth are attached to a piece which detaches from the main toy and stretches out on a line. When the line is extended the pincers can open and close. The line is spring loaded to retract. The eight legs are all ball jointed at body and knee. The pincers beneath the mouth have not a lot of flexibility in this mode.

As with Cybershark there's hints of a vehicle mode - twin exhaust pipes can be folded back from under the abdomen which in turn reveal; a pair of wheels in the abdomen. Perhaps some dragster mode was intended ?

TF: Fold the pipes out from under the back of the abdomen. Fold the abdomen back slightly allowing you to fold out to the sides the halves of the abdomen's shell. Raise the robot head out the back of the abdomen. Pull the robot legs out to the side and then fold both forward at once flipping the robot body forward which folds up into the robot's chest. Fold the pincers under the spider's mouth out to the sides to form the robot arms. Remove the pincers in front of the mouth & the winding mechanism behind them. Fold the robot arms so they point back along where the beast would have been. Fold the beast body up so it locks onto the robot body as the back - the jointed strut is folded up inside the back. Push the robot head and upper chest down to lock the body in place. The three highest legs on each side are joined to a panel and not the chromed body - fold this up so it's behind the shoulders and pose the legs over the shoulders. Straighten the robot legs, twist so they are the right way round, fold the feet out and attempt to stand. Pincer weapon pegs into her hand.

Resulting robot is the first I can think of in high heels - which doesn't help her balance. She bends at the ankle & knee, swivels between knee & hip, ball jointed hips, waist joint, ball jointed shoulders & elbows, bending wrist and turning head. You're meant to be able to rotate her waist and push down on the head as some sort of kicking gimmick but it doesn't work too well on mine ! Faceplate, waits and knees are highlighted in yellow.

Like TM Airazor she has an armour mode - the halves of the abdomen now serving as shoulder pads fold down to cover the chest. What is it with Hasbro feeling their female TFs need extra armour to defend themselves ?

Overall: Decent spider mode, ok if unstable robot. Worth getting if you're a BW cartoon fan.

TM2 Blackarachnia was released in Japan as Beast Wars metals toy C-49

Botcon Arcee www.tfu.info/2001/Autobot/Arcee/arcee.htm

As Blackarachnia is the first obviously female TF toy it probably made sense to attempt an Arcee repaint. The legs remain a dark colour and the pink chrome is still there. All the rest of the purple and black is cast in white, with the yellow painted highlights done as pink. The spark is now either Maximal or Autobot.

Nice repaint !

Arcee was a Botcon exclusive in 2001

[Philip Ayres]

Spittor www.tfu.info/1999/Predacon/Spittor/spittor.htm

Towards the end of the Transmetal 2 toys the Deluxe toys lost their way a bit. However at the same time the Basic and Ultra toys really upped their game. In this time period Spittor came back as a Transmetal 2 basic toy.

Spittor remains a frog, he's still blue but a much lighter colour than before. Gone is the projectile stinger/tongue replaced by a solid but removable tongue. Along the centre of his back are two pieces of lime green chrome - the one back at the back lifts up on a strut forming a claw. I'm not sure what it's for - energy weapon of some sort ? The eyes are also chromed this time in pink. The back is yellow with black stripes. We've got some dark blue on the upper legs, under side and the jaw which opens. The legs are ball jointed at hip & elbow with the front legs ball jointed at the ankles but the back legs just have a bending joint here.

TF: Look at the toy so the head is facing to your legs. Pull the whole back panel (not just the claw) up & back. Lower the jaw and raise the head. Fold the panel in the side of the mouth closest to you out so it covers the side of the beast revealing the robot head, then fold it up so the head looks skywards. Swing the head round towards you so that the middle of the body swings over the base of the back. Reposition the toy in your hand so you're looking at the beast head on the left again. Fold the panel with the robot head down so it's looking out the front of the chest. There are beast legs behind the toy - fold down the panel they are attached to so the legs form the robot legs. Fold the lower jaw up onto the robot's back. Fold the feet down and rotate so the three toes face forward. Position the arms. Peg the tongue into the robot's bottom as a tail or into the hand as a mace/morning star.

A truly demented / Hunchback style robot mode with the head on the chest (connected by a ball joint) and huge shoulder pads. But with the addition of the long gangly limbs - front beast legs are the robot legs while the rear ones form the arms - somehow this all works. A very, very good toy and a great update.


Gusher/Slapper www.tfu.info/2001/Predacon/Slapper/slapper.htm

Gusher is Car Robots toy D-004. Slapper appears in a Robots in Disguise Mega 3-Pack with Dark Scream & Gas Skunk. They are identical toys.

Here's what I said about Slapper in 2001: I've said before that a repaint can make or break a toy - here we have both extremes in one box. I think one of the first reviews I did was for the original later TM2 Basics so I'll just concern myself with the paint jobs:

Slapper (Frog, formerly Spittor): A great red colour scheme (yep - a TM2 version of our TM Repaint Spittor) makes this toy look very attractive - far better than the bright light blue of the original.

Buy them if you're missing the originals, like the red frog repaint or find them cheap."

Of course we never did find them cheap in the UK as toy retailers had cooled massively on the Mega size and never sold any of the RID megas. Big Red Robot Theory gains another piece of evidence - another toy improved by a red repaint. As I mention above the toy uses the colour scheme that first appeared on the BW Basic Spittor repaint that we in the UK got with a Video, so it's sort of nice that TM Spittor gets the same repaint. The eyes are now chromed in green, the head chrome is orange and the claw chrome is blue - is this the most different colours of chrome used on a TF toy ? All the dark blue plastic is now black.

It's a top, top repaint !

[Philip Ayres]

Night Glider www.tfu.info/1999/Maximal/Nightglider/nightglider.htm

In 1999 I wrote in one of the earliest reviews I can find "Nightglider - solid orange wing section with gold highlights. Body and legs are undercarriage junk covering the arms. Flip the body down at the mouth end , and then bend the wing section down.behind the back. Orange body. Spark centre on the chest not covered. "

I'm told Night Glider is a flying squirrel. In beast mode he's mainly orange with orange chrome over the edges of his wings, down the back and into the tail. The chrome is used to pick out robotic sections in the beast mode and down the back this really works with metallic paneling showing through the fur. The wings are fixe but there's a pair of small arms along the front edge that are ball jointed at shoulder and elbow. His robot legs form the back legs - ball joints at hip, knee & ankle. The tail has two folding joints at the base - the first closest the body bends up and down but he second only bends down.

TF to robot mode: Look at the underside of the toy. Flip the head up so that it's facing towards you. Fold the entire wing and tail section forward over the beast head as far as you can - but don't force it. Fold the robot arms that were inside the body down to the side. Click the beast head into the back of the robot chest. Turn the head round - important to remember to turn it back when TFing to beast mode. Turn the waist so the screw hole is the opposite side to the green spark crystal. Turn the knee and/or ankle so the front of the lower leg and the three toes are on the same side as the spark crystal. Fold the tail up the robot's back.

Standard BW Basic articulation - ball joints at ankle, knee, hip, shoulder, elbow & neck with a turning waist. Wings end up positioned behind the robot which is good. His Green Maximal Spark is open on the chest - one of the few sparks that isn't covered up in some way. He's even got a weapon - stored in the tail (now like a scabbard on the robot's back) is a grey sword - the same colour as the upper limbs and beast arms. Sword can be held in his hand or by any other basic with smaller size fist hole.

Overall: Decent basic. Gains points for the sword and scabbard.


Gildo / Dark Scream www.tfu.info/2001/Predacon/DarkScream/darkscream.htm

Gildo is Car Robots toy D-003. Dark Scream appears in a Robots in Disguise Mega 3-Pack with Slapper & Gas Skunk. They are identical toys.

In 2001 I wrote: "I've said before that a repaint can make or break a toy - here we have both extremes in one box. I think one of the first reviews I did was for the original later TM2 Basics so I'll just concern myself with the paint jobs:

Dark Scream (Flying Squirrel, formerly Nightglider): Uggh, wrecked with a nasty light blue and silver colour scheme. Surely something in brown or black would have been better than either of the colour schemes used on this toy.

Buy them if you're missing the originals, like the red frog repaint or find them cheap."

Yes he's not done well out of this repaint. The spark's become a Predacon one done in pink here. Not the greatest repaint in the world.... it's that cyan blue I think which also crops up on other bad repaints (EG Energon Strongarm)

[Philip Ayres]

Stinkbomb www.tfu.info/1999/Maximal/Stinkbomb/stinkbomb.htm

In 1999 I wrote in one of the earliest reviews I can find "Stinkbomb is beautifully simple, and looks rather good as a robot. Skunk head is hidden in the Robot's body after the animal back is folded round through the forelegs to form the robot back. The tail is attached to the robots head. Colours work very well - an almost black burgundy for most of the body and head, with a white streak down the back, orange forearms and waist, gold tail and sides and red on the visor covering the face. First simple four legged mammal they've done as a TM2 basic. Spark is in the left hip under a lift up panel, matching panel on the other side has details underneath. IMHO the best basic for a long time..."

Not done too badly here for one of the earliest reviews I ever wrote.

Stinkbomb is as you may be able to guess a skunk. He's mainly what looks like black but is on close inspection a very dark purpley brown. He's got a white streak across his back punctuated by yellow mechanical parts with a tail that is both ball jointed and hinged to the sides at it's base. Tail is gold chromed with an orange stinger that bends at the tip. Front legs - orange at the top - are ball jointed at the shoulder, elbow and ankle, back legs at the hip and bend as the knee. There's a set of three gold chromed pipes on each side between the legs. Each back hip has an orange panel on it that lifts up. One side contains mechanical detail, the other has the Maximal spark crystal. Perhaps an opportunity was missed here to make another double agent TF ? I'm sure with a little work it would be possible to customise one with a spark under either panel

TF: Unlatch the head and fold down between the front legs. Pull the body up from the back and fold forward. Pull up the panel the robot head and beast tail are mounted on. Fold the beast head into the body of the beast. Close the head/tail panel and turn the head round. Fold the legs down, rotate at the waist so the side without the screws is the same side as the robot's face - rotate at knee and/or ankle so the kneecap and claws are this side too. Fold the lower rear beast legs up onto the shoulders. Fold the robot arms out from behind the upper arms. Fold the pipes up so they're pointing diagonally up and back - you can pose these forward as guns if you so desire.

Articulation: Ball joints at ankle, knee, hip, shoulder and elbow. Turns at waist and neck. Tail is in the back of the head, same as before. Can either be hung back or pointed forward as a stinger. Nice red Wolverine style face mask.

Lovely little basic, most articulated mammal form and decent robot mode. Still good today.


Gas Skunk www.tfu.info/2001/Predacon/GasSkunk/gasskunk.htm

Gasskunk is Car Robots toy D-003. Gas Skunk appears in a Robots in Disguise Mega 3-Pack with Slapper & Night Glider. They are identical toys.

In 2001 I wrote: "I've said before that a repaint can make or break a toy - here we have both extremes in one box. I think one of the first reviews I did was for the original later TM2 Basics so I'll just concern myself with the paint jobs:

Gas Skunk (Skunk, formerly Stinkbomb): Very little repainting, just the addition of some highlights to the tail and the claws. Still the best toy of the TM Basics.

Buy them if you're missing the originals, like the red frog repaint or find them cheap."

OK missed a load of stuff here. Obviously the spark is now a Predacon one done in pink. Gold chrome is now silver with some of the tail painted black and some gold chrome set in that. White fur is now off white, with some more red highlights added to the mechanical details on the back. Claws are as I said now silver.

As repaints go it's not the most drastic in the world and you can easily get away with owning just one of this mold.

[Philip Ayres]

Home straight now - 3 Transmetal Reviews to write and 2 more to adapt.

[Philip Ayres]

Depth Charge

Depth Charge is the Maximal Ultra for 1998 - the Transmetal Year (1999 in the UK) He's a Manta Ray - a mixture of blue wings, grey tail and chromed silver body. He's got two grey rubber barbs projecting out the front. Sadly over time these have become rather distorted on my toy. The tail bends to the sides in two places and each wing bends up & down in two places. All of his modes can use his built in weapon - a disc launcher that fires out of the fishes mouth when you push down on the fin on his back. To reload you open the chromed panel on the top of fish and drop the discs in. I count seven of them in the toy at the moment but there's room for one more so I may well have lost one at some point ! Attached to his underside is a dark blue shark that we'll talk about in robot mode.

He has a vehicle mode: Fold the entire wing down halfway along it's length, straighten out the struts it's attached to and turn the wing so the curved edge is facing down. It's labelled Transportation Mode, but it's effectively a Depth Charge Tie Fighter !

TF (from beast to robot) Start by TF'ing to vehicle mode, then remove the very end of the tail - it pulls out - and the shark underneath. Unhitch the sides of the beast head with the eyes on from the main body. Find the back of each side and fold the top of both sides forward to form legs. Pull the disc cover up & forward via some hinged struts on the side of the toy so that the cover 's hinge is in front of the beast mouth. Fold the panel behind the disc storage forward to reveal the robot head. Pick the entire toy up and allow the legs and flap to dangle underneath it. The struts attached to them are in turn attached to a piece under the beast that needs to be rotated through 180 degrees. Bring the robot hips together and then fold the struts up behind the robot's waist and lock the waist into the underside of the beast. Fold down the feet and heel spurs. Fold the disc cover down behind the legs as a sort of shirt (think original BSG Cylon Centurion or SW:ESB Snowtrooper) There's a pair of engines pointing out the back of the beast now that end in silver chromed cones. Bend these down slightly then fold forward to form the robot arms. The forearms then come apart down each side which causes the underside to drop back at the elbow and allowing the cone to be folded back in turn revealing a chromed hand. Fold the remainder of the tail down as extra support for the body which is a tad back heavy ! Pose the wings according to personal preference. Place tail end in one hand as a sword and the shark in the other as double barrelled missile launcher.

Robot is big and imposing - great colour mix with the grey, chromed silver, some blue and a surprisingly large amount of purple which is rare for a Maximal/Autobot. The last time these colours cropped up on an Autobot (Gobot Ironhide) it looked awful, here it looks great suiting his role as an undersea warrior. His ankle articulation comes from the folding down of the feet during TF, the knees bend above and bellow the kneecap - which is complete with the barbs sticking out the front of them. The hips are ball jointed, he turns above the waist and at the neck. The shoulders move forwards & back, and swing to the sides. He's got a bicep swivel joint and a bending elbow on the arm. The wings have a multijointed connection to the back of the body - the strut rotates where it meets the body, bends, rotates again, bends again and rotates for a third time allowing a surprising degree of movement and flexibility to the wings - either out to the sides tie fighter style or folded in like a glider spring to mind immediately.

I've not had Depth Charge out of his box in at least five years but I may have been mistaken - it's a great toy, very good looking, very poseable, with weapons and a decent built in action feature. Well worth a look.

When Depth Charge was released in Japan he was BW Metals toy D-46 and also appeared in VS-46 with Transmetal Scavenger

Universe Depth Charge

Depth Charge's shot at repaint glory came early on in Universe According to information I have he's the fourth Ultra released in Universe and one of the first success stories to my eyes. The yellow of the missiles and discs becomes blue. The blue of the wings and shark become grey. The blue of the shoulders, forearms and waist becomes white. Purple becomes red, chromed silver becomes black and grey becomes a dark sea green. It's not quite as good as Depth Charge but works, especially in Beast Mode.

[Philip Ayres]

Rampage

Rampage is the second Ultra class toy issued for Transmetals, in opposition to Depth Charge - though in Japan he comes in the VS pack VS-41 with Silverbolt (who'd be more appropriate with Quickstrike I'd have thought) or by himself as D-41

Rampage is a giant crab. His shell is covered with orange chrome. His six legs are molded in brown - the front two pairs have ball joints at the body and knee, while the back pair have a ball joint at the knee, a swivel joint halfway up the upper leg and bend at the hip. His antennae are on ball joints mounted on his mouth which will open & close slightly.. His claws rotate where they meet the body, then have 2 joints that bend to the sides, another rotational joint, another bending joint at the point where the claw arms turn from brown to grey, a rotational joint before and after the claw hinge, a hinge at the base and halfway along the smaller inner part of the claw, and upward bending joint just before the claw and finally the larger part of the claw bends out a bit.

Under Rampage's mouth is a triple barrelled cannon. If you move him forward along the ground the cannon rotates. Open his claws up and you'll find three missiles inside. Insert these into the cannon & roll the toy along then the cannon with fire them sequentially.

Been dreading this bit: Rampage has a vehicle mode. Part of the reason I'm dreading it is that I lent Rampage to one of Liz's friends kids and he came back minus the instructions and one of the missiles. Here goes; Fold the back legs down so the half closest to the body is sticking out the back of the beast. Rotate the leg half way down the upper leg so the lower half of the back leg is sticking up in the air. Take the middle leg and fold back so that the tip of it is resting on the ball joint on the back leg. Fold the lower back leg down onto the lower middle leg and plus the peg on the front of the latter into a hole in the back of the former. Position the claw arms so they point straight forward with all the painted detailing on top and the larger part of the claw on the outside. Turn the entire claw arm at the base so the paint is on the outside.and the larger part of the claw faces down. Fold the first joint down and the second one up shortening the claw arm and bringing it closer the floor. Rotate the next joint so the purple chrome faces down. Bend the next joint so the claw faces to the side. Fold the smaller claw half in and then at the joint half way along fold the larger half out again. Turn the rotational joint after the inner claw hinge so the screw hole faces down (not up as the box shows !) Pull the rubber tread out from inside the claw. Fold the claw in so the hole on the middle of the circle on the claw armour meets with the peg on the brown claw arm and the hole above that meets the peg on the back armour. Bring the front legs up and fold forward so it's a mirror image of the middle leg but pointing forward and inside the large piece of claw. Thread the tread over the wheels on the legs.

Phew ! (OK I've cheated a bit while reviewing it and only done one side - I do have to put it back in beast mode in a min after all !)

The resulting tank is similar to those used in world war one with large triangular treads to one side and the guns in the middle. The tread should roll as you push it forward and turn round the wheels but the beast legs get in the way and even then the wheels at the bottom of the tank treads don't quite appear to be level. Having said that form wise it's one of the better TM vehicle modes (see also Airazor and Waspinator)

TF (from beast) to robot mode: Remove the missiles and gun from the claws. Turn the toy over and remove the tri cannon. Fold the legs and waist back, fold the legs out and feet & heel spurs down. Fold the beast head down to form the chest while pushing the robot head up through the gap. Turn the claws arms round so all the paint faces out and then bend the claw arms down the robot's back/ Fold the robot arms up at the shoulders bringing with it the front two pairs of legs. Swing the back legs and sides of the crab shell up to form the largest pair of TF shoulder pads you have ever seen. Swing the legs on the arms round and pose as you like - I prefer to have them stretched out from under the arms. Load the missile launcher, peg in one hand and peg the gun in the other.

It's a huge shell former - most of the best mode is carried on his back. The inner robot is a mixture of red and grey with purple feet to match the beast claws. The beast legs hanging from the arms add to it's sinister feel and the claws can be swung forward over the shoulders to give him more weapons. He bends at the ankle & knee, has ball jointed hips, neck & shoulders, has a very low rotational bicep joint ad a bending elbow. The beast legs are mounted on a piece that can be rotated under the lower arms.

Overall: Nice beast, decent vehicle, standard robot mode. It's a decent toy by itself. Then you compare it (and Depth Charge) to Ultra Optimus which is so much more in the same size box and it starts to look a little lacking. Oh dear.

Shokaract

Shokaract is one of the larger Botcon exclusives made, appearing in a wonderful box similar to the superb Japanese Masterforce packaging. It is a straight colour swap - orange chrome becomes blue. Brown legs and claw arms become bronze. Grey becomes pale blue. Purple becomes dark blue. Lovely repaint.
I'm surprised Rampage hasn't come back again. He's got lots of 5mm pegs that if modified would make great minicon ports !

[Philip Ayres]

Tigerhawk

Spoilers for the BW Cartoon ahead ! In the second season of the show the Maximals Airazor & Tigatron are kidnapped by the alien Vok. Towards the end of the third season the Vok need to visit Earth and in doing so they merge their captives to form Tigerhawk So he's both a Transmetal 2 toy and a Fuzor which has led some to think that the design started out as an attempt at a TM2 Silverbolt. Tigerhawk's only in a few episodes of the cartoon before being destroyed but the power he exhibits in those episodes makes me think it's very unlikely he was destroyed in the last episode and did in fact teleport away.

Tigerhawk. (and lets face it this is what you really want me to talk about) Whoa this is one nice piece of kit. Mainly white colour scheme - which is inherited from Tigatron, with metallic blue chrome on the wings some leg panels & a helmet shaped like a Hawk's head that can fold out to cover the tiger head. He's got olive green used on the missiles & some other smaller pieces and translucent green on the wings and forming the empty cockpit sphere under the beast. The cockpit here can't rotate from side to side but is weighted so it will always remain upright.

The beast mode is a Tiger, with Hawk's legs as rear legs and the obvious wings mounted on the back. The wings can be adjusted to give a passable Tiger mode - with wings folded down and along the sides - but you can also get a hawk mode - with the front tiger legs swung up his sides and the Hawk mask pulled down - this is quite a nice touch cos the first BW toys had 2 "heads" for the robots whereas one of the last has 2 for the beast ! The wings fold up at the joint where they meet the body and down at a joint about half way along just before they turn chromed blue. There's some raised feathers between the two joints. which can be stowed away when the wings are up. Fold the wings so they're vertical above the hawk and they can be released by a lever in the back. This also engages the missile launchers on the lower halves of the wings which swing forward catching the trigger on the way and launching the 2 missiles as well as releasing the feathers on the mid point of the wing. The metallic halves of the wings are held back by a trigger on each wing - press that and they swing forward. There's another trigger that launches the feather missiles which form the first & largest feather on each wing. Early photos of the toy show him with two feather launchers on each wing for the first and second feather but quite late in the day the second missile was replaced by a rubber attached feather. Over time this second feather has distorted very badly on my toy, both bending in the same direction due to the long term effects of gravity on them in storage. Rear (hawk) legs move back & forth at the hip, bend twice in middle and end in a claw which is spring loaded and closes when the middle is pushed. The front legs move up & down as well as out to the side a bit at the shoulder, rotate bellow the shoulder and bend at the knee & ankle. Mouth can be pulled down to reveal a tongue that can be moved up or down. The wings have a couple of tiny wheels on the back of each of them - this is the only remainder of some aborted vehicle mode, possibly a tank.

Transformation - Drop the wings down. Recover the missiles. Pull the arms that form the spine and the underside of the beast (including the cockpit) away. Pull the forelegs out to the sides and out of their peg sockets. Pull the tail and rear body section down (hawk legs are attached to this). Fold the forelegs down and lock the tops of them together to form the robot legs & waist. Rotate the central column holding the arms and with the spark in it round 90 degrees so the Spark faces forward. Fold out the jointed strut that attaches the tiger head to the central column. Pull the robot head out the rear section. Fold the hawk legs into and round the hips so the claws are at the front of the robot chest. Lock the rear section/robot chest in front of the column - a nice touch here has the maximal symbol on the chest directly in front of where the spark is on the central column and fold the shoulders down so they lock into the hawk hips on the side of the chest. The tail feathers now fold down onto the waist locking the legs together. Fold the tiger's feet up into the back of the lower leg revealing the robot feet and heel spurs. Fold the blue chrome on the back of the upper leg down to cover the lower leg. Simple when you get the hang of it. Or so I thought at the time I got it - getting old now !

Robot is soooo cool it's untrue. His left arm (what was the spine and the head) can hold the 2 missile launchers. The right arm has a double barrelled cannon built into it - nice touch since Tigatron and Airazor both have missile launchers in their right arm in the cartoon. Hawk claw gimmick still works in this mode even though they're now mounted on the chest. His head is the Tigatron head restyled slightly - feather type details and a clear green visor over the eyes (this is in fact the same piece of plastic as the crest on the head which is then painted over) Wings can be positioned how you want, but I've got them straight across his back - rather than folded - with the tips pointing upwards. The ankles and knees bend, there's a swivel bellow the hip, and the hips swing to the side and move back & forth (all as per the beast forelegs) The head turns. Both shoulders move back & forth as well as to the side - though the beast head arm is limited by the head) and have a ball joint at the elbow.

At the time I wrote "I reckon this is the best BW toy I've seen since the original gorilla Optimus Primal - certainly that's the only toy that gets near it gimmick wise. Get one as soon as possible !" and I still hold by the assessment - I hadn't seen Dragon Megatron then but I still like Tigerhawk better. It's a fantastic toy, full of character and play value.

Razorclaw

Tigerhawk got a repaint in the first Universe wave opposite the hideous Optimus Primal repaint. The green becomes burgundy, the clear green becomes clear burgundy, the blue becomes purple and loose the chrome and the white becomes black. It's a great evil version of Tigerhawk. The only problem I have with it is that the emblem on the chest (and I assume the spark underneath) remains a Maximal one ! But it's miles ahead of other early Universe toys in terms of it's colouring. Well worth a look I feel to boost your Predacon ranks.

[Dark Stranger]

Great series of reviews there Phil! I enjoyed the read.

Can't believe Inferno was a shelfwarmer though, he's easily my favourite BW toy.

What on earth were people thinking back then? Great robot mode, great beast mode, movable parts, secret firing missiles, manic grin, lovely colours and massive poseability.