The Unlicensed Third Party Transformers Thread

[Valkyrie Hunter D]

They don't waste any time, do they?

[mikeszekely]

Wei Jiang announced that they were going to do a Megatron to go with their MPP10 before MP-36 was even out. What's interesting is that it seems they're using their own design instead of KO-ing  MP-36 or one of the 3P Megatrons. What's more, although it's hard to tell from the resin version, it looks as clean as Despotron but not as puffy.

Oh, and supposedly the suppressor transforms into Laserbeak. Not traditional, but I guess that's kinda cool. Better than having extra parts you'll never actually use.

Well, it'll probably be too big for my collection. Maybe KBB will make a Voyager-sized KO. Their MP10v was definitely based more on MPP10 than regular MP-10.

[nhyone]

The Wei Jiang MPP36 looks good! They even show the back to show that there is no kibble.

I thought Wei Jiang mainly copies existing designs and upscales them? This looks original.

And why is Megatron holding a giant search light instead of his fusion canon? Megatron search and rescue?

[mikeszekely]

Ok, holiday bonus review (because I'm backed up and want to get back to Persona).  Here's Warbotron's Hammer Sharpener, their take on Nosecone.

So right off the bat, he's not exactly toy or cartoon-colored, is he?  If he were cartoon colored, his whole torso would be white (or light gray) and he'd have red arms and orange legs with red on the shins.  If he were toy colored, the yellow on his chest and shins would be ok, the silver would still be white, and all the brown would be much darker (almost gunmetal in some lighting).  If I had to guess, based on it's crazy influence on the Chinese market, the chocolaty brown and silver are likely inspired by Dreamwave's More Than Meets The Eye sourcebooks.  I'm not sure how they settled on his head; the cartoon was orange with blue eyes and a silver face, the toy was yellow with an orange face and eyes, and the MTME art has his head yellow with an orange face and blue eyes, but somehow we settled on yellow head with a silver face and orange eyes.

Color choices aside, Hammer Sharpener is a lot closer to G1 than Maketoys' version of Nosecone.  The kneepads, although more pronounced and picked out in brown and gray, were definitely on the G1 toy, and the five-s-ded panels and darker gray vents on his chest are molded after sticker details on the toy.  I think it's fair to say that he's a bit more stylized than Laser Cannon and Speed Wheel, but still recognizable as Nosecone.

Size-wise, he's also taller than an MP car, or fellow fellow drill tank Drillhorn (TFC's Hypnos).

Hammer Sharpener comes with several accessories.  He's got a pair of guns, two shields, and four knives.  The knives fit into slots on the shields.  He also has a hammer that stores inside his drill.  If Hammer Sharpener seems like a dumb name because nobody sharpens hammers, I'd like to point out that Hammer Sharpener's hammer is indeed sharp and pointed on the end.

Hammer Sharpener's head is on a ball joint, although he can't look down, lateral tilt is minuscule, and upward tilt is pretty limited, too.  His shoulders rotate on ratchets, and have a pair of hinges that get you just shy of 90 degrees laterally.  Unfortunately, what he's missing is a bicep swivel.  His elbows are double jointed and can bend until his forearms start to bump his shoulders.  He does have wrist swivels and the same single hinge at the base knuckle hands as the rest of the Warbotron/GT figures.  His waist swivels.  His hips can swing forward or backward just a little under 90 degrees and laterally 90 degrees.  He has thigh swivels.  His knees can bend a little under 90 degrees.  His toes can point down a little, and his foot is on a hinge at inside bottom of his shin so he can theoretically get 90 degrees of ankle tilt.  In practice, after about 45 (which is still plenty) the corner of his shin will be lower than his foot.

Although at first blush the handles on his guns look kind of short, he can hold them with no problem.  Same goes for his hammer.  His kneepads are also hinged so you can aim them forward like he's firing the molded missiles.

He can also hold his knives just fine.  You can mount the shields on his forearms or his lower legs.  Personally, I like the leg-mounted option.  They blend well there, and I like the idea that can swivel around so he call pull a knife out from his "boot".

The same peg holes can be used to mount his guns, if you don't want him to hold them.  Alternatively, there are pegholes for him to store them on his back.  Finally, if guns, knives, knee missiles, and a hammer weren't enough weapons Hammer Sharpener takes a page from Maketoy's book and has little guns that can unfold from the treads under his wrists.  I find it sort of curious that both Maketoys and Warbotron gave their Nosecones wrist guns, as I don't recall that being a G1 thing.

Nosecone turns into a drill tank, and I'm not really sure how Warbotron came up with it.  Mild spoilers, but Hammer Sharpener's alt mode is the most radical departure from G1, bot or alt, for the entire Warbotron Computron set.  It's much flatter than G1 Nosecone, yet the drill sits up much higher.  There's no discernable cockpit, unless we're pretending that yellow stripe that absolutely matches the rear of the vehicle is it.  And although the treads don't work and there's no rolling wheels, the treads do have a really nice wash, don't they?

With the shields attached to the sides of the rear and the guns mounted to top of the rear it doesn't look so bad.  The accessories help fill it out.  The guns and the knee pads can hinge upward so he can shoot at flyers instead of his own drill or torso.

That being said, you don't have to mount the shields and guns in those places.  Hammer Sharpener's got quite a few peg holes you can use.

Maketoys' Nosecone was easily my least favorite of their not-Technobots.  I've criticized him before for being over-engineered and a pain to transform.  Hammer Sharpener is the opposite of that.  He's simple to transform, generally fun to mess around with, and the numerous accessories and ways to use them make Hammer Sharpener one of the highlights of Warbotron's not-Technobots.  It's just a shame that they didn't give him bicep swivels or an alt mode that's closer to G1 Nosecone's.

[mikeszekely]

10 hours ago, nhyone said:

The Wei Jiang MPP36 looks good! They even show the back to show that there is no kibble.

I thought Wei Jiang mainly copies existing designs and upscales them? This looks original.

And why is Megatron holding a giant search light instead of his fusion canon? Megatron search and rescue?

AFAIK, while Wei Jiang's stuff has started with existing designs everything they've done has been improved from the original toy by a designer that goes by Black Apple. It's not impossible that Black Apple designed an entire Megatron.

[M'Kyuun]

That's a really nice looking Megatron. Since I already forked for MP-36, I'll skip this guy, but I look forward to the inevitable reviews. Looks like a more traditional transformation.

[Valkyrie Hunter D]

On 4/16/2017 at 3:57 PM, mikeszekely said:

Wei Jiang announced that they were going to do a Megatron to go with their MPP10 before MP-36 was even out. What's interesting is that it seems they're using their own design instead of KO-ing  MP-36 or one of the 3P Megatrons. What's more, although it's hard to tell from the resin version, it looks as clean as Despotron but not as puffy.

So that's what it is. It'll probably be too big for my lineup too, but I do like how its back is cleaner than the official version.

[mikeszekely]

Moving along to the arms, here's Double Strike, the Warbotron version of Strafe.

Warbotron added some blacks and golds, and Double Strike's chest is a little stylized, but we're back to robots that hew very close to the G1 toys.  Aside from colors and a little extra detailing, perhaps the biggest change are the little wings on his shoulders.  The shape is tweaked a bit, and they're also plugged in to the front of his shoulders rather than being attached to the side.  They do rotate and fold, so their basic orientation and overall affect on his silhouette are the same, and you can remove them and plug them into the sides if you wish.  Their placement is appropriate if you wish to transform him without removing them, though.  I could see wanting less black, white feet, and a cartoon-style white face with blue eyes, but Double Strike is unmistakably Strafe, which is good.

I find it a little odd, though, that he's nearly a head shorter than Speed Wheel/Light Speed.  I'm used to the limb bots being all the same size, but the arm bots in this set are definitely shorter than the legs.

Double Strike comes with a pair of guns, done in red and translucent orange with silver paint, and a pair of wrist connectors for the combined mode hands.

Double Strike's head is on a ball joint with nearly no downward or lateral tilt, and very little upward tilt.  It's on a flap, though, and if you pull up the flap you can fake a pretty good downward tilt.  His shoulders can rotate and hinge outward about 90 degrees, but he's got the same problem Speed Wheel does where the rotation joint is on the arm-side of the lateral hinge, limiting his ability to splay his arms.  He has a bicep swivel, a double-jointed elbow that can get his forearm up to his shoulder, and a second swivel between his elbow joints.  He has a wrist swivel, and the same style of hands as the rest of the Warbotron crew (and MP cars like Prowl or Sideswipe).  He's got a waist swivel and thigh swivels.  His hips ratchet just shy of 90 degrees either forward or backward, and use a friction hinge to get 90 degrees of lateral movement.  His knees can bend 90 degrees, but if you have his wings wrapped around the backs of his legs they'll prevent you from getting the full bend.  He doesn't really have feet, but the tail fins that serve as his toes can rotate, creating the illusion of ankle tilt, and then can also swing upward.

He holds his guns great.  You can't plug them into the tops of his shoulders due to how his transformation works, but if you want to recreate that G1 look you can kind of get it by pegging his guns into his back so the barrels point upward behind his shoulders.
 

Double Strike's alt mode is pretty similar to the G1 toy... and, compared to Maketoys' version, looks all the worse for it.  Like the G1 toy, he doesn't really have a cockpit and relies on the attached guns to complete the front of the jet.  Perhaps due to his transformation, perhaps due to having better bot mode proportions than the G1 toy, perhaps due to concessions to get the right arm-mode proportions, but Double Strike is also proportionally longer than G1 Strafe.

Another thing is that, for whatever reason, Warbotron decided to give Double Strike a backpack with a missile-firing gimmick.  The backpack sits near the front of the jet, and instead of tucking his arms into the sides like the G1 toy or Maketoys' version, Double Strike's arms wrap around onto his back.  The resulting combination has Double Strike a little taller on the front and shorter in the back vertically, the opposite of G1 Strafe, and this makes for a less aerodynamic shape than Strafe's already blocky jet mode.  With the landing gear down and the guns removed, you could almost buy Double Strike as a car instead of a jet.

Double Strike captures Strafe pretty well in a Voyager-sized form.  However, due to the sleek reimagining of Strafe's jet mode on Maketoys' version versus the blocky, "eh, close enough" alt mode on Double Strike I think he might be my least favorite of Warbotron's not-Technobots.  He's not really bad, but he's just ok.  I wouldn't say not to get him if you were interested in the entire Warbotron set, but I wouldn't say you should get him if you didn't care about the other Technobots and just wanted a Strafe.

[mikeszekely]

And the other arm, Warbotron's Turbo Ejector, their Afterburner.

Once again, very G1 toy, eschewing the red and white of the cartoon for the toy's orange, silver, and black.  Orange painted sections on his chest, silver on his shins, and gray on his shoulders replicate sticker details from the G1 toy.  As was the case with Speed Wheel/Lightspeed, Warbotron opted to paint the toy-accurate molded vents on his shins.  He loses the silver gray on his pelvis, and his legs thighs are orange instead of black, but this seems like another instance of the designers being influenced by Dreamwave's MTMTE sourcebooks.  Other than that he's got black hands and biceps instead of orange (and the more I review these things, the more black or gray biceps in place of other colors just seems to be business as usual), the addition of black feet, and the upper wheel on his back splits in half.

Turbo Ejector comes with a pair of guns that are, I think some of the nicer guns I've seen Warbotron do, and two partsforming bits.  He also comes with a little baggie of white parts, the purpose of which is a mystery since they're not mentioned in the instructions and Turbo Ejector was, if I'm not mistaken, actually the first of this set to be released.  Were they meant to fix some issue with Warbotron's Bruticus?

Turbo Ejector's articulation should seem pretty familiar if you've been following my reviews of this set.  His head is on a ball joint with some downward and lateral tilt, and he can actually look up a fair bit.  His shoulders can rotate and move laterally maybe 60 degrees.  What's frustrating is that he doesn't have the same awkward shoulders that guys like Speed Wheel have, but the combination of tall shoulders and back kibble still impedes his range of motion.  He's got bicep and wrist swivels, the standard Warbotron/GT hands, and a single-jointed elbow that still gets over 90 degrees of bend.  He has a waist swivel and thigh swivels.  His universal hips can move 90 degrees forward, backward, or laterally, and the forward/backward motion is ratcheted.  His knees bend a little less than 90 degrees, and his feet (or rather, his toes) are on a hinged ball joint.  That allows him to bend his toes up and down pretty well, and it gives him a faux ankle tilt.  The molding around his toes can block that tilt, but it's just a matter of working the hinge forward.

He holds his weapons fine, or you can peg them onto the lower wheel on his back for storage. The partsforming bits can be pegged onto the sides of his shoulders or onto his forearms.  If you put them on his forearms, the translucent orange pieces slide forward to give him wrist guns.  Also, the exhausts on the wheels behind his shoulders can swivel forward to give him shoulder cannons.

The split wheel has translucent orange fans inside.  They're hinged where they connect to his torso so they can swing forward/backward, and they're on rotating hinges at the wheel so you can position them just how you like.  If you prefer a more G1 look, you can pull the lower wheel down and fold the top wheel back up.

While I do like Maketoys' Tron-inspired take on Afterburner's alt mode, Turbo Ejector is definitely the more G1 alt-mode.  The partsforming bits for the rear of the bike, and the translucent orange parts stand in for sticker detail.  He's got a peghole where the G1 toy does, although it's picked out in gray paint on Turbo Ejector.  he's got a similarly gray-accented peg hole where the G1 toy had some silver paint and a screw hole.  Additional silver, gold, gray, and red paint pick out more details on his arms and the lights on the front that were molded but unpainted on the G1 toy.  The front axle is gray, kinked, and more detailed but otherwise G1.  The silver-painted cockpit still dominates the center of the vehicle.  The big changes are the exhaust pipes at the back and a large translucent orange section covering the G1 toy's obvious combiner peg, both of which are fine.

Warbotron recommends plugging Turbo Ejector's guns into the front axle.  I definitely dig it, as it gives him sort of a Batpod vibe.  You do have three other peg holes on each side, though, if you want a more G1 look.

I thought, weird Amidala-ish head crest aside, that Maketoys' Tron-inspired Afterburner was one of the better not-Technobots they did, but this is also true for Warbotron's version.   I do kind of wish that they'd have been able to avoid the partsforming, but for the most part Turbo Ejector is everything I'd want in a modern Afterburner.  Warbotron's tweaks to the G1 design feel like the kind of small changes that add the sort of additional details you'd expect from blowing the G1 toy up to a modern large Voyager.  If you're a fan of Afterburner or the Technobots you should be pretty happy with Turbo Ejector.

[mikeszekely]

No sense in putting it off.  Here's WB-03, the numbered-but-not-named Warbotron version of Computron.

At first blush, I might say that Maketoys did a more G1-ish Computron due to the clever way they used panels on their Scattershot's arms to make their Computron's torso armor.  Warbotron used Laser Cannon's arms to widen the torso, but Computron's chest is still basically Laser Cannon's hitched up a little higher, and now far too much white is showing.  What's especially irritating is that Warbotron included that flight stand with laser cannon... if they'd just thought about it a little longer they surely could have redesigned that flight stand so that it could have formed the missing torso armor.

Truthfully, though, he's actually very Computron-esque when you get past the torso.  His head's a little small, a consequence of having to fit inside Laser Cannon's chest, but it's modeled after the G1 toy with an orange face and yellow visor.  Laser Cannon's pistols can plug onto Computron's chest, a feature I believe the G1 toy had.  His thighs are not G1 white, but this is due to Laser Cannon's legs collapsing to form the thighs instead of the G1 method of just folding over.  I think, perhaps, the darker maroon panels could have been white, as they're the backs of Laser Cannon's legs, but it's certainly no worse off than Maketoys'.  Speed Wheel's top is facing forward, and while that's not cartoon canon I think it was possible on the G1 toy, and the gray paint on the cockpit, vents, and hood are the parts that would be whitish gray on the G1 toy anyway.  His other leg works fine with Hammer Sharpener's yellow at the bottom and the drill on Computron's knee.  His left arm still has the two guns pointed upward and the predominantly red and white color scheme.  You can arrange the little wings differently, if you choose, so the big difference is that Double Strike's wings wrap around his legs on Computron's forearm instead of jutting out, although you could easily unpeg them and angle them out a bit if you want a more G1 look.  His right arm still has most of the alt-mode cockpit on the forearm, and the partsforming bits clip onto the back of his wrist to emulate the folded-over part of the G1 toy.  He's still got the two wheels on his shoulder, which is really the most memorable feature on Computron for me, and you can arrange them up like this or move them out to the side more.  The only big change there is that Turbo Ejector's arms are bent so as to not block Computron's elbow vs Afterburner's arms being straight on the G1 toy.  I happen to have Laser Cannon's wings on his back, but if you want to leave them on Computron's thighs you can.  And the feet parts, although thicker, have a very G1 Computron design.

Warbotron's Computron is much bigger than Maketoys'.

 

He is maybe a hair shorter than their version of Bruticus.  This makes him a much better fit for my personal collection than Maketoys'.

For weapons, we take Laser Cannon's leftover nosecone and his rifle and extend them, creating a larger rifle and a battle axe.

Warbotron Computron's head is on a ball joint or a hinged swivel.  I can't really tell for sure, but he can turn his head and look up and down, but he has no lateral tilt.  His shoulders are ratcheted in the combiner pegs on the arm bots for rotation, and ratcheted in the combiner ports on Laser Cannon for 90 degrees of lateral motion.  The arm bots' waist swivels become the bicep swivels, and their hip and knee joints become a double jointed elbow that will get you better than 90 degrees.  At least, that's the case on Turbo Ejector, who's knees can bend forward a bit.  Technically the Double Strike arm should only bend at his hips, as the winged side is supposed to be the back of the arm, but there's nothing stopping you from deciding the winged side is the front to get the extra articulation from the knees.  Really, though, using the hips and knees is a dated design and I'd have really preferred if the arm bots came with dedicated elbow joints for combined mode like Ordin, Feral Rex, and Poseidon.  It would have looked better, not just because it'd eliminate the gap between the armbots' thighs but because his arms, which are way too long, could have been shorter.

Moving along, his wrists can swivel.  His thumbs are on ball joints at the palm with one additional hinged knuckle.  Each finger is individually articulated.  They're ball jointed at the base, which allows him to splay his fingers a bit, with two additional hinged knuckles.  His waist and thighs have swivels.  His hips can go a little less than 90 degrees forward or backward on friction joints, and are ratcheted for lateral movement.  Due to how Laser Cannon's hips transform to widen into Computron's hips he can't do a full split, but he can get a decently wide A-stance.  His ratcheted knees can bend about 45 degrees.  His feet have dedicated ratcheting joints for ankle tilt.  I didn't bother to test the full range, but it's enough to match his widest A-stance.  They also have a hinge in the toe so it can bend up or down.

Compared to other combiners, he's very stable.  I haven't had any issues with him wanting to fall over or do the splits on me.

His gun uses pegs on the handle to secure into peg holes on his palms.  The battle axe is just held with friction, but the joints in the fingers are strong enough that he's not going to drop the axe once you have the fingers wrapped around it.  If Warbo-Computron needs more firepower you can fold out the missiles on his feet, the knee missiles on Hammer Sharpener, or peg one of the limbs' guns (I'd suggest Turbo Ejector's) onto the sides of his thighs.

Warbo-Computron cleans up pretty well from behind.  Laser Cannon and Double Strike's weapons integrate into Computron, and Warbotron designed Speed Wheel and Hammer Sharpener to have places to stow their guns in leg mode, albeit loosely.  Turbo Ejector's guns don't stow away as cleanly, unfortunately, but there are still lots of places you can peg them in on Computron's body.

One thing I have to note, something that you can't see in these pictures, are that Warbotron's tolerances are just off sometimes.  Collapsing Laser Cannon's arms to make his torso mode required me to loosen the screws on his forearms, then retighten them to close up the seams.  His arms feel fairly loosely attached, but I had to take Speed Wheel apart to get him off the combiner peg.  As I already mentioned, the guns that fit fine on the most of the various ports on Speed Wheel and Hammer Sharpener are very loose in the ports designed to stow them in leg mode.  Likewise, Double Strike's little wings are fine in their robot/alt mode ports, but if you move them to the other ports on his shoulders for arm mode they're pretty loose.

And there you have it, folks.  Warbotron Computron and the individual not-Technobots are definitely not perfect.  If another determined 3P company wants to take him on, they can definitely do better.  In combined mode, the two big things that bug me are the lack of a G1-style torso and the inability to stow Laser Cannon's nosecone on his back.  If I'm being honest, though, I originally got Quantron based on good word of mouth and I was never really happy with him.  After collecting more combiners and realizing that the majority of them are more in this Warbotron scale I decided to start buying this set and, for all its flaws, I'm infinitely more satisfied with him than Maketoys'.  Maybe it's because Computron was never my favorite (if anything, he's possibly my least favorite of the US G1 combiner teams), but Warbotron's is good enough.  If someone else (although probably not ToyWorld and their ridiculously huge combiners) makes a better one I might check it out, but unlike Uranos or Hades I'm also fine if this is the last Computron I ever buy.  Does that mean I'd recommend him?  It's tough to say if flaws that I can live with would be deal breakers for someone else, so good enough for me may not be good enough for you.  All I can say is that I'm happy with him.

[JB0]

1 hour ago, mikeszekely said:

Turbo Ejector's guns don't stow away as cleanly, unfortunately, but there are still lots of places you can peg them in on Computron's body.

I'll say. If he had any more peg holes on him, I'd think he was a Centurions reject.

 

[M'Kyuun]

13 hours ago, JB0 said:

I'll say. If he had any more peg holes on him, I'd think he was a Centurions reject.

 

[mikeszekely]

Alright, how about those Dinobots I promised?  First up we'll look at ToyWorld's Muddy, their take on Sludge.

Muddy's roughly Voyager-sized, about a head taller than an MP car and close in height to KBB's Voyager-sized MP-10.  Scale nuts will likely find him too small, then, but I think it's a good size for a CHUG collection, and on a little small for my personal head canon.  The question, then, is does he look like a Sludge?  Gold feet, gray shins and arms, red torso with a black/translucent center, black thighs and pelvis, and wings?  All checks.  His torso is a little boxy compared the to T-shape of G1 toy/'toon Sludge, and there's something else about the black on the front, the shape of the translucent piece, and the molded detail flanking and below the translucent piece that seem a bit off to me.  He trades the lone blue stripe on his shins for a set of blue, red, and green stripes, and the sides of his legs are much smoother.  The shape of his wings is a bit different, too, but I'd say it's a fair take on Sludge.

Zooming in a bit, I think maybe I'm thrown by his head, too, which seems too squarish and is missing the silver on his forehead.  ToyWorld did opt to go for cartoon blue eyes (light-piped), and what it's lacking in Sludge's empty-headed expression it nearly makes up for by looking every bit the part of heroic Autobot.  Also, as you can see, his shoulders are a set of hinges so you can position them lower or higher.

ToyWorld does some interesting and not entirely G1 things with Muddy's transformation.  His robot arms are actually the hind legs, and the smaller front legs fold through his wings to curl along the inside.  Meanwhile, his tail folds up into the back of his robot legs to form his heels, the dinosaur neck tucks in close and pegs onto his back, and even the dinosaur head folds in so the bottom is flush with the neck.  The nice thing is that it all feels clever but not at all complicated, and it makes for a very clean robot mode.

Muddy's accessories are nothing to write home about.  He's got a gun and sword, both of which are loosely based on the G1 toy's.  The gun has a longer barrel than the toy did, but shares much of the same molded details.  Instead of being a single black piece, though, the barrel is done in an awful translucent red.  The sword is very G1 toy, right down to the all-red color, although ToyWorld again opted for the translucent plastic.  At the risk of sounding like one Bobby Skullface, both accessories would look a lot better with some paint.

Muddy's head is on a ball joint, and he has some pretty good downward and lateral tilt, but not much upward.  For a big guy like a Dinobot, though, I think that's fair.  His shoulders can rotate, but their lateral movement is limited to about 45 degrees due their size and how the hinges in them work.  His biceps swivel, and he's got tight ratcheted elbows that'll go 90 degrees.  His hands have a pin hinge at the base knuckles, with all his fingers being molded as a single piece, so his hands can open and close.  Surprisingly, he doesn't have any wrist swivels, but he does have a waist swivel.  His hips are soft ratcheted for forward and backward movement, of which he can go 90 degrees in either direction, and a much stronger ratchet for lateral movement.  He can get 90 degrees laterally, with enough detents that he can go from stock straight to a causal A-stance to a number of more extreme A-stances before ultimately doing the splits.  He has a thigh swivel, but it's just above the knee instead of closer to the hips.  That counts for something, I guess, but I tend to think looks a little more awkward.  His knees are ratcheted and get a little over 90 degrees.  The front chunk of his feet have hinges that enable them to swing inward and/or upward, for up to 90 degrees of inward ankle tilt and 45 degrees of upward ankle/toe tilt.  The gold toes have another hinge that lets them bend downward up to 90 degrees.

Muddy holds both of his weapons fine.  They just have 5mm pegs and don't use any MP-style tabs, but his palms and thumbs are molded to form a 5mm port.  Muddy's sword is comically small in his hand, though.

Muddy transforms into a Brotosaurus, because he doesn't turn into an Apatosaurus.  I like it.  The head is a little more lively than the cartoon but also more "gentle brotosaurus" than the mean-looking G1 toy.  His head's done in gold chrome, as are his dino-toes and the robot toes on his back, and the front half of the brotosaurus and the end of its tail is in silver chrome.  The silver chrome is toy-accurate, and while the gold chrome is only partially so I really prefer it to the the pale yellow of the cartoon or the chrome inside translucent plastic of the G1 toys.  His legs are more modern brotosaurus, with little toes and noticeably larger hind legs, compared to the stumpy G1 legs and their two in the front, one in the rear spikes.

In brontosaurus mode, his head is on a ball joint that, due to the way it's cut, can look up a tiny amount and straight down as long as it's pointing forward.  It can turn left and right, but doing so forces him to look slightly downward.  No further neck articulation.  His front hips/shoulders can rotate 360 degrees and move laterally nearly 45 degrees.  He has front thigh/bicep swivels, and his front knee/elbows can bend about 45 degrees forward or backward.  All four gold dino toes are on ball joints.  They can't really bend up, but they can bend 90 downward and rotate to give him fake dino ankle tilt.  His hind legs are his robot arms, so 360 degree rotation at the hips, about 45 degrees of lateral movement at the hips, thigh swivels, and hard ratcheted knees that bend 90 degrees backward.  Only the last bit of his tail is articulated, and it just amounts to a little wiggle up or down.

Muddy's sword folds in half and can be stored inside his bronto neck.  Typically, I love it when robot mode weapons have ways to hide in alt modes, but I don't really like how you kind of have to put it there or have a big gap in his neck, and even if you do put it in there the translucent red doesn't match the gray.  His gun can peg into 5mm ports on his sides above his bronto hips.

Comparing Muddy to something like Fans Toys' Stomp would be asinine, because there's no way they'd expect a toy this stylized and this small to be considered an MP Sludge.  Like I said, he's a CHUG Sludge, one that cleans up very well in both modes.  You wouldn't even know he's supposed to be a combiner component if it weren't for the pegs around his collar and knees.  Unfortunately, he's not the only Sludge competing for that space.  Fansproject has their Lost Exo Realm Columpio, and and Planet-X has their Fall of Cybertron-style Neptune, both of which are slightly cheaper at current market prices (assuming they're in stock) and about the same size.  Personally, I'm not actually a fan of the Fall of Cybertron Dinobots (although I've heard good things about Planet-X), and although the Fansproject Dinobots are cheap enough that I might check them out due to curiosity my instinct is to prefer the more updated G1 look of ToyWorld's figures.  In any case, without either figure on hand to compare them with Muddy, all I can say is that that I really dig him.  If you're looking for a Sludge to go with your CHUGs I'd definitely suggest giving Muddy a look, just be aware  that there are other options.

[JB0]

Just to be clear, the remark about Centurions rejects wasn't as malicious as it came across. I genuinely liked the concept behind the Centurions, and I like how many options Warbotron left on their not-Technobots. It is just an odd thing to see that many peg holes on a pseudo-Transformer.

 

48 minutes ago, mikeszekely said:

Muddy's accessories are nothing to write home about.  He's got a gun and sword, both of which are loosely based on the G1 toy's.  The gun has a longer barrel than the toy did, but shares much of the same molded details.  Instead of being a single black piece, though, the barrel is done in an awful translucent red. 

Just a hypothesis here, but I think the red-barrelled gun is a compromise homage. Since they don't include a missile launcher, the gun barrel is molded so it can be treated as such.

If that is what they are going for, they made the wrong call.

 

Muddy looks pretty darn nice.

Though I really miss the smoked-plastic-over-chrome dinosaur heads of the original Dinobot toys. I always thought it was a neat effect, and I'm kinda sad that it looks like no one else does.  

[mikeszekely]

17 hours ago, JB0 said:

Just to be clear, the remark about Centurions rejects wasn't as malicious as it came across. I genuinely liked the concept behind the Centurions, and I like how many options Warbotron left on their not-Technobots.

It's cool; it's not like I designed it, anyway.  I'm just happy that people are actually reading these things.

17 hours ago, JB0 said:

Just a hypothesis here, but I think the red-barrelled gun is a compromise homage. Since they don't include a missile launcher, the gun barrel is molded so it can be treated as such.

If that is what they are going for, they made the wrong call.

Yeah, it could be... except G1 Sludge came with two guns, right?  The missile launching one, and a plain black one.  The molding and shape of the ToyWorld gun looks more like the gun that didn't  fire missiles.  But really, who knows that these companies are thinking half the time.

17 hours ago, JB0 said:

Though I really miss the smoked-plastic-over-chrome dinosaur heads of the original Dinobot toys. I always thought it was a neat effect, and I'm kinda sad that it looks like no one else does.

Y'know, it's funny you should say this...

Instead of doing another ToyWorld Dinobot, let's have another look at Sludge.  This time, we'll look at Thunderous, GCreation's take on him.

Thunderous is slightly taller and significantly more massive than Muddy, and he's a bit closer to G1.  His large gold feet have the vented details of the G1 toy, and some black stripes with silver and blue details stand in for some sticker details.  He's got the gray forearms and dino-toes on his wrists as well as the lack of color on his pelvis that the cartoon has.  Some of the black lines on the cartoon's chest are here but blue, and the shape of his torso is much closer to G1.  He's even got the smokey translucent plastic over gold chrome.  His wings are closer to the G1 toy as well.  His head is a little too squarish still, and I'm not a fan of the red-painted eyes, but the big silver chunk on his forehead helps a lot.  I'd also like to point out, because I'm not sure how well it's showing up in the photos, but while Muddy's red is just red plastic most of the red on Thunderous is a gorgeous metallic red paint.

Thunderous also proudly wears his dino legs on the sides of his shins.  While that's technically more G1-accurate, Thunderous doesn't clean up anywhere near as well as Muddy.  Not only is he carrying the legs on the sides of his massive shins, the dino tail is still somewhat visible and the dino head hangs limply off his back, making no effort to tuck away.

Thunderous comes with a bit more in the accessory department than Muddy.  We've got two identical guns and two identical swords.  Both are nicely detailed and painted.  He also comes with one of the largest combiner feet I've looked at, and I've looked at a lot of combiner feet.

Thunderous' head is on a ball joint with some pretty great range.  He can tilt his head laterally, look up a fair bit, and look down with no issues.  His shoulders are on a hinge at the torso and what I assume to be a ball joint inside the shoulder.  In addition to rotation he can shrug a bit and a little less than 90 degrees of lateral tilt.  He's got bicep swivels, and a double-jointed elbow that's ratcheted at the top and friction at the bottom.  Due to the size of his arm, though, he can still only bend his elbows about 90 degrees.  Unlike Muddy, he does have a wrist swivels, but also unlike Muddy his hands are molded as a single piece, so he can't open or close his hands.  He does have a waist swivel and thigh swivels just below his hips.  Speaking of hips, he can kick forward a little over 90 degrees, backward a little under 90 degrees, and laterally a little over 90 degrees.  His knees are on soft ratchets, but due to the sheer bulk on his lower legs he can only bend them about 45 degrees.  The gold toes can rotate to give him a faux ankle tilt, and they're also on double hinges so you can bend then up or down.  His wings are hinged so they can sweep back as far as you like, and they're also on swiveling posts so you can angle them upward like MP Grimlock's.

Thunderous can hold his accessories fine, but the left shoulder on mine is super loose.  Speaking of shoulders, if you want to try to cram all his weapons onto him he can carry the swords and peg the guns onto his shoulders.

Thunderous turns into Brontosaurus, as Sludges should.  He's a bit closer to G1 in this mode, too, especially the toy.  He's got the bigger gold-chromed feet on his back ,the silver chromed front half, dino feet with two toes in the front and one on the back, legs that are all the same roughly the same length, and a toy-style smoked-translucent plastic head/neck with gold chrome inside.

In bronto mode, Thunderous' head is on a hinge at the end of a ball joint, so he can look straight up, down, left, right, and tilt his head.  His mouth opens, and he's got a flamethrower on a hinge inside.  Like Muddy, there's no additional articulation on his neck.  His shoulders/front hips can rotate 360 degrees, spread a little under 45 degrees laterally, and he's got a forward/backward butterfly motion.  He's got bicep/front thigh swivels, and his elbow/front knees can bend 90 degrees forward or backward.  His rear dino toes are fixed, but his front dino toes are on hinged ball joints so he can point them up, down, or spin them to create faux bronto ankle tilts.  His rear hips can rotate 360 degrees, but they're lacking the lateral movement, butterfly joints, and thigh swivels of the front legs.  The ratcheted double-jointed rear knees can get a little over 90 degrees of bend.  His tail is basically unarticulated.  You can bend the chromed end up but doing so breaks the sculpt.

I can't find a place to stow Thunderous' swords, but his guns can plug into either his front or rear hips.  It's worth noting again that the guns are identical, though, not mirrored, and since they're not top/bottom symmetrical one side will look upside down compared to the other.

One other thing you can do is take the combiner foot, split it in half, and attach each half to his hips to give him even bigger guns.  As is often the case when you try to find uses for combiner hands/feet outside of combined mode, it's stupid.  Actually, it's doubly so, because usually companies like Maketoys will do it so that all the combiner parts are used to try to justify the partsforming.  Here, GCreation is coming up with a dumb use for the foot, but you still have to take pieces off of the foot and set them off to the side anyway.

Now, the big reason why I've decided to review Muddy and Thunderous back-to-back instead of doing one whole set and then the other is because it's very difficult to say which is better.  In a vacuum either seem like they'd be fine CHUG Sludges, but when compared directly as two G1-style CHUGish Sludges that also happen to be combiners it's interesting how most of what I didn't like on Muddy is better on Thunderous, but most of what I though Muddy did really well Thunderous doesn't do as well.  I like the sculpt, the size, and the accessories that come with Thunderous.  I love the red paint and the attention to detail like the flamethrower in the mouth.  On looks alone he seems like a more premium toy.  And yet, Muddy is easier to transform, hides the fact that he's a combiner better, and despite the simpler engineering cleans up much better.  So with that in mind, I'd encourage anyone looking for CHUG Dinobots to look carefully at the their options, because even after having both in hand I'm not sure which I like better.

[JB0]

5 hours ago, mikeszekely said:

Yeah, it could be... except G1 Sludge came with two guns, right?  The missile launching one, and a plain black one.  The molding and shape of the ToyWorld gun looks more like the gun that didn't  fire missiles.  But really, who knows that these companies are thinking half the time.

You're right, of course. And the missiles were metallic, not clear red. I can just see where they might have considered it an homage anyways, and the barrel DOES wind up looking like a separate thing that isn't really PART of the gun.

 

Holy wow, Thunderous has some huge guns.

Interesting. Just from looks, I have to agree that it's a pretty tough call.    Mostly, I like Muddy's design better. The humanoid torso on Thunderous is nicer with all it's blocky angularness, though. But the actual look of individual parts, I prever Thunderous. Lot of extra detailing, a "shrouded" dino head, and ... just in general, that extra mile to make it prettier.  With the exception of those lovely metallic dino toes on Muddy.

[mikeszekely]

Well, gotta get this up early since I'll be out tonight.  Moving back to ToyWorld, here's Roar, their Snarl.

Aesthetically, Roar is very in keeping with Muddy.  A lot of his engineering is fairly similar, but in some ways simpler since he's sort of backward compared to Muddy.  I will say that I think Roar's head sculpt is closer to Snarl's than Muddy's was to Sludge, still with the heroic appearance and blue eyes.  The split tail that was arguably Snarl's most distinguishing feature is still there, and decked out in some nice gold chrome like the G1 toy had.  His shins don't clean up as well as Muddy's, since they still have half a dino head on the side.  But, I'd argue that's cleaner than Gigapower's Guttur, an MP-style Snarl that hides the head inside the legs but leaves the front dino legs on the sides.  That seems like more to hide, and at least ToyWorld did that much.  With the space inside, though, it's a shame that ToyWorld didn't try to hide both the way Fans Toys did on their MP Snarl.  The colors are mostly spot on.  The only big exception is the crest on Roar's forehead is red, while it was just black in the cartoon and silver on the toy.  You could make an argument a red pelvis based on the cartoon, but the G1 toy had a black pelvis with red stickers so I'm pretty ok with it.  And again, ToyWorld did a very good job hiding the fact that Roar is also a combiner.

What throws me off with Roar is the shape of the torso.  The dark translucent part isn't quite big long enough, and overall it's too flat.  Whether you were looking at the toy or the cartoon, Snarl's chest was shaped by large, angled panels, and instead ToyWorld is giving us little molded vents and some black paint.

Oh, and I compared Muddy to an MP car, but here's a regular Hasbro Voyager for size since I'm asserting that these guys are CHUG-style Dinobots.

Roar's accessories are... meh.  The sword is again very G1, just translucent instead of solid red.  The gun, though... it's closer to Snarl's black gun than his missile launcher, but it's like the ToyWorld designer saw the G1 gun, noticed the peg/screw hole on the side, and designed the entire gun around holes.  Like the G1 gun, it's got a long barrel, but the translucent red barrel on the ToyWorld gun lacks the hose or other details present on the G1 gun.  Muddy's gun didn't look great, but Roar's looks downright bad.

He holds the gun and his sword fine, though.  It'd be nice if the sword were a little bigger, but it doesn't look as undersized as Muddy's.

Articulation is pretty similar to Muddy's.  His head is on a ball joint that can't really look up or tilt, but he can look down just fine.  He's got the same shoulders that you can raise or lower, with a hinge inside the shoulder for lateral movement.  It's limited to about 45 degrees before they start bumping into the big red pieces on his shoulders... pieces that rotate for transformation but don't actually lock into place in either mode.  That's frustrating, because his shoulders are ratcheted for rotation, so unless you hold the red panels in place they'll actually want to turn before the shoulder joint does.  He's got a waist swivel and bicep swivels, and a (very tight) ratcheted elbow that can bend 90 degrees.  Once again, his hands have a pin at the base of the fingers so his hands can open and close, but he doesn't have any wrist swivel.  His hips are ratcheted for lateral movement and he can easily get 90 degrees there, and there's a very soft ratchet for forward/backward movement that'll get just shy of 90 degrees to the front and 90 degrees backward.  His thigh swivel is just above the knee, which works but doesn't look any less awkward than it did on Muddy.  His ratcheted knees can bend just over 90 degrees.  The front and some of the side of his foot is on a hinge, so he can't tilt his toes up or down but he's got a great inward ankle tilt.  The halves of his tail are on a couple of hinges, too, so you can move them up or down, forward or backward.

As you'd expect, Roar turns into a Stegosaurus.  We've got that same gold chrome that was on his tail on his dino toes, his dino head, the upper part of his front dino legs, and the plates on his back.  Due to his transformation he's losing the smoked translucent plastic on his hind legs, and for aesthetic reasons on his dino head.  The head's not as flat as the G1 cartoon or toy, but I think it looks nice.  I like the blue eyes better than the G1 toy's red ones or the cartoon's weirdly-drawn eyes.  He has splashes of green, red, and blue paint on his sides, but not a lot of other detail.  I'm also a little bummed that his front legs weren't all chrome, as there's no reason for the gray plastic on them.

Roar can mount his gun onto his back, and like Muddy his sword hides away.  This time it's in his tail, and I have pretty much the same thought as last time; it's cool that they attempted it, but I hate that you kind of have to do it or have a big gap, and that the visible translucent red doesn't match the gold chrome of the tail.

For dino articulation his tail is actually on a peg (chances are it'll come off when you're trying to transform him.  Technically that means it can rotate, and a hinge lets in move up and down, but it really doesn't look right unless it's flush against his butt.  His head is hinged so he can look up and down, but he can't rotate his head or look side-to-side.  His mouth opens.  His rear dino legs are his robot arms, so his hips are on rotating ratchets and hinged for lateral movement.  He has thigh swivels, and ratcheted knees that can bend 90 degrees.  His rear dino toes are hinged so he can point them down, but there's no upward or inward tilt.  His front dino legs rotate, and using the transformation hinges he can move his front hips/shoulders pretty wide, too.  The front legs also have thigh/bicep swivels, and an elbow/knee hinge that can bend slightly backward and forward nearly 90 degrees, and a hinged toe with the same articulation as the back dino feet.  All of the plates on his back are on ball joints, so you have a lot of latitude for displaying them how you please.

Since the last review, I checked out some of the competition for CHUG Dinobots.  There isn't a Fansproject Snarl, and I'm seriously unimpressed with their Sludge, Grimlock, and Snarl who seem to have much more significant flaws than ToyWorld or GCreation.  So while there are definite issues with Roar, they're fairly minor and often subjective and I'd feel pretty comfortable comfortable recommending Roar as a good, G1 CHUG-style Snarl.  But be sure to tune in later to see how GCreation's stacks up.

 

[mikeszekely]

Ok, I guess it's later.  This is Growl, GCreation's Snarl.

Out of the gate, we again find GCreation to be a little more toy accurate.  His torso is exactly what I wanted Roar's to be, he's got two of the plates on his back sticking up between the split tail, red-painted vents and silver, red, and blue paint on his pelvis mimic sticker details, and although it's not painted do do the lines and triangles on his shins.  the molded circles on his feet were also present on the G1 toy.  GCreation opted to to go opposite of ToyWorld and hide the dino head but leave the legs on the side, which I suppose is fine- it certainly seems to fit with GCreation's aesthetics for the line.  Growl's head is also very G1 toyish, with a grumpy sort of scowl.  And, once again, most of the red you're seeing in this picture is a nice metallic paint.If I could have offered one suggestion, it'd be to have used red instead of silver for the the part under the smoked-translucent-over-gold-chrome chest panel, and maybe red instead of black for the bottom of his torso.

Growl comes with two painted swords and two cool-looking black guns with silver and red paint.  Neither are particularly G1-accurate, but they absolutely blow Roar's accessories out of the water.  And, as another combiner leg, Roar comes with the other foot.  If you compare them, though, the molding on the gold-chromed toe is different than the one that came with Thunderous.

Roar's head is on a ball joint.  He can look up a and tilt is head sideways quite a bit, down just a little.  Might be a one-off problem with my copy, but the ball joint was crazy loose on mine, like even the hips on Titans Return Skullcruncher would be an improvement.  His shoulders are balljoints at the end of a double hinge, so in addition to rotation he can shrug and move his shoulder laterally somewhere between 45 and 90 degrees.  He has bicep swivels, double-jointed elbows that get 90 degrees, and wrist swivels but his hands are one molded piece.  He does have a waist swivel, but if you go strictly by the instructions a GCreation seems to want you to use a hinged peg at the top of his crotch to plug into his belly button, which would eliminate the swivel.  His universal hips can move forward, backward, or laterally 90 degrees.  He has thigh swivels just below the hips, ratcheted knees that bend 90 degres, and his toes on on a hinged swivel for a little up/down tilt and a faux ankle tilt.  The split tail has some hinges, but they really only serve to make the tail roll forward or backward.  You can't angle them, and they never quite look right to me.

He holds his weapons just fine.

Growl turns into a Stegosaurus, as he should.  His tail, plates, and front dino legs are all gold-chromed, and his head is that smoked translucent over gold chrome and red eyes that the G1 toy had.  He trades that same translucent/chrome on the rear legs for silver plastic, likely a concession to his robot mode, but the translucent circles around the pegs on his dino hips are certainly G1 toy.  He also trades the G1 toys' gold chrome toes for gold paint.  A lone gray-and-red painted stripe is all that breaks up the silver plastic.

Like Roar, Growl's plates are all on ball joints so you can turn and angle them how you like.  They're more stylized than Roar's but I definitely dig them.  His tail is pegged in so it doesn't have any articulation.  His head is pegged in place and shouldn't have any articulation.  It  is hinged and could, in theory, look down, but doing so break the sculpt and show robot knees hiding out behind his dino head.  The mouth does open, but unlike his buddy Thunderous there's nothing inside.  Due to the angles of the hinges in his robot shoulders his rear dino hips can move out laterally a bit, but only while also doing a backward butterfly movement.  The rear legs also have a thigh swivel, hinged knees that can bend 90 degrees forward or backward, and toes on hinged ball joints for up/down toe tilt and a faux ankle tilt.  I'm not entirely sure about his front hip/shoulders... they rotate on what seems to be friction, but toleranced so poorly that it squeaks louder than a lot of ratchet joints.  No bicep/thigh swivel, and the elbows/knees bend a little less than 90 degrees either forward or backward.  His front ankles are ball joints, so he can rotate his ankles or tilt them inward/outward a little.  The gray part of his front foot is actually hinged, so he can bend his foot down, and the gold toes are on an additional hinge to give them some up/down range.

His guns can peg into either is front or his rear dino hips, and there doesn't seem to be any way to store his swords.  Honestly, I'm not a fan of sticking weapons onto dino hips, so its not a big deal for me.  Like Thunderous, you're supposed to be able to split the combiner foot and mount that like guns to Growl's hips, too, but the tolerances there seem to be off and I could get them to stay in place long enough for a photo.  Not that it matters, because it still leaves leftover bits, and I still think it's stupid and hate it.

Ultimately, we find ourselves in pretty much the same position as we were with the Sludges.  Growl fixes a lot of the aesthetic issues I had with Roar, especially in the torso and weapons and gives him some paint that makes him look like a more premium toy.  He doesn't have the rotating panels on the sides of his torso, either.  But, once again, GCreation opted for more complex engineering that doesn't really pay off in these modes, making ToyWorld's Roar a little cleaner and a little more fun to mess around with.  I also like the both heads better on Roar.  So once again, while these are not MP Dinobots, they're both good CHUG Dinobots without a clear winner between the two.  

[mikeszekely]

How about a Grimlock?  First up is the ToyWorld version, Grimshell.

Grimshell's definitely very Grimlock-y.  The color of the red/blue/green marks on his shins are similar to (but in a different order) than the cartoon, as are his blue eyes. The split tail on the sides of his legs and the smoked translucent plastic over his chest is G1 toy.  The basic colors are all correct, with the biggest differences being Grimlock's face plate being a too-light shade of gray and his robot toes being done in gold chrome.  Officially, his dino toes actually fold inside his wrists, but you can leave them out.  He's still got his wings with the dino arms on his back.  Really, most of what sets him apart are little tweaks, like a lot of the molded detail is slightly different than G1 Grimlock, or he's lacking the red and white sticker detail that was painted on the Hasbro version of MP-08's biceps but he's got little splashes of red on his biceps.

For size, I'm comparing him to the only Voyager-sized CHUG Grimlock I have, the Generations one based on FoC Grimlock.  As you can see, Grimshell is quite a bit bigger.  In fact, he's just a little smaller than MP-08.

Grimshell comes with quite a few accessories, which you could probably have guessed since the previous two didn't have any combiner bits.  We've got a nice G1-style Grimlock sword and gun.  The sword goes for the translucent red instead of the solid red and has slightly different molding than the G1 toy.  The gun goes for translucent red barrels instead of the clear on MP-08 or the black of the G1 toy, and also adds some silver paint to the sides in basically the same spot MP-08 did.  Additionally, we have both combiner feet and hands, plus some shoulder armor and antenna for combined mode.  There are pegs on the feet that make me think the combiner kibble might be usable in robot or dino mode, but the instructions don't mention it so we'll just talk about those more when we talk about the combined mode.  Not pictured are some screw hole covers and a face plate for combined mode, which I'd already installed prior to taking photos.

Grimshell's head is on a ball joint that can look up a fair amount, rotate, and tilt to either side, but his chin is already basically touching his chest when he's looking straight ahead so down's a no-go.  His shoulders are on squeaky soft ratchets for rotation and a double hinge for lateral movement, but due to the shape of his shoulder and the material around it he's limited to about 45 degrees.  That's not optimal, but I guess it's not worst than MP-08, right?  He's got bicep swivels and ratcheted double-jointed elbows that get 90 degrees of bend due to how large his forearms are.  His wrists can swivel and, due to transformation, can bend up and down, which I find useful for sword-wielding characters.  The fingers are all one piece on a base knuckle hinge so he can open and close his hands.  He's got a ratcheted waist swivel, and hips that can bend on ratchets 90 degrees forward, backward, and laterally with hinges on his hip armor to get it out of the way.  He's got thigh swivels just below this hips and extremely tight ratcheted knees that bend just under 90 degrees.  The knees are perhaps too tight; it takes a lot of force to move them, and that force tends to start engaging joints for transformation.  ToyWorld even built a clip into his leg transformation to help hold the leg in place, but it's just not up to the task.  His toes are on ball joints that can point down a little and rotate for a faux ankle tilt.  His wings are hinged for opening and closing, with another hinge to angle them up just a bit.

Grimshell holds his weapons just fine in either hand, even with the dino toes out.

Grimshell's T-Rex mode is very much in keeping with his robot mode, in that it's basically G1 with the dragging tail, thick legs, hinges molded into something like rocket jets, robot chest for a belly, and gold neck, but also with stylized molding and painted markings that are different.  The toes and neck are gold chrome, the end of his tail and his dino arms are silver chrome.  The teeth are painted silver, and ToyWorld again goes for the cartoon blue eyes.  The most obvious differences are the shape of the head, which is very stylized and actually more evocative of FoC Grimlock than G1 Grimlock to me, and the claws which have the middle claw inverted.

A few other differences are due to Grimshell having more obvious combiner parts on him than the others.  A large portion of his back is red because it's the combined-mode pevils (which is on Grimshell's butt in robot mode).  You can also see combiner connectors on the under side of his tail, and the black rear of the combined-mode head on the back of his otherwise gold neck.

Grimshell can open his mouth to reveal a gold-chromed flamethrower, which itself is on a hinge so you can angle it just right for the pose you're going for.  The head itself is on a hinge so he can look straight up and a good bit down, although looking up kind of makes his neck look skinny due to how it's shaped to allow for the downward look.  He can't turn or tilt his dino head.  His dino arms are on on ball joints for rotation, bicep swivel, and lateral movement out to about 90 degrees, with a hinge at the elbow for 90 degrees of bend.  His dino wrists can swivel, and each claw is individually articulated on a hinge.  His dino hips are on that double hinge from his shoulder, so he can get a decent A-stance, and soft-ratcheted for rotation.  His bicep swivel becomes a thigh swivel and the double-jointed elbow becomes a double-jointed knee that can get 90 degrees forward or backward.  If you want more dynamic poses for his dino legs, you can actually bend the joints in opposite directions, angling the hips back a little, bending the top joint forward, and using the bottom joint to get the lower leg flat again.  The dino toes can point down.  The tail is fixed.

Grimshell can plug his gun and, for a change, his sword onto his hips, either using the ports on top or the ports on the sides.  If you prefer, you can use the pegs holes on his back to stow his weapons there.  Due to the shape of the gun and the shape of the greebles on his back, though, the gun can't point forward when it's on his back.

I'll preface this by saying that I like Grimshell, a lot actually.  I'm not loving the light gray on his face, but I'd imagine that's a simple as taking the head apart and stripping the paint for an all-black look, and I'm a little bothered by the arrangement of his claws, but I can live with that.  Although his combiner bits are more prevalent they're still not very obtrusive, and the extra paint on his gun makes it look a lot better than the others.  I admire that ToyWorld tried to do something a little different with Grimlock's molding and transformation, so he ultimately feels like a very different toy than MP-08.  MP-08 is still the elephant in the room, though, because a lot of collectors already have one.  And if you're cool with Grimshell as a CHUG Grimlock, despite him being a bit larger than your typical Voyager, you were probably OK with MP-08 as a CHUG Grimlock.  That makes Grimshell a harder sell if you've already got an MP-08.  If you don't, though, or if you do but you're keeping your MPs and CHUGs far apart, and you're going with ToyWorld for your other CHUG Dinobot needs, Grimshell is a much better aesthetic fit with the other TW Dinobots than MP-08.

[mikeszekely]

More Grimlock?  More Grimlock.  This would be GCreation's Wrath.

In keeping with GCreation's aesthetic, Wrath is big, intimidating, has the G1 toy's red eyes, and looks mean.  Like Grimshell, Wrath has a two-tone black head with a gray face, but the gray is more of a gunmetal and looks, honestly, pretty great.  However, take away the extra bulk and more intimidating head scuplt and what we've got is a toy that looks an awful lot like MP-08.  In fact, here's a run down.

And that doesn't even cover his dino mode.  I'm sure some of that you can chalk up to sticking to the source material, but given how GCreation used painted detail and dino legs hanging off the robot legs for Grown and Thunderous while not painting sticker details and being sure to hide the dino tail on Wrath really gives the impression that Wrath wants to be not merely a stylized Grimlock, but a stylized MP-08.  Not that there's anything necessarily wrong with that... I really like Wrath's buffed-up MP-08 look, and by ditching the head-turning, tail-wagging gimmick of MP-08 Wrath actually fixes the floppiness issue of my Hasbro MP Grimmy.

One thing MP-08 still did better, at least on the original Takara and Hasbro USA versions, was the translucent chest panel.  Wrath's is lacking the smokiness, coming off as clear at best and sort of greenish at worst.  It's a super odd choice on GCreation's part, because not only does it not match the G1 toy and not look as good as the official product but it doesn't match Growl, Thunderous, or (spoilers!) the two GCreation Dinobots we haven't looked at.  To add insult to injury, it's just pegged on and will come off if you look at it funny.

Wrath comes with a lot of accessories... perhaps too many.  There's the nicely-painted G1-style gun and sword, and another gun for Thunderous.  Unlike the two that came with Thunderous, this one is inverted so one doesn't have to be upside down if you peg them onto his bronto-hips, so it's certainly a welcome accessory.  Wrath also comes with a pair of toes that match the ones that came on the foot with Growl.  I presume the intention was in case you wanted symmetrical feet in combined mode you could swap out the toes that came on Thunderous' foot, except I tried taking swapping them out and the inside parts of the toes don't sit flush in these new toes.  So they're really kind of worthless.  The gray piece below the Thunderous gun is an alternate handle for Wrath's gun that we'll talk about it a minute.  There's also what look to be the chest and pelvis of the combined mode, faceplate for the combined mode head, and some junk that I'm not really sure about except the part directly above the Thunderous gun.  I do know that it's for wrapping around Wrath's wrist, then you can attach the combiner chest and pelvis to it and it's sort of like a shield.  I say sort of because it's obviously the intention but it looks stupid and still leaves parts leftover, so just like the feet splitting into guns it's the same kind of ham-fisted attempt to integrate combiner parts into robot/alt mode that looks stupid and ultimately fails for not including all the leftover junk, and I hate it just as much here as on Growl and Thunderous.  Maybe more.

Oh, and there's one other pair of parts not shown, also stupid.  We'll get back to them in a bit.

Wrath's head is on a ball joint with some fantastic range.  He can look straight up, tilt his head sideways just enough to look curious or confused, and the area around his neck is sunken in enough that he can even look down.  His shoulders are on some kind of joints... I can't tell for sure what's all in there, but I can tell you he's got a little bit of a forward/backward butterfly, lateral movement limited to about 45 degrees, and ratcheted rotation.  His biceps swivel, and he's got ratcheted double-jointed elbows good for 90 degrees.  His wrists swivel, and his fingers are a single molded piece on a hinge at the base knuckle so he can open and close his hands.  He has a ratcheted waist swivel.  His hips can move forward or backward 90 degrees on ratchets, and rather than use hinges to move the red armor on his pelvis it turns with the hip.  A separate ratchet gives him 90 degrees of lateral hip movement inside the red armor.  He's got ratcheted thigh swivels.  His knees are a soft ratchet that give him a little under 90 degrees.  The front part of his feet are on a hinge to give him his ankle tilt.  His wings have a hinge for opening and close, and a soft ratchet for angling them.  On the whole, the range of his joints is average to below average, but it's not really worse than MP-08's, and as I already said the use of nice, solid ratchets makes him a lot less floppy in hand than my Hasbro MP Grimmy.

Wrath holds his weapons well, as long as you put them in his right hand.  In an absolutely baffling move, GCreation opted to use tabs on the weapons that fit into slots in Wrath's palms.  The problem, which I've tried to show you, is that rather than center the slot in his palms it's offset toward the knuckle hinge.  That meant offsetting the tabs on the weapons to match, but both weapons are offset to fit Wrath's right hand only.  Using just the friction and Wrath's grip you can kind of work the sword into his left, if you're careful, but it's impossible for him to hold his gun in his left hand.

And onto dino mode.  You can again see how Wrath is like a buffer, meaner MP-08.  he's got the silver chromed-arms, red eyes, and gold-chromed toes of the G1-toy.  Wrath also tries to go for the translucent plastic over gold chrome neck that the G1-toy and MP-08 have, but unlike MP-08 he's got to be a combiner.  So, like Grimshell, he stores the combiner head inside the dino neck in robot mode.  However, to keep it from being seen through the translucent plastic in dino mode you actually have to transform the combiner head out of the neck then slip in two gold-chromed parts that peg together and serve no purpose at all except as filler for the neck in dino (and combined) mode.  It's such a stupid design, and one that could have easily been remedied if they'd just made his neck an opaque chrome gold like Grimshell's.  Alternatively, they could have keep the translucent-over-chrome if they just made the entire head a partsforming bit.  It's not like people who were OK with a giant partsforming chest and pelvis were going to suddenly draw a line at the head and say, "too much partsforming, I'm out!"

In dino mode, Wrath's head has ratchets for moving bending his head up and down as well as opening his jaws.  The range of the neck is almost identical to MP-08's.  He can't turn his head or swivel it, though.  Like MP-08, Grimshell, and (for that matter) Thunderous he's got a molded flamethrower inside his mouth.  His shoulders are on ball joints for rotation and a little bit of shrugging and butterfly movement, but he's actually got dedicated hinges for 90 degrees of lateral movement.  His elbows are also hinged with 90 degrees of movement, his wrists swivel, and his three claws are individually articulated on a hinge at the base knuckle.  His tail is fixed.  His dino hips are ratcheted for rotation, but he looses most of his outward lateral movement in dino mode.  he does have thigh swivels and double-jointed ratcheted knees.  Like Grimshell, they can work in tandem to bend 90 forward or backward, or they can bend in opposite directions.

You can remove the keyed handle from Wrath's gun, leaving a peg hole behind.  You can then take the part I called out earlier and slot it into his back to give him a raised peg that the gun can then plug into.  I'll note that he has similar slots on his sides, and the instructions allude to a method of using some or all of the combiner bits to attach the chest/pelvis shield to his back, then plug Thunderous' guns into it.

One other, final thing I'll note is that as I was transforming him, a process that is a little more finicky than on MP-08 or Grimshell, a spider crawled out from the crevice behind the ratcheting combiner peg that will plug into Growl.  How long was that spider chilling in there?  Did it hitch over from a factory in China?  From the US Ebay seller I bought this set from?  Or did it crawl into Wrath from somewhere else in my house?  I don't want to hold spiders against a toy, but I'm an arachnophobe so minus points for spiders.  Also, I'm afraid to sleep now.

Anyway... Wrath is aesthetically a great Grimlock toy.  I many ways, I find him to be superior to both Grimshell and even MP-08 (although I'm not suggesting that he's an MP toy and I'm not comparing him to Grinder).  However, there are some very questionable engineering choices going on here that, as I've already pointed out, didn't have to be an inevitable consequence of making a Grimlock that's also a combiner.  As such, as I take a more in-depth look at the GCreation and ToyWorld sets for these reviews (plus taking some time to at least check out some reviews of Planet-X and FansProject's Dinobots) I'm starting to get a clearer opinion about everything that I'll talk about at the end of these reviews.  For now, I'll just say that I like Wrath for a Grimlock in my personal collection of mostly Voyager-ish, mostly 3P figures (that I'm sure someone on TFW will call a CHUG collection despite the fact that the only HasTak figures in it are MP cars).

[mikeszekely]

And tonight we'll look at Iron Dreg, ToyWorld's Slag.

I mean, yeah, that works as Slag, doesn't it?  His black thighs and head are more toy than cartoon, despite the cartoon blue eyes, and I'd argue he could use a little less black on his abs and a little more red on his hips, but he's arguably closer to G1 Slag than Muddy or Roar were to their G1 counterparts.  To me, Slag's most distinguishing features were the the way he wore his dino head like a good and the silver lower jaw on his chest, and Iron Dreg's got that.  He's even got the rounded sides where his shoulders connect to his torso.  The big departure from G1 is that his tail folds along the sides of his legs instead of disappearing in the cartoon or hanging off of his back like the toy, while the dino legs that were chilling on the sides of the toy's legs are tucked inside the backs of his legs.

After showing these guys with an MP car and Hasbro Voyagers, I just went with MMC's Kultur for scale at random.

Iron Dreg comes with three accessories, which would almost give him an advantage over the other three Dinobots we looked at were it not for how bizarre they are.  His gun's actually ok; it's a little chunkier and looses some detail in the barrel, but it's got a similar design to the silver one that came with the G1 toy.  But in lieu of a G1-style sword we get... whatever these things are.  My first guess would be hatchets with black handles and red translucent blades, but for whatever reason the blade is on a hinge and can swivel up and around to make... a pointed stick.

Out of the box, his horns are also separate parts, and he comes with a pair of screw hole covers.  The covers go on the side of his dino head, and the horns fit into ports on top of his dino head.

Iron Dreg's head is on a ball joint that's similar to the others; he can look up a bit, has good sideways tilt, but can't look down.  His shoulders use hinges to get something like 60-70 degrees of lateral movement, and a stiff ratchet for shoulder rotation.  The problem, much like ToyWorld had with Roar, is that the round part of the sides of his torso also rotate on ratchets for transformation, and the ratchet is weaker there so it wants to turn well before his actual shoulder joint.  Well, that and the fact that his dino neck frill gets in the way.  He has bicep swivels, wrist swivels, and a double-jointed elbow that'll bend until his dino toes touch his shoulder.  The hands open and close on a hinge at the base knuckle.  He's got a ratcheted waist swivel, ratcheted hips that go a little shy of 90 degrees forward and backward, and a stronger ratchet for lateral hip movement.  He seems to have more detents in his hips than Muddy or Roar, and can get in a more relaxed A-stance than they can.  He's got the thigh swivel just above the knee, and ratcheted knees that will get you more than 90 degrees.  His gold toes are on two hinges so he has a faux ankle tilt and can bend his toes upward quite a bit.  For extra stability in some poses you can bend the dino toes on his heels downward as well.

He can, of course, hold his weapons fine.

With a gold-chromed face blue eyes, silver-chromed horns, neck frill, and back, gold-chromed robot toes on his back, and a gold-chromed tail, Iron Dreg is looking very much like cartoon Slag.  Aside from some Grimlock-matching red, blue, and green stripes on his back the only big difference are his dino toes decked out in gold chrome.  Neither feature is G1-accurate, but all four ToyWorld Dinobots have had them, giving them a very unified aesthetic.

Iron Dreg's tail doesn't move, and it seems like ToyWorld didn't intend for his head to move either, but there's enough wiggle on the transformation joints to get him to look up a little.  His jaw can open and close; there's actually two hinges at play, so by keeping the hinge closer to his neck in place and just working the other hinge his robot head stays hidden better and the dino head looks more natural.  The rear dino hips can spread a little if you mess with the transformation joints, he got thigh swivels, knees that bend just under 90 degrees, and toes that can point downward.  His front dino legs have ratcheted shoulders/hips and hinges that will spread his legs a little, bicep/thigh swivels, double-hinged elbows/knees that can bend forward again until his dino toes touch his shoulders, and toes that can point downward.

I'm not sure if ToyWorld meant for Iron Dreg to store his gun on his hips, but the molded holes there are too big.  The only place I could get his gun to stow on dino mode is to plug it into the peg holes on his front dino legs, just below the elbow/knee.  As for his melee weapon things, they stow inside his tail, and again I'm frustrated that we wind up with two black rods breaking up the solidity of his gold tail.

Not much more I can say about Iron Dreg than that.  He's a good Voyager-sized Slag with a few issues and a good aesthetic match for the other ToyWorld Dinobots.  I think if you got him for your CHUG collection you'll probably be content with him.

[mikeszekely]

GCreation's turn.  This would be their Slag, Hammer.

Once again, GCreation is opting for a very G1 toy look.  The tampoed details on his shins and blue paint on his shoulders stand in for sticker detail on the older toy, and the gray on his face is much darker in normal lighting than it is in this picture.  Combined with the red eyes, it's also very toy-ish.  You probably can't tell from this picture, but even some of the molded details on his torso are lifted from the G1 toy.  He's got the silver-chromed lower jaw on his chest, the gold-chromed feet, and the dino legs curled up on his lower legs.  Aesthetically speaking, aside from my preference for a more cartoon-style red head with blue eyes, the only things I could find to nitpick are the lack of black on his abs, and the tampoed detail on his shins kind of make me question why nothing was done to mimic the stickers on the G1 toy's knees.

Hammer comes with a bunch of accessories.  He's got his swords, which I've actually come to realize are more like Snarl's and the ones that came with Growl are more like Slag's.  I don't think that's an accident, though; Hammer's dino toes are on the front of his forearms, while Growl's are on the back.  Those toes would prevent Hammer from holding Growl's swords.  Moving along, we also have a pair of guns, a combiner  hand, a large hilt for a combined-mode sword, a smaller hilt, and a large translucent red blade.  The other two parts are used for combined mode, which is going to get huge minus points for making me hang onto that little square with a peg on it for nothing but combined mode.

Hammer's head is on a ball joint that can look up a whole lot, tilt his head sideways more than I need, and look down a little bit.  His shoulders are ball joints on the end of a double hinge, so he can rotate his shoulder and move it laterally over 90 degrees.  He fixes a problem I had with Iron Dreg by putting some of the dino frill on hinges so they can move up and out of the way of his shoulders.  He has bicep swivels and double-jointed elbows that can bend 90 degrees.  His wrists can swivel, but his hands are a solid molded piece and can't open.  he's got a waist swivel, hips that can go a little less than 90 degrees forward and backward and 90 degrees laterally, and thigh swivels just below the hips.  His knees are soft ratchets, but the tail that makes up the back of his legs still sticks up a little too far for him to get the full 90 degree range there.  His toes seem to be on ball joints, but there's very little wiggle.  It's mostly just for rotating to give him a faux ankle tilt.

He holds his swords and guns just fine.

Alternatively, you can put the large red blade into the smaller hilt and have Hammer wield it.  It's Final Fantasy-style oversized, and the lack of ratchets in his arm joints means it's also a little too heavy for him.

Hammer's triceratops mode is as G1-toy as his robot mode.  He eschews the silver chrome on his back and gold chrome on his toes that ToyWorld used on Iron Dreg because the G1 toy was gray-backed, gray-toed (although the G1 toy did, I think, have smaller chrome panels that could have been picked out in silver paint at least).  He does have the silver-chromed neck frill, and the bulk of his head is toy-accurate chrome under translucent plastic with beautifully-painted metallic red horns.  Some red and black paint on his sides stands in for more sticker detail.  The one miss in this mode, and it's a pretty big one, is that his tail isn't translucent-over-chrome.  It's a toy detail that they missed, but it wouldn't be such a big deal if they'd used gold chrome or even the gold paint they used on Thunderous and Growl's toes.  Instead they opted for silver.

Hammer's dino head can look up a little, but it's really for transformation and you'll quickly find yourself revealing his robot head.  His jaw also opens and closes, but  it's just the single hinge.  A small, gold-chromed flamethrower can be angled down from the roof of his mouth.  The silver-painted part of his tail is on a hinge so you can tilt it down, but again it's more for transformation and will break up the lines on his tail.  His rear dino hips are on ball joints, mostly for rotation but there's a little wiggle in there.  No thigh swivels, and his knees are double-jointed for nearly 90 degrees forward, over 90 degrees backward, or you can arrange them in opposition for a natural triceratops stance (I assume).  His rear toes can bend down for transformation, and they're on mushroom pegs for faux tilt.  His front legs are his arms, so you've got the shoulder joints (which are more of a butterfly joint in this mode), bicep/thigh swivel, double-jointed elbows/knees for 90 degrees forward and a little backward bend, and dino toes on mushroom pegs for faux ankle tilt.  His guns can peg into his front hips/shoulders.

And there we have it.  We'll find out later how he works as a combiner, but as a toy on his own he's a good figure that closely homages the G1 toy.  And once again, it comes down to GCreation having better paint and a more G1 toy-accurate design and ToyWorld having the toy that's less complicated and easier to mess with.  Neither are MP, and both are perfectly good CHUG-style Dinobots.

[JB0]

5 hours ago, mikeszekely said:

the G1 toy was gray-backed, gray-toed (although the G1 toy did, I think, have smaller chrome panels that could have been picked out in silver paint at least).  He does have the silver-chromed neck frill, and the bulk of his head is toy-accurate chrome under translucent plastic with beautifully-painted metallic red horns.

As Slag was the Dinobot I owned (because triceratops was the best dinosaur ever) I can verify he had two sliver chunks in his wings/dino shoulders. Large trapezoidal lumps with techno-detailing on them. GCreation has the lumps molded in, they just aren't painted.
I also note that while GCreation has the right dinosaur HEAD, their frill is wrongwrongwrongWRONG to the point of distraction, given how closely they echo the toy in so mnany other places north of the tail.  Toyworld's frill is almost lifted straight off the original toy with the flat design and striations across the plates(though it should be slanted backwards and with more panels of varying sizese, and the lack of slant really messes with the Toyworld dino head).  On the other hand, Toyworld gave him silver-chromed horns and ribs.

 

And I can forgive GCreation the gray tail. It is better than chromed gold, mostly because it actually looks like it belongs where it is in a way the original tail honestly never did. 

Though given the drawing board myself, I would've done an original-style tail that detached and turned into a weapon. The chrome spine running through the tail always looked like it should be a weapon to me. (In my head, his tail shot lasers)

 

Favorite touch on the GCreation one: The teal detailing on the shoulders. At first I thought they really went overboard with it(the original stickers had a lot less color there due to the V shape), but the more I look at it, the better it looks.

Toyworld's, I like the RGB rectangles on the shins, as inauthentic as they are. Also the smaller gold lumps in dino mode. The original Slag toes that GCreation apes honestly stick out way far.

[mikeszekely]

Well, we're getting close to the end now.  Tonight we'll do ToyWorld's Swoop, who goes by Spear.

So, in robot mode, that's not really a bad Swoop.  With the blue eyes and chest he's obviously leaning toward cartoon Swoop.  He's got the red picked out on his chest, the gray panels on the front of his legs, black feet, and mostly gray arms.  I guess it's not exactly visible in this picture, but the red strip on the side of his leg is there, too  What's interesting is that the majority of the red on the other four ToyWorld dinobots was just red plastic, but Spear's is all a metallic red paint similar to GCreation's.  His face is a more red and visored, and he's got some red stripes on his shoulders and tiny red/blue/green marks on his shins to keep that continuity with the others in the set.  His wings are shaped a little differently in robot mode, but I can deal with that.  Really, the most jarring departure from G1 Swoop (aside from the chunkiness of his lower legs) is the black thighs and the lack of ptero-feet on them.

For size, here he is with MMC's take on Swoop's Marvel G1 rival.  That works for me.

QC (among other things) seems to have been rushed on Spear.  His wings, which just peg onto his back, don't look like they were toleranced properly.  I have nasty stress marks on both sides of the blue plastic around the peg hole on both peg holes.  This is NOT a one-off case, either, but a common issue with Spear.

Accessory-wise, Spear's a pretty G1.  He's got a pair of swords that are very close to his G1 sword, just done in translucent instead of solid red plastic.  His guns are red instead of gray, but still a good match, with translucent red (non-firing, attached) missiles.

Spear's head is on a ball joint.  He's got a tiny amount of downward range, adequate sideways tilt, and so-so upward tilt due to the crest on his head banging into his back.  His shoulders are on soft ratchets for rotation.  A strong ratchet inside the shoulder gives him nearly 90 degrees of lateral movement, but a hinge for transformation will get his arm much further up.  He's got bicep swivels, double-jointed elbows that'll get him well over 90 degrees, wrist swivels, and the fingers are on a hinge at the base of the hand.  He does have a ratcheted waist swivel, but it'll push the ptero-head away from his torso.  His hips soft-ratchet forward a little under 90 degrees and just a click or two backward (which is fine... how far can you move your hip backward?).  They friction laterally 90 degrees.  He has thigh swivels, thankfully just below his hips.  His ratcheted knees can bend 90 degrees.  His feet have hinges for about 45 degrees of ankle tilt and a little up/down foot tilt, plus there's an additional hinge that lets his toes bend up and down.    His wings can rotate where they're pegged into his back, then there's three hinges before you even get to his chromed wings.  There's a pivot near the dino claws that swing half the wing in or out, and just beyond that is a hinge to fold the wing down, but it stops at 90 degrees.

He can hold his guns or his swords just fine.  If his wings are closed the peg hole for his guns is covered.  There are tiny pegs on the other side of his wings that you can store his swords on.

And here's where Spear really falls apart.  Spear transforms into... a winged box with a pteranodon peaking out.  Seriously, Swoop's always had sort of a blocky alt mode, but this here is more Soundwave than Swoop.  I kind of wonder if this was the best solution ToyWorld could come up with to give Spear the bulk in the legs to make a big enough forearm for combined mode?  In any case, it's not good at all.

You can improve him a little by fan-moding him.  Gives him a huge butt, and he's still got his bot-mode arms on his back, but this might be the lesser of evils.  And in keeping with the ToyWorld aesthetic he's got the silver chrome on his wings and the gold chrome on his dino face and dino legs/feet.

Anyways, back to the official transformation... his wings are basically the way I described them in bot mode.  One thing I didn't mention yet, though, is that there's a folding flap near the hinge.  This is so that, if you use the pivot to stretch his wings, you can fold the flap over and peg the halves of the wing together, avoiding the gaps on Fansproject's Swoop.  his guns cab peg onto the underside of his wings, and his swords can either peg on top of his wings or onto his backpack via small tabs on his robot forearms.  His dino neck has a hinge for up/down movement, and another to look side-to-side  His jaws open.  His dino knees have a double-jointed hinge, and his feet are on a hinged ball joint.  The rest of his body is a brick.

I won't beat around the bush... Spear is a disappointment.  His robot mode is ok, but his alt mode is horrible.  While most of the time I think it's more important to get the robot mode right, I'd say the Dinobots are probably the exception where you really want to nail the alt modes.  Now, if you're a twisted soul like me who thinks robots are always better if they combine and you're in it for the combined mode then you're probably stuck with him.  But if you're just looking for CHUG Dinobots you'll probably want to look elsewhere for a Swoop. 

[mikeszekely]

Alright, last one.  This is GCreation's Blade, their Swoop.

Blade is an accurate Swoop, but only if you're picking details from from the cartoon or other sources and applying them to the G1 toy.  The red body, the black shoulders and biceps, and the black outline around his face is toy-accurate.  Gray paint on his shoulders, the blue and white stripes on his wrists, and red paint on his lower legs (that you can almost see in this picture) all stand in for stickers.  Black paint on his chest replaces silver chrome.  Like Spear, Blade's got the molded, painted details on his shins, and unlike Spear his wing shape is very G1.  The red eyes are more Dreamwave than the toy's dark visor or the cartoon's blue eyes, though, and the yellow dino legs on his thighs are cartoon-style.  I really only have three complaints, and one is really a matter of preference.  First, I think his face is too small.  If GCreation had pared back or skipped the black outline entirely and just sunk the whole thing back further into the red part he'd have more room for face and his head would still look proportional.  Second, I think Blade's too tall in general.  While all the GCreation Dinobots were taller than the ToyWorld ones, Blade is much taller than Spear, and taller than all of the other GCreation Dinobots except Wrath.  The other thing is, like most of the season 1 toys, I didn't have Swoop (or any of the Dinobots) as a kid.  Although I did read the comics from time to time, my impressions of Swoop were largely driven by the cartoon, and to me Swoop is blue, not red.  (GCreation did do a limited run of Blade in blue.  I happened to get all five of these guys for a bargain, but I'm already strongly considering buying the blue version, so if anyone wants a red GCreation Blade for a good price PM me before I put him on ebay).

Blade comes with a bunch of accessories, and again I'm kind of annoyed at how many bits are for combined mode.  We do have some pretty G1-style swords with silver and red paint, and some still sort-of-G1 missile launchers with painted red and gold tips, which are all fine.  We've got another large translucent red blade, one with different molding than the one that came with Hammer, and another small hilt.  No large hilt this time.  Then we have the combiner hand, a part to help connect him as an arm in combined mode, and what I believe are parts to attach his wings to Wrath for combined mode.

Because of the joints for his dino-neck, getting Blade's head positioned just right is a bit of a chore.  When you have it, though, his head is on a hinged ball joint so he can look up a fair amount, tilt his head sideways, and look down into his dino head.  His shoulders can extend nearly 90 degrees laterally on two hinges and a ball joint.  He's got bicep swivels, and his single-jointed elbow can bend 90 degrees.  He has wrist swivels, but his hands are molded into fists with no finger articulation.  He does have a ratcheted waist swivel, but his pelvis is sort of T-shaped instead of rectangular, and his spine is actually behind his hips, so turning his waist too far can look a little odd.  His hips can go 90 degrees backward, and over 90 degrees forward or laterally, with thigh swivels just below his hips.  His ratcheted knees can bend almost the whole way over, until the backs of his thighs start to touch his calves.  Well over 90 degrees.  His ankles are tight ball joints, so he can tilt his feet up or down, tilt his ankle inward or outward, and rotate his foot.  A hinge halfway through his foot lets him point his toes up or down.  His wings have ratchet that lets you ankle them upward one click, and a number of hinges we'll talk about more in alt mode.

Blade holds his blades fine.  His gun/missile launchers can peg onto his wings.  In this picture, I have the wings installed so that they fold backward, so the guns go onto the front.  The wings are interchangeable, though, so you can easily reverse them if you want the gun/missile launchers on the back.

Blade can also hold his gun/missile launchers just fine.  He can hold the big sword, but the weight is really taxing the joints in his arms.  The big sword has a peg hole on one side that can plug into a peg on Blade's back for storage, but there's no place to store his little swords.  (I think I forgot to mention it, but Hammer's large sword has little pegs on the blade that fit into holes on his "wings" for storage in robot mode).

I think this picture really says it all, doesn't it?  If we're being totally honest, yes, both Blade and Spear suffer from compromises necessary to make them a combiner arm that's not weirdly disproportionate to the triceratops, but it's like ToyWorld just said "Ef it, he's a box now."  GCreation retained a largely G1 transformation, with the arms collapsing toward the body and his legs folding over onto his back.  Because of the combiner stuff inside his torso can't collapse, but panels on his chest slide over the gap left by the dino-head.  His big problem is that he's thicker through his torso, from chest to back, because his torso and legs are a little thicker than they'd have to be if he weren't combining.  His silver-chromed wings are huge, though, and with the right angles you can kind a lot of his back junk.  As has been the case with this set, the dino head is toy-style smoked translucent over gold chrome.

Blade's dino-neck has three up/down hinges to facilitate a variety of head positions, but no swivel.  His jaw can open, and like most of the other GCreation dinos he's got a flamethrower in his mouth.  His dino-legs have a hinge at the hip, a hinge at the knee, and a hinge at the ankle.  There's no swivels or lateral movement, and no ankle tilts, but given how tiny his legs are I think it's fine.  There is a small peg hole on his tummy that could probably used for some sort of flight stand, but no stand is included.  Then there's his wings, which are huge.  I don't have a measuring tape handy, but fully extended his wings are big enough to stretch from one side of my monitor to the other, exceeding the screen and reaching onto the bezels, and I've got a 27" monitor (if I put a wing tip in one corner and stretch to the opposite corner he falls short, so that'd be between 23.5" and 27").  Each wing is hinged where it connects to Blade's body, with a trio of additional hinges.

I've looked at Planet-X's Caelus and FansProject's Volar in addition to Blade and Spear, and maybe Swoop's just a hard character to get right because I don't think any of them are perfect.  Considering that he's got to be a combiner limb in addition to a robot that turns into a pteranodon, though, GCreation got an awful lot right.  My real concern would be his size; while I'm strangely ok with MP Grimlock (or a Grimlock of similar size like Wrath) in a CHUG collection, and I'm OK with the Dinobots in general being larger than an average Transformer (who I'd consider to be Voyager-sized), a Swoop as large as MP Grimlock and taller than everyone who isn't Grimlock is pushing it for me.  Were I open to mixing and matching Dinobots from different lines, and if I didn't care about the combining aspect, I might suggest something like Volar instead just because he kind of fits my mental picture of Swoop's size and physique.  I do think that GCreation did a pretty good job here otherwise, though.

[JB0]

I have to say that, at this point, I really think GCreation has it down.

I know I've said things about complex designs for complexity's sake, which it sounds like is a serious problem with the GCreation dinosaurs, but... they are tickling my nostalgia bone something fierce here.

I owned Slag(and he was one of my favorite toys, so he went with me EVERYWHERE), a cousin owned Swoop, another cousin owned Grimlock(and I nearly died playing with him), I got a hand-off Sludge from a friend in the 90s... so I've had a lot of exposure to four the original toys, with pretty much every seam memorized on Slag(as well as some long-absent stickering), and GCreation really hits that toy look. Sure, there's some places where Toyworld is revising things for the better, but overall they just don't tickle my fancy the same way.

...

It also means I'm not nearly as "into" Snarl as I am the other four. Sure, I know there WAS a stegosaurus, but he just doesn't have the same physicality in my mind that the others do.  Also, let's be honest here. Stegosaurus is the least cool of the four dinosaurs and a pterosaur five dinosaurs present

Edited April 29, 2017 by JB0

[M'Kyuun]

Hey now, no stego prejudice! I've always liked the stegosaur, and as it happens, when I finally decided to get off the fence and actually dive into the 3P Dinobot pool, I went with Fanstoys' wonderfully G1esque Iron Dibots, and Sever (Snarl) was the first one I had in hand. The only Dinobot I owned as  kid was Sludge (still my favorite), so Fanstoys' Stomp was my first order (still waiting for him to be restocked at TFSource), but Sever was available and I bit. Glad I did- wonderful, solid figure that churns my nostalgia like buttah. The only negative I can think of is that his dino head can't look up without disrupting the sculpt. Otherwise, he's the best representation of G1 Snarl available, and even if Takara decide to release all new MP Dinobots at some point, I'm not sure what they could really improve on over Fanstoys' Dibots. 

I've mentioned before that I think Swoop was the weakest of the original Dinobots in alt mode due to the concessions required for transformation, and that has seemingly carried through to all the modern takes, including Fanstoys' Soar, who by virtue of its faithfulness to the G1 toy and toon incarnations, remains rather blocky. It is what it is.  To date, I think Derrick Wyatt's take on Swoop is my favorite, as he made a much more organic, sleeker looking pteranodon, and the thin, lithe bot mode suits the character. I wish he'd made Snarl and Sludge, as I'd love Animated versions of both to complete the G1 team.

[mikeszekely]

Since I didn't have any of the Dinobots as a kid, my ranking from most favorite to least favorite was entirely based how I liked the dinosaur they turned into... T-Rex > Triceratops > Pteranodon > Stegosaurus > Brontosaurus (and Brontosaurus > than Apatosaurus, which is why Sludge is a Brontosaurus!).  But for the whole ToyWorld vs GCreation thing, I have thoughts on that now, but I also have one more review post.

M'Kyuun, I'd love to take a look at and review the Fans Toys Dibots and even the Gigapower versions, but since my head canon (which works with combiners) has most transformers being similar in size (and that size being represented as Voyager-ish) they're both too big for my collection.  The Fans Toys' ones in particular seem to be well-made with a heavy cartoon aesthetic and intuitive, fun transformations, but c'est la vie.

On the topic of modern Swoops, while I liked Animated as a show I never had any interest in the toys.  I can see the appeal of Animated Swoop, but what I think would be really cool is if someone like MMC tackled the IDW Dinobots.  IDW Swoop has a lot of the same aesthetics as Animated Swoop.

[mikeszekely]

Ok, so that last review post I promised... rather than doing a "Here's ToyWorld combined!" and then later a "Here's GCreation combined," I'm just going to do one comparative review.  So first, here's ToyWorld's unnamed Dinobot combiner.

And he's... ok.  There's lots of blingy chrome, which I like.  The tweaks ToyWorld made to their designs to make them more unified really pay off in this mode.  I also like how Grimshell's dinosaur head sits on the chest, which I feel helps give the combiner a look that's distinct from Grimlock's.  The bestial feet and clawed fingers seem very appropriate.  The problems with this guy really boil down to three engineering issues.  First, the space between the detents in his hip ratchets are a little too wide.  This makes his feet want to slide and could lead to him doing the splits.  Second has to do with how Grimshell's lower legs fold over his thighs.  There's a joint that moves the combiner connect inward to allow Grimshell's lower legs to have the clearance to spin around, and the only thing holding everything in place afterward is a hinged flap with a peg that fits into hole on the combiner connector.  It's not quite up to the task, though, and it pops loose when handling him.  Lastly, there are the connectors themselves.  There's a rumor that ToyWorld hadn't actually set out to make their Dinobots a combiner, and only did so when they heard about GCreation's.  I can believe it, because all that they have to connect with are a few 5mm pegs and all that's necessary for transforming them (not that it's even covered in their instructions) to to basically move the heads and tails out of the way.  Roar's tail actually comes off and is pegged onto the backside of the leg mode.  So a few pegs go into holes on the ports in Grimshell's legs, and a few pegs go into holes on the feet, and that's all that's holding this guy together.  The result isn't exactly stable.  However, I don't think he's as had as a lot of people have suggested.  I've seen a lot of pictures of this guy with his legs at really awkward angles, but as you can see I've been able to get him in a nice A-stance with a little patience.

And the size is right, too.  He stands at just about the same size as GT's Gravity Builder, which is perfect since I consider Devy and the Dinobots to be natural rivals the way Superion and Menasor are.  And since Gravity Builder is about the same size as Warbotron and the majority of other 3P combiners, ToyWorld's Dinobot combiner works well in my collection.

As far as articulation goes, I'm not really up for testing the ranges.  Suffice to say, his head is on a hinged swivel, his shoulders rotate inside Grimshell and move laterally on the combiner pegs inside Iron Dreg and Spear.  He's got bicep swivels, and dedicated ratcheting elbows that extend from Iron Dreg and Spear's torso's.  His hips are identical to Grimshell's, he uses Grimshell's thigh swivels, and the red combiner connectors have a ratcheted swivel that makes for his knee joint.  The feet parts have hinged ratchets where they connect to the legs to provide ankle tilts.  The hands can rotate at the wrists, the thumb is on a ball joint at the base with two hinged knuckles, and the individually articulated fingers are hinged at the base with two additional hinges.

Disappointingly, there's no weapon for combined mode.  I'll note, somewhat cynically, that ToyWorld makes "combiner swords" that are sold separately that are pretty much perfect for this guy.

Moving along, this is Shuraking, GCreation's Dinbobot combiner.

Aesthetically, he looks pretty good, too.  Still lots of chrome, although GCreation likes to use gold paint on some parts.  I appreciate how the leg bots actually look transformed, and not like Growl and Thunderous just folded their heads and tails around (although Thunderous' head is very prominently dangling off Shuraking's calf).  We still have the cool clawed fingers, and I like how CGreation incorporated Blade and Thunderous' guns to give Shuraking missile launchers on his forearm and big shoulder cannons.  The torso and head, though, look very much like Grimlock got bigger and started wearing the other Dinobots.  It's a shame that GCreation didn't try to give Shuraking a more unique appearance.

A problem for me, although it may not be for you, is that Shuraking is just too big.  Maybe if you're going to use him as a pseudo-MP combiner and have him go up against ToyWorld's Constructor, sure, that might work.  But Shuraking is significantly bigger than the Warbotron-sized combiners, which makes him too large for my shelves.

On paper, Shuraking should have similar articulation with ToyWorld's.  He does have some extra wrist bends, but the awful engineering for how the knees connect make me leery of bending his knees, and the shape of Blade's torso pushes him out of the combiner port when you try to move the shoulder laterally.

At least Shuraking has a combined-mode weapon, although it's pretty dumb.  The large hilt that comes with Hammer has slots in it.  You can plug both the large red blades into the outer slots to give him a really stupid sword with two blades.  The slot in the middle is too big, though.  You can't just put one blade into it and have him holding a normal sword.  I thought maybe you could put the blades together in the middle, but nope.  That doesn't work either.

Even as a kid, I'd always wondered why the Dinobots were a five-member team like the Aerialbots or the Stunticons but they didn't combine.  Yet, for something that never really existed (ok, there was a comic book in a 2004 Metrodome release of one of the Transformers DVDs in the UK), it's kind of interesting how similar GCreation and ToyWorld's combiners end up being.  Both have gold claws and gold spikes on the their hands, both have gold toes, both have heads that are pretty Grimlocky, both have red spots on their foreheads, both have Swoop's wings on the combined back, and both use Grimlock for the torso, Slag for the right arm, Swoop for the left arm, Snarl for the right leg, and Sludge for the left leg.

Both even have a similar gimmick where you can have a normal face, or pull off a part to reveal a bestial face.

Shuraking's face is pretty scary.  He's got a mouth full of sharp teeth with a molded gun inside.  His skinny jaws can open and close.  They sort of remind me of the fangs you see on something like one of the Devil Gundam's Gundam Heads, or the Walter Gundam.  It's ok, I suppose.

ToyWorld, too, has a fanged mouth with working jaws.  It's a lot more cartoony, though.  It almost reminds me Venom's appearance in the '90s Spider-Man cartoon.  Can't say I'm a fan of it, but I think the head with the face plate is fine.  The gold antenna further separate the combined-mode's appearance from Grimlock's, but if you're not keen on the partsforming required to put the antenna there you can simply leave them off.  ToyWorld even included some molded detail in and around the peg holes so he looks just fine without it.

I think it's fitting that we've come around to partsforming, because this is ultimately GCreation's downfall.  Now, I'm not opposed to a little partsforming, but GCreation just got lazy with it.  Not counting hands, feet, or individual mode weapons that integrate in combined mode, ToyWorld uses partsforming to fill in and bulk up the combined chest and to optionally give him antenna.  GCreation uses parts to connect the arms to the torso, a tab that pegs into Hammer and does... something, to make a new, bigger pelvis, to make a new, bigger chest, to attach Blade's wings to the combiner's back, and to create posts to attach Thunderous' guns on the shoulders.  And if it wasn't bad enough that I have to have all that crap just for combined mode (because no, I'm not counting the "shield" you can make from the pelvis and chest), you still have a ton of parts left over to put in a box somewhere.  Actually, to attach the arms in combined mode, you have to remove these parts from Wrath.

That's just stupid.  It's stupid, lazy engineering.  And what does all this get you?  A combiner that's only mildly more stable.

So ultimately, I'm going to suggest this (which is what I'm doing); if you want CHUG Dinobots because you want five individual robot dinosaurs, I'm ultimately going to suggest going with GCreation.  Yes, they're a little bigger, and they're a little less fun to transform.  And yes, I prefer gold chrome to smoked translucent plastic over gold chrome.  However, I really think GCreation nailed a lot of the G1 aesthetics, the accessories are a lot nicer, and the use of paint (especially the metallic red) gives them a more premium look.  If you want a Dinobot combiner, though, I think ToyWorld's the way to go.  He's easier to transform, easier to assemble, doesn't require an obscene amount of partsforming, and doesn't leave you with a box of leftovers.  The RGB stripes applied across all the Dinobots helps create a cohesive look for the limbs, and again I appreciate how having the T-Rex head on the chest helps the gestalt look visually distinct from Grimlock.  I also prefer the smaller size, but honestly if Shuraking were identical in size the lazy partsforming really ruins it for me.  I'll probably never de-combine ToyWorld's gestalt and display him with Gravity Builder, Havoc (to be completed), Hades, the two Warbotrons, Uranos, Poseidon, Feral Rex, Ordin, and ToyWorld's Throttlebot combiner.  But I'm also going to keep the GCreation dinobots and display them in dinosaur mode, occasionally flipping them to robot mode.

At this point, I think I should address the other options for Dinobots.  I've said before and I'll say again that these guys aren't MP, so if it's MP you want you should look at Fans Toys or Gigapower.  But there are other CHUG options as well.  Planet-X is very well-regarded, but they're meant to be the Fall of Cybertron Dinobots.  If you're cool with that aesthetic for your CHUGs, great; I might even try to get my hands on Vulcan (their Grimlock), but I'm not sold on the FoC aesthetic mixing with the "G1, but updated" look prevalent with the actual HasTak CHUG lines or 3P lines like MMC's Reformatted or Maketoys' Cross Dimension.  Your other option would be FansProject, which I think is a better aesthetic fit for CHUG than Planet-X.  However, they've yet to release a Snarl (and who knows if they ever will, at his point), while their Sludge and Slag seem to have interesting designs but seriously flawed executions.  They seemed to have played it safer with their Grimlock, but ultimately they wound up with a very G1 Grimlock in robot mode that turns into a weirdly-proportioned T-Rex.  Their Swoop is the only one I might suggest over GCreation or ToyWorld if you're open to mixing and matching.

[JB0]

Awww, man, it is a darn shame that the GCreation combiner is such a mess of bonus parts and stupidsword.

I wonder if there was a communication breakdown somewhere along the line with that sword. Someone suggested a double-bladed sword, meaning like a tuning-fork(which is dumb but looks awesome), and the guy responsible for making the parts completely misunderstood the concept and stacked the blades like a sandwich instead.

 

You're right about the GCreation torso being pretty lame, too.  But those WINGS. Shuraking's wingspan is simply majestic.

But the Toyworld torso is spectacular, and I love that tyrannosaur head hanging out of the chest. It is like someone looked at Gaogaigar, I mean Predaking, and went "Nope, lions are for chumps"... though I'm thinking the triceratops frill would make a spectacular chestplate too.

...

Pity you can't fit the GCreation wings onto the Toyworld robot.

11 hours ago, M'Kyuun said:

even if Takara decide to release all new MP Dinobots at some point, I'm not sure what they could really improve on over Fanstoys' Dibots. 

They could give Slag a black humanoid head, like he's SUPPOSED to have!

Scoria's cartoon-accurate red head is an instant dealbreaker for me. It is, seriously, the only thing that kept me from ordering one.

[Tking22]

21 minutes ago, JB0 said:

They could give Slag a black humanoid head, like he's SUPPOSED to have!

Scoria's cartoon-accurate red head is an instant dealbreaker for me. It is, seriously, the only thing that kept me from ordering one.

FT-04X and FT-04T both came with black heads instead of the toon accurate red one that comes with the standard release. I don't know if those decos are to your liking though.

[technoblue]

Vulcan is a fun figure, but don't take my word for it. Take a look at him in person if you can. I'm biased since I have all of the Planet X Dinobots now. I'm also not shy about posing them with the more Cybertronian MMC Reformatted bots. I think they all look good together.

Having combining Dinobots out in the wild today still feels strange to me. I was never introduced to the concept before this third-party trend. In the show they were these overpowered lugs--gimmicky characters--able to take on anything the Decepticons could throw at the Autobots if it wasn't for their odd temperament. But then, that temperament is what often made them endearing.

FansToys has me locked in for G1 MP-styled Dinos. I think they strike a good balance between toon and toy too, although in a perfect world we would get all the options for these toys on day one. For instance, stylized and toon-accurate head sculpts, fixes for quality issues...but it is what it is. I've gone so deep already that I don't know if I could sell my Dibot collection for a more toon-centric official collection. Takara would have to really surprise me to get me to move, and I might end up keeping my Dibots anyway. I mean, I have other multiples...

On a related third-party note, have you guys seen the latest images of MakeToys Howling Meteor? I sold off all my MP-11 Seekers a while back hoping that I'd see something like this come out. It looks like patient collectors are in for a treat. 

http://www.tfw2005.com/boards/threads/maketoys-mtrm-09-howling-meteor-maketoys-unofficial-starscream.1047088/page-29#post-14556122'

Some more pics. Those poses in bot mode are amazing.

http://www.tfw2005.com/boards/threads/maketoys-mtrm-09-howling-meteor-maketoys-unofficial-starscream.1047088/page-41#post-14558825

Edited April 30, 2017 by technoblue

[mikeszekely]

1 hour ago, JB0 said:

But the Toyworld torso is spectacular, and I love that tyrannosaur head hanging out of the chest. It is like someone looked at Gaogaigar, I mean Predaking, and went "Nope, lions are for chumps"... though I'm thinking the triceratops frill would make a spectacular chestplate too.

Can't argue with that. Although someone suggested using Sludge for the torso.  Probably wouldn't make as impressive of a chest, but there's a certain sense in using the biggest dino for the middle.

1 hour ago, JB0 said:

They could give Slag a black humanoid head, like he's SUPPOSED to have!

Scoria's cartoon-accurate red head is an instant dealbreaker for me. It is, seriously, the only thing that kept me from ordering one.

43 minutes ago, Tking22 said:

FT-04X and FT-04T both came with black heads instead of the toon accurate red one that comes with the standard release. I don't know if those decos are to your liking though.

Not to get you too excited, JB0, but not only did Scoria come with the black head in addition to the cartoon one, they also sold separately a replacement part to give him the toy-accurate smoked translucent dino head and red horns.

I'd caution anyone shopping for Scoria the same thing I told M'Kyuun, though.  Perfect Fusion is actually Fans Toys, and their Cesium is Fans Toys having another go at Slag because they weren't satisfied with the first one.  I haven't been following the whole thing super close, but looks to me like the biggest difference is that they dino tail will store in Cesium's legs and his back will be cleaner in bot mode than Scoria's.

41 minutes ago, technoblue said:

Vulcan is a fun figure, but don't take my word for it. Take a look at him in person if you can.

Yeah, I probably will.  I liked the Cybertron games, but I've never been super into the character designs from the games.  Still thinking about checking out Vulcan and Jupiter at least, and maybe Aesclepius just because there isn't a good Voyager-sized Perceptor.  Likewise, if they do a Shockwave or a Soundwave I'll probably bite.

42 minutes ago, technoblue said:

On a related third-party note, have you guys seen the latest images of MakeToys Howling Meteor? I sold off all my MP-11 Seekers a while back hoping that I'd see something like this come out. It looks like patient collectors are in for a treat. 

Yes!  I know that MT gets criticized for making bots a little puffy with smaller heads, but I really dig that look.  Must be from reading Dreamwave...  Between this and Despotron they've really been knocking it out of the park lately.  I haven't really been interested in MP-scale figures, but Maketoys is really tempting me to go all in on the Re:Master line.  Heck, I already have Gundog...

[JB0]

1 hour ago, Tking22 said:

FT-04X and FT-04T both came with black heads instead of the toon accurate red one that comes with the standard release. I don't know if those decos are to your liking though.

Well, darn. Now I have to hunt for one.

 

I'd caution anyone shopping for Scoria the same thing I told M'Kyuun, though.  Perfect Fusion is actually Fans Toys, and their Cesium is Fans Toys having another go at Slag because they weren't satisfied with the first one.  I haven't been following the whole thing super close, but looks to me like the biggest difference is that they dino tail will store in Cesium's legs and his back will be cleaner in bot mode than Scoria's.

Or that.

 

Edited April 30, 2017 by JB0

[mikeszekely]

Hey, you know what? Once you accept that you're not going to combine the GCreation Dinobots you can easily remove the Shuraking head. Just take two screws out of the bar it's on, then open the bar. Pop the neck out of the sliding track, close the bar back up, and replace the screws. Now that you don't have to hide the head, you can leave the gold chrome parts inside the dino neck even in robot mode, which solves my biggest complaint about Wrath.