Beastly

And on the subject of dinosaurs, I arrived home today to the news that a large box with my name on it had arrived. A box from Singapore. A box containing toys.

Specifically, five of TakaraTomy's original Beast Wars reissue/repaints (Cheetor, Dinobot, Rhinox, Tigatron and Waspinator) and the knock-off 'reissue' Generation 1 Mirage.

I must say that the Beast Wars toys are everything I expected them to be - good and bad. The paint jobs are excellent, but the models themselves seem poorly conceived, oddly constructed, and flimsy in all the wrong places... But they do look good. Not necessarily accurate to the TV series (though this was meant to be their big selling point), but very good in their own right.

Waspinator is far more stable than I'd expected - his legs seemed awkwardly constructed and likely to be unable to properly support him but so far, so good. The way the beast mode head separates and becomes the robot chest is very flimsy, but it works well enough.

Cheetor and Tigatron are basically the same model with a different paint job... but it's amazing what a difference the paint job makes. Somehow, between the two, the beast heads do look different - Cheetor seems leaner, Tigatrons more muscular. Robot mode is the more convincing of the two (not least because it's the only mode that's actually poseable), but even that isn't without its problems. Having the whole beast head as the robot's chest makes it look pretty daft. The robots can't even look straight forward because their chests are in the way! Still, both make up for it by having water pistols - I hadn't realised before I held them in my hand, but the 'guts guns' are able to suck up water and squirt it out. Hours of fun!

Rhinox came misassembled - the shoulder pieces and upper arms were on the wrong arms. Easily fixed, but daft - it was quite obvious how they were supposed to look (screws visible, and large gashes in his biceps? I think not!). Strangely, Rhinox is the least stable in robot mode, mostly due to excessively large beast shell pieces, and comparatively small feet. I'm sure I'll figure him out sooner or later, though.

Dinobot actually looks better in person than in photos. He's still very broad, and the tail still looks crap, but robot mode works pretty well. The spinny-tail-thing is rather weird (I could never figure out what it was supposed to achieve, even having seen one series of the TV show!), and his sword looks fairly ineffectual, but he's a decent enough model.

Mirage... was one of those toys I wish I'd bought 20+ years ago. Back then, he would have been fantastic. Sure, he's a brick with only limited arm articulation, and his vehicle mode is rather chunky for a racing car... But back in the days of Generation 1, he was a pretty nifty toy. The knock-off is by all accounts and almost perfect replica, though the paintjob has been improved (at least one part which was originally stickers is now tampographed). My only gripe is that mine appears to have two right fists. Still, I'm not about to send it back over something so minor. It barely notices, and he looks so cool with my other Gen 1 reissues... Also, can I be the only one who wishes Hasbro would go back to the edgier, less black-and-white profiles of Generation 1?

Now, I really should get off to bed...