Thankfully, Hasbro decided to come with a repaint fairly quickly, referencing an Action Master figure, just for added fun, and the new colourscheme - black, purple and acid green/yellow - looked far better than Skullcruncher's green, pink and grey...
Beast Mode:
Of course, the original Krok - being an Action Master, that breed of TransFormers toy that didn't actually transform - didn't have a beast mode... Nor did anything about his appearance imply a beast mode that might be reptilian, let alone specifically a crocodile. What he did have was a TargetMaster partner - then called 'Gatoraider' - who transformed from a robot alligator into a handgun for Krok.
In a baffling, yet ultimately sensible turn, Titans Return Krok uses the TR Skullcruncher mold to give the character an alternate mode more appropriate to his name than the TransFormers Collectors' Club version, which used the Generations Megatron stealth jet with a new head and a very basic Arms Micron to mimmick the old Action Master. Here, we have a robotic crocodile with a Titan Master who turns into his robot mode head.
And what an excellent crocodile it is! My reservations with Skullcruncher were mostly to do with his garish colourscheme and, while black, purple and acid green/yellow are hardly suited to the idea of a robotic aquatic reptile, the more subdued look works pretty well. It's only occurred to me more recently that, with a more 'sunshine yellow', this would essentially be the G1 Insecticon colourscheme, even down to the translucent yellow cockpit canopy. Like all the translucent yellow parts on this toy, the canopy is molded in a rubbery plastic which seems too soft for that purpose, and it bends out of shape more readily than it opens to admit Gatorface. The cockpit interior features sculpted detail on and around the chair, as well as a small control console, but Gatorface doesn't peg in anywhere, he just sits on the chair with his legs bent in front of him, which means he does tend to rattle around in there, even with the canopy closed over him.
The legs aren't exactly in proportion - the front legs and feet are overly large, with huge, widely-splayed claws and the back legs are molded in a fixed squat, with smaller, squarer feet and shorter, curved claws at the ends. The vast majority of the purple visible in this mode is thickly painted, with only a few joints being molded in purple plastic. Krok also has a couple of red stripes, running vertically down his sides, just in front of the back legs, so it's not the most intricate paint job, but it works well enough.
The tail attaches to a short 5mm peg to the rear end of the body, allowing for about 20-30° of 'wag', but it's otherwise a solid - albeit hollow - piece of plastic, so it doesn't look that great. Krok's pistol plugs inside the tail via a handy 5mm socket toward the tip of the tail, and its barrel extends the tail by a little over a centimetre. Curiously, there's no other useful way to attach the handgun in beast mode. Two of the figure's other three 5mm sockets are covered by the croc's neck piece, and the last is under his jaw, right near the neck joint, and the gun is too tall to make attachment there at all practical. I guess the gun could attach to the outside of the tail rather than the inside, but it can still only really point backward unless it's barely pegged in. Similarly, there are only two Titan Master foot pegs on the entire beast mode's body: one on each forepaw, making them pretty useless, on balance. Given the number of spines on Krok's back, I'd have thought at least a couple could have been substituted for Titan Master foot pegs...
The head sculpt for beast mode is easily the highlight of the model, making it a real shame that, just like Weirdwolf's, it's left to hang off his back in robot mode. What I like most is that it's actually fairly accurate to a type of crocodile - the longer, narrower snout, the terrifying snaggleteeth - unlike the G1 version, which more closely resembled an alligator. The eyes are light-piped, with black plastic pegs within the head providing the dual service of keeping the rubbery, translucent yellow plastic in place and acting as pupils in the eyes. Opening Krok's jaw reveals is terrifying (albeit rubbery) teeth, and an equally scary tongue, that looks like something out of the later chapters of Kiss Players. On mine, it seems the head was fitted together before the purple paint on the lower jaw was dry, as the upper teeth have a habit of sticking, and have left impressions in the paint. The protruding lower tooth on the left side had been caught inside the mouth as well, so it's a little bent out of shape and has to be held out when closing the jaw. The top of Krok's croc head features a translucent yellow piece as a reference to the HeadMaster's cockpit in the G1 version, it it doesn't open - it seems to be glued in place over the top of some minor tech detailing, almost G1 Dinobot-style.
Robot Mode:
Considering TR Krok is based on a non-transforming action figure, it's remarkable how well his colourscheme suits the Skullcruncher mold, but this wouldn't be the first time a Titans Return mold had been designed with more than one character in mind - most, in fact, seem to have been put together on the basis of creating at least one repaint, with or without minor retooling.
It's quite obvious from the sculpted detail on the chest that it was designed primarily to emulate and improve upon G1 Skullcruncher's chest door detailing for the TR version of that character. Krok's upper chest is largely unpainted black plastic, so the chest looks more like a single unit. Below that, the designers really upgraded the waist detailing, with a load of wiry-looking detail partially covered by angular strips of armour that wrap around the sides of his waist, seemingly designed to resemble an organic musculature. The hips and thighs have a decent amount of sculpted detailing, but some of it looks as though it was intended to be supplemented by paintwork, and one look at him from behind reveals that his thighs are as hollow as his lower legs, with a large, squarish hole in each one, between the hip and knee joints.
Having the entire beast's head just hanging off the robot's back seems like a terrible waste in this day and age, but it's consistent with G1 Skullcruncher. If you're feeling daring, the head can be detached from the ball joint inside the collar, but then there's no way for Krok to interact with it and, frankly, just having the beast mode's collar hanging off his back actually looks worse than that and the head.
The paint job follows the Action Master fairly closely, considering how different the two figures actually are. The implied 'cockpit' detailing on the original has become three small dabs of pink paint on the internal tech detail toward the top of his chest, with a slightly more orange pink covering his robo-sixpack. The armour strips/internal wiring on either side of his waist has a blanket coating of silver paint, which wraps around the sides and extends up to the first seam on the lower part of his chest, and is there flanked by panels of purple. I wonder if it might have looked better if the armour strips at his waist had been left unpainted, to provide a bit of contrast, and the silver extended onto the central panel of his chest, but I don't object to the way it's been done. The beast mode's purple flanks flare out on either side of the waist, looking for all the world like a jacket that's suddenly cut off at belt level, an effect emphasised by the unpainted black plastic on the insides, between the beast flanks and the robot's waist. For the most part, the paintwork is cleverly applied - particularly on the legs - but the plastic colours deviate from the original in a couple of important places. The arms have their plastic colours effectively inverted - giving him black shoulders and forearms, purple biceps, elbows and fists - while the groin is molded in the same acid green/yellow plastic as his thighs, as opposed to black. It all works quite well in context though, and I only know there are differences because I looked up photos of the G1 Skullcruncher and Action Master Krok for comparison - in isolation, TR Krok's colourscheme and paintwork look great. It's interesting also that, while the colourscheme in beast mode reminded me a little of the G1 Insecticons, most of the parts that give rise to that similarity are concealed in robot mode.
Krok carries a fairly large pistol, molded in the acid green/yellow plastic, which is fairly detailed, albeit made largely of hollowed-out areas due to the all-too common minimising of plastic usage - it doesn't look as bad as his hollow thighs, and it's certainly better than the ride-in guns of some of the Voyager class figures, but it does look a little cheap. He also has the beast mode tail... which can attach to his shoulder via the acid green/yellow fold-out peg, or be held in his hand via a long peg on the underside. TFWiki lists it as a 'blaster' but, with the exception of the two tube-like details on its sides, I can't see what about it is supposed to look like a gun of any kind... It seems more like a bulky lance or, when mounted on his shoulders, a shield... but it's a damned awkward one, if that's what it's supposed to be. G1 Skullcruncher's tail became a very chubby sword, but there's no way for this version to be wielded in that way, even if there was an outside chance it'd look good that way.
I've seen online that some folks - evidently fans of the Action Master - objected to the head sculpt as it's too squared off (a typical symptom of simply being a HeadMaster/Titan Master) and the proportions are distorted, in particular the silver-painted battlemask is smaller and squarer within the face. One aspect of the original that couldn't be easily reproduced on a Titan Master was the 'cycle helmet' on top of his noggin. Here, the forehead has been painted silver and pink to resemble the original, but the related details on the sides of the head (Gatorface's cuffs) aren't painted, and the purple thighs of the Titan Master figure may have worked better in grey. I quite like the face as it stands, though, and only think the battlemask should have been made a little wider, with the cheek guards perhaps a little more curved, and protruding separately from the battlemask, rather than merging into it...
Titan Master Gatorface:
For this version the TargetMaster is naturally replaced by a Titan Master, and - probably due to potential trademark problems - Gatoraider is now 'Gatorface'. Mind you, the colourscheme is surely more 'Mountain Dew' than 'Gatorade'..? Molded in both the acid green/yellow and purple plastics used on Krok, Gatorface is entirely unpainted, and one of those Titan Masters where the hips aren't pinned, so his legs can pop off quite easily. He seems to be one of the more intricately detailed figures, with a defined helmet, visor, nose and chin on his own face, so the lack of paintwork is especially disappointing.
He can sit in Krok's tail and use it as some kind of sled or gunboat, with the larger robot's pistol plugged into the inside of the same 5mm socket it uses for storage in beast mode, but via the shorter, angled 5mm peg on top of the gunsight. None of these 'vehicles' are especially impressive, but this one looks as though it's missing something from the back... and the 5mm socket used to attach the tail, or the long peg which allows Krok to wield his tail as a dubious weapon, could allow accessories from other figures to fill in the gaps - Prime Armour would seem ideally suited, for example.
Krok's transformation is all very simple and familiar - very similar to lots of other Titans Return figures. The tail detaches, allowing the legs to flip out from the rear end of beast mode, with the stubby purple feet flipping out, then the crocodile head flips up and back on a double hinge, to rest neatly on the back with the uppermost spines fitting into notches on the crocodile's neck piece. The beast's claws flip back, giving clearance for the robot's hands to swing out from the wrists... and that's pretty much it. The only things worthy of noting is that the purple knee sections have to clip into the tops of the shins, or the legs tend to be very floppy, and it's actually quite tricky to get his lower legs to peg together when transforming him back to beast mode. One other oddity is that his fold-out feet are so small, I'm surprised they bothered making them transform at all - they might as well have made them into larger dorsal spines, as they did on G1 Skullcruncher.
Most Titans Return figures have very similar levels of articulation due to their fairly generic transformations. Krok's shoulders are arranged similarly to Weirdwolf, with small ball joints mounted well inside large, open spaces in the shoulder pieces, allowing for a comparatively huge range of movement. Here, though, outward movement on the ball joint is replaced almost entirely by the transformation joint, which allows him to lift his arms a little over 90° out to the sides. Also, unlike the vast majority of Deluxes, he has a rotation joint just below the elbow, as well as the standard bicep swivel. This is actually so his beast mode paws can lie flush with the surface he's standing on, but they're useful for expressive posing in robot mode as well. The actual knee joints are very tightly pinned on mine, and I often find the knee unclips from the shin before actually bending where it's supposed to. The lower legs and feet don't present a particularly stable means of standing, as his footprint is basically L-shaped, and the outsides don't extend back far enough to provide a sufficient 'heel'. It may have helped if the crocodile's rear legs/feet could be moved into a position where they act as additional heel support, but they just clip into the sides of the lower legs and are too high up to have any effect. It's easy enough to compensate for this by angling the thighs back and the shins forward, but he doesn't lend himself to particularly dramatic poses. Interestingly, it's been reported quite widely that TR Skullcruncher had very loose hips, but Krok's seem fine.
In beast mode, this mold is a bit of a mixed bag. The front end features a ball-jointed head with an opening jaw, and that alone is excellent (why couldn't Weirdwolf have been the same?). With just a small turn or tilt, a subtle opening of the jaw, Krok becomes incredibly expressive. The forelegs are a little awkward due to the way the shoulder is jointed at an angle in this mode, but the swivel below the elbow compensates for this well. The back end is a bit of a disaster, though, with fixed-pose back legs mounted on ball joints that have great range but, in practical terms, offer little useful poseability. The single-piece, solid tail can swing but, compared to the ball-jointed head, it's a massive disappointment.
Without any sense of nostalgia attached - either to G1 Skullcruncher or the original Action Master version of Krok - this figure works pretty well, but it's a very average Titans Return figure. Krok is a clever repaint - it almost seems as though some aspects of the TR Skullcruncher mold were designed with Krok in mind - but in those instances, it's more usual for Hasbro to release the repaint first. Perhaps the acid green/yellow could have been toned down a touch, but it can't be argued that it doesn't provide a good contrast to the more subdued black and purple. The placement of Titan Master pegs in beast mode is a little strange, some of the purple paint has been applied too thickly and the use of rubbery plastic for the teeth/tongue and cockpit canopy was a huge mistake in my opinion... But Krok's biggest problem is that he's a repaint of a figure that was really only created by Hasbro/Takara Tomy in direct response to Third Party products, and nothing about him outshines that. He's a lot of fun, but few figures in this line more clearly exemplify Hasbro's lack of innovation, as we edge closer to the 35th anniversary of TransFormers as a brand.
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