Given that the current vogue in Knockoffs is to oversize everything, it seems strange to look back on what JustiToys decided to do in the mid-2000s, some years after the appearance of Takara's Smallest Transforming TransFormers line of blind-boxed, miniaturised G1 toys. STT ended somewhat prematurely, with only a handful of characters under its belt, but clearly captured the imagination of some of the Third Parties. None were as notable or as ambitious as JustiToys, who released a complete set of their own World's Smallest Dinobots over the course of three years.
But rather than being simplified versions of the original toys with even more limited articulation, these were downsized duplicates, scaled to fit alongside STT figures according to the G1 cartoon so that each of them towered over the official toys' robot modes.
I've never made any secret of my disdain for the very concept of the G1 Dinobots, but I was fascinated by the STT line, and these were just interesting enough to get my attention, not least because I'd never owned any of the original Dinobots myself, but had handled a couple of those owned by schoolfriends back in the day.
Since I don't want to prolong the agony of writing about more Dinobots, I'm
going to deal with all five of them as a complete set, even though their
releases were staggered and each was individually boxed.
Packaging:
The inaugural release in JustiToys' WST Dinobots line seemed like an odd choice, considering most Third Parties - both at the time and since - have started with a Grimlock-analogue to test the waters. Snarl wasn't exactly a central character either in the TV show or the comics, so it was quite a daring move, but seemingly one that paid off.
The box is a fairly standard cardboard affair containing an equally-standard two-part plastic tray. The print is full colour throughout, with a mixture of Japanese and English text. The artwork on the front is an excellent representation of a bellowing Snarl, while the back features product shots and a small Tech Specs analogue in one corner. Next to this are a note about the 'Secret' Dinobot which was set to include miniature versions of the G1 Dinobots' missile launchers, as well as a simple vector image of Snarl's head, which is indicated to be a coupon. According to the text on the bottom of the box, this was supposed to be set aside as a condition for acquiring that final toy, though no such condition applied at the time I bought the final figure. In the background is an image of the Dinobots battling the Constructicons, while the sides how images from the cartoon alongside images of the toy, emphasising the figure's accurate scaling versus STT Jazz, and highlighting specific details such as the head and tail. The final image is a silhouette, of the next WSTD figure, Slag.
Alongside the figure and his primary weapons, Snarl's package contains a poster version of the background artwork from the back of the box, an instruction leaflet designed very much in the style of G1 TransFormers toys (albeit printed in monochrome), and his sticker sheet.
Beast Mode:
I'm not sure quite what it is about the Stegosaurus, but it's always struck me as being one of the cuter dinosaurs... There's just something about the tiny head on such a large, bulbous body (almost like a chicken drumstick with legs), the comparatively stubby tail, and the disparity in size between the front and back legs that makes it adorable. Of course, the spikes on the tail and the massive, blade-like plates springing out of his back kind of work against it, but the overall effect is still somewhat cartoonish, particularly with the classic, yet lurid Dinobot colourscheme of grey, red and gold chrome. Nevertheless, to me, he's just about the most striking-looking of the group thanks to the extent of the chrome.
Given the size of the toy, the level of detail and accuracy to the G1 original is phenomenal, but there are a few differences in build quality. Most noticeable are the legs, on which the knee joints are simple pegs, so the lower legs are surprisingly easy to detach. The shoulder joints on the front legs are much simplified, clipped in place, and without the cap that the G1 toy had so the clip is exposed. The most significant difference, though, is that the dinosaur head is just the empty translucent shell with no sculpted detail, where the G1 original had a chromed inner part featuring additional detail. I could understand this move if JustiToys had even just painted the inner face, not even sculpted and chromed it, but the missing part is very conspicuous. It's made even moreso because the rim of each half of the head has been chromed... so one has to wonder why that decision was made.
The stickers on this one have held up better than those of some of the later WST Dinobot toys, but I recall them being an absolute pest to peel off, because the cuts just weren't adequate. None of them tore when I pulled them from the sheet, but several required the use of a scalpel to properly separate them from the sheet. One oddity is that the G1 toy had tech detail stickers in the recessed sections of the torso which accommodate the front legs in robot mode, but these are absent on this version... Probably just as well, though, as they would have been a real pain to apply.
Snarl is generally quite wobbly in this mode - the grey parts
of the body (the robot's lower legs) clip together well enough, but don't adequately clamp around the
red backside, and the extension joint at the robot's waist is loose
enough that the body has a habit of rattling apart. After a little research, it appears that this was essentially true of the G1 toy as well, so I guess they get points for accuracy..? This being the first of the WST Dinobots released, there were two ways of looking at it: either the QC and sturdiness of later toys would be improved, or they were all going to have their own weaknesses. Thankfully, it turned out to be the former...
Robot Mode:
Probably the first and most important thing to mention here is that the wobbliness of beast mode unfortunately gets cranked right up to 11 in robot mode, as there are very few parts that clip into place. Probably the worst problem is the waist joint, which both rotates and extends for transformation, but remains completely loose in robot mode. Pick him up, and the joint extends. What's strange is that there's a long tab on the underside of Snarl's torso and a corresponding slot in the top of his groin section... but the two parts don't clip together, possibly because that would negate his waist rotation. The hinges on each of the halves of his tail - splayed out behind him - are just as bad, and flop about erratically while attempting to pose him.
That out of the way, Snarl is quite a striking figure, if not particularly imposing due to his bizarre proportions. His enormous barrel chest, narrow waist and thighs and huge clod-hopping feet give him the look of a TransFormers Animated character... though there never was a (proper) TFA Snarl either in the TV show or the toyline. The character named 'Snarl' was technically Slag, but I guess Hasbro didn't want the controversy and hadn't settled on the alternate name 'Slug'/'Slog' at that point.
Since his arms are made out of the beast mode's back legs, they end up massively bulky and, while the G1 original had a spring-loaded feature whereby the forearms popped out once the beast mode's lower legs were flipped back under the arm, this shrunk-down version has them as separate parts than have to be plugged in. This makes a certain amount of sense, but they're very small parts, and probably quite easy to lose. The grey parts of the arms/legs are actually hollow and, for no discernible reason, feature springs around the shoulder joint. Additionally, while it was obvious in beast mode that the head was hollow, it only becomes apparent in robot mode that the tail is as well, where both were closed off which chromed parts on the original, full-size toy.
So, build quality isn't great... but the paint job, and particularly the chrome, still look phenomenal. The stickers - while troublesome to apply and, in some cases, very reluctant to adhere - are part of what G1 toys so much fun, and they really add to the overall look of the figure, adding detail where the sculpt is lacking, and adding colour beyond what was possible with paint at the time. Each and every one of the stickers is a miniature duplicate of those provided with the G1 toy, only really let down by the poor cutting on the sticker sheet - in terms of both depth and alignment to the designs - and the barely-adequate glue.
Snarl's weapons are accurately reproduced but, while the sword included with the G1 toy was red, this one matches they original toy's box art and makes it grey. The only accessory missing is the missile launcher, an oversight which was later corrected with the set of extra weapons packaged with the last figure in the set. The sword accessory is a decent size, but the peg that fits into the robot's hands is a tiny thing on the end of the hilt, so it looks as though Snarl is balancing the sword on his fist rather than holding it properly. The blade is basically rhombic, but has a couple of notches taken out near the tip to give it a bit of extra character. The handgun seems excessively long for a robot Snarl's size, but it's nicely detailed and even retains the hanging 'tube' on the underside.
The head sculpt is quite impressive given how tiny it is. Naturally, it's missing some of the finer details - the fluting in the helmet's central crest is entirely absent and the horns are stubs rather than hooks - but they've also altered the face somewhat. Where the full-size original had two large, angular eyes separated by a nose, this version has a squared-off visor that extends pretty much from one side of the head to the other, and the nose starts below it.
As mentioned above, certain aspects of Snarl's transformation are a little floppy, and the decision to use separate parts for the forearms seems to have been equal parts reducing the complexity of the toy and plain old cost-cutting. Most of it works pretty well, but the peg connecting the two halves of the tail together and the one at the toes which connects the grey halves of the body together are incredibly tight, likely due to their chrome coating, and are consequently very difficult to separate. One of the strangest features is the inclusion of springs inside the shoulders. They have absolutely no effect on anything as far as I can tell, except that the right arm/rear leg is somewhat inclined to fall off. Weirdly, the G1 toy appears to have springs inside the beast mode's front legs, ensuring that they retract back into their slots in robot mode, whereas this smaller version relies on friction and a split peg attachment... which makes me wonder if they were misassembled with the spring in the wrong place. All this aside, for me, the most frustrating part of transformation is widening the hips which, given the size and awkward positioning of the parts, is a lot more difficult than it should have been.
As is to be expected with a remake of a G1 toy - particularly a downsized remake - Snarl's articulation isn't great... In fact, I might go so far as to say his is the worst of the set. While he has knee articulation due to his transformation, his hips do nothing but expand or contract - the thighs are actually molded such that they butt up against the groin section at the front and back, giving them zero useful articulation. Waist articulation is unhindered but, as previously mentioned, very loose. The arms rotate at the shoulder, and that's pretty much it, so he's neither dynamic nor very poseable.
Flamethrower (Slag)
Packaging:
It came as no surprise that, between JustiToys first release and the second, the branding changed. Clearly aware that 'Dinobot' was likely to be a Hasbro trademark, they quickly added a couple of superfluous letters in the middle and rebranded as 'WST Dinorobots'. Similarly, where the initial toy used the G1 character's name, this one displays Slag's function only... In English, at least. Those familiar with Katakana will be able to make out the closest approximation available in that character set: 'Su Ra Gu'.
Other than these changes, it basically follows the same template as Snarl's box - gorgeous, dynamic artwork on the front, product shots, Tech Specs and the coupon on the back, in front of the same battle scene, and comparison pics on the sides, along with a silhouette of the next figure. This one is obviously Grimlock.
Inside of the box is also slightly different - no poster with this one, but a Collectors' card accompanies the instruction leaflet and sticker sheet behind the clear plastic tray. The card is only a little smaller than the plastic tray, and features a slightly less cropped version of the box art on one side, with Slag's "Capability Index" below a smaller version of the Dinobots vs. Constructicons image from Snarl's poster on the other. Additionally, while the look and layout of his instruction sheet is broadly similar, this one is printed in two colours - black and red - and the printing of the greyscale images is slightly lighter and clearer.
Beast Mode:
The Triceratops is not as immediately cute as the Stegosaurus, but there's something about this chubby, horned creature that's quite compelling... and JustiToys reduced rendering of the G1 toy appears to be somewhat more accurate to its G1 source than its predecessor. The translucent shell of both the head and the tail cover gold chromed mechanical innards. Aside from this, Slag's appearance is quite modest compared to Snarl, with the only instance of uncovered gold chrome being on his rump, with silver chrome on his pair of larger horns (bare red plastic on the G1 original), his lower jaw, raised sections on the sides of his back and on the frill at the back of his head. Aside from that, most of the visible parts are the metallic-look grey plastic.
Consequently, the stickers play a very important part in improving his appearance, with (comparatively) large tech detail patches on his backside, hips, shoulders and in the recessed strip on each side. I had problems getting some of these to adhere to the toy - while some have held up remarkably well, others started peeling instantly, particularly those that were applied to curved surfaces.
Pretty much all the sculpted detail of the original appears to be present, from the raised and recessed sections to the additional armour plating, and the implication of joints mid-way down the front legs. The rear legs are actually articulated at the knee but, since the front legs are not similarly articulated, the joint serves no practical purpose in beast mode. It's there for transformation rather than to make the beast mode more dynamic.
Slag feels genertally more sturdy in this mode, but the tail is a source of some concern. Rather than being atteched to the beast's backside in two halves, like just about every other Dinobot tail, it's attached to the robot's backside - concealed within beast mode - via a pair of hinged rods, and it just sort of slides into place at the back in this mode. The joints aren't loose, and the rods, while made of plastic, don't appear to be in any danger of breakage, but the design choice and construction are questionable... Though this is an issue with the G1 toy's design rather than being unique to this miniaturised remake.
Robot Mode:
Slag's robot mode has always been one of the most iconic, from his triceratops head hoodie to his bulky but satisfying upper-body proportions, to his clumping great feet. From the front, he looks pretty awesome... but from the side or the back, the dubious construction of the toy is laid bare. The beast mode's flanks open up to become wing-like but, rather than being attached to the robot's back, they're stuck out on a long, thin rod which does not collapse into the body. Furthermore, I'm honestly not sure what you're supposed to do with the tail - the instructions have it just hanging down behind his feet, like a translucent-shelled, gold chrome tail on the end of a thinner, squarer, articulated red tail. It's possible to fold it up behind his 'wings', such that it's concealed from view except from the sides or back, but knowing it's there, like a spare part, is annoying.
On the upside, robot mode is rather more colourful than beast mode, and more of the chrome becomes apparent. The beast's lower jaw folds down onto the robot's chest for a flash of silver chrome separating the head from the body, while the large chunk of gold chrome protruding from the beast's rump turns out to be the robot's toes. JustiToys decided to follow the animation model's colourscheme, giving Slag white thighs and a red head, while his hands are black. Most of the stickers are primarily for beast mode, though, and seem less prominent here. He does have a few robot-specific stickers - one above each knee and one across his waist - but they're pretty low-key.
Slag's weapons, meanwhile, are anything but. Where Snarl's were bare plastic - albeit with the gun and sword molded in different colours of plastic - Slag's are both fully chromed. The sword seems a little too large, not least considering the robot's dinky hands, and the shape seems like something out of a Fantasy movie rather than a weapon to be wielded by a giant robot... But I guess that's just another symptom of Hasbro adding to the TransFormers line from incongruous sources like Takara's Dinosaur Robo offshoot from Diaclone. The handgun is a bit of an oddity in that it's basically quite small, but has a long barrel that almost looks as though there's a silencer attached to the end. Additionally, the main body of the gun has a sort of tail fin which appears to have either its own, smaller gun or some sort of sight at the tip. There's something very 1930/40s cinema Sci-Fi serial about it.
Having a red head makes Slag all the more distinctive among the WST Dinorobots and, again, it's quite a decent sculpt given its small size. Like Snarl's, it's not a perfect reproduction of the G1 original on a smaller scale, but it's good enough for what it is. The face is unpainted, but the visor has a coating of blue paint to complete the G1 'toon look, though the blue paint doesn't work very well over the red plastic.
While Slag's transformation feels generally a bit more sturdy than Snarl's, the wings clash with the chromed frill piece both where it meets the neck and on the tips of one or two of the frills on each side, with an audible click. The transformation of the beast mode's back end to the robot's legs is very much like the front end of Snarl, in that the thighs spread out and the two halves of the back end rotate 180°, with the beast's legs compacting a little. The weakest parts of the process are the aforementioned tail, which is basically not involved in transformation at all and just ends up hanging out on his back, and the robot's hands which, like Snarl's, are tiny boxes of black plastic that plug into the soles of his beast mode's front feet. On the G1 toy, these were concealed inside the front legs and deployed with a slider, but this version has hollow front legs, with the inner face open.
Commander (Grimlock)
Packaging:
As mentioned above, Grimlock tends to be the main event in any collection of Dinobots - particularly those from Third Parties - and, consequently, is normally the first to be released, to get the fans hooked. Given the rebranding between the first two releases, let alone the questionable build quality of Snarl, it was probably a wise decision on JustiToys' part to hold Grimlock back.
This also allowed his branding to be identical to Slag's, even down to being labelled just 'Commander' in English (since G1 Grimlock's function was given as 'Dinobot Commander'), while the katakana just below the WST Dinorobots masthead reads 'Gu Ri M Ro Ku'. There's another excellent image of the character looking dramatic on the front, and the toy on the back with the same background, cut-down Tech Specs and 'secret Dinorobot' coupon on the back. The sides have the same comparason shots, including a very cute one of STT Megatron wrestling with WSTD Grimlock opposite a scene from the TV show. The silhouette of the next Dinorobot is obviously Sludge so, by this point if not before, it would have been apparent that the 'secret' figure would be Swoop, since it wasn't till much later that Third Parties - as well as Hasbro themselves - started adding new characters to the ranks of the Dinobots.
The contents also follow Slag's template - two-colour instruction leaflet, collectors' card and the same kind of shockingly bad stickers as the previous two.
Beast Mode:
In all honesty, I can see why Grimlock in particular is so compelling. It's not just that he's a Tyrannosaurus Rex - voted best dinosaur by every child, ever (citation needed) - because he's really not that accurate, and I'd like to think it's not because he was protrayed as such a doofus in the TV show. This bipedal, weedy-armed robo-lizard has a clumsy-yet-menacing appearance, tending more toward the former when stood with his tail to the ground, as he appeared in the cartoon. I think that G1 Grimlock was one of the only toys to get his proportions right - height and length vs. width and the size of the limbs just seem to work, though the head appears wider and flatter than the traditional depiction of a Tyrannosaurus Rex.
Like Slag, Grimlock's colourscheme is skewed toward grey, with his gold chromed, tech detailed neck contained within a translucent shell, while the gold on his lower abdomen and toes is fully visible. Silver chrome adds a certain something to the arms, a small compensation for their awkward, right-angled pose, and the chromed tail tip is subtle, but effective. Also like Slag, his stickers are strategically placed for maximum effect - tech detail just below his chest ridge and wrapping around the sides of his abdomen, below his arms and onto his back, with smaller stickers on the hips, rump and at the base of the tail. They all appear to be remarkably accurate to the G1 originals but, as with some of the other figures, the cutting leaves something to be desired.
Sculpted detail is, again, exceptionally close to the full-size toy, and reproduced sharply. JustiToys miniaturised toys completely eclipsed Takara's STT efforts from their first release but, by this point, they'd really hit their stride. In this form, Grimlock feels very sturdy, so their decision to make him one of their later releases is very much vindicated.
Robot Mode:
I noted when I wrote about Masterpiece Grimlock that he cuts a very imposing figure. It's actually somewhat diminished in this version, not because of his small stature, but because of some of the improvements made to his overall design for the MP version which arrived a few years later. G1 Grimlock was always somewhat peculiar-looking 'bot because his head was so tiny compared to the rest of his body. It's more apparent on Grimlock than on, for example, Snarl, because the latter has more exaggerated proportions. This one looks bulky, but everything fits together in the context of being a giant alien robot, with inexplicably humanoid - almost Superheroic - proportions... except that tiny head.
Like Snarl, the beast's tail is hollow and folded down his legs, but G1 Grimlock only actually covered the larger part of this anyway, leaving the tip hollow beyond the connection peg/socket on each half. Everything else is pure miniaturised reproduction of the G1 toy, even down to the translucent window on the gold chrome chest, and the sculpted tech detail within.
This was the last of the figures that I even tried to apply stickers to, because the cutting was terrible and the adhesive was almost useless in some cases. Some of them have stayed put remarkably well, while others fell off instantly and were lost. The worst were the stickers for Grimlock's hips, because the movement of the joint instantly counteracted the adhesive, which stuck better to the metallic core of the joint than it did the surrounding plastic. What's still there looks good, but there aren't even that many robot mode specific stickers: one either side of his head, one just below the chest window, and an Autobot insignia emblazoned on his crotch.
His weapons are, just like the others', excellent reproductions of the full-sized originals, with the sword chromed and the twin-barrelled gun molded in black plastic. I think Grimlock's sword may be my favourite of the lot of them, but possibly more because I'm subconsciously associating it with the translucent one included with the Masterpiece figure, which makes use of an LED embedded in one hand. Obviously no such luxuries here, but the chrome looks cool - far better than the plain red plastic of the G1 toy.
Grimlock's head is another of those that ended up getting completely mangled by the cartoon - though it was perhaps interpreted in an even more diabolically 'freeform' way in the Marvel comics (Andrew Wildman's possibly being - for me - the nadir, in all its nobbly-balaclava-like glory). It's also one of those that's since been reintepreted in some pretty impressive ways - IDW Comics, the War for Cybertron videogame, TF Animated, the Masterpiece figure... even the live action movies - but this is very much a back to basics, pure G1 toy version and, being a little simpler than those of the other Dinobots, it turned out very well. It's difficult to see what little detail is there, but being all-black apart from the visor is very much on-brand for the traditional Grimlock.
Grimlock's transformation is probably one of the simpler, yet more interesting of the set. The dino head flips back, the upper torso opens out, the lower torso swings up to become the robot's chest and the tail end performs some simple gymnastics to become his legs. This leaves him with a robo-dinosaur's head hanging off his back between a pair of 'wings' with arms sticking out of them, but it's very efficiently done, as far as G1 toys ever did efficiency. Justitoys even improved the toy by adding a slider joint for the head, so that it sits between his shoulders rather than behind them. The main problem with this figure - and I don't know if the G1 toy had a similar problem - is that the chest doesn't really clip into place in robot mode, so moving his arms is liable to dislodge it and allow it to start flopping down over his groin again. It looks as though the head's slider joint was intended to prevent this - with the neck peg pushing the two sides of its channel out, against the sides of the channel in the gold chromed chest - but it's not very effective. Friction is sufficient to hold that part in its dino belly position but, while there's a slot through each edge, just below the arm, there's no corresponding clip on the grey plastic to secure it.
Jungle Warrior (Sludge)
Packaging:
Thankfully, JustiToys were still using the same artwork template for their fourth release - the last of the non-secret WST Dinorobots - with another excellent rendition of the character on the front, product shots, etc. on the back, and even still the same announcement of the secret figure, despite the silhouette on one side so obviously being Swoop. Again, he's named as 'Jungle Warrior' in English, per his function according to his G1 Tech Specs, but the nearby Katakana reads 'Su Rā Ji'.
The contents are much the same again as well - Sludge himself is folded up at the neck, as he'd otherwise be too long to fit in the same size box/tray as the others, the instruction leaflet is two-colour, and the Collectors' card follows the same template as the previous two.
Beast Mode:
In terms of cuteness, Sludge easily ranks second as the robotic Brontosaurus. He's also possibly one of the least detailed, as much of his body is made up of large, mostly smooth chunks, with only a few areas of ridged detail here and there. The head is a decent reproduction of the full-sized original, but the lower jaw isn't actually attached as far as I can tell. Rather than being hinged to open, it's simply wedged in underneath the translucent carapace over the gold chromed skull. It occasionally works itself out of position, making it difficult to close his mouth, but there doesn't seem to be any danger of it falling out and getting lost. Aside from the innards of the head and neck, the only gold chrome on him is the lump on his back, above his hips, but his tail is silver chrome, like Grimlock's, and he appears to be wearing a silver chrome waistcoat - another cute aspect of his design.
After the problems I had with Grimlock, I stopped even trying to attach the stickers, so he looks pretty boring in my photos - very grey and featureless compared to all the others. Frankly, the alignment of the cuts on his sticker sheet is quite poor, so it really didn't seem worth risking the inadequate cutting and the dodgy adhesive.
Similar to Snarl's front legs, Sludge's back legs have a little recess to slot into for robot mode, but his hips are spring-loaded to automatically slot into place when folded back. The downside to this is that the hips sit at an angle, the spring pulling the leg closer to the body at the back, due to the way the body tapers back toward the tail.
Robot Mode:
While his beast mode isn't the best looking, Sludge gains some points in robot mode for following the pattern set by Snarl and Slag - the grey is broken up by a red chest and black forearms. He's also, along with Grimlock, one of the best proportioned figures and, while his head does look a little small, it's nowhere near as undersized as Grimlock's. His arms are a decent length because his forearms and hands fold under the beast mode's body rather then being separate parts. His hips are set quite wide apart, but are very much in line with the size of his chest, while his legs taper out to their massive footprint rather more gradually than those of the previous three.
Of course, what little chrome was visible in beast mode is largely obscured in robot mode, with his silver 'waistcoat' opening out into wings on his back, the tail folding down the sides of his lower legs, and the dino head and long neck ending up on his back. He'd probably look a lot better with the stickers applied, but I really couldn't be bothered with the risk by this point, particularly as the robot-specific stickers are smaller.
He comes with excellent, miniaturised reproductions of his G1 weapons - the intricate, long-barrelled handgun and sword with a curious cable connecting the hilt and a frame around the blade. As with the majority of the other figures, the sword is chromed, but the gun is plain black plastic. Since his hands are integrated, he seems to wield both weapons more securely than the likes of Snarl and Slag.
Sludge's head sculpt is probably the best of the set, as all the important facial detail is there, the helmet isn't overly simplified, and the face is highlighted with a neat application of silver paint. Additionally his eyes are painted blue, and remain separate, making him the only one of the WST Dinorobots who isn't depicted as having a visor of some kind.
This figure's transformation shares aspects with both Slag (shell parts making up the beast mode's sides which have to be worked around other parts of his body - in the case, the arms) and Grimlock (the legs are basically handled the same way though, similar to Snarl, Sludge's beast back legs contract into his body to narrow down his robot mode lower legs). Also like Grimlock, the beast's head and neck just end up hanging off his back. The clearance issues between the robot's arms and the chromed 'wings' is largely down to the strange peg-like protrusions on the front and back of each shoulder. I can't for the life of me figure out what useful purpose they might serve, but they are present - and likely just as frustrating - on the G1 toy. Had this figure been made these days, I'd have suggested they were for attaching effects parts, such as those supplied with some of the larger War for Cybertron toys.
Bombardier (Swoop)
Packaging:
And so, we come to the final, 'secret' yet inevitable Dinorobot, Swoop... or 'Su Wā Pu', as the Katakana on the box reads. For some reason, there's an oddity with Katakana that seems to leave with without a Wu syllable, so either this is a typo, and it should have 'Su Wō Pu' (though I believe this would have sounded like 'swop', just with the vowel sound extended) or this is the best approximation Katakana has available. Still, everyone knows this is Swoop, so that's hardly important.
The back of the box looks a little bare now that there's no 'secret' figure to advertise, but everything else fits the same template - no single part has been enlarged or moved to occupy the newly-available space. Curiously, the side of the box features a new silhouette in the 'Up Coming WST Robot' slot, but it's so boxy and vague, I hadn't a clue at the time what it was supposed to be advertising. My research suggests it was Blaster (aka Communications Liaison), who certainly fits the boxy silhouette.
Along with the figure and his own weapons - a pair of missile launchers and another chromed sword - this package contained the requisite stickers, Collectors' card, two-colour instruction leaflet, and a complete set of the missile launchers which were absent from the individual WST Dino(ro)bot boxes.
Beast Mode:
In retrospect, I have a sneaking suspicion that Swoop was the main reason I started collecting the WST Dino(ro)bots, as he was never sold in the UK. I was generally ambivalent about the Dinobots (apart from that one Christmas when I really upset my mother by announcing that I wanted Grimlock rather than Optimus Prime, because he was cooler in the comics at the time, little knowing that she was one of the fortunate few who'd been able to purchase Optimus Prime), but I can still remember feeling genuinely aggrieved that this one toy - at the time, one of the few Autobots capable of flight - was not even available to me. I liked - and still kind of like - his overall design, and the way they kept his beast mode comparatively slim by having his legs fold over only his back to become a sort of jet pack for the avian robot.
Even on a miniaturised version of the figure, Swoop's wingspan is quite striking, at least partly because both wings are fully chromed. They're also covered with surface detail, including tiny, stubby representations of the Pteranodon wing claws as little guns. Furthermore, JustiToys even retained the 'landing gear' feature, whereby the feet swing down/back and the torso opens to reveal a tiny landing wheel - an actual, separate, rolling wheel - on the end of a fold-out plastic arm.
Swoop's missile launchers attach to the undersides of his wings in both modes, but the socket is extremely shallow, so the connection isn't great. They hold in place, but the slightest nudge will knock them out.
Again, I didn't bother trying to attach any of Swoop's stickers - I seem to recall that no-one reported any improvements in the sticker quality versus the earlier releases, so there didn't seem to be much point. Swoop actually looks quite good without them, though, since there's so much flashy chrome visible. Aside from the silver on his wings and stubby beast legs, the claws of his feet and his 'skull' are gold chrome, the latter having the standard translucent plastic carapace, plus red plastic for the crest section. Since the torso is shared between both modes, its metallic blue paint is nicely on show, as well as the standard black and grey plastics used for the robot parts on his back and just visible on the sides of his body.
Robot Mode:
Bizarrely, Swoop ends up as the most 'normal' looking bipedal humanoid robot of the set, albeit with his beast mode's wings just folded up on his back and its crest still hanging off the back of his head. In a lot of ways, Swoop looks as if his Cybertronian form might have been very similar to that of the Seekers - all his silhouette is missing is the tall protrusions from his shoulders - which would actually make some sense. He has his aerial form's 'nosecone' running down the front of his body, slim arms and legs, and weapons that attach to his wings.
He also breaks the mold by being the only one of the Dinobots to have retainted the Diaclone version's blue torso, despite red plastic and paint featuring quite prominently elsewhere on his body. While the sculpted detail of the wings and torso is excellent, the arms are a little lacking, with the forearms blending into the hands in a way that initially made me thing they'd been attached back to front, since the 'thumb' just looks like an extension of the armour from his wrists.
The real shame about the stickers is that they feature quite a lot of nice additional colour and tech detailing, but the cutting on Swoop's is so poorly matched to the print that some of the smaller details have either been cut through or missed entirely. Having worked in print myself, I know that the process of die-cutting tends to need quite a lot of margin for error, and the small size of the individual stickers here pretty much makes that impossible
Swoop could, theoretically, hold his missile launchers in his hands, but having them remain on his wings is such an iconic part of his look they really should remain there, even though they will fall off during transformation. It does seem odd for one of the Dinobots to be armed only with a mêlée weapon, but swords are a staple of the Dinobots, and Swoop does come with two missile launchers by default, so I think it balances out. The one downside to the missile launchers - other than the fact that they're not spring loaded (you'd have a hard time finding a spring to fit the launchers, even if the triggers were mobile - which they're not) - is that not one of the three chromed missiles provided with the set actually fits into either of them. The sword is chromed and looks like a cross between Grimlock's and Sludges - the shape of the former, but with a rigid pipe connecting the hilt to the frame on one edge of the blade, similar to the cable on the latter.
G1 Swoop had a very simple head sculpt, and this one does a good job of reproducing the rudimentary, angular helmet, the mouth and chin, and his visor, with silver paint over the exposed face, and blue for the visor. The extra flash of colour provided by the red crest at the back of the helmet further helps to distinguish him from his compatriots.
Swoop follows the pattern of airborne G1 TransFormers by having a simplistic transformation, even by G1 standards. Naturally, the wings aren't involved in his robot mode, and just fold back on themselves, while the lower legs simply swing round from his back via double hinges, which then collapse at the knee, leaving the Pteranodon's feet as spiked kneecaps. His arms slide out from the body at the shoulder, while the torso itself splits down the middle to accommodate the translucent/gold chrome portion of the head, leaving the robot's head behind at the shoulders. Straight out of the box, Swoop is the only one of this set that I had any problems transforming, because the two slider joints on each of the two halves of the chest were far too tight. It's possible that the tolerance of the parts was fixed without consideration for the chrome layer, but I was able to improve things a little by loosening the screws in the red plastic fittings on his back. The joint still sticks, because even the slightest shift in angle tightens everything up again, so I'd be curious to see how the full-size G1 toy fares.
Along with his simplistic transformation, the final Dinobot also comes with only rudimentary articulation. The hips are fixed - since the thighs are the beast mode's legs and feet, molded as part of the wing section - but the knees can still bend on their transformation joints, and the feet can tilt a little, forward and back, due to transformation. There's no waist articulation due to the necessities of his transformation, and the arms are jointed only at the shoulder, since the forearms collapse back over the bicep in beast mode. The head can tilt forward and back slightly due to transformation, but offers no turn at all.
Bonus Accessories
As detailed by the text on the first four boxes, Swoop comes packaged with the four missile launchers intended for Snarl, Slag, Grimlock and Sludge, each in its own resealable bag with three of the appropriate missiles. I've never taken any of them out of the bags, and only removed Swoop's missiles long enough to determine that none of them fit either of his launchers, but the sculpted detail looks good - very accurate to the full-size G1 originals - and all but one set of missiles is chromed.
Based on images of the G1 toys, it looks as though all of them can be attached to their corresponding beast modes, while some can be held in the robot's hands. Grimlocks, by the looks of things, has to attach to his shoulder because its peg is on one side rather than on the bottom.
While these were described all along as 'bonus' accessories, they're really just corrections to the omissions of the original packages - each of the G1 Dinobots had the full size equivalent already included - and I've no idea why they were left out. Perhaps they were trying to get the spring-loaded launch function working, and held off on releasing these until they'd determined it just wouldn't work?
I've always maintained that the Dinobots were a silly addition to the TransFormers line, and the very idea of them - whether they were originally on Cybertron per most of the associated fiction (the Marvel comics, for example, had them awakened and reformatted by the Ark, to deal with Shockwave), or built on Earth by Ratchet and Wheeljack in a moment of extreme whimsy, per the G1 TV show - is completely incongruous. TransFormers were originally marketed as 'Robots in Disguise', but giant robotic dinosaur forms can hardly be considered disguise. It's not even as if they could be effectively deployed in any battle that humans might have seen until the Cybertronians stranded on Earth revealed themselves fully to the population... at which point the disguises became pretty much moot for all the robots, both Autobot and Decepticon.
This set is another fine example of my weird collecting OCDs. Were it not for this affliction, Snarl alone would probably have put me off the rest... but, having picked him up, I was compelled to buy the others. The opportunity to play with any version of Swoop - who was not available to me back in the 1980s - added more weight to it and, while I'm somewhat glad to have been able to acquire these shrunk-down G1 Dinobots they've never impressed me beyond the extent of their accuracy versus the full-size toys. They certainly don't fit with any other part of my TransFormers collection, even the Smallest Transforming TransFormers, which they were intended to complement.
Of the set, the first - Snarl - suffers the most due to wobbly parts, missing details and - of course - the terrible quality of the included stickers. Slag is certainly an improvement, but it wasn't till Grimlock that these figures really started living up to the original promise. Granted, even the simplest of these is vastly more intricate than even the most complex of Takara's Smallest Transforming TransFormers, but that just makes the corners JustiToys chose to cut all the more apparent.
On the upside, one of the things JustiToys kept from the original toys is the use of die cast metal parts. I believe the chest sections on all of them are metal, adding to the heft of each one and ensuring they feel substantial for their size. They also retain the original toys' vestigial Diaclone figure cockpits, though none of them seem to open particularly well.
Objectively, I do find it puzzling that, until the live action movie interpretations, Hasbro failed to produce a complete set of reimagined Dinobots, despite 'Dinobots' as a concept appearing in TransFormers Animated and the Fall of Cybertron videogame. Energon only got Grimlock and Swoop as a terrible combiner pair, Classics only got Grimlock, and then the first complete new set of G1-style Dinobots appeared in 2017/18 as the underachieving components of the ugly gestalt Volcanicus. Meanwhile, several Third Parties have produced their own takes on the Dinobots and, if they don't manage to complete the core set of five in every case, they at least tend not to focus on Grimlock quite so heavily as Hasbro, and occasionally add new members to the team.
As a limited run set of G1 toys which have been downsized
rather than upsized - as is the current vogue - they scratch much the
same itch for me as some of the Collectors' Club exclusives. For general
purposes, I doubt they'd ever count as 'must have' toys, but for a
capital-C Collector with a particular fondness for the G1 Dinobots, they're
probably more than a simple curiosity. JustiToys release a handful of exclusive versions, from the traditional black repaints, to G2-themed recolours, but as few as 300 were made of some of them. Even fully chromed 'Lucky Draw' versions exist, but these apparently number 10 at most, and I wouldn't fancy trying to transform any of those.
No comments:
Post a Comment