Jurassic Park X TransFormers Tyrannocon Rex (& Autobot JP93)

(Femme-Bot Friday #80)

By and large, the very concept of TransFormers crossovers with other properties is not one that interests me. The pair of Street Fighter II sets won me over because I'm also a Capcom fan, and because it used the Generations Arcee mold - which I was quite keen on - for Chun Li. The movie crossovers - Back to the Future, Ghostbusters, Top Gun and Universal Monsters - all looked low-effort and poor-quality.

And, to be perfectly honest, when the Jurassic Park crossover was revealed, I planned on skipping it. Sure, the new paint job for the Kingdom Megatron mold and its new head sculpt looked great, but the transforming Ford Explorer looked like the kind of knockoff toy sold in the London Zoo gift shops. With a price tag in excess of £120, I felt it was more overpriced garbage that I could happily live without, even though the absurdly-named Tyrannocon Rex was billed as a Femme-Bot. If Kingdom Megatron was overpriced at £52, and the equally absurdly-named 'Autobot JP93' (whom I shall henceforth refer to as 'Dickie Attenbot', per my girlfriend's suggestion) is very clearly not Leader class in terms of size or engineering, this boxed set was clearly a rip off, and not worth investing in.

But then I saw an announcement on Reddit that Zavvi had cut over £70 from the price tag, bringing it down to about £51 for the pair... and then saw that Amazon had followed suit... meaning that the cost of the boxed set of two figures was below Kingdom Megatron's RRP. That changed everything...

Packaging:

Now, I ended up ordering from Amazon... and, perhaps because we recently cancelled Prime, they then decided to wait most of a week before despatching it, and put the mailing labels directly on the toy's packaging. Classy, not their usual behaviour... and almost made me regret buying from them, rather than paying the £2 extra for delivery from Zavvi. Thankfully, I'm not overly concerned with the box, since it will soon make its way into the bin. However, with a little patience, I was able to remove them both without damaging the finish, let alone the print, allowing me to take the photos.

It is, admittedly, a nice display box, with Tyrannocon Rex (I really need to come up with a better name for her, not least because 'Rex' is the masculine form, so she should be 'Tyrannocon Regina', if anything) tied onto the backing card in a dramatic pose, standing on the cardboard representation of a wrecked safari vehicle, while Dickie Attenbot sits, in vehicle mode, just in front of her. It almost seemed like a shame to open the package up... but I've never been one to leave my toys MISB. What's curious, though, is the sense of foreshadowing you get from the fact that, while Tyrannocon Rex is on full view, Dickie Attenbot is basically shoved right into the corner of the box, almost as if Hasbro were embarrassed by his presence.

The back of the box features a brief story outline, explaining that Dickie Attenbot has been despatched to track, capture and return Tyrannocon Rex to her paddock at Jurassic Park. It's implied that the park know she's a sentient robot... which makes the whole situation a bit weird - almost like she's a refugee from the TransFormers Animated universe, in which she was an animatronic, brought to life by the power of the AllSpark.

The main feature of the back - a large Tyrannosaurus footprint - had been concealed by the packaging labels, and I was a little surprised to find there were no product shots, as the footprint itself isn't exactly the most exciting bit of artwork, however much of a movie Easter egg it's supposed to be. Product shots - even on boxes with windows as large as this one - are a staple of this kind of toy, and it's baffling that even the standard flashes advertising the complexity of the toys in terms of transformations steps are absent from this package... All it has is five lines of scene-setting text, translated into French, German, Spanish, and Portuguese. Aside from that, it's pretty much just markings from the movie studios and a panel making it clear that Dickie Attenbot is an officially licensed Ford product.

Beast Mode:

I cannot express how much I wish the original Kingdom Megatron had decided to forget all about homaging the original Beast Wars toy and fully embrace the more 'realistic' dinosaur appearance of the toy's sculpt. It's still largely rubber panels slapped onto a rigid plastic skeleton, but the base colour of that rubber and its paintwork are vastly superior, from the more muted, fleshy tone of the underside to the darker striped band running from the back of the head to the tip of the tail. The sunkenness of the eyes has been emphasised with a darker paint around the sockets and onto the jowls, the eyes themselves are pretty basic, but the gums, teeth and tongue have been nicely painted as well. Where the Kingdom toy had incongruous white plastic for the joints, that stuck out like a sore thumb in beast mode, this one uses brown, which fits much better in both modes.

The only downsides to this version are that the rectangular panel of rubber on the tail's side panel hinges has a bit too much of the dark brown paint applied, and there's a surprising amount of bright red plastic visible in some of the wider seams. Given its position, those tail hinges probably didn't need any of the darker paint, so it looks for all the world like it was meant to be the lighter paint, applied to the bottom of each piece, and the folks at the painting stations got their instructions mixed up. The visible red plastic is a bit harder to avoid, since Hasbro appear to have really played up the G1 Dinobot angle with this... er... dino-bot.

What's rather sad about this set is that Tyrannocon doesn't come with any accessories - unique or otherwise. While I don't much care for the blast effects that came with some War for Cybertron toys (none of the handful I own, though) it might have been nice to have one or two of those, even if they didn't want to design and manufacture something unique for this 'special edition' toy.

By and large, this figure comes together slightly better than my Kindom Megatron does, though the chest/belly panels don't stay together quite so well, and the rump/loin panel doesn't seem to want to stay pegged in on one side. The only other issue is that the colour matching on the hinges for the main torso panels is pretty poor, but that doesn't bother me a great deal.

Robot Mode:

With Tyrannocon Rex in robot mode, it becomes instantly apparent that almost the entire paint budget got blown on her beast mode, so there's virtually no paintwork on her inner robot parts. As mentioned above, there's a distinct G1 Dinobots vibe, since red was their primary robot mode colour. It has been observed that, with black plastic for the legs, there's the unfortunate effect of a largely black robot wearing a red bikini. However, given that her arms are red, that doesn't quite line up... Unless it's more of a Superhero leotard, of course.

But, essentially, the majority of the torso is red plastic, with the only paintwork being an approximate 'T' shape in glossy black, from the 'teeth' at the collar down to the waist, roughly following the sculpted detail of the chest, and a coating of red paint over the front of the upper part of the pelvis, which had been molded in black plastic. It's a little disappointing, since there's quite a variety of detail on there, and Kingdom Megatron at least had two shades of gunmetal applied to the chest. Nice and glossy though the black paint may be, it's just not that interesting on its own. One can but hope that Reprolabels come up with a colour-adjusted variation of their Kingdom Megatron label set for this toy, because it actually looks pretty bad in its stock form.

As with beast mode, Tyrannocon comes togther pretty solidly in robot mode. In particular, the two halves of the lower part of the pelvis snap together very securely... So much so that actually separating them again, to go back into beast mode, is a terrifying experience, and I fully expect one of the tabs (or maybe even one of the hinges) to break sooner or later. Still, on balance, rather that than it flops apart the moment she's set down on a shelf. Getting the robot mode chest to sit on or separate from the upper part of the waist joint is also a bit of a trial, but mainly because there's so little clearance from his backpack.

Something approaching a saving grace is provided by a truly excellent head sculpt, but the fact that the whole thing is painted glossy black means it's not being shown off to its best advantage. The sculpt almost looks like an attempt at a G1 Grimlock head sculpt, run through a very light 'Bayverse' filter to up the level of detail and throw in a few unexpected angles. The 'face' is very much just a multi-layered battlemask, and the 'eyes' are a fairly basic red visor, but it's a very striking look... So it's a real shame that it's let down by a weirdly misshapen ball joint for the neck. It allows rotation well enough, though getting the head to sit straight is nigh on impossible. Tilt the head back, though, and it all goes horribly floppy... Additionally, the panel the head is mounted on for transformation just doesn't click into place properly in robot mode. Pretty as the head is, the experience of trying to pose it just makes the toy feel even cheaper in its construction.

Something I hadn't noticed when taking the photos was that the housing for the rotation joint above the knee of the right leg was broken, and a shard of its rigid black plastic was jabbing into the softer plastic of the dual mushroom peg. That would explain why I'd found that joint more stubborn than the one on the other leg and, upon removing and re-seating the joint, it became far smoother to rotate. By the looks of it, there's a chance that the joint could have been seriously damaged if I hadn't dislodged that shard.

It's a real shame that the main draw - for me - in this boxed set turned out to be such a disappointment. I don't dislike it - not at all - but I can't help but think it could have been done so much better... On balance, I'd say it's still one of the better offerings from these TransFormers Collaborative sets... but that's the very definition of 'damning with faint praise'.

So, since we're here, let's take a look at the part of the set that I knew in advance that I really wasn't going to like.

I mean, let's face it, I've been wrong before, haven't I?

Dickie Attenbot:

Vehicle Mode:

This being an officially licensed Ford Explorer vehicle mode, it should come as no surprise to find that his vehicle mode is ugly, but reasonably accurate. Ugly not just because of the vehicle type, but because of its day-glo colourscheme. Also, the fact that there are so few transformation seams visible on this toy is an immediate red flag... but we'll get into that later.

The Ford Explorer looks appropriately rugged as a vehicle intended for use around a safari park, and, while the acidic green used as the primary colour - both plastic and paint - is more-or-less accurate to the vehicles from the movie (within a margin for error because they look completely different in almost every photo), I think it's either a bit too saturated, or it needed that very specific sheen that car paints provide. By comparison, the red and yellow paints look spot on... though the former exhibits some inconsistency in its applications or its opacity between the green and translucent grey plastics, while the latter seems less dense on the doors, and there's both misalignment and overspray around the rear bumper. Also, comparing this toy to photos of the vehicles in the movie, the yellow paint should have gone higher up the sides of the vehicle, almost to the tops of the wheel wells, so that the park's branding would be partially over the top of it.

Unlike most Hasbro releases, both the head- and tail lights are fully painted, with the latter even having their black frames painted on. The windscreen wipers and all the window frames are likewise painted but then, while the Ford roundel and the Explorer branding has been sculpted on the rear, neither are painted. The small, passenger-side searchlight has been painted silver, but the two running lights on the bullbars are bare black plastic with a more detailed sculpt. Due to the few, strategically-placed transformation seams, Dickie Attenbot makes for a fairly decent model Ford Explorer... and will probably return to and thenceforth remain in that mode once I've finished this write-up.

While the weapon provided is a fairly nondescript shotgun-type thing, there are two mounting options in vehicle mode. The 'disguise' option sees it attaching to the underside via a tab added to one of the legs and a slot on one side of the weapon. The 'active' option takes the time-honoured approach of sticking the gun on the vehicle's roof via one of two slots just behind the sunroof. It seems a little strange that it has to be mounted upside down, but I'd guess one of the no doubt numerous stipulations Ford had in the license agreement was 'no 5mm ports visible in vehicle mode'. Given that a mounting point is available on the underside, I'd have thought any means of mounting a gun to the roof of an ostensibly civilian vehicle - Autobot-in-disguise or not - would be superfluous...

Robot Mode:

Dickie Attenbot might have been a reasonably decent TransFormers toy if it had been released around the time the first Jurassic Park movie was in the cinemas... In fact, all things considered, I could easily believe that it was designed in 1993 considering its overall appearance, and simply held over until the right opportunity presented itself.

At first glance, it's very much the stock Diaclone-type body, with the front of the vehicle becoming the robot's chest, the windscreen and part of the roof dangling off the back, door wings, with the rear of the vehicle becoming the legs and - in this case very perfunctory - feet. While the fact that this arrangement is still in use is testament to the quality and inventiveness of the original Diaclone line, the fact that a toy in the 2020s uses it with so little embellishment seems pretty sad to me.

The main addition to Dickie's colourscheme is black, appearing at the waist, pelvis and hip joints, as well as on the arms. The overall look of his limbs is very squared off, and the detail - such as it is - is neither extensive nor impressive, again looking much like a figure from at least 15-20 years ago. The redistribution of his vehicle mode paint job is interesting, as he gains large panels of red on his shins, while the partial 'Jurassic Park' branding on his door wings is largely hidden behind his arms, substantially reducing the amount of yellow on show. The full 'Jurassic Park' logo on the vehicle's bonnet is now front and centre on his chest, directly in front of his head. Given that his legs are predominantly green, the use of black plastic - particularly without any supporting paintwork - makes those part look as though they were intended for a different toy, and it might almost have been better if the arms were mostly yellow.

The fact that the arms are unpainted black plastic also doesn't do his shotgun any favours because, without any paint of its own, it doesn't exactly have much visual impact in his hands... which is a real shame, as the design and sculpt aren't that bad, and it's certainly not as hollow as some other contemporary weapons. It reminds me a little of the guns packaged with G1 Prowl, Bluestreak and Smokescreen, or possibly G1 Jazz... and, while weapons haven't been commonly vacuum metallised for quite some time, a few touches of paint would have made all the difference to this, even just some yellow or red paint on the fore-end, or silver for the barrel. When not in use, the gun can attach to a tab on the bottom of his backpack via a slot on either side.

One really crazy element of this toy's design - and a prime example of those who worked on it missing a trick - is that the vehicle mode's passenger-side searchlight was sculpted onto the same chunk of plastic as the windscreen, so it ends up on Dickie's backpack... It baffles me that no-one thought to make that another accessory, even though it would likely have to have been made to the robot's scale rather than the vehicle's. It almost makes more sense for Dickie Attenbot to wield a searchlight rather than a shotgun, and it would have made for a far more interesting feature on vehicle mode, particularly if it was mounted in a 5mm socket on the bonnet, allowing it to rotate, if nothing else.

I'm going to admit straight away that I loathe the head sculpt... but, even so, I can appreciate what they were going for. Not least of its problems, it looks far too small, sat in the middle of his broad shoulders, atop so tall a body. Below the ridiculous 'hat', the head somewhat resembles the Autobot insignia, with its massive green lambchop 'sideburns' (or perhaps it's intended to represent a popped collar?) and trapezoid chin chunk. The mouth slit seems superfluous, and the nose seems to sit in front of the recessed visor, ending abruptly at the bridge. Given that there's a little black blob on the back of the 'hat', it looks as though the head was designed to have light-piped eyes but, for some reason, that part was cast in the opaque black plastic... I'd guess it would likely have been painted over even if it was cast in the translucent grey of the car's windows. That 'hat' though... I get the idea of something resembling a hunting hat, but it looks as though the people involved in designing this toy's head couldn't reach an agreement on whether they should reference the smaller-brimmed Tyrolean type, the wider-brimmed Panama/Stetson type, or the sort of tricorn variants popularised by Bloodborne. The end result has elements of each without committing to a specific style, and would have looks less out of place had it not been painted yellow. The craziest thing is that it's a different shade of yellow to that used on vehicle mode, and the head also features the toy's only application of flat grey paint for his face.

Dickie Attenbot's transformation is every bit as simplistic as one might guess just by glancing at his robot mode. It's essentially the ancient Diaclone-derived car transformation, and about the only thing that makes him unique in transformation is the way a section of the roof folds under his feet... Thing is, that step is entirely unnecessary except to gain access to his ankle tilts. Even then, these panels only need to be untabbed from the roof, and he'll stand perfectly well, ankles tilting freely with the flaps pointing straight up from the feet. The massively gappy upper body could have been closed off a little more simply by allowing the vehicle's front to angle further down, while neither the tab nor the socket protrusion for the backpack needed to be as long as they are, so the backpack could have been smaller and tidier. There's nothing new or innovative here, and it really shows. The fact that the robot's knees are the transformation joint is the sort of thing Hasbro have been doing on their budget figures, or those targeted at the much younger demographic, for years... and it's sad enough to see it make a comeback on the likes of Legacy Skids (to whom this figure bears a passing resemblance in terms of engineering), let alone on what is ostensibly a 'premium collectable' figure in the TransFormers Collaborative selection.

But if transformation is uninspired and archaic, his articulation is insultingly bad. Sure, he has ankle tilt... but his actual 'knee' transformation joint sits well below the sculpted knee detail, and results in the extremely ugly exposure of a massive chunk of vehicle when the 'knee' is bent. He has the largely ubiquitous upper thigh swivel... but then his hips are ball jointed. Excellent though their range may be, this sort of arrangement has become less common in recent years because ball joints are known to have wonky tolerances. The overall articulation of the legs isn't exactly conducive to dynamic posing... and then they didn't bother putting in a waist joint, which has been a staple in TransFormers toys - even when not required for transformation - over much of the last decade or so. The shoulders, at least, are not ball jointed, and get the standard 360° rotation (with allowances made for his door wings) and 90° swing out to the sides... but then the elbows are ball joints, doubling as bicep rotation and only getting a little bit more than 90° of bend. The wrists only move for transformation, folding into his hollow forearms. The head is on a ball joint, allowing the expected 360° rotation... but the shape of the head permits the barest of tilt in any direction. While a waist joint is probably the most harmful omission in terms of his poseability, he can't support the barrel of the his shotgun with one hand while holding it in the other without the gun being essentially flat against his chest.

These Collaborative sets have mostly been crap, comprising low-effort repaints and/or reshellings, or uniquely-designed robots that are somehow at least 15 years behind the curve when it comes to TransFormers toys, and invariably the plastic quality has been discernibly lower than mainline releases. This set encompasses the very worst of all those factors. I don't really understand who Hasbro thinks their target market is... but I strongly suspect Hasbro don't know themselves. Tyrannocon looks great in beast mode, but bland in robot mode, and is a waste of an otherwise excellent head sculpt. JP93 is such a poorly-designed, outdated piece of crap, I'm not surprised no-one at Hasbro or Universal tried to come up with a better name.

Tyrannocon is nevertheless the best part of the set, by a wide margin, and despite the shortcomings of her robot mode paint job. Honestly, with the discount I got, it was almost as though Hasbro were paying me to take Dickie Attenbot off their hands... Which is not a situation I find entirely disagreeable. Much as I have disliked the Collaborative concept, this is a set that's worth acquiring at any reasonable discount - the larger, the better - if only for the opportunity to customise and improve Tyrannocon's robot mode. One thing's for certain, the original price tag of about £120 for an undersized Leader class toy and a licensed (presumably) Deluxe class companion was well over the odds.

I'm certainly glad I didn't pay full price for this set... but, having paid a little over £50 for it, I learned that at least one of the UK-based specialist retailers had dropped their price to £40 just to get rid of their last remaining stock, not even two weeks after I took advantage of Amazon's massive discount... and I honestly can't blame them. What is surprising is that I subsequently saw that Amazon have put their price back up - last I looked, this set was about £67.