Looking back on the War For Cybertron Trilogy, now that we're entering the second year of Legacy, it is quite easily apparent that it was a troubled toyline from the very start. How much it was affected by COVID-19 is anyone's guess but the line, as a whole, was an occasionally glorious trainwreck, with little in the way of consistent direction, particularly when the Netflix series is included in its context.
Siege was a toyline that didn't live up to its promise and which ended before it really got started. Its accompanying show didn't feature half the molds or characters available, yet introduced some who weren't represented on the toy shelves. Earthrise was yet another in Hasbro's seemingly interminable series of 'true' G1 reboots, yet half the expected characters wound up in the Studio Series '86 line, while the animated series was a continuation of Siege that had zero connection to the toyline beyond certain specific figures. Kingdom, meanwhile, was seemingly cobbled together from the end of Earthrise and a Beast Wars anniversary toyline which has continued into Legacy without ever properly acknowledging Beast Wars, or its anniversary, and the Netflix show kept the same old Siege CGI for the Autobots and, while it introduced some of the Maximals, most of the Predacons were absent.
So it seems strange that Hasbro chose to further muddy the waters by creating several unrelated boxed sets, all of which featuring either repaints or minimal retools. The Golden Disk Collection would have been an easy pass for me, in its entirety, were it not for Hasbro's decision to make Terrorsaur part of the set rather than a mainstream Kingdom toy. This one was only of mild interest to me, because the original Tigatron figure was unexpectedly good... but, at £32, Mutant Tigatron was a figure I decided I could live without. However, as part of Hasbro's Advent sale in the run-up to Christmas 2022, they dropped his price to just £16... and I found I could no longer resist.
In my write-up of Terrorsaur, I described his enclosed packaging as 'dull', and there's really nothing new here. The front of the box shows a different section of the Golden Disk - the idea being that putting all the boxes together revealed an image of the complete Disk - while the back shows a couple of product shots on a stony background... These images are nothing special - beast mode standing still, robot mode in a fairly basic pose - and could have been made much larger considering how much space is left around them. It also shows a couple of discrepancies with the figure itself, in that his pelvis and collar are shown as orange, while the hands, the tip of his gun and his heel spurs are turquoise. As you'll see below, the opposite is true on the final toy.
What's really disappointing is that there was supposed to be a story behind the Golden Disk Collection, that actually explained the origin or purpose of this 'mutant' version of Tigatron... but there isn't even a single-sentence bio printed anywhere on the box... Given the vast amount of otherwise unused space on the back, they surely could have added something to give him a bit of context.
Beast Mode:
Since Mutant Tigatron is a simple repaint as far as his beast mode is concerned, there's not much to say here. The orange plastic is quite desaturated, and the painted black strips on his fur are 100% identical to the standard version. The only real difference is that the patches of darker fur on the original's hindquarters have been replaced with an ugly cream colour on his chest and 'beard', mostly painted with harsh edges that don't complement the sculpted detail in any way. Like the original, the eyes are gold, but this one actually got some paint inside the mouth.
Around the face in particular, there is some feathering of the cream paint and, while it could be optimistically or generously interpreted as an attempt to blend it in and make it look more realistic, it's clearly not intentional, and just looks untidy. What it really needed - to look more like a real-life tiger - was for the entire belly and the inner faces of his back legs to have some of the off-white paint. I know it's all cost-related, but this figure's RRP was higher than that of 'normal' Tigatron, and yet it feels like more corners were cut here.
On the whole, while I certainly like this version, it's not quite so striking as the standard version, and nothing about it really earns the increased RRP. In no way does it look or feel like a premium product.
Robot Mode:
As with beast mode, there's not a lot of difference here apart from the head and the colourscheme... And the latter continues the pattern set by beast mode: it's rather disappointing. Granted, the turquoise on the front of his pelvis helps to break things up a little, but the decision to use the same flat, creamy paint for his thigh armour and shins was seriously flawed. Additionally, while the original Tigatron has some pearlescent paint on key parts, this one has no special finish at all. Except for the black tiger stripes and the cream armour panels, everything on the body is bare plastic... So this 'special collection' figure looks less special than the regular retail version of Kingdom Tigatron. A few applications of either metallic turquoise - or, if that was too similar to the standard version, perhaps copper or gold - would have worked wonders here, as it's left to the pelvis, shoulders and collar, the elbow joints and head to add variety. It just needed something to break the almost literal monotony of the plastic
Even the weapon has the same, single application of pink paint over the 'gut' section at the back. Having both components molded in orange plastic - unlike the image on the back of the box - means this version looks ridiculous. I could just about get behind the white version packaged with the original Tigatron, but a mostly unpainted orange weapon doesn't exactly look fearsome or dangerous - it looks like he's wielding a toy weapon, in-universe.
The so-called mutant head sculpt is based on the alternate head of the original Beast Wars toy, accessed on that by simply flipping the robot head down in its mounting. This is actually quite a good rendition. It's a weird, somewhat insectoid-looking sculpt that absolutely looks like a mask. It's not especially detailed, but seems to feature teeth and/or mandibles protruding around what must be a mouth. One has to wonder why, if this sculpt exists, the Kingdom Tigatron toy wasn't made with the option to swap the face out, in homage to that feature of the original... but I guess the Kingdom toy was styled after the character in the TV show rather than the original toy, and the mutant masks were not used in the TV show. As with beast mode, the bulbous eyes are painted gold, but the sockets were left unpainted. A touch of black paint here would have really brought them to life and highlighted their unusual shape... but, then again, a touch of paint on the teeth would also have been welcome.
The main problems with Golden Disk Collection Mutant Tigatron are that it owes everything that makes it a great figure to the original, mass-release Tigatron toy, and the changes to his colourscheme and paint job are not significant enough to make it worth the (admittedly small) increase in cost. Quite the contrary, in fact, as his paintwork appears much less extensive throughout. Without any real context for the figure - the precise who, why and how of Mutant Tigatron - there's no real point to it... and, while I believe there was some small explanation of who and why he is on his product page on Hasbro Pulse but, with the figure now sold out, it's been delisted, and is only accessible if you search for it specifically. For the record, here's what it had to say:
"The Golden Disk is a powerful artifact with the ability to reveal knowledge of the past, the future, and of the infinite possible destinies throughout time. Discover an alternate timeline in which the quantum surge that mutated many Maximals and Predacons into Transmetals, goes very differently…"The quantum surge kills all Maximals and Predacons, except Tigatron. He survives, but the surge left him severely mutated, aggressive, and savage. He doesn’t remember his allegiance to the Maximals, and another survivor plots to take advantage…"Mutant Tigatron figure converts to tiger mode in 22 steps. He comes with his classic Quasar Cannon and tail whip accessories."
Given that Terrorsaur was the only Beast Wars antagonist (not to mention the only other Beast Wars character) in the collection - the other sets being Puffer & Road Ranger and Jackpot & Sights - one can presume that he's the other survivor referenced... But his own blurb only spoke of his intent to somehow travel back in time (again?!) and become the Predacon leader. The blurb on the other sets was pretty much nonsense, and none of it really connecting into anything resembling a narrative beyond "quantum surge causes time vortex that brings random characters into the Beast Wars era".
I suppose there's some merit to the figure simply as another use of the excellent Kingdom Tigatron mold. It certainly seems like a no-brainer to recolour the mold into the more common type of tiger but, at the end of the day, all it really proves is that Hasbro don't really understand how to make special/exclusive figures... Either that, or they lack the will to make them in any way special... and I'm inclined to believe it's more the former.
Because Mutant Tigatron is precisely the sort of thing I could imagine the TransFormers Collectors' Club producing, back in the day, either as a Club exclusive, or as part of a BotCon set, and I can pretty much guarantee they would have done it better. Not least, they wouldn't have left so many robot parts unpainted, and they would have woven his story into their ongoing Timelines narrative (if a Club exclusive) or made a complete one-shot story to support it (if a BotCon figure). As it stands, Golden Disk Collection Mutant Tigatron is an eminently missable curiosity... much like all of Hasbro's misguided 'capsule programme' toys.
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