Sunday, 1 September 2024

TransFormers Collectors' Club BotCon 2016 Combiner Wars Terrorsaur

The fact that the last handful of releases from the Fun Publications era of the TransFormers Collectors' Club and BotCon were branded as Combiner Wars toys, rather than coming under the Club's own brand, Timelines, was an early sign that changes were afoot.

Hasbro had pushed Combiner Wars hard - one might even say beyond its limits - and, while a custom gestalt made the ideal basis for an exclusive boxed set, they had produced so many retools of their own that, by 2016, there just weren't any surprises to be had with the format. Hasbro themselves had already moved on to Titans Return and, while FunPub's use of an older toyline was essentially par for the course, there just wasn't enough mileage left in Combiner Wars, even with a set related to (or perhaps retconning) Dawn of Futures Past - one of their very best BotCon sets.

Their take on Tripredacus was deeply uninspired, utilising some of the least highly-regarded molds, which were nevertheless among the most frequently retooled. The only real highlights of that year's show were a retooling of the RID2001 Megatron mold as TransMetals Megatron, and 2015's TransFormers Legends Slipstream mold (itself a retool of  the very first Windblade toy) as Airazor.

So... why did I also acquire Terrorsaur? Let's see if I can figure that out, shall we?

Vehicle Mode:
So, here we have yet another exclusive based on a Combiner Wars mold, specifically the Aerialbot Air Raid - AKA "the one that didn't get a full release in Europe due to 'lack of interest from vendors'", if Hasbro are to be believed. It's the loosely-based-on-an-F-14 mold, but painted with Terrorsaur's mottling on the wings, and a cheeky orange pteranodon beak painted in the grand tradition of shark's teeth nose art on military aircraft.

Most of the base plastic is red, but it's the typically insipid Hasbro red, which is a real shame on a figure from the Collectors' Club/BotCon, who would normally have much more vivid colours. Along with the aforementioned mottling, the wings and fins each have a dark gunmetal paint applied along the leading edges, along with some orange along the tips of the horizontals, and just below on the verticals. The cockpit canopy is painted in black, but the only other paintwork is what's applied for robot mode.

While BotCon 2017's Combiner Wars/Shattered Glass Starscream came with both the standard handgun and the gestalt hand/foot component, Terrorsaur was packaged only with the handgun... and, unfortunately, it was one of the worst - if not the worst - CW weapons, because it was reprehensibly hollow. Had it been designed to split in two, then half could have been attached to the 5mm socket on the underside of each wing. Instead, the only logical place to attach it to vehicle mode is the port on the top of the jet... but it's a weapon more suited to acting as a turret than anything a jet might carry. On the upside, the Air Raid mold had missiles built in to the underside of the wings, below the hinges, so he is armed even without the gun attached.

Robot Mode:
Much as I liked them at the time, the CW Aerialbots' robot modes haven't aged well. In retrospect, they seem clumsy and downright lazy. Even at the time I bought Terrorsaur, I had become fatigued on Hasbro's new gestalts because the engineering was so basic, and everything transformed in pretty much the same way - legs collapse up toward the body on hinged attached to the knees, arms compress in at the sides, and a huge chunk of vehicle - any and every vehicle - folds up from the back to 'cover' the head. This was fine for anything that had to become a car or truck, but each deviation from that form led to ever greater compromises. Those compromises were obvious enough on the Aerialbots, where sleek jets became chunky blocks with wings, but it was rather more egregious on the Generations Selects take on the Seacons, and Abominus from the Power of the Primes toyline.

So, Terrorsaur out of one of the Aerialbots was nothing if not predictable... but the 2016 BotCon boxed set was the Tripredacus council (loosely referencing Beast Wars Tripredacus) supplemented by Ravage and Tarantulas, all out of less than stellar original molds, and combining into Predacus. Terrorsaur was the attendee-exclusive bonus figure, but clearly so underwhelming that some BotCon attendees just sold it on afterward.

And underwhelming it really is. The upper torso is entirely unpainted, despite the Air Raid mold having plenty of sculpted detail, and the plastic feels rather cheap. The waist has a block of dark gunmetal paint on either side, with silver paint covering the remainder, down to the rotation joint at the pelvis. In terms of coverage, the paint on the legs and arms isn't much better. The shoulders are fully painted silver, with gunmetal applied to the vent details on the outsides and to the hands, with smaller applications of both metallic paints on the vambraces. Technically, the whole upper arm should have been silver, but either the bicep part is molded in the 'unpaintable' plastic, or the budget wasn't sufficient. The legs come off worse, with applications of gunmetal down the raised part of the shin, and silver on the truncated 'toes', on the tech detailing just above, and curious 'arrow' designs on the kneecaps. These are clearly a callback to Terrorsaur's CGI model from the TV show, but the paintwork bears no relation to the sculpted detail it's applied to, so it would have been better used elsewhere. FunPub were clearly going for as many visual cues as possible, but didn't really think them through... not least because leaving the entire chest unpainted doesn't reference Terrorsaur's beast tail chest anywhere near enough.

While the only weapon he comes with is the weakest of the Aerialbots' selection, this mold has one advantage over the Skydive mold used for SG Starscream: 5mm ports on the vambraces. The gun looks astonishingly bad in-hand - its hollowness being on full view unless it's pointing down - but manages to be somewhat reasonable-looking when plugged into his forearm. It is unpainted, though, so that's not exactly a ringing endorsement.

The unique head sculpt is as close as this figure gets to having a saving grace and, while it's fairly accurate the the TV show's it's not one of FunPub's finest. For starters, it looks far too small on this mold's shoulders, but the main issue is that the proportions of the head itself are all over the place. The crest is too short, and it lacks the trailing 'tail' on the back of his head, the parts of his helmet that extend over his cheeks are too large and too close to his eyes, and the hollows below them sweep too far back along his jawline. The face itself isn't bad, as such, but his expression is weird - halfway between a Starscream-like smirk and a rather goofy interpretation of the Grinch smile. The most frustrating part about it is the effect the shape of the helmet has on the head's range of movement: he can't look up without using the combiner joint, but he can tilt his head down very slightly. However, as the base of the helmet rises as it follows his jawline, and then slopes down again toward the back of the head, he has a decent amount of sideways tilt. This odd shape then makes it difficult - though far from impossible - to rotate his head as it clashes with the corners at the base of his neck.

I picked up Terrorsaur at Roll Out Roll Call, eight years ago. If I remember correctly, he was available along with BotCon 2016's Megatron and Airazor as the organisers had made a deal with FunPub. The former was a little pricey and surplus to requirements, while I had already acquired the latter via eBay. Terrorsaur was essentially being given away as a convention exclusive, to those who bought a full weekend ticket to the event. The fact that he was even available in sufficient numbers suggests that either FunPub overordered for BotCon 2016, or he just wasn't that popular... And the latter seems likely, because Terrorsaur was still available long after Megatron and Airazor had sold out.

The whole thing of the final couple of BotCons being inextricably linked to Combiner Wars was rather disappointing, and the inclusion of Airazor made out of the Windblade/Slipstream mold was a bizarre retcon on one of the Collectors' Club's very first exclusives, and didn't really fit the theme. Terrorsaur, meanwhile, had the potential to offer owners of the Predacus boxed set the option of an alternate limb... but only by borrowing the hand/foot accessory of another figure, so it feels deliberately scuppered. What's even more crazy is that this figure was repainted as Fractyl in the fifth and final Subscription Service set... and that version came with not only the hand/foot part, but a whole separate figure of pre-Beast Wars Scorponok based on the Legends class Scamper figure that was first released as part of the Thrilling 30 Metroplex set.

All of which makes Terrorsaur seem like an afterthought - easy filler material from yet another Combiner Wars retool - rather than a fully considered addition to the BotCon set, and extremely low-effort compared to FunPub's previous offerings. In part, that's really not surprising: by that point, FunPub would have been fully aware that Hasbro would not be renewing their license to operate BotCon and the TransFormers Collectors' Club... However, it's not clear whether they were forced to rely so heavily on Combiner Wars or if it was simply the easiest option, taken at a point where they no longer had a vested interest in producing something impressive.

Whatever the cause, I'd honestly have thought the Windblade/Slipstream mold would have been a better basis for Terrorsaur, and Airazor could have been adapted from one of the Aerialbots instead (perhaps the Fireflight/Slingshot mold, since it's loosely based on a Harrier, which at least references a bird of prey, even if it's not the correct one). As it stands, this version of Terrorsaur is a dull, stodgy, cheap-feeling thing that does neither the character nor the Club justice. Not a terrible freebie for a convention, but certainly not something to seek out on the secondary market.

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