War for Cybertron: Kingdom Dinobot

Dinobot was one of those characters who got a really raw deal, both in the original 1996 Beast Wars toyline and pretty much ever since. A pivotal and much-loved character from the TV show, he was saddled with one of the worst-looking toys, that suffered even more due to the line's 'mutant mask' gimmick that was never even referenced in the TV show. So awful was the original toy that my one and only experience of it was Takara Tomy's 2006 Telemocha Series repaint, released for the 10th Anniversary, which had the dubious advantage of a somewhat show-accurate colourscheme. I bought even that version reluctantly, and only because I wanted to have a version of Dinobot to honour his impact in the TV show.

He got a somewhat improved remake in the Universe toyline, back in 2009, but I don't think it ever made it to the UK, because I couldn't find it anywhere - online or in bricks-and-mortar toy shops. It looks substantially better than the original but, even then, my preference would have been for Takara Tomy's Henkei! Henkei! version, as Hasbro's version introduced a weird green and purple combo to his colourscheme.

 

So now, in the wake of the stunning, yet fragile and expensive Masterpiece toy, it falls to Kingdom to produce a more affordable update to the character. Having chosen to do so at the Voyager class pricepoint, let's find out if it's another comparative dud like Optimus Primal, or something special like Blackarachnia...

JustiToys WST Dino(ro)bots

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.

FansProject Lost Exo Realm LER-06 Echara

(Femme-Bot Friday #72)

Having bought Comera and almost immediately broken one of her ankles, I was rather more dubious about picking up her slightly-remolded sister figure. Aside from a handful of cosmetic changes, they were identical, and it seemed likely that the ankles on Echara would be just as troublesome. Add my general disdain for Dinobots, and I'd pretty much convinced myself not to bother.

Then TFSource had a sale, late in the summer of 2019, and she was essentially half price. Where a Femme-Bot is concerned, that's an offer I couldn't refuse.

Clever/Sneaky TFSource. Now I have another Dino-Femme-Bot in my collection.

Binaltech BT10 Grimlock

If Binaltech's pre-movie 'lost years' timeline wasn't weird enough when it repurposed obvious Autobot shells into Decepticons - even if there was a valid in-story explanation - it jumped up a gear with its tenth entry. Early G1 Autobots getting new, contemporary, licensed vehicle modes to replace their old, unlicensed G1 vehicle modes was one thing... but the latest figure, Grimlock, had originally been a Dinobot, with a robotic Tyrannosaurus Rex as his alternate mode.

Yet, while turning the former Dinobot Commander into a car may have seemed strange, they at least chose a fitting vehicle - the latest iteration of one of the most well-known American muscle cars.

Studio Series #07 Grimlock

Yes, yes, the Eternal Despiser of Dinobots has picked up another Dinobot toy and - hypocrisy piled upon hypocrisy - it's a live action movie Dinobot at that. Here's the thing, though: similar to The Last Knight's Megatron, movie Grimlock's design isn't inherently bad generally... it's only inherently bad within the context of TransFormers. If someone had come up with a property in which robotic dinosaurs evolved the ability to transform into humanoid 'knights' in an attempt to combat a bunch of robotic 'knights' that transform into spacecraft, with AOE Grimlock and TLK Megatron being their leaders, I might be tempted to give it a look... it's just not right for TransFormers, in my opinion. Plus, given the way the movie Dinobots and TLK Megatron look, I'd struggle to decide who the good guys were supposed to be...

Which brings us to the Studio Series, where Hasbro are taking the opportunity to release whole new molds of 'popular' characters from throughout the live action movie franchise, and one of the first Leader class figures to be released is Age of Extinction Grimlock. Roundly received as looking far more accurate to the CGI and with an appropriately subdued paint job, rather than the garish copper, silver/grey and black of the versions released in the AoE toyline, I'm still not entirely sure why I caved in and bought him... But let's have a look and see if we can figure it out.

FansProject Lost Exo Realm LER-05 Comera

(Femme-Bot Friday #47)

This almost certainly isn't the first time I've made myself look like a bit of a hypocrite, having repeatedly denounced the very concept of Dinobots, only to buy one and find it's actually quite good, objectively speaking.

FansProject started their Lost Exo Realm series of unofficial Masterpiece Dinobots, surprisingly, with their own take on Sludge - where most other Third Parties seemed to start with Grimlock - and only got to the Dinobot commander after their versions of Slag and Swoop... But the bigger surprise was how they followed him - not with their version of the final G1 Dinobot, Snarl, but with a pair of original characters built around the same basic structure... Dino-Femme-Bots, no less.

Naturally, that piqued my interest, so I ordered the first of them, Comera, toward the end of last year, with a view to potentially getting the second, Echara, if it turned out to be good... Because if I'm going to make myself a hypocrite, I want to go full-on about it.

Masterpiece Grimlock

OK, let's get one thing out of the way, straight off the bat: I think the Dinobots were rubbish.

I mean, seriously, robots that transform into robot dinosaurs? And how many different nonsensical 'explanations' for this bizarre phenomenon? The whole idea was ridiculous, and probably one of the worst aspects of TransFormers being a toyline created out of several crossover brands, in this case Takara's Diaclone Dinosaur Robo line. Grimlock was supposedly a robotic Tyrannosaurus Rex, but his proportions were all wrong and the dinosaur legs were poorly positioned and just didn't look anything like those of a T-Rex, the head was too wide and too flat, the arms stuck out from the torso, with a fixed 90degree bend at the elbow... The whole thing was a catalogue of poor design, quite apart from the fact that it was a frikkin' robotic dinosaur. The Dinobots are why I was initially quite sceptical of Beast Wars.

Weirdly, and as mentioned in my write-up of Classics Grimlock, I bought a full set of Justitoys' World's Smallest Dinobots - at no small cost - because the idea of them appealed to me. Other than being scaled to the authentic Takara Tomy World's Smallest line (based on their comparative sizes on the TV show), they were functionally identical to the full-sized version in every detail. They were a curiosity and a massive aberration in my collection, picked up largely because they were made available as a complete set, whereas G1 Swoop was never released in the UK. As it turned out, they're not great quality, and part of me rather regrets buying them.

Still, something must have convinced me to buy this behemoth... Let's see if we can figure out what it was...

Classics Grimlock

By and large, I really do not like the Dinobots. Not the concept (robots that transform into... robotic dinosaurs?), not the characters. I didn't bother picking up any of the G1 Dinobots, and only bought the third-party-manufactured World's Smallest Dinobots because they were limited editions and incredibly cool at the time. I'm really not sure why I bought Classics Grimlock... but the reuses of the mold - TFCC's Shattered Glass Grimlock and Takara Tomy's Classics Overkill - were pretty good. Shame I don't own either of them... Yet...