Beast Wars toy-inspired voyager-class Dinobot is the Grilock head on a pink body, which is a recipe for nostalgia. With this figure showing up at liquidation, is there a reason to get another version of this mold?
Picked up Buzzworthy Dinobot at Ross purely for nostalgia’s sake. I like the Grimlock head a lot, and I like the Dinobot ’96 coloring. That said, had I not asked for and gotten a 10% damaged package discount, I still wouldn’t have bought this, $13 was somehow too far while $11.70 wasn’t.
Robot mode pros:
– Grimlock head looks pretty great in the ’96 blue face with gold eyes
– joint tolerances feel less punishing
– weapon paint looks great, the white sword and red interior on the tail… thing are a nice visual
– overall deco gets it right, especially the torso’s eyes and metallic orange paint
Robot mode cons:
– obviously, it inherits a lot of the flaws from the original (waffled parts, chonky, kibbly, long arms, wobbly waist)
– no stripe paint on the arms, not enough on the torso
– backside is pink instead of metallic orange
Beast mode pros:
– dino eye slits look great, prefer this over the cartoon pupils
– deco looks great, a lot more striping, painted nails, most of the orange is packed away, it’s a solid homage but also a decent look for this mold in general
– deco is more cohesive than the previous versions, the robot hips and shoes integrate better, the faux-eyes are easier to ignore, no gold boobs, no weird half-painted parts
Beast mode cons:
– inherits a lot of the same stupid problems as the original of course (can’t pose much, weird proportions, robot thighs in the way of the arms, giving birth to shoes, dopey floppy hands, left beast thigh shell still doesn’t wanna close)
Overall, this is probably my favorite use of this mold simply because it’s not as much of a visually-jumbled mess and it doesn’t feel like quite the whiffed-tolerances disaster that the original did. It doesn’t have cartoon credibility of course, but it has classic toy cred. The lower price risk also makes the clever stuff that does work shine better, though at full price I’d definitely have preferred cartoon-accuracy.