Cliffbee.com Armada Terrorsaur w/ Ironhide Toy Review

Individual Review




Name: Terrorsaur
Series: Armada
Allegiance: Decepticon
Alternate Mode: Pterodactyl / Jet

Thanks to Excelon Zero loaning me Terrorsaur & Ironhide for this review.



PTERODACTYL MODE
Height: 9cm Length: 15cm Width: 26cm

   Exact dimensions will depend on how you pose him, but Terrorsaur has a pretty impressive wingspan for a deluxe. He's an orange and green pterodactyl. It's meant to look robotic, but in these colours Terrorsaur doesn't exactly look reptilian either. The chrome of the Transmetal Terrosaur is gone, which also prevents this beast from looking robotic. The plastics here are an equal mix of orange, grass green and menthol green - all three have a slight metallic sheen. The eyes are bright orange while there are some bright orange, green and silver elements here and there. It's a very unified colour scheme, but it's not really what I'd call aesthetically appealing. The combination is not a bad idea, but on a beast it just looks strange.

   Pterodactyls don't have hands on their wings - the wings _are_ the hands, with really long fingers and webbing between the those fingers. Terrorsaur has orange painted claws instead of points on the front edge of his wings, so he's somewhat inaccurate.

   The legs are also rather big, being the lower legs of his robot mode. The front and ear claws are poseable, but are fairly loose so they don't really give him the ability to hold onto things. His wings are on ball joints on his shoulders, and they're more poseable than they would be in reality. The mouth opens, there's ridges on the insides of his beak, like a set of pliers. His head can move up and down, but it doesn't move at the top of the neck but at the base of the neck - this joint exists for the transformation.

   This beast feels more like something from Beast Machines than either Armada or Beast Wars, thanks to the obviously differing colours, legs that become legs and wings that become arms. The mould has problems, the colours are nowhere near as good as those of the original - and the MiniCon clashes with them, too.

TRANSFORMATION TO JET MODE

   Rotate the legs sideways and peg them under the body. Swing the feet foward. Open the tail to reveal the engines. Lift up and fold forward the purple panels on the wings to reveal the VTOL fans. Fold down the crest.

JET MODE
Height: 6cm Length: 15cm Width: 25cm

   Weak. It's basically a bird with no legs and a couple of plane bits added. The fact that the nosecone is the head of the bird makes this mode ridiculous. It turns from a flying reptile into a plane that looks like a flying reptile, and makes you wonder why they bothered. Most Transmetal vehicle modes have some practicality, this one doesn't.

   The engines and VTOL fans are cool, but ultimately can't save a bad mode that simply looks like an afterthought.

TRANSFORMATION TO ROBOT MODE
(from Pteranodon mode)

   Fold the legs and hips back, from underneath the body to sticking out the back of the toy. Lift the chrome panel behind his head and fold the entire beak under the head. Fold the purple section of the body down whilst lifting out the robot head and folding the animal head in. There's a notch on the bottom of this section that should click into the groin, but it's tricky to get it to click in. Fold the arms down, swing up the rear panels on the wings, stand him up. Detach the wing extensions and place in his hands as weapons.

ROBOT MODE
Height: 14cm Width: 9cm

   Terrorsaur is again a mix of two greens and orange, although the menthol is less prominent and the orange moreso. Again his eyes are bright orange, on a grass green face with white teeth. The orange claws are now on his hands, and there's some more orange paint on his thighs. While the beast didn't look so great in these colours, the robot mode looks awful. There's just too much orange.

   There's a couple of features that really stand out in this mode. Firstly he's really lanky, and secondly his arms are really long. We're talking down to his ankles. There's a lot in the way of poseability in this mode, but a lot of it is hampered by design flaws. The elbows are hinged, the shoulders ball joints. The head can turn 360° and can look down but not up. The hips are ball joints, and just below these are swivel joints. There are two sets of hinges in the knees, essentially giving him independent kneecaps. The feet have front claws and rear heelspurs. Despite all this, he's got badly designed _round_ feet with loose hinges on the claws and heelspurs, meaning he pretty much has to stand upright or he'll fall over. While the shoulders are very poseable, the hinged elbows with no wrists hurt when he has such huge weapons.

   The weapons, formed from large panel sections of the wings, fail to impress me. I think they're meant to be sickles or machetes or something, but they look like giant sails. They're really nothing more than a way to remove all that wingspan for robot mode. And they _suck_ as weapons. I think he almost looks better with them hanging off the back of his forearms, despite the fact his arms are too long already. He looks more intimidating without them in his hands anyway, "Oh no! Terrorsaur's going to sail me to within an inch of my life!". In the upside, they're menthol green so wielding them gives Terrorsaur some counterbalance for all that orange.

   Like the jet mode, there's elements that smack of a rushed design job. The sides of the chest are on unused swivel joints, which were probably originally intended for the jet mode, but may have been for this mode. The weapons are a waste of time. Okay, a lot of Transmetals have weapons which are essentially hiding kibble, these things don't look like weapons at all. The arms to me look like they never bothered making them look like arms. But the worst facet is the feet design. Why give him all that leg poseability if he has feet that can't support many poses?

   This is the worst Transmetal robot mode by some distance, and now it looks like he's been attacked by a vegetable patch. The arms are bad, the feet are bad, the weapons are half-assed and the colours awful.


Name: Ironhide
Series: Armada
Allegiance: Minicon
Alternate Mode: Dune Buggy

DUNE BUGGY MODE
Height: 3cm Length: 6cm Width: 3.5cm

   A tan dune buggy with a giant cannon on the back, the kind you'd expect in desert combat. Duneraider has black ridged wheels and a matte black rollcage and matte black barrels on his cannon, with black seats buried underneath the rollcage. The blacks tend to obscure the detail, but black and tan is a decent enough idea. The rear fenders are painted a distinctly different shade of tan, sadly.

   On top of the cannon Ironhide sports a Minicon symbol, and on the front of the rollcage he has moulded headlights, and there's a few other moulded details that impress me like taillights. The Powerlinx port is underneath the buggy, right at the back.

   Ironhide's rollcage can swing up, and while it's needed for his transformation it's still play value. It falls off easier than it lifts up, but removing it actually improves the look of this mode since the blacks don't get in each other's way then. There's a rubber wheel underneath, if you roll him along with a little bit of downward pressure it'll cause the barrels of the cannon to swing side to side repeatedly. The cannon can rotate right around, and the gimmick will work regardless of where it's pointed, which is really cool. What's not so cool is that rotating the cannon will reveal his robot face, but you can hide it again by spinning it around so you see the powerlinx port instead.

   It's a good mould with a great gimmick. The tan and black is a good idea, although the rear fenders do not look good.

TRANSFORMATION TO ROBOT MODE

   Flip the front out to form the robot legs. You're meant to lift the rollcage first, but you don't have to - the legs will push it out of the way naturally. The kneecaps will also push out automatically. Rotate his head around, stand him up and position the arms. This transformation reminds me a lot of Beachcomber, the first TF dune buggy.

ROBOT MODE
Height: 6.5cm Width: 3.5cm

   Ironhide is now mainly tan, with that different shade paint on his eyestrip (why? the most pointless paint colour ever, here!). The thighs and feet are black, along with the tyres on his shoulders and knees. If not for the random differing tan shades, this robot mode would look good. As things are, Ironhide is as random as Terrorsaur, and is a regression from Duneraider.

   Ironhide has a very simple, almost droid-like, face, and the mechanisms on his chest give him a mechanical look. His most distinctive feature in this mode is his pointy kneecaps. Remember how the flipping legs necessitated gaps on Beachcomber's hood? Well Ironhide gets around this problem with panels that pop up to become rather pointy kneecaps. They cover half of his thighs and look a little unusual, but you wouldn't want to let him get you in a headlock!

   Poseability is pretty good for a MiniCon with a gimmick. His shoulders rotate and his head turns. The hips and knees are independently hinged, and while you have to be careful if you want to put him in action poses, the rollcage can act as a third leg so you do have some options.

   The stronger mode of the mould, and still fairly decent, but needlessly sullied by that stupid tan paint on his face and arms.


VARIATIONS

   As mentioned, Terrorsaur is a repaint of Transmetal Terrorsaur, Ironhide is a repaint of Duneraider.

OVERALL

   Two bad repaints that clash make this a very forgettable set. Terrorsaur loses chrome, gains bright orange and ends up looking like the son of a carrot and spinach. The tan Ironhide doesn't compliment him at all, and this is _not_ helped by the bad decision to add in a second shade of tan. Terrorsaur's beast mode is the best aspect, although that does has problems. The jet is a waste of time and robot mode is badly proportioned. A repaint I'd recommend avoiding - track down the originals - 2/10

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