Name: Corahda
Series: Beast Wars Neo
Allegiance: Cybertron
Function: Ground Trooper
Alternate Mode: Cobra
COBRA MODE
Height: 9cm Length: 28cm Width: 6.5cm
Incidentally, the length refers to Corahda with his tail fully straightened - it's 23cm of his 28cm on it's own. Anyway he's a cobalt blue cobra fading to a steely blue on the tip of his tail, with some silver on his neck and red and yellow markings on the back of the hood. His eyebrows are gold and his eyes and teeth white, the eyes have black pupils and there's some bronze robot mode visible on his belly, which doesn't look out of place. Considering how many colours Corahda's sporting here his colour scheme is very unified, and it's more or less believable thanks to some clever choices. I could believe in a cobalt blue cobra, even though most snakes are blacks, browns or greys.
As you'd expect this snake is designed with the hood spread out, and it's a lot thicker and wider than it should be since most of the robot mode is tucked away here. I don't mind this really since all that robot has to be somewhere and it's pretty unobtrusive really. The tail is really just tail and the head is posed in the dancing cobra pose. There are scales all over the top side of the snake, including the tail, and he even has nostrils on his snout. The tail ends in a bony tip for some reason.
There's a bronze squirtgun that sits underneath his mouth, and pushing down on a panel at the back of his neck will activate this if there's water in the bladder underneath. If you remove the squirtgun there's clearance for his lower jaw, which opens to reveal a pink inside and two white lower fangs. The main part of the toy is otherwise static, but there's plenty of wiggleroom in the tail. Literally. There are eight joints towards the back of the tail that wiggle from side to side like the traditional wiggling snake toys. The next four are taut ball joints while the joint that connects the long tail to the main body is a ball joint that's designed to support the weight of the head. I'm very impressed with this tail - the five ball joints allow the tail to anchor the toy and stand up in a dancing pose, while the others allow for a loose "natural" slinkiness to the tail's tip.
Ok, the head is a lot bigger than it should be, but this is a commendable effort. Takara were flirting with disaster in trying to create a realistic snake Transformer, but Corahda's snake mode shows it can be done. The colours work quite well, although they're maybe a little bland. The squirtgun isn't really very exciting, but it's easy enough to just leave it out.
There's actually a "gun mode" which involves lifting up the head and folding out the robot legs as supports. It's not much more than a snake with legs (and an exposed venom squirter), and like most BW Neo weapon modes is a non-event.
TRANSFORMATION TO ROBOT MODE
Lift up the head, fold out the neck-panel, flip out the robot head and push it through the neck-panel's gap. Unclip the robot legs, rotate the belly clockwise to form his chest, fold down the tail to become his right arm, fold out the squirter's base to become his left arm. Straight the legs, fold the snake head down to become his chest, so that the top of the head proper is vertical. Flip out the feet and stand him up.
ROBOT MODE
Height: 15cm Width: 8cm
The exact width will vary depending on what you do with the long wiggly right arm. Anyway, Corahda is again cobalt blue with a gold groin, a cold conquistador style helmet and the removable gold squirtgun on his left hand. His ribcage, left shoulder and head are bronze while his face is metallic blue with green eyes. There's a deep red spark crystal on the outside of his left shoulder (like a tattoo), sporting a Maximal (well, Cybertron) symbol inside it. The colour scheme here is pretty good, with the blue, gold and bronze working well together. The red spark crystal is nice and thankfully the green on his eyes is so minor you'll probably miss it unless you look for it.
The hood of his snake mode now forms something of a poncho - combined with the conquistador helmet there's a definite Mexican theme here, even if the elements don't quite match. The right arm is a long whip, in the shape of the snake's tail, while the left is a claw with the squirtgun mounted its the outside. The shoulders are concealed inside the curls of the poncho while the chestplate is the snake head.
By joint count this a fantastically articulated deluxe, although the eleven joints in one should probably be excluded. Other than the whip arm, both shoulders are ball jointed, the left elbow is a somewhat restricted hinge, the head is on a ball joint and his hips, knees and ankles are all ball jointed. Corahda has two-pronged heelspurs on each foot, which do a great job of making this top-heavy robot mode stable. That same top-heaviness does restrict the range of leg poseability, but you still have some stable poses available. The left arm is pretty versatile thanks to the four ball joints in the upper arm and ball jointed shoulder. The lower whip half will do what gravity tells it, but you have some influence thanks to the upper arm joints. Rounding out the play value is the squirtgun, which isn't so impressive really, but hey at least it means he has a handgun.
The colours are good, the articulation is impressive and there's some poseability here. There are some design restraints such as the limited poseability of one arm and a tail for his other arm, but considering what Corahda has to transform into this is a pretty well done robot mode. There are certainly better Beast Wars robot modes out there, but there are also worse examples out there that don't have the excuse of such a tricky alt mode.
VARIATIONS
None that I'm aware of, although his Japanese and Korean packaging are different.
OVERALL
A pretty difficult thing to do, but Takara have made a decent snake Transformer. There are compromises in both modes, but nothing that wrecks the toy, and Corahda has a lot of play value for a deluxe. Herpetologist transfans will no doubt want Corahda, and if you like the Beast Wars Neo style (which includes the BM Dinobots) then Corahda is an interesting toy you should check out - 7/10
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