Cliffbee.com Universe "Dinobot" Triceradon Toy Review

Individual Review




Name: Triceradon
Series: Universe
Allegiance: Autrobot
Alternate Mode: Triceratops

Thanks to Griffin for loaning me Triceradon for this review.



TRICERATOPS MODE
Height: 10cm Length: 19cm Width: 6cm

   A pale purple Triceratops with mustard yellow horns, spines and claws and a silver stripe down the spine, Triceradon is about 98% organic in this mode. Aside from some robot mode stuff on the back of his hind legs and a shoulder underneath his neck, he's covered in leathery moulding. There is a small gap on his underside between the hind legs, but I can easily overlook this. Of course, whether or not this colour scheme is accurate is unknown, but it works aesthetically, which is all I can ask of it. The yellow on his horns is somewhat unlikely, but still possible. He even has painted eyeballs.

   The moulding in this mode is excellent. Scales, wrinkles, nostrils as well as hair-strands on his horns and beak. His front legs are moulded into slightly different positions, with the left slightly forward to give him a walking pose. All four legs are on ball joints at their hips, which allows for some posing. Probably about as much as a plant eating quadrupedal dinosaur would have had, anyway.

   There's an interesting addition to this mode. He has the ability to play dead. The legs can splay out to the sides. Pushing the central horn back makes his eyes roll back in his head and his tongue hang out. Finally you can open panels on this side to reveal ribs and flesh. It's macabre, certainly, but it's an interesting addition to what's already a pretty good mode.

TRANSFORMATION TO ROBOT MODE

   Oh boy. I'm not going to go through this in too much detail. It's fiddly, almost to the point of being annoying. There's asymmetry, the head becomes one forearm, the tail becomes the gun, which he holds in the other hand. Lots of panel manipulation and the hind legs become the robot legs. Transforming him back to dinosaur mode is tricky, since everything has to fit in exactly the right spot. I suppose it's a typical BWNeo transform in that it's complex and exact.

ROBOT MODE
Height: 12cm (top of head) Width: ~15cm (depending on pose)

   The pale purple that was by far dominant in triceratops mode is still a major theme here, but it's joined by a tan on his arms, groin and ankles. His chest is vermillion and silver with an asymmetric moulding. The gun has a vermillion tip, his face is mustard with green eyes. The head is moulded to resemble a triceratops head, it looks like he's wearing a purple helmet with a giant crest. There are splashes of lilac on some connecting pieces in robot mode, which doesn't really fit with the much fainter purple. The colours don't really work too well in this mode - there are too many distinct colours here.

   Triceradon's robot mode is quite stocky, with a small torso, big legs and lots of kibble on his arms. The right hand is the beast head, the beast's back is his left shoulderpad. Attached to this shoulderpad are the forelegs, from which purple spines protrude to make them look like attack spikes or something (as opposed to just pure kibble). He has an armour skirt, which sort of just sits there attached to his waist. It's small, but does get in the way to some extent.

   The gun sports a spark crystal, which is covered by a stamped Autobot logo. It doubles also a missile launcher. There are two lilac missiles which live in the shoulderpad that you can load into this launcher. Adding to this play value is the fact he's quite poseable. He has poseable ankles, heelspurs, knees and ball joints on his hips. The knee joints are a little high, but don't look that bad. The head can turn, although due to the shape of his chest can't turn all the way to the right. The shoulders and left elbow are ball joints and there are two joints in the right elbow. It's worth nothing that poseability is hampered by kibble - some poses of the legs are limited by the skirt, and the left arm's posing is quite limited by it's huge shoulderpad. The upside is that the heelspurs make him quite stable, so he'll stand in a lot of poses.

   This is a decent robot mode, but the kibble does bring it down a fair bit and the colours are frankly terrible. One hand being a beak is a negative in my books. The proportion problems are quite minor, but the smallish torso is accentuated by the giant kibble on the arms. I can't fault the attention to detail in the mould - the head moulding is fantastic - but the colours here are awful and there are many versions of this mould with better colour schemes.

VARIATIONS

   He's a recolour of BW Neo's Guildeart, BM's Triceradon. There is another Universe version.

OVERALL

   A good mould with lots of kibble, a great sculpt and some clever play features. While the mould has its positives and negatives, there are also better versions of it - and most of them are easier to find than this somewhat garish repaint. I'd recommend Guildeart if you can find him, instead - 5/10

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