Name: Injector
Series: Beast Wars
Allegiance: Predacon
Function: Air Commander
Alternate Mode: Anglerfish/Hornet fusion
Thanks to Goktimus Prime for loaning me Injector for this review
BEAST MODE
Height: 12cm Length: 17cm Width: 13.5cm
A purple anglerfish with a yellow hornet wedged up it's rear end. Basically the head of this beast is a transparent red and purple anglerfish with a slightly shortened body, while the back half is a yellow hornet with purple stripes, six purple legs and transparent red wings. The colours are fairly logical for the hornet and passable for the anglerfish, but they don't too well. His teeth are white and eyes bright green. I'm not a huge fan of the colour scheme, mainly because of the sharp distinction between the two beasts - but this is the least of Injector's problems.
While the Fuzor concept started out as a _fusion_ of two beasts, Injector is really just half and half, and feels very forced. The division between the fish head and hornet body is jarring - it's also as if a hornet didn't quite decelerate in time and found itself stuck inside the fish. The two beasts actually have a gap between them, the hornet half isn't very unified anyway, with the robot torso sitting under the abdomen awkwardly and there being a gap between the thorax (which his wings attach to) and the abdomen. More than anything else, the entire design just feels lazy - if it was done properly this concept could work. The robot legs are unceremoniously shoved underneath and very badly concealed - they don't clip in anywhere. This last aspect really indicates that the designer was sloppy here.
As far as anatomy goes, the hornet stuff is all fairly generic - it could just as easily be a bee. He has six legs, although the latter pair are the robot legs and don't really work so well, being larger and not flexible enough to sit in any natural position. The wings have moulded veins and there's a generic rough texture on the abdomen, while the head of the fish has some scale-like sculpting, yellow wart-like features (why?) and moulded gills. There's a yellow rhino-like horn between his eyes, which makes Injector perhaps the least successful anglerfish.
The play value is fairly underwhelming, to be honest. The jaw opens and shuts and the wings can swing forward. He cannot stand on his legs and the hornet half tends to flop around if you try to pose them anyway. The stinger at the back is a missile, and while it can be fired, shooting it backwards seems somewhat pointless.
A terrible fusion of two beasts, largely because the design is so lazy. He's a fish with a hornet up the backside, not a fusion. The sculpt is okay but a little generic while the play value isn't impressive. Had the designer made a serious attempt at fusing the two beasts, this beast could work, but as things stands, it's awful.
TRANSFORMATION TO ROBOT MODE
Detach the abdomen and set aside. Swing the robot legs up from underneath, rotate the waist. Fold down the insect legs, swing the sides of the abdomen out to the sides, forming his arms. Rotate the head, clip together, lift up the wings and stand him up. In theory you can attach the abdomen as a handheld launcher, but all you achieve is giving him a kibble-arm with a launcher.
ROBOT MODE
Height: 18cm Width: 8cm
A yellow, black, purple and red robot. Injector has purple boots, black thighs, forearms and groin, a yellow chest and a red head with yellow face. The abdomen pieces on the outside of his forearms are striped, and they don't pull out at all, leaving the forearms partly concealed - or entirely concealed if you plug the missile launcher back it. His teeth are the fish teeth while the eyes are the same green as the fish eyes now on his helmet. Again the colour scheme is mixed, although as jarring as in beast mode.
The wings on his forearms look good, but it's all downhill from here, I'm afraid. The head is _huge_ since it's basically an entire fish. His face is about an inch in front of the chest while the body itself is quite small compared to his head. We're not talking gigantism here - the head is about the same volume as the entire body below it (excluding wings). The horn and dorsal fin on top of the head make this an ugly robot - although all that anglerfish on the helmet doesn't help either. The legs are unpainted and vaguely arthropodic without being notable while the forearms are dominated by the hornet kibble.
There's a gimmick built into the fish half - pushing in on a plate underneath the back of his head will release most of the fish which flicks forward as the spines of the dorsal fin fan out. It's a nice idea, but doesn't end up as impressive as I suspect the designer was hoping. It's a lot better than the handheld weapon, which clips into the kibble on the outside, forming a abdomen-shaped missile launcher. At least the purple missile fires okay.
Poseability is not so good despite good articulation because he has to support the weight of a giant fish while the insect's legs and wings sit on the back. His shoulders and hips are ball jointed while the elbows and knees are hinged with rotators. His ankles are also hinged with the feet incorporating relatively large heelspurs. His jaw again opens - it's the same trick as before.
The head is again quite lazy, and you'd think the designer would try to make better use of the chunk of fish on top. The head gimmick is uninteresting and ungainly at any rate while the back heavy nature of this toy works against him. Injector's robot mode is no worse that his beast mode, but it's no better either.
VARIATIONS
None, thankfully. The Japanese equivalent, Rartorarta, is virtually the same, with some black plastic replaced by grey. Rartorarta represents a different character.
OVERALL
A very lazy execution of the Fuzor concept which saw two beast mashed together in an inelegant and lazy way, Injector's weapon is awful while the beast mode is a mess and the head of the robot mode is ridiculously big. Topping that off, the name is terribly cheesy. He was initial slated to be called "Aquasting", which is still somewhat corny but not as bad as Injector. Probably the weakest Beast Wars toy - and while that line is generally strong, this toy is just plain bad - 1/10
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