Name: Killerpunch
Series: Beast Wars Neo
Allegiance: Destron
Function: Intelligence Officer
Alternate Mode: Styracosaurus
Thanks to Tiby for loaning me Killerpunch for this review
STYRACOSAURUS MODE
Height: 10cm Length: 19cm Width: 6cm
A deep lilac Styracosaurus with bone coloured horns - and this beast has a single horn on the nose with eight on the frill, Killerpunch is a repaint and extensive retool of Guildeart. There are some mid blue spots down his spine and tail, his eyes are yellow while his beak and toenails are bone. Like Guildeart, Killerpunch 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 sculpt. There is a small gap on his underside between the hind legs, but I can easily overlook this. Without any evidence either way, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that Killerpunch's colours are plenty realistic. The deep lilac has a nice sheen to it, making this an attractive colour scheme, and I'm glad that the colour is so different to Guildeart.
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. While the overall look is still fairly similar to Guildeart, much of this beast has been remoulded - the head is totally new, the tail and back have also been redone with the spots and a more pronounced spine. The "playing dead" feature is no longer available since the eye feature of Guildeart is gone, although you can still open panels on his sides revealing red "flesh" and silver ribs.
The poseability is fairly limited - 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. While the playing dead gimmick is gone, the head can now fire. Tip it forward slightly - you need to actually slightly deform the beast - then push the red tab hidden behind his frill and the head will fire a few inches. It's not very impressive, since you have to do so much to activate it in the first place. The tab actually flips forward to give the headless beast a robot head of sorts.
A decent beast mode with great colours, and I'm really impressed with the effort that has gone into the resculpting. Killerpunch's gimmick fails, but visually he works well. I wouldn't say he's any better or worse than Guildeart, but is distinctly different which I appreciate.
TRANSFORMATION TO ROBOT MODE
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 launcher becomes one forearm, the tailtip becomes his hand weapon, 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. The transformation isn't the same as Guildeart, since the tail weapon is different, and the head ends up stowed on his back.
ROBOT MODE
Height: 14cm Width: 14cm (depending on pose)
While the lilac is still a main colour here, prominent on his legs, head and arms, there's a dark magenta on his torso, right shoulder ankles. His chest is silver and black while his face is vermilion with yellow eyes and a silver mouth, in a grimace. The head has been totally resculpted, too, Killerpunch looks like he's wearing some sort of warhelmet. The torso sculpt is the same, although the right arm is different (thanks to the different beast head) with a purple Destron spark Crystal on his forearm. The lilac, magenta and bone colours combine quite well. The two main colours are bright but are similar enough to compliment each other with the bone as a subdued counterfoil.
Killerpunch's robot mode is very stocky, with a small torso, big legs and lots of kibble on his arms and back. The right hand is the head launcher, with the tab becoming one side of a claw, the lower jaw being the other side. His beast back is his left shoulderpad. Attached to this shoulderpad are the forelegs, from which bone 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 bright colours mean the kibble looks a little jumbled, unfortunately - Guildeart's lighter colours are more successful in this respect.
The tailtip becomes a silver sabre, and quite a hefty one at that. It's a very imposing weapon, and looks much more threatening than the tailgun Guildeart carries. He loses the missile launcher, but you can load the head and fire it from his other hand - this is his "killer punch" (hence the name). 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 right around, the resculpting gives it a wider range of movement. 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.
While I like the colour combination here, the colours serve to highlight the significant kibble. While many of the kibble pieces are placed as features, Killerpunch does look a little messy. I do appreciate the effort put into making him different to Guildeart, not just in the colours but also the sculpt. While the "features" are quite imposing and the new weapon is great, he just feels a little too busy here. It's still a nice robot mode, but is a bit weaker than the original.
VARIATIONS
None that I'm aware of, although he is a repaint and retool of Guildeart, as mentioned. Guildeart has been repainted several times, but this resculpt has not been repainted.
OVERALL
A good retooling overall with nice colours, but Killerpunch doesn't really improve on the original concept. The beast mode is his better mode, even if the head gimmick fails. The robot mode looks good but highlights the kibble a little more than I'd like. His weapon is better than Guildeart's and the resculpted head means he does feel like a different character, but considering how tricky to find (and expensive) Killerpunch is, I wouldn't recommend him over Guildeart (or one of the repaints), and really if you have that mould, this one doesn't offer much more for the price you'll pay - 7/10
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