Name: Obsidian
Series: Beast Machines
Allegiance: Vehicon
Function: Aerial Combat
Alternate Mode: Combat Helicopter
CHOPPER MODE
Height: 6cm Length: 12.5cm Width: 12cm
A mid green and pine green twin rotor helicopter with transparent orange cockpit, rotors and tailfins. There is no black on this toy whatsoever, despite the name. The colour scheme is pretty good nonetheless, with the darker green being a metallic plastic and the orange plastic working better than most transparent plastics used in Beast Machines. There are pine green and light orange paint applications rounding out a good colour scheme.
This is clearly not a real helicopter. The twin rotors are big, tall and obvious. They sit on the ends of a wing above the fuselage, below the wings are beefy looking gunpods, which have five orange barrels each. There's also a pine green gun underneath the cockpit which can swing up and down, giving Obsidian a total of eleven barrels. Adding to the already impressive armoury are the missile launchers - swing the rotors forward and press the orange buttons at the back and you'll fire the rotors, which are designed to double as buzzsaw blades. They don't spin and will only fire maybe 20cm, but still provide some play value.
The styling is very military and Obsidian looks like he could almost be a real chopper (well, maybe not in these colours). The big rotors and proliferation of weaponry make for a powerful looking combat machine, even at this scale.
Adding to the play value in the rotors is a semi-detachable cockpit, which can fold forward to rest on a ball joint, allowing it to pivot around like a bird's head. The rear landing gear can fold up, while the front gear are moulded underneath the gunpods and don't move. I'd recommend leaving the rear wheels down otherwise he'll tip back.
A pretty tough looking chopper, not a Vehicon you'd want to mess with. The absence of black is a little detracting but there's enough fun here that I'm not bothered by the misnomer.
TRANSFORMATION TO ROBOT MODE
Fold down the tail, which will cause the nose to also fold down thanks to a series of gears. The torso will have formed and the head swung out, although you'll have to fold it forward. Fold down the gunpods to form his arms, split the legs and rotate the tailfins back to form heelspurs.
ROBOT MODE
Height: 11cm Width: 12cm
Again a mix of two greens with orange highlights, Obsidian's colours again work well and black is again notable for it's absence. The orange is really just a highlighting colour now, although we see a little more on the top of his head, which is a simple angular affair with a transparent orange eyeblock but no lightpipe. The face is typically Vehicon, simple and drone-like, so I don't object to the lack of value there - although a working lightpipe would have been nice. The colours again work well here, if anything they're slightly nicer than those of the chopper mode.
Big, blocky and top-heavy, Obsidian again gives the impression of a fighting machine, despite his size. The wings sit over his shoulders as giant shoulderpads, the rotorblades on the tips make for a toy that's more or less triangle shaped. Instead of hands he has gunracks, which works for an instrument of destruction. The top of the torso is the gear mechanism while the lower half is the cockpit of the chopper. The nose gun is pretty phallic, but luckily it's the same dark green as his legs and you don't really see it.
The rotor-missiles can again swing forward and fire in this mode. The cartoon shows his flying mode, which is achieved by leaving his legs attached and folding down his feet. He's unable to stand in this configuration but you can hold him, for enhanced play value I guess.
The head is on a ball joint and the neck is hinged at the bottom, the shoulders are restricted ball joints that function as swivels while the elbows have both hinges and ball joints. The hips are ball jointed while the knees and ankles are ball joints, with the heelspurs able to rotate allowing for stable posing. The end result is great poseability for a basic, despite the top heaviness of this mode. Add in the rotors and you've got great play value for a toy with no handweapons (or true hands, for that matter).
Aside from the nosegun, I have no real complaints. This is a well designed robot mode with good colours, great poseability and some cool design elements like the gunrack hands. The aesthetic is unmistakably Vehicon, so if you don't like that look you probably wont think much of his looks, but the play value is is hard to argue with.
VARIATIONS
This mould has been recoloured in both RiD and TFU, both repaints are creatively called Obsidian - and neither are black. Corporate imagination does not exist, it seems.
OVERALL
Two well designed modes with colours that are surprisingly well suited make Obsidian a good toy. You've got to be a fan of the Vehicon set to really appreciate this guy, although the play value is excellent for a basic no matter what era of Transformers you like. Recommended to BM fans and definitely worth a look for others - 8/10
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