Name: Triceradon
Series: Beast Machines
Allegiance: Maximal
Function: Frontline Combat
Alternate Mode: Triceratops
TRICERATOPS MODE
Height: 10cm Length: 19cm Width: 6cm
A brown Triceratops with bronze horns, spines and claws and a green 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 bronze on his horns works quite well. The bronze on his spines and claws is a slightly duller shade, since it's painted over brown plastic instead of being bronze plastic like the horns. The green stripe down his back suddenly ends on the tail, but this is about the only flaw in his paint job. 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 brown 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 a metallic blue with an asymmetric moulding. The gun has a red tip, his face is red with green eyes. The head is moulded to resemble a triceratops head, it looks like he's wearing a brown helmet with a giant crest. There are splashes of purple in robot mode, too, which is nowhere near as bad as it may sound.
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, which sports a purple spark crystal, is also a missile launcher. There are two purple 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 robot mode is quite good, but the kibble does bring it down a fair bit. 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. I'm not so sure about the use of both red and the light purple in this mode. I'd have preferred they left one of them out, but it doesn't ruin the mode's colour scheme.
VARIATIONS
He's a recolour of BW Neo's Guildeart, and has been revisited in the Transformers: Universe line. Twice.
OVERALL
A great beast mode in mould, colours and features. The transform is involved, if a tad too tricky. The robot mode is also quite nice, but it does have significant problems. Triceradon is a typical BWII mould - great detail, complex transform - the sort of toy into which a lot of effort was put. In truth I think he's the weakest of the Deluxe Dinobots, but then they're all good toys, and collectively are one of the few high points of the disappointing Beast Machines subset - 7/10
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