Cliffbee.com Wolfang Toy Review

Individual Review




Name: Wolfang
Series: Beast Wars
Allegiance: Maximal
Function: Infantry
Alternate Mode: Timberwolf



WOLF MODE
Height: 8.5cm Length: 16cm Width: 6cm

   A grey wolf with white paint sprayed on his paws and under the chin, a black nose, green eyes and some blue robot bits visible. Blue outbursts aside this is a pretty good colour scheme. It's not that the blue clashes, it just doesn't belong here. There are a few obvious joints and seams which conspire with the blue to give Wolfang a rather disjointed beast mode. The end result is a potentially cool wolf mode colour scheme that doesn't quite work.

   As you'd expect of a Timberwolf, Wolfang is a stocky, muscular looking beast. He has a big, bushy tail which flicks to the right, a very thick neck and muscular ridges on his back. The front paws are fixed in a stalking sort of pose - with the left one in front of the right, while the rear paws have hinged ankles and ball jointed hips. The sculpting is pretty good - aside from the muscular ridges there is moulded fur all over, teeth in his snarling mouth and lines inside his ears.

   The hindleg articulation gives Wolfang some poseability, but the fixed front legs mean a bounding pose is out, sadly. The head is fixed and the tail cannot move (although it can detach). On the back of his thighs Wolfang has blue robot kibble, while from the front his robot mode fists are visible underneath his chest. The moral of the story? Look at Wolfang from the side.

   A great idea and a good colour scheme are held back by unposeable front limbs and lots of seams and robot bits ruining the illusion. It's a shame since this should have been a great beast mode - and the colours hint at what might have been. It's still not a bad beast mode, but it's far from great.

TRANSFORMATION TO ROBOT MODE

   Detach the tail and backplate, Swing down the legs and fold out the back of the thighs to form the robot boots. Split the head, fold out the side panels to form hipplates, swing the robot arms out to the sides. Rotate the beast-head halves to form shoulderplates, slide down the torso. Lift up the mutant head mask if you like, fold out the handles on his backplate and tail to give Wolfang a shield and missile launcher. The two missiles are actually concealed in his torso, and slide out of his back.

ROBOT MODE
Height: 13cm Width: 12.5cm

   The blue is of course far more prominent here. The head, chest, forearms and boots are blue, while the shoulderpads, groin, thighs and shinplates are grey. There's a fair bit of black too, notably the mutant head visor, fists and upper arms. The mutant face is black with bright pink eyes, which work better than you might expect - even if the pink _is_ out of place. The robot face proper is silver with green eyes and a huge protruding chin (we're talking Guy Smiley gone wrong). Pink eyes aside this is a very tasteful colour scheme, and the blue which was something of a liability in beast mode now combines with the grey and black to form a fantastic colour scheme. The robotic parts are mostly the mid blue with black detailing, which works really well. The concave shield and missile launcher's tip are silver, which is easy to miss on the grey plastic.

   Wolfang has some unusual proportions, notably big thighs, a short torso and shoulderplates that are a dominating feature. The last one is fine aesthetically, although it causes some poseability issues. The short torso is on it's own ok, but combines badly with the big thighs. I do like the integration of wolf mode elements here - the head becoming the shoulderplates and the shinplates are the hindpaws. The is some kibble, mind you - the front paws hang off the back of his upper arms and the side panels of the wolf mode hang off his hips.

   This is a pretty poseable robot mode - the neck, shoulders and hips are ball jointed while the knees and elbows are hinged, there are rotators in his upper arms complimenting the elbows. The knees and beast ankles are the same joint, so the boots aren't hampered by their clip-together nature. The feet and heelspurs are hinged, giving Wolfang great leg poseability. The shield handle is double jointed, allowing for a wide range of stances while the missile launcher more or less just sits in his hand.

   The black crossbow bolt missiles look pretty cool and fire around a metre, annoyingly the black launcher button is on top of the launcher, making it visible in wolf mode. The butts of the missile actually stick out of his belly around half a centimetre, which is a little surreal.

   Despite the proportions this robot mode works fairly well. The colours, weaponry and poseability really help Wolfang out, to the point where you don't really notice the kibble. The proportions still bug me somewhat, and while the pink eyes are out of place, I recommend the mutant head mainly because the diving board chin is just too weird.

VARIATIONS

   None as such, although K-9 is a recolour and extensive retooling of Wolfang. Max-B from Beast Wars Second is an even more extensive repaint & retool.

OVERALL

   The robot mode has some proportion issues, but also gets great colours and poseability. The beast mode is nowhere near as cool as it could have been, sadly. A lot of the problems here were rectified on K-9, so you might like to skip Wolfang and grab his domesticated cousin, but Wolfang does have much better colours so I'm more inclined to recommend Wolfang if the robot mode strikes your fancy - 6.5/10

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