Dave's Transformers Studio Series Rant: '86 Leader Wave 1

#86.06 Grimlock (T.rex) with Wheelie (non-transforming)

Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Studio/LGrimlock

By the time I got to this in the review queue, Leader Slag (er, SLUG)
with Daniel Witwicky. Will the line last long enough to get all five
Dinobots, and will they all be Leaders with partners? Well, Swoop could
probably be done just fine as a Voyager. And maybe Snarl. I wonder who
they'd have as Sludge's partner...Spike as a redeco of Daniel? Anyway.

CAPSULE

$50 price point.

Grimlock: It's big, looks good, and doesn't have a pile of fiddly
Masterpiece-style panels. Strongly recommended.

RANT

One of the trickier things about nostalgia about childhood memories is
that we expect everything to have scaled up with us, and it doesn't. This
hits Transformers fans pretty hard, because when presented with the original
toys (or faithful reproductions) they just seem so puny. I suspect that some
of the appeal of the Masterpiece line and 3P toys of a similar size is that
these larger toys feel the "right" size for people whose childhood memories
are scaled to tiny hands. A toy twice as big as the original feels more REAL
than the original if you yourself are twice as big as you were when you first
got the toy. Now, I was almost already my full height when Transformers
first came out, so the effect doesn't hit me as hard as it does people just a
few years younger, but I can definitely see how this Grimlock would feel just
about right to anyone born after about 1975 who got their first Transformers
as gradeschoolers.

Packaging: same size as previous Studio Series Leaders, same trade dress
as other '86 toys. The art on the front and sides shows Grimlock in dino
mode with Wheelie riding on his neck. Grimlock spent almost the entire movie
in dino mode, so it makes sense to use that mode for the art. (Grimlock did
briefly use his robot mode during the assault on Unicron, or I suspect they'd
have been tempted to make him non-transforming.)

AUTOBOT: GRIMLOCK
AUTOBOT: AUTOBOT WHEELIE
Assortment: 86.06
Altmode: T.rex (Grimlock), non-transforming (Wheelie)
Transformation Difficulty: 24 steps (Grimlock)
Previous Name Use: G1, G2, BW, Alt, RiD01, Ti, MP, Energon, RiD, RBA, AoE
(Grimlock); RotF, GenTR (Autobot Wheelie)
Previous Mold Use: None
Movie: TFtM
Scene: Mockery of Justice

GRIMLOCK and the DINOBOTS storm the QUINTESSON courtroom.

Packaging: Five ties hold the robot into the blister, including a
(rather shredded on mine) plastic shield over the chest. The claws are
closed over the fists, but otherwise no mistransformation. One tie on
Wheelie, one on the rifle. No sword (he barely used the rifle in the movie,
and not the sword).
The backdrop is the wall of the Quintesson Pit of Judgement.

Robot Mode: They went almost 100% cartoon deco here. In terms of mold,
the only serious difference is that they didn't try to minimize the foot
claws on the wrists (which could technically be done with some extra panels
to hide the real claws and replace them with stubs). And in terms of color,
the main thing that stands out is that they kept the smoky clear chestplate
from the toys (made it a little too smoky, you can barely see the Autobot
symbol behind it). The metallic blue visor is also a little dark under
normal lighting compared to the bright blue of the animation model.
Otherwise, though, they didn't put in the toy sticker details that had been
left out in the cartoon, and did keep the three colored bars on each shin.
While there's the molded detail to support a lot more color boundaries, they
deliberately kept the actual colors very simple and close to the animation
style.
At 8.25" (21cm) tall, it's a bit bigger than average for modern Leader
toys, but they're making an effort to keep the Dinobots at more or less the
same scale as the other Studio '86 figures, so they gotta be tall. Mostly
medium gray with red, gold, and black, plus a few other splashes of color.
Most of the toy is slightly silverly medium gray plastic. The head, fists,
thighs, and rifle are black plastic. A light gray plastic is used for most
of the torso front (which is largely painted gold), the dino forelimbs
hanging in back, the wing hinges, the wrist roots, and hinges inside the
feet. I suspect this plastic is meant to stand in for chromed plastic, which
animated as white or light gray. The pelvis, hips, shoulder struts, and some
bits holding the wings on are bright red plastic. The front of the
chestplate is smoky clear plastic. I suspect that the claws on the wrists
are medium gray plastic as well.
Gold paint covers most of the toros front and the claws on the wrists.
The visor is metallic blue, as are the kneecap stripes. Near the bottom of
the shins are red and green painted bars, and the toe tips are painted
black. The abdomen front is painted red in a decent match for the plastic.
A barely visible red Autobot symbol is printed behind the smoky plastic.
While there's dino mode paint visible from behind, I'll cover that later.
The neck is a restricted ball joint, the waist is a smooth swivel. Each
wing is connected via two hinges to allow them to swing forwards and
backwards as well as splay outwards. The shoulders have ratcheting swivels
and then smooth "lift up to the sides" hinges. Smooth bicep swivels, and
kinda weird hinged elbows. They have little snap clips to keep the arms
straight when they're working as dino legs, and bending the elbows makes it
look like the arm has been broken. (Some have had trouble with the tabs
snapping off, as well.) The wrist claws are hinged, the wrists themselves
are swivels. The hips are universal joints, with soft ratcheting on the
swivel and smooth lifting hinges. Smooth upper thigh swivels, soft
ratcheting knees, sideways hinged ankles. Unlike the elbows, the ankles have
bits molded in to keep everything looking connected when the hinge bends.
5mm socket fists, 5mm sockets on the outer faces of the forearms, outer
faces of the shoulders, outer faces of the boots, the undersides of the
heels, and one in the top of the back. (Unfortunately, the 5mm peg on the
rifle is too short and blocked by the ammo clip to let it make use of most of
these sockets for storage.) There's a 3mm socket in the back of the pelvis,
and another on the outer top edge of the left shoulder (for Wheelie).
The rifle is unpainted black plastic 3.5" (9cm) long with a very short
5mm peg grip. The two barrels each end in a 3mm stud. On top near the back
is a non-standard clip that goes around a dino forelimb for storage in robot
mode. There's also a pair of tabs on the left side that go into slots
revealed in dino mode.

Wheelie: Okay, credit for not just making him a single block. While it
lacks full articulation and is very hard to stand up on its own, there's six
points of articulation and a removable (and therefore lose-able) weapon.
That said, it's very much still an accessory rather than an independent
figure. And it has a lot of hollows in all four limbs, someone's gonna go
nuts with a gap-filler kit, I expect.
It can't stand up straight, but if it could, it would be about 3" or so
(7-8cm) tall. Mostly a mix of medium gray, orange, and whatever the orange
equivalent of pink is (close to "white people skin tone" color, but not
quite). The back (including shoulder struts) and pelvis (including hip
struts) are black plastic, the y-shaped slingshot is light gray plastic, and
everything else is a medium gray plastic that's a little darker than
Grimlock's medium gray.
The orange cream color is painted on the fronts of the arms and most of
the torso front. Regular orange covers the rest of the arms (but not the
hands), the thighs, the shins, and the helmet. The face is silver with
bright metallic blue eyes (should've done Grimlock's visor in this color).
The border around the face is unpainted gray. A red Autobot symbol is
printed on the sternum. No paint on the slingshot.
The right arm is straight, the left arm is bent with the hand in a
plucking pose, both knees are bent. The neck is a restricted ball joint, the
waist is a smooth swivel, the shoulders and hips are ball joints. The inner
faces of all the limbs are riddled with hollows, as if they were novelty
macaroni shapes.
The right hand can hold 3mm pegs, and the slingshot (12mm tall) has a
3mm grip. There's a 3mm peg on the underside of the left thigh for sitting
on Grimlock's robot shoulder, 3mm channels on the heels that wrap around pegs
on either side of the dino mode neck, and unintentional 3mm sockets on the
inner faces of the knees. You can attach a knee to one of the pegs on the
left wing, since they use that size peg and socket to seal closed as the dino
chest.
It's not impossible to stand the figure without external support, but
the results are not really worth the bother.

Transformation: Amazingly non-frustrating. I mean, it's essentially a
tweaked G1 transformation, with a few more folding bits in the robot legs to
get to the tail without having "skipped leg day" effect on the robot thighs,
plus the robot head folds in a bit rather than requiring the dino neck cover
it up. The only bit I needed to refer to the instructions for was storing
the rifle (tabs on the side of the rifle go into slots in the heel chunks,
which actually stabilizes the tail a bit). Mind you, a lot of Grimlocks copy
some or all of the G1 transformation and do it badly, usually leading to
terrible tails or bad robot legs or both.
I mean, it's not the ONLY Leader Class to have a non-frustrating
transformation, but given my experiences with the complexity of the rest of
the TFtM Studio Series wave 1 toys, it's a pleasant surprise.